waht have you lost?
 

Freedom and control of your life. Religion is to control.

control
 

What have you lost, lumberjim? Freedom and control of your life, that's all. The purpose of religion is control.

This points to a basic misconception about the afterlife--that after our physical death we might remain individuals, with the name and the identity we had while alive.

If we think instead of the animating spark of life within us as a small part of a complete, singular universe, then the very idea of our individuality becomes a matter of biological constraints. These counstraints would be undone upon our death, and therefore any illusion of individuality.

We would go to heaven not as individual souls travelling to a cosmic vacation resort, but rather upon our physical death we would simply rejoin the universe we temporarily forgot that we were a part of all along.

At that point, concepts like "free will" no longer have any meaning.

There is no "I" in heaven.

the purpose of religion is control. I agree. well said.



<-----------ooooo.....12k! damn.

who's talking about religion? i was talking about faith.

I love this question... it just cuts right thru all the bullshit.

If one does not believe in heaven, how can there be or not be freewill?

Oh hell, don't let that stop you. Everyone else is speculating about something they know nothing about. ;)

Who is Faith?

If the laws of physics (which we still don't understand perfectly) control the behavior of the atoms in our bodies, and the atoms in our bodies control the behavior of our cells, and our cells determine what our brains do, then everything we do is determined by the way the natural environment was in motion when we were born. Our whole lives were mapped out for us before we were born. Not by a higher power, but mapped out the same way a ball will fall to the ground if you release it from your hand.

Or the other view is that we are sentient. That our consciousness is influenced by our bodies, but is separate from our bodies, and that we can make choices independent from the influences of our bodies.

You left out a step right here. "... if our brain is the same thing as our sentient mind ... ". That's the step I take issue with.

Two words come to mind when dealing with consciousness.

Indeterminacy and emergence.

Unless you are willing to state that a "magical" factor is necessary to produe a human mind, then it is 100% certain that the natural laws of physics determine what we are.

Now, in order to claim that the human mind is a result of "magical" or "supernatural" qualities (which there is no way of avoiding if you want to claim that we are not a result of the same mundane natural laws that produce everything else) one must assume an attitude of supremely self-satisfied, human-centric egotism.

not magic. abstract. the mind exists in abstraction. the brain exists in nature.