Quote:
Originally Posted by oojay
With things that are as hard to wrap your head around as the origins as the universe and possibility of an afterlife, all we can do is postulate as to which idea seems the most coherent and cohesive, and provide our reasoning for believing as such. Asking questions is the only way to learn and grow. We may not get the answers we seek, but we will be better off for having at least asked. I would rather be the man who asked a million question and got no answers than the man who failed to question at all.
|
This isn't about asking questions as much as it is about answering them. We all ask questions. What happens after we die? Even though we don't know, you have an answer to that question. So do I. But I try to apply parsimony as a way to filter out my possible answers. What that does it helps reduce the likelyhood of me being wrong by basing itself as much as it can on the world as we know it.
If you have to come up with lots of new assumptions to accommodate your idea of the world, any one of those assumptions could be wrong. You say the soul travels to a planet. That means you f.ex make assumptions that there is a soul, that this soul can travel through space and that there is a home for souls on a distant planet. These souls are obviously made of something that we can't measure at the moment and whatever that is, perhaps you believe it can hold information like shape, thoughts and memories. These are just a few of the assumptions one would probably have to make to accommodate your idea of what happens in the afterlife. I'm sure there'd be plenty more when you get into the details of it. None of these assumptions are supported by current evidence and as far as you know, any or all of them could be wrong. Basically, it's just you fantasizing. To me, that's just moving away from understanding.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by oojay
So is your school of thought that no one can know and/or everyone who believes in anything of a higher power (be it religion or spirituality) is wrong? I believe in a grand unification theory of everything. Everything and everyone in the universe is connected and everything has a purpose (even if it is only a purpose that we self-impose upon it).
|
What is a higher power?
I do believe people who believe in religion to be wrong. If people want to have an objectively right idea of the universe and how it all hangs together in their head, then they should leave behind notions of deities, hells, heavens, ghosts, laying on hands, etc. All of this is based on assumptions that are not supported by evidence and have resisted all attempts at proving.
Humans are not robots. We're prone to all sorts of mind tricks that we play on ourselves, be they placebos, suggestions or cognitive dissonance. These things affect us deeply and so when trying to find the truth, we need methods to get around our human weaknesses.