Um, sorry, that post came off rather flippant.

What I meant was, when we refer to an 'afterlife', we usually mean the
continuation of our conciousness after the cessasation of our physical
bodies. Since the mind is a part of that body, it's generally assumed
we'd be carrying on in a spiritual way, and thus the assumption that God
would be part of the equation.

Still wasn't talking religion nessasarily.

Should I find the opportunity to get back into school full time, I'll
achieve it - a degree in cosmology and philosophy. I can spend the rest
of my days pondering the universe for a living, and I'll pump out a few
books on the subject while I'm at it.

It's about as grown-up as I'll get. Meanwhile, my video game is calling.
:*)

Lemme think. Uhhh ... about a year, my guesstimate.

Wow, I need to get laid. :O

So, you are referring to an 'afterlife', without referring to a god?
I'll have to refresh my brain on that one, I'd never heard of a
philosophy that considered such a thing.

I wasn't pointing to religion, btw. Religion and God are two different
things.

"If we do not have free will, than why would God condem certain people
to hell if they have no free will to change that? That sounds like an
evil god. "

Christianity is based on the notion that human beings DO have free will,
and their ultimate place in destiny is based on what they do in this
mortal life. Predestination has little logical support in that light.

However, can we honestly say that God has no idea whatsoever what anyone
is going to do, or where they're going to end up at the end of it all?
Equally ridiculous, and the one point that predestinationists rely on
for their viewpoint. It's a valid one, to be sure. God certainly DOES
know the choices we will make, even before we have been created.

What shapes the conversation is whether or not one believes in a God of
probabilities, if you will. A God that knows the choices you could make,
and the outcomes for all of them - and has planned accordingly. We make
the decisions, and we all fit into His plan, regardless of the choices
we make.

The choices we make are for our benefit, not His. He is God. He is
already transcendent. Of course He wants us there with Him, but it's our
choice that makes the difference. This is the soundest reasoning behind
free will there is.

We cannot take roads He did not design, however. We can never step
outside God's plan. This is the soundest reasoning for predestination
there is.

In the end, I think it's both. We have free will. God knows our every
step before we take it. God made it this way, and gave us our own minds
to do it with, not for His sake but for ours so we can learn from our
experiences.

Being Hindu, I happen to believe that everyone comes to be with God at
the end of their journeys. It makes a certain amount of logical sense to
me for God to make life's roads this way in the first place, and bring
us back again and again to learn on spiritual levels. There's too much
to learn in the span of a single lifetime, and God would not logically
create damned souls.

But, I could be unutterably wrong. Ahh, philosophy. :)

Message forums are the worst places on the planet to try to have
philosophical discussions, and the best philosophies are those taken one
point at a time. :)

I certainly cannot begin at the beginning of all this, or my post would
run so long no one would read it. So, I'll jump right to the end: "What
I was thinking in the first place when I posed the question was what
values are common to a life here on earth and an afterlife, if there are
such values? And if they exist then how would we go about incorporating
them into our lives now? Or does it even make sense to do this?"

This is completely dependent on the viewpoint of the person in question.
We do not have proof of an afterlife; we can suppose and justify and
make claims, but we have no proof of an afterlife or of the existence of
God in any way. Which is good, because if there were proof, there would
be (a) no need for faith, and (b) no need for philosophers.

So, as far as the 'meaning of life', it's mostly relative. If you are
open to the existence of God, I personally believe you will be shown
what is or isn't truth - for you. Your path may be very different from
mine. There are those who insist that there is no God at all, no
afterlife, nothing. Their path is a path to God as valid as yours or
mine. We cannot make judgments on what view is correct and what view
isn't.

This brings us to the next part of your question, the bit about
incorporating and so forth. Since your 'truth' is for you, only you will
be able to answer that. Generally it's a good thing to show those around
you that whatever goals or ideals you believe await you in the afterlife
are worth exemplifying in this one, but it's too difficult a question to
answer because we don't know what those goals are; you have to make the
journey and find out for yourself.

Which I realize is not an answer. Sorry. The bill's in the mail. :P

A Baptist minister, a Pentecostal missionary and a Catholic priest were
old friends from childhood who went their separate ways spiritually, but
every summer found two or three weeks a year to get together and share
their common passion, fishing.

The priest had missed the last couple of years, and was happy to be
informed that the other two had found a new place, a large lake brimming
with bass, and nice cabins too. A month later the three of them were
together in the boat enjoying each other's company and hoping to trick
some bass into biting a lure or two.

