RE: Christianity with no afterlife
February 24, 2015 at 12:18 pm
(This post was last modified: February 24, 2015 at 12:19 pm by Dystopia.)
I can distinguish 3 basic concepts that are present on mainstream middle eastern religions:
- Afterlife --> This is fundamental to religion because it gives people hope. No one wants to know that life is, in the grand scheme of the universe, meaningless. Religion tells you that this life is just a temporary state of existence that will evolve into something greater. This is silly and false, but it's captivating and it may make people feel better, the belief that once you die your body will perish but your soul will live, as if our personalities were immortal
- Heaven --> You do good things, you go to heaven. The concept of heaven is meant to teach people how to do or do not certain things. It's a moral guidance. A very bad one, but I believe it's intended as such
- Hell --> Works together with heaven, and it's where you'll end up if you screw up. It's a frightening concept and it scares the shit out of people, its purpose is to stop you from doing bad things.
--> Heaven and Hell are basically two sides of the coin, one is for good people and the other is for bad people. If you do good, you go to Heaven, if you're bad, you go to hell. The afterlife (excluding the limbo) is the ultimate goal of religious people (for Abrahamic religions) and it gives meaning to their actions.
In my opinion it's not that Christians would disappear, but if there was no heaven and hell I think Christianity would never have been so successful for so long in the first place - Hell scares people, and heaven is a worthy moral goal, if we take away these concepts the afterlife vanishes as well, and as such there is no inherent meaning for life because regardless of what you do you'll end up in the same state (after you die), and since god is controlling you, might as well do what you please.
So yes, there would be fewer Christians because you are speculating on the non-existence of one of the biggest pillars of Christianity (probably the third biggest next to Jesus and god)
- Afterlife --> This is fundamental to religion because it gives people hope. No one wants to know that life is, in the grand scheme of the universe, meaningless. Religion tells you that this life is just a temporary state of existence that will evolve into something greater. This is silly and false, but it's captivating and it may make people feel better, the belief that once you die your body will perish but your soul will live, as if our personalities were immortal
- Heaven --> You do good things, you go to heaven. The concept of heaven is meant to teach people how to do or do not certain things. It's a moral guidance. A very bad one, but I believe it's intended as such
- Hell --> Works together with heaven, and it's where you'll end up if you screw up. It's a frightening concept and it scares the shit out of people, its purpose is to stop you from doing bad things.
--> Heaven and Hell are basically two sides of the coin, one is for good people and the other is for bad people. If you do good, you go to Heaven, if you're bad, you go to hell. The afterlife (excluding the limbo) is the ultimate goal of religious people (for Abrahamic religions) and it gives meaning to their actions.
In my opinion it's not that Christians would disappear, but if there was no heaven and hell I think Christianity would never have been so successful for so long in the first place - Hell scares people, and heaven is a worthy moral goal, if we take away these concepts the afterlife vanishes as well, and as such there is no inherent meaning for life because regardless of what you do you'll end up in the same state (after you die), and since god is controlling you, might as well do what you please.
So yes, there would be fewer Christians because you are speculating on the non-existence of one of the biggest pillars of Christianity (probably the third biggest next to Jesus and god)
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you
