Life, Death, Heaven, Hell, and God

Hello Papa.

I don't know what to say or think any longer... Not long ago, I accepted atheism as my worldview even though I desperately want to believe in more spiritualistic worldviews. The main problem is that atheists claim that their beliefs are rational and all other beliefs are not; it sounds right, but I don't agree with their militant behaviour and disrespect.

I'm so confused and don't know what to do, it's a huge dilemma :'(

Please help!!

Aurel (age 15)

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Dear Aurel,
 
Religion, God, Life, Death have all been very much on my mind lately, so your letter is timely. I thoroughly enjoy discussing philosophy and spirituality with my readers. I will write more soon, but if you don't mind I want to send you a link to a PDF that you might find fascinating (a little academic, hope you don't mind): http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ConsciousRealism2.pdf
 
I'm not sure which atheists you are talking to. My sister is an atheist, and she's a very kind and wonderful person. Not in your face at all. That said, I do believe in more than just the physical world. 
 
How about you ask me a few specific questions about spirituality or other "Big Questions" and I will write you back? Now, these answers are based on my personal beliefs, so take them with a grain of salt (they are worth the price you pay for them). I will tell you that I am not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew. I am also not an atheist, Satanist, or Wiccan (although I respect Wiccans). 
 
Cheers,
Papabear

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Thank you for your time but I'm not in the mood for ... anything, let alone philosophy, religion and spirituality. It's just.... I don't know, the whole atheist worldview isn't what I'm comfortable with in the slightest. I know that you once said that we have to stick with a view that we are comfortable with, and that's spirituality, but I'm always afraid that they might be right. Maybe the physical world is the only world? Maybe there is nothing after death? I don't agree with any of that since I do believe that there's something out there and that the universe simply cannot be a product of randomness and chance.
Sorry, I didn't mean ALL atheists, just the militant, in your face ones like professor Richard Dawkins. You know, the ones that don't respect other religious beliefs and that think religious and spiritual people, people different than themselves, are deluded and in a way crazy. I want to be kind and respect people different than myself and I don't think that spirituality and religion is just stupidity and delusion.

I'm not in the mood for anything because I don't think that the physical world is the only world but if I do think otherwise, I'm not rational and intelligent (judging by what many anti-theists say). And then there's death. Many atheists say that their decision to become atheist was the best thing that happened to them but I don't think that's true. They say that they appreciate and enjoy their lives more due to the fact that this is the only life they have. They say that they are generally more joy-filled and happier than when they were religious/spiritual. I don't agree, since the only emotions I could experience since I "decided" (unwillingly) to "become atheist" are sadness, fear and anger. I don't find my hobbies more enjoyable, my sex drive is almost gone, I don't have anything to wake up for and I have trouble getting asleep (I cried myself to sleep this night and had woken up two times unable to sleep). Without spirituality, everything loses its soul. Love doesn't make sense anymore if it's just a chemical reaction, and that sex is just a drive to reproduce. Nature isn't beautiful like it used to be, I don't feel like exercising, I don't find art interesting... Ironically, Dawkins (recently I watched a lot of his documentaries) said that this is more beautiful and interesting than "poverty-stricken religious views.”

I don't want to believe that we are just biological computers, I don't want to believe that there's no purpose to life. I refuse to believe that religious people are stupid and that religion and spirituality should just die.

I refuse to believe that this is "reality." I really, really don't.

I used to be optimistic... Now I just don't know. I would love to be spiritual again, to not worry about death every other minute...

I don't know anymore. If this is supposed to be rationality and reality, then I'll gladly chose ignorance.

I'm going on vacation tomorrow morning and I will possibly be home from said vacation in 10-11 days. Here are some specific things I wish to know, from your perspective.

1) God
2) Heaven/Hell
3) Life after death?
4) Did you follow more than two religions in your lifetime?
5) Were you indoctrinated and or baptized into Christianity?

Feel free to write back while I'm on vacation, thank you for reading my letter. You're a great guy!
 
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Dear Aurel,

If you’ve read my column, you probably have seen me write that I feel that anyone espousing a religion and asserting that they “know” their religion is right and is the only correct way to believe is either lying or deluding themselves.

But the same goes for atheists. To say, “We know for a fact that there is nothing beyond what the scientific world can explain and that all we are is biological beings and death is the final word” is also an exercise in hubris.
NOBODY knows what life, death, the universe, God/Not God are. NOBODY knows their true nature. In that spirit (pun intended) I will tell you here and now that Papabear doesn’t know, either. I have my theories, my conclusions, my beliefs that I have come to after 50 years of thinking about such things (even as a little child my thoughts were on this matter), but all of them could be wrong or just partially right, or right but only in a limited way.
To answer your questions, I’ll start with the less philosophical ones and work my way up.

