Why do so many people believe in an afterlife?

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Most people I know don't believe in an afterlife. Why would they lie about that?

They are not lying, really. All I'm trying to say is that everybody has a built-in belief in the spiritual realm, God, afterlife, and things like that. Later in life some people become deaf to this call from within. They deny it. I hear often people say that we are all born atheists. I claim the opposite. To become atheist is a choice.

People can always claim that they simply don't believe in anything. My opposite claim is as valid as theirs when I say that they deny their belief.

^ This.

Oblivion is extremely difficult to comprehend, so people naturally assume that consciousness would still go on in some form after death.

The afterlife, perse, doesn't exist in the way most people think. Yes, there are such things as spirits and other realms, personal experience there. I was a paranormal investigator and saw many 'unexplainable' things, and occurrences you'd only read about! Ghosts do exist, for they are the spiritual energy you have left over. For there is a difference between spiritual energy and the soul itself. The more violent the death, the more of an energy left behind.

There isn't a heaven in the way they imagine. There is another realm, yes. And yes, I believe it is a fear of death coping mechanism that others have created the 'Heaven'. There are dark spirits and normal spirits, and positive; negative and positive and all the in-between — it's all pure energy.

I have died twice (frostbite and drowning) and come back to life in this current life. I've known others who have died and come back, too. There is a Light one can go into. It is the Light that connects us to what you'd call the creator. For it isn't a being, it's pure energy and consciousness. Intelligent, even. We are all connected, to you, to me, to everything. One day you'll understand when it is your time.

Consciousness is a 'state of mind' that we have the capability to experience during life, because we are connected. Life doesn't stop after death. Death is just something that happens to your 'physical' body/vessel. Beyond that, we still exist. Our soul travels on and our spiritual energy joins the rest of the ether. We are pure energy. Many of us get reborn into new bodies. Some of us have lived before. We comeback to learn what we need to until we have fully grasped what we are here to do.

The Why? That is what I am figuring out in this life and it's my life pursuit. I have a strong feeling of wanting to return to the 'source' but in due time...

I thought you meant by deny that they secretly believed in an afterlife.

And think the exact opposite of what you just said. People's beliefs correlate strongly to those of the people around them. In countries with mostly atheists most people don't think of an afterlife, in countries with christians they believe in souls and afterlife, and in countries with buddhists people believe in reincarnation. So I think these ideas are not innate but transmitted through upbringing and culture.

Exactly; religious beliefs are memes, passed on from one generation to the next.

spiritual experiences viewed through a lens of metaphysical entanglement. mistaking intensity for an indication of 'reality.' feels good = is true. feels bad = not true. being unconscious of the relation between belief and desire. conceiving of objects as existing inherently, as construed on the basis of inherent distinctions, as having essences, particularly 'selves.' absolutizing frames of reference, holding the view that there is something about the world that recommends itself to a particular interpretation independent of a particular, temporally relevant set of circumstances, that it wants to be seen in a certain way.

Socialization

You are quite right.

I have a relative that insists she experienced this very thing. I'm NOT making this up. She isn't the silly, superstitious type either. She was raised catholic, but never really took her religion seriously. I've never known her to lie, although she does exaggerate when she retells stories. I don't know what to make of it, but she reports what many near death experiencers do. She said there was no sense of time, even though there were sequential events, and it was so beyond this world, and she could communicate with others at phenomenal speed. After that, she wasn't religious at all but spiritual. And she tells me the same thing, that I'll understand when I get there.

So... there. I don't know if there's anything supernatural about her experience, but I don't think she's making it up.

Fnord fears the afterlife, so he invents oblivion.

If there was not even a mention of an afterlife in the Bible, I would basically question why am I on this Earth, struggling to only face non-existance. (The thought of nothing after this life makes no sense to me.) Thus, thanks to the Lord, I can struggle while knowing that it will be worth it. However though, as for the sinners...they'll have their nonexistance....after a while....of judgement.

Except for Enoch and Elijah getting taken up directly, the good thief next to Jesus at least is the one that really speaks of him joining Enoch and Elijah after he succumbs to suffocation and whatever else kills people on the cross. There's also the thing of bringing up the righteous from hell on the three days Jesus was out or it being said that Mosus would be the first to have a chariot of fire pick his soul up at the day of judgment. Implication seems to be that the righteous who have died are asleep in the Lord and will get a complimentary etheric skycab ride on the house. Technically it does seem almost redundant when time and space are an illusion but I suppose it'll be something that jives with what people can envision and that seems to be the dominant point.


A bigger question then that for me was "How do I live the best life I can and make full use of the resources available?". I can't believe in there being a reality that would magically appear when we die that wouldn't have been accessible all along while we were alive.

That is true, (about the Afterlife thing.) About the second part,I guess because I can cope without being able to see spiritual things, I can see a possibility of a ''Hidden'' reality.

What if the "hidden reality" turns out to be worse than the one that is not "hidden".

ruveyn