Your eternal destination: you decide.

I don't know anything about afterlife, but I know what I like... I like. The insight I get from the idea of reincarnation is that life is a learning process. Mistakes are built into the process of learning. They enable it. In time you reduce them as you understand more of the material.Judeo-Christian concepts owe more to judiciary models. Life is about laws, infractions, punishments and clemency. The model tells us much about the nature of the human conscience, but it has trouble with aspects of the universe that cannot be intepreted this way. It's still going to be a long time before Falwell can crack that beatific smile. You have to think any eternal, ominpresent and omnipotent creator worthy of the description would understand what we face here. Our lives are pitifully brief and we're compelled to sleep away a third even of that. Our experiences are limited, our ideas uncertain, and our survival issues pressing.To imagine such a being consigning us to eternal anguish for reaching an inaccurate conclusion about invisible things during the brief opportunity afforded us to ponder the matter... well, let's just say that would be a strange way to run a universe.So strange, in fact, that the image suggests less about eternal reality than it does about human fears. The fear of hell is the fear that you might have made an irreversible mistake--or the fear that someone else might not abide by your rules unless properly cowed.The behaviors we've seen on display in this thread confirm as much.At first it appears we are being asked to consider the possibility of heaven and hell for the sake of argument. When the author of the OP shrinks from answering the same question turned back on himself, you see what's really going on. The OP isn't (as we are later told) about hypotheticals. So what is it about?The OP attempts to impose a structure on the rest of us and get us to take roles in it. We are asked to do so regardless of whether or not we buy into the worldview it reflects.As in this thread, so in society. Fundamentalists contrive to impose order--their order--on those around them. The universe, as always, proves to be remarkably uncooperative with the project. When it demands self-examination from those who hope to impose the structure, they run.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : format.Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Thanks, AF, for a lovely picture of a lovely lady. I understood ts to be speaking generally--a bit of wisdom in harmony with your comment in Message 189 about not limiting oneself.I'd like to put that in my quote file, ts. Is that original with you?___Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

You initially mentioned kinship of feelings as evidence of an extraordinary shared experience that lent credibility--'beyond the shadow of a doubt'--to a particular religion. Now you say you were only talking about ordinary shared experience--nothing different in kind than fans experience at a ball game. Which is it?Florida State plays Penn State in the Orange Bowl. One team scores a touchdown. Half the fans are happy and half the fans are disappointed.Does the happiness of the happy fans indicate they have chosen the 'true' football team for their support? Do the disappointed fans support a 'false' team? If so, what does it mean if the lead changes? If not, can it be that either choice is valid? If either choice is valid, what is really being proven 'beyond the shadow of a doubt' when any fan feels happy?____

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ArcherAll species are transitional.