• Was I indoctrinated and/or baptized into Christianity? I have never been baptized, which is a little ironic because I was raised Southern Baptist. This is to say, my father took the family to Southern Baptist churches, but he never forced me to be sprinkled with water or dunked; he married an agnostic, and this tempered my gullibility quite a bit. I will always remember my mother losing it one Sunday when the minister declared that “Jesus wants the church to have a new red rug.” That was the beginning of my understanding of what a tax-free racket religion is in this country.
• Have I followed more than one religions in my lifetime? Well, I was raised Christian, as I said, but quickly became agnostic, after my mother. Even so, I craved a spiritual grounding of some sort. I briefly turned back to Christianity in my college days (I went to a college associated with the Methodist church and we had a very kind and loving minister named Jon Powers who restored my faith in Christians quite a bit, and then when I had my first real job in Detroit I met a couple other very good Christians). I’ve read my Bible (I own three, actually), but over time began to see how much in the Bible is contradictory or just plain incorrect, which made me doubt that it could genuinely be the work of an infallible God. I started looking around at other faiths (my best friend is Jewish, and the Jews I’ve met are wonderful people; but it’s always seemed a rather exclusive club to me); I find some very good things in the Qu’ran (I own a copy), especially how Islam keeps things very simple compared to the ridiculously complicated beliefs and rites of the Catholic Church, for example. However, as with the Bible, the God of Islam is too violent for my tastes. I believe that if there is a God, then God would be superior in every way to Man, which means he would not have the failings of Man, such as hate and a desire for vengeance or to punish people. I mean, if little ol’ me can have a heart and forgiveness and love, then wouldn’t a Superior Being be a billion times more compassionate and loving than I?

So, I started exploring other beliefs. Some, such as Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, seem too tied up in mythologies. When I found out about Wicca, though, I found much to appeal to me. Wicca doesn’t judge people and believes in kindness to others and to Earth. This is all great stuff, and I did some reading about it and considered myself a Wiccan for a short time, but I just couldn’t get into the ideas they have about “magic.” I don’t think there is such a thing as magic, really (again, I could be wrong), but I do admire that Wiccans make very clear that black magic—magic to harm others—is forbidden and if you practice it you will be harmed seven times over.

Next, I got into Shamanism, especially that of the Native American people. Even consulted regularly with a friend in Oklahoma named Blackbear Bright (wonderful person). I love the interconnectedness to the natural world that Shamanism has (similar to Wicca, which is a form of shamanism, really), but I still felt it was not exactly for me. I haven’t abandoned it, but now I flavor it with my pursuit of Buddhism. Buddhism is not a religion, of course, but it is a philosophy that is very spiritual in nature. So I guess you could say I’m into Shamanism/Buddhism but I also add to this my interest in quantum physics, which has become like a third religion to me.

• Heaven/Hell: I can cover this briefly by saying that traditional views of Heaven and Hell are created by religions as models for a punishment/reward system to control their flocks. Be good and do what we say and you will go to Heaven. Be bad and God (who’s such a bitch on these matters) will make you burn in Hell forever and ever with no hope of every escaping. So, I call bullshit.
• Life/Death: As you may know, I lost my love, Jim (Yogi), last October very suddenly when a pulmonary embolism killed him. Now, the topic of life and death has always interested me, but now it is at the forefront of my thoughts. I have been terrified (like you) by the notion that when we die that is it. Everything that we were is lost (except for those who remember us, but it is really lost when they die, too), and our consciousness dissipates as well. Death, following this model, is an absolute and there is no hope of escaping it. Some people find this comforting, I’ve heard, but I find it horrifying. For one thing, it means that Jim is truly gone and I will never see him again even after I die. For another thing, it means that everything we do in life is, ultimately, completely without meaning. Oh, sure, you can have a bit of fun in the present (and, actually, if you believe death is the final word why not just go have an orgy and commit crimes and eat anything you want and don’t worry about it?) but, in the end, nothing at all matters.

I can’t accept that. I can’t accept that all we are is an organ in our skulls and that we are, in essence, just machines that happen to be self-aware. There is increasing evidence that death is not the end. Some call it a transition, some a rebirth into a real world.

Aurel, you know that little voice inside your head? That’s not Jiminy Cricket—that’s your connection to your spiritual conscience. Pay attention to it. It is saying that although you don’t believe Christianity is your path, neither do you feel that atheism is the right choice because you feel in your heart that there is something more. Instead of ignoring or pushing away that feeling, make yourself more open to it. Listen to it. It is, in my opinion, your connection to the Godself.

• God: My conclusion has been that God is not a separate Being. Rather, God is literally EVERYTHING. God is omnipresent and omniscient because the universe is the body of God, and everything it contains, including you and me, is a part of God. Furthermore, evolution is more than biological, it is also spiritual—an awakening. Each of us has a bit of the Godself within them, and this includes the ability to create, imagine, and dream, but only if one has been awakened, not if one is consumed by the idea that the visible world is “reality.”

I believe that we are like eggs within the Womb of God. As we experience this life, we grow spiritually until we “die,” which is actually the release from the Womb when we are born into ourselves. Like eggs in a woman’s body, however, some of us do not become fertilized, so to speak, and are reabsorbed into the womb. Those eggs do not mature to the point where they are born. Those that do, become like baby gods, able to create their own reality that is based upon what they experienced in this life. Those that learned to be loving will create new, loving universes, and those that did not will create universes that are less than happy. I have a suspicion that we are in one of those less-than-perfect universes, but we have the power within us to overcome this rather ugly world and generate something much more beautiful.

Aurel, the key to finding happiness and hope again is to trust in your feelings that there is more to us than mere matter and energy. You are turned off by religions, I understand that completely; and I feel that you are also right not to trust the atheists, so certain in their denial of the spiritual.

We are each a piece of the Creator, gifted with the power to create new realities if we allow ourselves to awaken from the Womb and become born as our true selves.

And those are my conclusions … for now. Whether or not you believe them is certainly up to you, but what is more important is for you not to give up. Do not give into the hopelessness of the atheists, and do not be fooled by the dogma of the religious. In other words, while it is okay to listen to what others have to say, don’t let them dictate your beliefs but discover for yourself your own reality.
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Hugs,
Papabear