What are your views on life?

South Africa
February 10, 2009 8:02am CST
What are your views on life, the afterlife and religion. I think religion a big scam, im not sure about the afterlife but i believe a little bit in reincarnation.
2 responses
• Hungary
30 Mar 09
Here is what I believe: I HOPE and BELIEVE that there is an other world in which I will be in a need of my experiences that I gained here in the life. So I believe that I must live a hard life even if it won't be happy. I would like to be close to ready after I die. And I hope there is no reincarnation, why ? If there is we won't remind our previous lives and we will believe in fake things, and there will be no upper level that we could reach. Maybe I descriped my opinion a little bit incorrect and people might misunderstand it but this is what I belive in.
@Vaddiba (190)
16 Feb 09
Life is a mysterious phenomenon that man has been trying to decipher for a long time. And no religion has yet provided an intelligent answer that makes any sense. My opinion is that Darwin has provided the best answers in regard to the phenomenon of life. I respect Darwin's scientific approach because he simply allowed observed facts to dictate his findings, unlike organised religion which is purely based on the need to influence others without the presentation of proof. Life or nature is a spontaneous process. And it's a process that doesn't have a conscience ... simply because it's a process ... there's nothing personal about it. And, of course, nature or life, as a process, isn't perfect. That's why nature has produced beautiful as well as downright ugly things. For example, when we see a lion in the jungle hunting down a zebra so that it can eat in order to prevent itself from dying of hunger, is that an attractive sight? No, it isn't. Does nature care? No, it can't care, because nature is an active process that doesn't have a personality. Water in a hot desert will turn into steam if it is exposed for an extended period of time. It's a process guided by natural physical law that doesn't need the presence of a god or a person to be present for it to work. Now, here's a question to consider: If a personal human-like god created the universe, wouldn't that god be more complex than the universe it created? In which case, I reckon the creationists would accept that god must have also been created. However, if you look at the universe from a "naturalistic" perspective, things make more sense, because as a process, we can see where nature isn't perfect. And we can see where nature is cruel. Viruses exist. Cockroaches exist. When a female Praying Mantis completes the mating process with its partner, it bites off the head of the male and kills it as a result: how sick and twisted is that? Does such observations tie in perfectly with the concept of a god who supposedly creates beauty and perfection? No, it doesn't. I think I can be confident in saying that if any of us had the ultimate power of creation, viruses wouldn't exist. Cockroaches wouldn't exist. Neither praying Mantis. On that basis alone, most humans with ultimate powers of creation would have done a better job than the "all-powerful" god of the creationists. The problem is that human beings are the victors and victims of their own ego and hyperactive imagination. Of all of natures' creation, mankind is the most creative, and, ironically, the most destructive of creatures that has ever inhabited the earth. We are not perfect because nature isn't perfect. If we were created by a perfect all-knowing god, then we would be perfect in all aspects of our existence. We would be living in absolute paradise here on earth instead of wishing for an unknown paradise elsewhere.