What If Heaven Is Not For Real? - Page 1

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/01/20/378528953/what-if-heaven-is-not-for-real

 

Last week, a young man named Alex Malarkey made news when he publicly retracted his story that he'd been to heaven. This, understandably, may not seem like news to some people. But Malarkey's story, based on the tragedy of an auto accident when he was just 6 years old, became a best-selling book called The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven.

More important, his book, along with others such as Heaven Is for Real — written by Todd Burpo based on the story of his then-young son, Colton — have come to form their own literary genre. Sometimes called "heavenly tourism," these volumes have proven quite lucrative for their publishers. The details of Malarkey's religiously motivated decision to tell the truth can be found elsewhere. But for me, his story raises a deep question about the origins of humanity's very deep anxiety about what happens after death.

It's easy to see Malarkey's case as an example of how religion can be used by the unscrupulous to fool people (of course, lots of things can be used by the unscrupulous to fool people). Thinking more broadly, however, what the story really highlights is how deeply we human beings fear the end of our lives — and lengths we'll go for solutions to that fear.

The elaborate descriptions of winged angels and heavenly architecture in these books are just a modern manifestation of something people have been doing for a long time — imagining a better life after the end of this one. Given the depth of suffering this life can entail, it's not hard to imagine where that impulse comes from. And, again given the depth of this life's suffering, those of us not inclined to wish for a heavenly afterward might keep our compassion open enough to understand the impulse leading so many others to do so.

 

But while ending suffering is one thing, ending existence is another. That is where my question about our anxiety over death and the need for an afterlife really begins.

For many folks, what's most terrifying about death is the ending of their own being. Each of us is, naturally, at the center of a remarkably vivid life. We're center stage in our own dramas of love and hardship, victory and defeat. The idea that it could just end, that we could just end, evokes nothing short of horror for many people. As Woody Allen famously put it: "Life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering — and it's all over much too soon."

This kind of existential terror never made a lot of sense to me. To explain why, I need you to know that when I was 9, my older brother was killed in an automobile accident. I saw him that afternoon, and he waved to me from across a field. Then I never saw him again. I was already an astronomically inclined kid, and that event, the most significant of my entire life, propelled me even deeper to questions about existence and time. Through all the grief and the questioning, one thought about death has always stayed with me:

I'm not concerned about the many years of my nonexistence before birth. Why then should I be concerned about the many years of my nonexistence that will follow death?

In other words, even though none of us existed 1,000 years ago, you don't find many people worrying about their nonexistence during the Dark Ages. Our not-being in the past doesn't worry us. So, why does our not-being in the future freak us out so much?

I am on record as being militantly agnostic about consciousness and death. I tend toward the "it's all over when it's over" camp, but that, for me, is more of a hunch than a scientific position. Still, no matter how the universe is constructed with regard to death and its aftermath, empirically I think we can conclude that dread in any form is an unnecessary response. When it comes to our impending nonexistence, all we need do is let the past be our guide.

GSD, I believe in evolution, that said I believe there is a beginning and there is an end for every individual.
We should appreciate the time we have, and we should try to do our best to "better the world", but looking at the total, we are not that important.
We are just a part of the whole, and that´s okay.

Yep, and it is called birth and death.

yep~ and that's ^^ your opinions ~~ 

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Susie, do you believe in Santa Claus too?

That´s what it is - an opinion, based on science.
In case there is a god - I try to be a good human, because I believe in humanity and respect - shouldn´t he judge based on our deeds instead on our believe?
In my world a "human" human is more worthful than a religious maniac...

Santa Claus was made by Coca cola, an all American invention

Sure is my opinion and some would have me not express that opinion under any circumstance including judging me to be a bigot and going to some make believe hell.

Shtal, do you believe in Santa after all the fairy tale of Santa is more recent than say a virgin birth and much more believable than say a virgin birth.

 

Now I await pages of copy and paste bible passages.

 

If there is a God of the bible and he can't accept me for what I am, then he can take his little band of followers and pick up his ball and go home.

 

Oh NO!! Not pages of copy and paste !! Lol ~ death first ,,,

 

I figure if you can't explain it in your own words without pages of bible passages well then it really doesn't mean a lot to you but regurgitating what someone else said/wrote.

Susie, my concern was how did you came to believe what you believe?

Usually some people start believing in evolution when they come some point in their lives where there start having lack of faith in creation or no faith at all or like Charles Darwin with his personal observations and interpretation of the world we live in.