I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
*picks up his 10 ft. pole and approaches Lixy's new thread*
You have asked me to let people peek under the covers Lixy, and see me naked. The only problem is some people want to set my bed on fire if they don't see what is in their mirror or at the least, feel the need to beat my blankets with a club until they like their image.
OK Lixy. If you have the guts to ask, I have the guts to answer. If this is a personally narrow subject for anyone, you may not want to read on.
Do I believe there are MANY things beyond our awareness and greater than our puny asses. YES! I know better what I do not believe than what I do have convictions about beyond my existence.
I, personally, .....just for myself, have a problem believing that in the true scope of the vastness of our known universe, that there is an entity aware of my instantaneous individual existence, has the ability or any reason to effect it. One of my personal bewilderments is the ego of our specie that places ourselves at the apex of intellect. I will be much more surprised to find that we at not the protozoa of the cosmic sea then that we are.
As for involvement with organized religion, I have substantial roots in Christianity. Most of my awareness of the other four major modern religions is academic. As an American assembled from Irish and German parts, I was baptized Roman Catholic and early childhood was observant but not particularly practicing. Later, a very active Lutheran (Missouri Synod) life style became the way of life in our home and I was confirmed at fourteen. I was awarded Scouting's God and Country award. I took a strong religious faith to the service and found the inverse to the adage of "there's no atheists in a fox hole". My first
sincere consideration of a supreme being became questions rather than 'blind faith' and through what is still a continuing review I believe the responsibility for myself and others lies in our hands.
While I am keen to be joined in conversations of fact, concept and opinion, this is a subject I shy from, not so much from alienation for philosophical difference, but from concern of causing question for another that feels a comfort and strength within their convictions. I am responsible here, now and in all memory for my deeds and effects from my existence. To harm another's beliefs is the same as any unwarranted aggression for me.
While history and even current events bare witness to the misuse of 'religion' for the justification of mans worst capabilities, no one can repute the uniformly moral basis to a free willed analytical animal that religion provides. The good done by organizations and individuals of conviction is almost equal to the evil committed by having a "god on your side".
As for a 'here-after', my speculations is as uncertain as any other conceived and stated by man and for that reason I find it as feasible (or infeasible). Within the limits of the infinitesimal knowledge we have, energy can not be created or destroyed. Only transformed to different states. Without venturing beyond the four quantifiable dimensions we have, (even though there seems to be sound reasoning for up to seven more) I, like all humans, want to think that after our short time span as we know ourselves, there could be a continuance of what we consider the 'life force', 'soul', or whatever we consider the difference in animate and inanimate, to another state. Whether part of a collective process or an independent cycle, I see no reason for it to relate to anything we know as 'here' or in a form associated with or conscious to an 'us'. So for these reason, I do not expect to aware of my present individuality after I cease to exist as I know it.
I only feel a relative certainty the 'now' and 'each other' is all I ever know in this form.
If there is reincarnation, I want to come back as a porpoise in Luixy's new swimming pool. With a 7 pound tongue and able to breath through a hole in the top of my head, how could I lose?
