Two sides of death

Heaven and Hell

Thomas Paine was a deist, which is the belief in a God who created the universe but does not intervene in its functioning. He was an opponent of organized religion and Christianity, but he believed in a deity that was evident in nature. I am an agnostic, somewhat similar to Paine, and, in lieu of Christianity, I have a different opinion about the hereafter. Here is more Paine...

Paine believed that those who spent their lives trying to make others happy would be happy in the afterlife. He also believed that the wicked would be punished.

My opinion of the hereafter is a place where there is a huge chain-link fence to affinity, with one side bright, cheerful, upbeat and festive. The inhabitants reside in paradise, a blissful utopia that sees its residents in the prime of existence with no physical problems.

The other side dark, raining, sleeting, snowing with regular bouts of oppressive wind and engulfing surges of water. The occupants are all chained with a length that only allows them the room to get to the fence and wish they had led a better life.

There is a watchdog and it is his job to come up with methods to further torture those on the dark side. Like the denial of food and drink, forcing the bottom dwellers to disrobe in the cold, rain and snow. Making these poor souls walk on hot coals to get to the food and drink they are allowed.

Donald Trump will destroy democracy

These are two very specialized ideologies, but meant to be a simplification of the unyielding difference between right and wrong. We have lost our way in this determination today, particularly on the political scene. We have an incoming Oval Office lunatic that has threatened to jail Jan. 6 committee members and his enemies in general; He wants to deport 11 million immigrants and doesn't care if there are U.S. citizens caught up in the process; He has focused on unqualified and incompetent people to fill his administration.

There is more, much more, and the downside of it all is that Donald Trump wants to destroy our democracy and replace it with an autocracy. And, unfortunately, some of the American public, and it must be a relatively large portion, has turned into apathetics. They want someone to make their decisions, and for the life of me I will never understand how they want to trust Donald Trump with this task. The next four years could prove a reckoning and this includes Trump and all his minions.

The new Atheist

 

I grew up thinking atheists were the scourge of the earth. How could you possibly not believe in the God? Then I thought I was called to the ministry and quickly learned that beliefs were relevant to whose side you were on. I was a Methodist then, just one bloc of what would turn out to be a worldwide mixture of, again, beliefs. But there was a discipline attached to these convictions that, in those days, you didn't dare deviate from without a reprisal from the church.

It happened to me early on and it was at that point I discovered just how much I disliked disciplinarians. In high school you took it with a grain of salt if you wanted an education; so why did I then upon graduation join the Navy? Don't know where this is all going except to say that today the religious business has become more open-minded, yet there are still many who will tell you their God is the only God. And then...Atheists will tell you there is no God.

Did you know there are Atheists who believe in God? They are called Agnostics

and I am one of them. I tried being an Atheist because of the hypocrisy in Christianity, the organized church, and something that happened in my life. But I just cannot visualize the existence of the earth as we know it without there being some supreme being that started it all. Just think, if the amoeba did walk out of the sea, who created the amoeba and who created the sea? 

Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and other faiths should read Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species." I read it years ago and am reading it again now to determine if the years in between have added anything to the mystique of Darwin's theory. Greg Epstein is the author of Good Without God. He is the new chief chaplain of Harvard and apparently "His personal beliefs or disbelief don't seem to be an issue." So go figure, Christians.

And here is a headline from Salon, "Staunch atheists show higher morals than the proudly pious, from the pandemic to climate change," that launches an article exploring religion in many aspects of the calamities we are dealing with today. It would seem here and in other articles I have read recently that a position that has been around for several years is valid. A person does not need a church, or a specific God to be religious. And that is the new strength of religion.