I don’t believe in God much these days but it just seems absurd to me that he would forever punish people that commit suicide when I, me just being a relatively “good” person, wouldn’t. What kind of happy heaven is there to be expected then? Only a hypocritical one, where God is just a mother fucker that plays the “all merciful dad”.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?â€
By Epicurus
28 comments
If the God believed by Christians existed, then it goes without saying that he wouldn’t condem people for commiting suicide.
I predict another 40+ comment post why all this talk of god recently?
It’s because we all of us who contemplate suicide, to a greater or lesser extent, wonder and even fear punishment in the “after life” if there is one.
The minute you start thinking of suicide the issue comes up. It’s inevitable. What kind of God do you believe in if any?
Here’s something. 1) Hell doesn’t exist, it’s a state of ‘mind’. 2) What if you are God & you are creating your own life…is it possible for you to punish you or is that some dogma that’s been passed down for eons to instill fear in you to control your beliefs & behaviour? 3) What if every death is a form of suicide, but in actual fact you just change states & do not actually cease to exist? There is no evil, just a perception of it.
A coin would not be a coin if it didn’t have a heads side & a tails side. The same with life…ying & yang…just find your own balance.
If I were a master of the universe, I think I would have greater things to worry about than these puny earthlings
I agree with you first two arguments Softsoul, yet I find that we can create our own reality only to a certain extent, in the outside, as hard as I tried and believed I could I never became the Hollywood actress I wanted. In the inside, some people have the genetic predisposition to be happier than others and viceverse; you can work on improving that but achieving a complete change is just as impossible as me being Angelina Jolie.
+1 softsoul
the bible God is in fact all loving … if you happen to love pain
his children sometimes refer to painful suffering as ‘blessing in disguise’ .. personally, I’d prefer to only experience non ambiguous blessings
on a more serious note, I don’t think people who kill themselves go to Hell .. what would you be punished for ? for escaping this unpleaasant place ? and why can’t God fix this world so that his children don’t have to suffer this much ?
people can only blame themselves for allowing power-thirsty people to control their lives through FEAR
*unpleasant
*scratches painful
Ok can anybody proof there is a after life.? Real proof. Science say’s when you die. It’s game over. Consciousness is produced by the brain. Religion say’s we have a soul. I say youwhat.?
Black Swan, I just want to personally applaud you and thank you for all your posts and comments. The stories and words that you share on here are most appreciated. I just felt that you should hear that in case you don’t hear it enough.
Can you imagine plants and animals going into the afterlife. Why would that make it any less believable.
We is eternal beings. Spirits having a physical/human existence. That’s it. It’s all experience…the good, the bad, the ugly…just experience. It’s the judgement of it that confuses it all. Acceptance. Live physically or non-physically. Shakespeare I think said it pretty well. If what you believe happens to you in the afterlife makes you uncomfortable, maybe you’ll consider why that is. My research and experience has shown it’s an exhilarating thing to welcome & look forward. Relief & release. Eckart Tolle talks about it on youtube.
I find people contemplating anything regarding the afterlife fascinating. I spend most of my time surrounded by atheists.But from a ‘christian’ point of view, I suppose they would say it doesn’t matter what sins you commit as long as you repent. Yet commiting suicide seems to be the one sin which it is most difficult to do so, obviously.
Softsoul. Where is the proof.?
There’s no proof of the after life but there’s also no proof that it doesn’t exist. Supposedly humans have a state and a level of consciousness that animals and plants don’t.
According to science energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. Where will this energy go? Anyway, I am not religious at all but still there is a bit of fear about killing myself and carrying on a negative energy wherever I go if any place.
@softsoul, I don’t doubt you have done extensive research, yet there are different currents on the same matter. If I follow Nietzsche’s line, I will have a different perspective than if I study Plato or Depak Chopra. Having said this, I find the line of thinking that you mention interesting even though it’s not entirely convincing.
I found some. Well allmost. The AWARE study.. study is the first launched by the Human Consciousness Project, in 2008 a three year study The aware study results should be out later this year. I think Dr sam parnia objective & made the study bulletproof. Over the last 3 year’s there looked at 2500.heart attack cardiac arrest. 20% will say they had a NDE. The 500 should see the hidden images. If not why not.?
The relationship between mind and brain during clinical death, and is led by Dr. Sam Parnia. The team will be working in collaboration with more than 25 major medical centers throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States.
During the AWARE study, physicians will use the latest technologies to study the brain and consciousness during cardiac arrest. At the same time, they will also be testing the validity of out of body experiences and claims of being able to see and hear during cardiac arrest through the use of randomly generated hidden images that are not visible unless viewed from specific vantage points above
Parnia is writing a new book due out February 2013. pretty clear this is related to the AWARE study.. study is the first launched by the Human Consciousness Project.
The summary doesn’t mention verified OBE.
If god exists I don’t think he is supposed to be ‘good’. In the bible he kills thousands of people, famine, plague etc etc. I don’t think he’d have any qualms about punishing suicidal people. He’s a tyrant – seems to like punishing people who don’t agree with him.
Having said that, I don’t care. It’s hard for me to believe in an afterlife
Very interesting Donnie. Please share any other information you find about the subject.
So in Feb 2013 we should know one way or the other.?
Religion and all this supernatural stuff like spirits and ghosts was written by cave men with clubs thousands of years ago.They feared the world and other human tribes
so they made up imaginary Gods to protect them.They thought thunder was God punishing them all all that….
Black Swan Deepak Chapra thinks that chameleons viewing the world with eyes set on rotatable axis constitutes another realm of conciousness. (fun pseudononsense fact)
Also, you said something about where does all this energy go, well according to prominent pysicist Lawrence Kraus and retired Oxford chemist Peter Atkins there is no energy in the universe because the positive and negative charge form a net sum of zero. (i made a funny video mocking it if you want to see.)
Also on the topic of enduring conciousness, Stuart Hammerof an anesthisiologist has devised an interesting theory with Roger Penrose which reduces conciousness to the quantum state in a strange sort of hive mind which endures the destruction of the body.
21 comments okay not 40 yet but i called it
Sure, I’d love to see the video @ Scar. I am always interested in new theories and discoveries. Don’t know why cause we’ll most likely never know or fully comprehend this subject.
Well it’s difficult to compregend comprehension without circular reasoning.
Sorry, I rewatched that video for the first time in a while and remembered how unserious it is, albeit hystarical if you know who Peter Atkins is, but essentially the point is that at the big bang the energy in the universe divided itself into positive and negative charges and when you sum the charge of all the energy in the universe the result is zero, i.e energy does not exist.
Personally i think it’s nonsense, but i was just throwing a theory out there cause i heard things about philosophy/science and could not keep my mouth shut.
Lol. I still appreciate the input. I heard another theory about the universe if you are interested. They said that after the big bang. Energy was condensed into matter and anti-matter which eventually started eliminating each other. In the end the was more matter than anti matter so it “won” and that’s why we have the universe as we know it. Otherwise nothing would exist.
Of course you end up talking about God when discussing Suicide.The problem is, the God of the Christians, and the one described by Epicurus in the verses you posted, doesn’t really exist:God is not a person like we are, so there is no point in asking “why does he do this”, since God doesn’t possess an individual will like we do.Actually, the word “God” itself freaks out people sometimes (myself included), so I think it’s best to say, the Universe, or All That Is.Think about it in Buddhist terms, not in Christian ones.
I certainly wouldn’t do that if I were him. This is one of the MAJOR reasons I have endless hate for him. He’s CRAZY