Life experience and the soul

Well, if you convince yourself that Eliza and Winona are coming to visit you, then once a couple of days pass and you realize that they're not coming after all, you'll probably be disappointed. However, if there is no afterlife, it won't be possible to be disappointed because you won't exist!

Which I have no problem with per se.Except that no one set of such unevidenced beliefs is any more rational than any other. As per my brief discussion of afterlife rituals described in Message 24.Thus if those that believe also believe that theirs is the "one true way" (which all too many do) then I will again disagree with them.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Well, to be technical, which is more rational: thinking without any evidence that there are cookies in the kitchen cabinet, or thinking without any evidence that there are goblins in the kitchen cabinet?But despite that, you're right in that neither the cookie-believers nor the goblin-believers can claim that their beliefs form the "one true way" until they actually look in the kitchen cabinet and get some evidence.

Welcome to the world of mental health: some people believe that they will go to hell and it terrifies them.

As I said before, shouldn't this make them either change their ways or change their beliefs?

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"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." - Douglas Adams

That is fine as long as I am afforded the same freedom.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

By "freedom of religion" I mean both freedom of religion and non-religion.

No because the the experiences that lead them to the conclusion that they are in fact going to go to hell happened in the past and are thus unable to be changed.The individual ruminates on his/her experiences and becomes more and more distressed.People who process information in this way cannot simply put their beliefs to one side for the obvious reasons.So they can't change their beliefs or their past.Their soul (so they believe) is destined for hell and that is that.

We don't.Only a very small percentage of the population is actually "engaged in such pursuits."That is my point. Some people are going to find things like astronomy important... and those people will engage in those pursuits. Others will find things like playing baseball to be important, and they will engage in those pursuits.There doesn't exist any subjective concept that all humans follow or desire. Such things are different for different people. Sure, plenty of folks will agree, and form groups with common interests. But certainly not "all." I agree. But the things humans are curious or interested about vary widely from person to person. Not really. If that's all you said, I'd have you imprisoned, remove the machine to the dump and forget about the whole thing. Such things aren't worth my curiosity. I reserve my curiosity for those things which have facts behind them, and that I'm interested in their possible results. You just saying that such a thing is important isn't enough for me. You'd have to provide some facts before you got me interested. I completely agree with the first part of the above paragraph. But then you seem to imply that "we humans" are all curious about heaven. And that's where you're wrong (if that's what you're actually implying). Some humans certainly are curious about heaven. But not all, humans aren't so easily generalized.Those who find ideas with no factual basis to be irrelevant and worthless will not find "heaven" to be interesting and will not try to find out as much as they can. Basically, they won't try because they already know that when no facts are present, there's only useless speculation to be done...

Cookies and goblins are equally evidenced until you look in the cabinet? Equally irrational to believe in either until actually looking? I am sorry but that is just nonsense. Listen to yourself.What about all of the past objective evidence that suggests that cookies A) exist and B) are not just possible but fairly likley to dwell in kitchens? What about the fact that there is no objective evidence for the existence of goblins whatsoever? What about all of the evidence that suggests that goblins are in fact features of human story telling? You ignore all of that and treat the cookie Vs goblin claim in an evidential vacuuum of evidence? A complete evidential island in which all previous objective experience is discounted? Why? That is just sheer madness.I suppose that if I say I have just witnessed a cat crossing the road whilst walking home alone at night that is identical to the claim that I have just seen a T-Rex? Or that I have just witnessed god?What is it with you guys and this ridiculous notion that each claim operates as if all other human knowledge didn't exist. I despair I really do.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

All right, I agree you've established that in the case of a few people who have acted in a very bad way at some point during their life, the concept of an afterlife is disturbing, not comforting. But how many people do you really suppose:
join a religion that involves an afterlife,
commit so much sin that they feel they are doomed to go to hell,
refuse to try to repent or change the course of their life in order to be "saved,"
revisit their sins so much that their life starts becoming miserable,
and still don't take any action to resolve this guilt?

I'd just like to point out that never once in my post did I write the word "all." Some people are going to find things like God important . . . and those people will engage in those pursuits. Have you ever considered where facts come from? Facts come from research and observation, which springs from curiosity. Why would you observe something if you weren't curious about it? That's not at all what I was implying. I said that humans are curious about all sorts of things, one of which is heaven. Once again, facts have to come from somewhere. Where no facts are present, people still get curious, which results in them doing research or making observations, and presto! they establish facts.

Pretty much every Chatholic patient I've treated; it's more common than you would think.There is a type of cognitive process called rumination that is very much like worry where the individual cannot stop thinking about (insert reason to feel bad here).This pretty much take s over people's lives and contributes a great deal of the variance in major depressive disorder and generalised anxiety disorder.Much more common in people given to religious thought.You could argue that it is the propensity of these people engaging in magical thinking, rather than a specific belief in their eternal soul going to hell (see what I did, there?), as being the problem. But I would suggest that you can't entertain the notions of a soul and it ending up in hell if you did not engage in magical thinking.

I was actually posing a rhetorical question to respond to your previous statement: But you're right, I failed to acknowledge the presence of the past objective evidence that cookies are likely to reside in the kitchen. Let me rephrase my point. If I have a closed box, the belief that some cookies are in the box and the belief that there are some goblins in the box both technically lack evidence. Obviously, cookies are more likely to be in the box because cookies exist elsewhere. But by your argument, one of these arguments is no more rational than any other, as they both have no support.I understand, and largely agree with, your assertion that there cannot be a "one true way" where unevidenced beliefs are concerned. Yet I disagree that all these beliefs are on common ground; some are obviously more far-fetched than others.

I'll let you have the final word on the facts, as you probably know much more about this area than me. But I disagree on the logic. Remember, correlation is not equivalent to causation. The cognitive process of rumination may correspond to people given to religious thought, but that does not necessarily mean the religious thought causes the rumination.