After a few hours, the Baptist stated that nature was calling. He stood
up in the boat, walked across the water to the shore and disappeared
behind a bush. The priest's mouth almost fell into the boat, but not
without noticing that his Pentecostal friend hadn't batted an eye. "What
a man of faith!" was all he could think as the minister returned from
around the bush, walked across the water and re-entered the boat.

An hour or so later the missionary felt the urge, and did the same
thing: walked out of the boat, across the water and sought privacy
behind the bush. Again, the priest was flabbergasted, and again, his
other friend didn't seem to much notice. "Amazing! Where do these guys
get their faith?" Just as before, the Pentecostal returned by blithely
walking across the water and climbing into the boat.

The priest waited an hour, then said to himself, "These are men just
like me. We all worship the same God, and we are all men of faith. If
God favors them, surely He will favor me!" So, the priest stated that
his own calling was taking place, stood up, stepped out of the boat -
and into the drink he went, over his head.

The two friends just smiled as the priest climbed back in, gathered his
composure and stepped off the boat once again - and once again, went in
over his head.

At this point the minister said the the missionary, a wry grin across
his face, "You think we should show him where the rocks are?"

LOL I just went through this with the Russian fake on this very web
site, remember? Gotta love these people.

Married for three years. We were both too young, unready and miserable.
Divorced now for about 25 years.

Yeah, I am SO ready to get married to the right girl.

This is something I run into every once in a while. It's really not that
complicated to me.

God created all the roads. He knows all the intersections, because He
created them. We can choose any road we like and strive to reach
whatever destination suits us - but God knows where every road ends, and
what lies along the way. He even knows which roads we'll choose, because
He created us and knows us better than we do.

We have free will, and God knows every decision we can and will make.
It's not an either-or situation.

I'm an Ultima Online fanatic. Been playing since 1999, off and on, and
run two websites dedicated to the game.

I have an albino guinea pig named Wilson. He's an adorable little
fuzzball and I love him to death. :D

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b189/picturesfromhell/wilson.png

*blink - blink* OMG, you're right. Ugh ... *rolls over*

.. mmmfp? *stretches*

Some time ago, I found I had to stick to a diet that included no
caffeine and very low calcium. This means no coffee, regular tea, most
soda, milk, ice cream and some cheese.

I'll confess, I cheat on the cheese and the ice cream from time to time
- but I've been caffeine free for over a month now. A little weird at
first, yeah, but I don't miss it at all now.

Well, I don't miss the caffeine. I sure do miss the taste of coffee
though. :(

I can't take peas. Peas! YUK. Just the thought puts me off dinner.

But I love Liquorice. The real stuff, hard black with tons of bite.

I've been to PR, it's a beautiful place with beautiful people - and yes,
the women there are drop dead gorgeous. :)

I can change the oil by myself. That's about it. :)

OK, the Hindu of the group will now take the soapbox. :)

Hinduism is quite old, older than many of the major religions on this
Earth. Yet any good Hindu will tell you this is not what's important.

There are a lot of people in the world causing a lot of trouble and
spreading a lot of grief because 'their' religion is the correct one,
and 'their' God is above all other gods. Yet any good Hindu will tell
you this is not what's important.

There are a myriad of ways to interpret religious text, no matter where
it comes from. There are scholars and shamans, priests and rabbis,
ministers and laymen all pointing to their interpretation of Holy Writ.
Yet any good Hindu will tell you this is not what's important.

What's important? That you love one another. That you give God a place
in your heart and strive to understand His role for your life. That you
seek to understand that our petty little lives are threads in God's
tapestry, weak by themselves but strong as part of the fabric of the
universe.

Now, I could go on about the Vedas, and the concepts of reincarnation,
karma, the Godhead, the incarnations of Vishnu, and all the rest of it.
Those things are important - to a Hindu. They are not important to
everyone.

Any good Hindu knows that the things that matter to everyone are the
only things that have real importance. It doesn't matter who's religion
is oldest, or whether it started with goddesses or totems or blue cheese
dressing. It's not important to know how the world was created, or how
it will end, or whose prophets were touched by God and whose weren't.

What matters is that we love each other. That is the essence of all true
religion.

Intelligently, it has to be figurative.

There are two parts to deciphering John's writings - the future events
he saw, and the sights in Heaven he witnessed.

For the future events, we know today that these events occur in the far
future from when he lived - if it all happened tomorrow, we're looking
at around two thousand years. There is simply no way that he could
describe what he witnessed, even with full comprehension of the events,
in terms we could understand today. Since we don't have an accurate
description, we must take the events as described in a figurative sense.

As for the sights in Heaven ... well, it's Heaven. I doubt anyone could
fully comprehend the glory of God when it's presented to him face to
face. So we have to take a figurative stance on his descriptions of
Heaven as well.