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Old 06-26-2006, 06:27 PM   #8
Urbane Guerrilla
Person who doesn't update the user title
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Southern California
Posts: 6,674
Quote:
Like Dana's grandfather, he is convinced he's going to hell when he dies. Too bad.
And if he's indeed a good and decent man, his soul's in for a heck of a shock, no? Wonder how many days of those "...been there ten thousand years..." it'd take him to get over it?

Firebase -- welcome aboard -- I've seen a fairish few of people around here who voluntarily "remove all doubt." Speaking of hell, they catch a lot of it from me -- inasmuch as my doubts are removed. I also try and be encouraging when I see them doing better.

Quote:
What is this "more" of which you speak?
Well, Pangloss, I guess you're a very devout materialist if you have to ask that one. It's also a very hard question for those with any touch of mysticism in their mental makeup to make any answer to that would persuade the skeptic. I would make a very poor mystic, myself -- just not enough of that in me.

The religious end up talking about faith a lot in response to this kind of question -- which may satisfy the religious but leaves the skeptic either cold or just unmoved. And this is just about the sort of thing I'm going to close this post with, so ain't I unsatisfactory. Thing is, even the most irreligious persons are no strangers to faith -- as a general rule, faith in other persons' integrity.

Science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein was, and proudly, a determinedly rational atheist. He had no reason that convinced him to expect an afterlife, and finding no proof, he wasn't going to. Now as for me, I hope and expect to meet Robert Heinlein in Heaven.

And I like eggs too. A lot. Passionately.
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