My atheist friend

[Sethomas]

I actually agree, thus a few years ago I had this phase where I believed in God but not the soul so I stopped paying any attention to religion and such.

I do agree that most popular notions of the afterlife are pretty absurd, but I think that doesn't preclude the possibility of something that's probably incomprehensible. If there is post-mortem consciousness, I doubt it resembles people dancing in white robes in clouds while others burn in lakes of boiling oil for ever and ever and ever in saeculo saeculorum. I think existence itself is pretty absurd in itself, so what harm is a little faith that maybe some experience of the self pervades after death? Well, it CAN be harmful when you believe in a reward of 72 virgins or whatever, but still.

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by Sethomas

I actually agree, thus a few years ago I had this phase where I believed in God but not the soul so I stopped paying any attention to religion and such.

I do agree that most popular notions of the afterlife are pretty absurd, but I think that doesn't preclude the possibility of something that's probably incomprehensible. If there is post-mortem consciousness, I doubt it resembles people dancing in white robes in clouds while others burn in lakes of boiling oil for ever and ever and ever in saeculo saeculorum. I think existence itself is pretty absurd in itself, so what harm is a little faith that maybe some experience of the self pervades after death? Well, it CAN be harmful when you believe in a reward of 72 virgins or whatever, but still.

I like to think that God exists in the electrical bonds that hold everything together. Physics helps us to understand how everything we can sense takes shape, but God's will, God itself, is why any particular particle bonds with another, and another with another... so on... to form us and all the other crap in the universe. When we die, whatever it is that we call our soul disperses back out into the energy holding everything together.

It's not as complicated as most organized versions of spirituality, but it's simple.

[kahljorn]

I wrote a paper as to how part of the purpose of God is to hold the universe together, and without god the universe woudl disappear. It was loosely based on the five ways and that the universe is actually God or what god has designed. He's a sort of sustainer.