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writersjourney

... and thank you, Sir, for your likewise stimulating comments! I hope you will revist this site often!

posted by GEPRUITT on September 17, 2006 at 8:57 PM | link to this | reply

Your Post Got Me Thinking...

...I can imagine believers becoming agnostics or atheists on their death bed because I have seen a few people die and appear to give way to despair near the end. Maybe it was despair at not having lived as well as they had hoped -- "well" being defined as doing something other than watching television or passing the time away with other mindless preoccupations from day-to-day. Or maybe their despair was that they did not spend more time living with awareness of the presence of God -- maybe they felt their life lacked spiritual depth. Or maybe, as believers, they became angry with God and asked themselves "Is this all there is to life?" In their anger they might have turned away from God and/or denied his existence altogether.

The truth is, I really don't know -- I just seem to have detected despair of some sort.

But this led me to remember a Buddhist saying about the way that our entire life is rehearsal for our death. It is the notion that we should live "well" so that we can die "well". Some Buddhist teachings stress meditation when you are healthy and everything is going well so that when you are dying and prone to anxiety your mind will easily shift gears and enter a meditative state that will be more conducive to a peaceful death.

The thoughts above suggest to me that we essentially place our bets during life on which is the better way to die, to die with a sense (an awareness) of a presence that is Good, Truth, and Creative -- a presence that prevents us from feeling alienated from the universe and from our existence. We can choose to live in a way so that we will quite naturally die in that state of mind; or we can live in a way that places all of its bets on the material, the transitory, the here and the now. We can place our hopes in a life which, as it slips away, leaves us with a kind of ontological alienation.

It's not enough to give verbal and/or intellectual assent to a belief about the infinite and the eternal; it is necessary to dwell in that awareness through all of the ups and downs and changes in life in order to enter that awareness on the day we die. So, how we live is essentially a bet. We would be well-served not to wait until we are on our death bed before we place our bet, although conversion, even in the final hour, is preferable to not experiencing a deeply felt conversion at all.

Thanks for stimulating these thoughts.

posted by writersjourney on September 17, 2006 at 1:51 AM | link to this | reply

JANE

Thanks for your comment. Visit this site as often as you like!

Gerald

posted by GEPRUITT on September 17, 2006 at 1:13 AM | link to this | reply

I like that -- the noise level of atheists. Well put.

I believe you may be onto something!

posted by JanesOpinion on September 16, 2006 at 12:07 PM | link to this | reply

XENO-X

Could that possibly be that, by far, MOST higher IQ people are NOT Atheists? I strongly suspect that the real # of true Atheists is much less than their NOISE LEVEL would suggest! I further suspect, tho I have seen no published stats on the matter, that the overwhelming majority of so-called "Non-Believers" are in fact Agnostics and, as such, should not be truthfully considered "NON-Believers," since they do not rule out the possibility of God's existence. If you have any breakdowns on such percentages, I would be grateful if you would share them with me.