8 ms·
For a long time I've been pretty worried about my mortality. But ever since I became a Christian a couple years ago, I've been much more at peace about it. Not
by sdegutis 13y ago
For a long time I've been pretty worried about my mortality. But ever since I became a Christian a couple years ago, I've been much more at peace about it. Not all the way (yet?), but much more than before. I highly recommend looking into Christianity to anyone else feeling that same fear.
- obituary_latte 13y agoPlease don't downvote just because you disagree. Have a discussion if you're comfortable with your beliefs. It would do more good for all involved.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- 300bps 13y agoSorry, I was raised Christian and realized at 12 years old that it was complete bunk. How did I realize that? I read the bible. Literally every day. I read it cover to cover at least 15 times. It contains pearls of wisdom floating in a sea of nonsense. No rational person can read that book cover to cover and remain a Christian. Which is why Christians have bible study groups where they focus on John 3:16 and other pretty verses while ignoring the wackjob parts that make up most of the bible. But it is pointless for me to even point this out to you so I'll stop here.
- narrator 13y agoThe bible makes as much sense as most ancient literature. I read it and compared it to ancient Greek, Roman and Babylonian literature. It's interesting to compare and contrast what values are emphasized over others. The old testament is very into offspring and private property, mainly in the form of livestock. The Greeks are more into glory for its own sake. Gilgamesh is about friendship, civilization vs.nature and trying to live forever.
- jamesrcole 13y ago> The bible makes as much sense as most ancient literature. I don't see why that's a meaningful comparison. I'm inclined to say, so what?
- 300bps 13y agoThe bible makes as much sense as most ancient literature. Key difference is that rational people in 2014 aren't claiming that Zeus may strike you down with a lightning bolt or thinking that Gilgamesh was divinely inspired. The old testament is very into offspring and private property Really? It just seems like a mish-mash of things nobody today would find acceptable. It advocates slavery in many places. Example: http://biblehub.com/genesis/16-8.htm http://biblehub.com/genesis/16-8.htm http://biblehub.com/genesis/16-9.htm http://biblehub.com/genesis/16-9.htm Giving up your virgin daughters for men to do as they want: http://biblehub.com/genesis/19-8.htm http://biblehub.com/genesis/19-8.htm And then there's this: http://biblehub.com/ezekiel/23-19.htm http://biblehub.com/ezekiel/23-19.htm http://biblehub.com/ezekiel/23-20.htm http://biblehub.com/ezekiel/23-20.htm There is some wacky stuff in The Holy Bible. The New Testament isn't much better. It's a little better. But not much.
- kirse 13y agoWhat else do you expect? You're not supposed to find most of it acceptable. Why are you surprised when a book that records the fall of man into sin and depravity is both shocking and FULL of stories of man pushing the bounds of depravity? It is brutally authentic and you should be reeling at the accounts of the depths of what mankind has done to himself. The Bible doesn't "advocate" anything by those verses. Surely you wouldn't read a historical account of World War II and be so naive as to say that the book is "advocating" genocide, would you? That would be totally irrational. To say that God "advocated" mankind's actions because they are recorded in the Old Testament is completely, utterly false and naive. It's like saying two parents "advocate" drug use when they recount the story of their child's drug addiction and how they attempted to bring their child back to being clean. The parents might even have a part in their story where they demanded their child keep the drug habit to the basement, or maybe even offered clean needles in lieu of the potentially infected ones off the street. But to say they "advocated" for that behavior? Hogwash! No, the motive you are looking for is "merciful allowance, with a loving hope for restoration."
- pstack 13y agoThere's no discussion to be had. A toddler may feel at ease because someone convinced him his flashlight will fend off the monsters in his closet and under his bed. It helps the kid sleep, but there's no enlightened, meaningful, or useful discussion to be had from that. If I tell you "I believe in the healing power of crystals and wear them around my neck and it has helped me come to a certain peace with my mortality", you would either say "well, good for you if that helps your mental state cope with things" or "you're fucking nuts". Neither avenue is going to progress, inform, or help anyone.
- charleswalter 13y agoWhy Christian? Try muslim dude.
- milesf 13y agoSame here. Been following Jesus for over 24 years. For the skeptics out there, have a listen to this guy http://waltermartin.com/realaudio.html http://waltermartin.com/realaudio.html It's a website that is desperately in need of a makeover (real player? that still exists?) but when I was a skeptic he was the only guy that gave straight answers, and would admit when he didn't know something. Too bad there are so many false teachers out there today. Makes it confusing for people.
- learc83 13y ago>I've been much more at peace about it. Not all the way (yet?) I've been a Christian for 25 years. I don't think you'll ever be completely at peace with your mortality--in the same way that riding a roller coaster is still scary even though you know it's safe. But I've seen the difference in the way my Christian and non-Christian friends handle death, and the difference is striking.
- Yhippa 13y agoWhat would you say the difference is?
- benjohnson 13y agoFor me, as a Christian: hope and gratitude.
- chroma 13y agoThey differ in their belief about the deceased's current subjective experience (or lack thereof). To the religious, death is an illusion. After a short time on the earth, everybody meets up again in the afterlife. It may be sad, but not too sad. To those who don't believe in an afterlife, death is real. When someone dies, everything about them is annihilated. A lifetime of experiences destroyed; a unique personality deleted from existence, and everyone worse-off because of it. Sadly, the desirability of an outcome has no correlation with its likelihood.
- 300bps 13y agoThe universe existed for ~ 14 billion years and did just fine without me. It will probably be good for at least another 14 billion years after I'm gone. And the funny thing is, I have never lost a minute of sleep over not having existed for those initial 14 billion years.
- chroma 13y agoI'm not entirely sure how your reply connects to my comment. Are you arguing that death isn't bad? If so, try pointing the argument at someone else: "The universe existed for billions of years and did just fine without you. It will probably be good for eons after you're gone. And the funny thing is, I have never lost a minute of sleep over your non-existence for those initial billions of years." It sounds both psychopathic and psychotic.
- GuiA 13y agoI recommend The Little Schemer
- gfodor 13y agoI find it strange people can die knowing about Jesus but not lisp and somehow think they are enlightened :)
- kendalk 13y agoOh, they are enlightened! They know they can learn Lisp in Heaven. :) As for Python...
- dmoo 13y agoI seem to remember that it was the snake that got every one in trouble in the first place...
- aurelianito 13y agoObligatory xkcd cartoon: http://xkcd.com/224/ http://xkcd.com/224/
- kunai 13y agoI hate to break it to you, but religion is just a ruse to help people come to grips with their mortalities. It's extremely unlikely beyond belief that there is any notion of heaven or hell in this universe. I don't want to start a religious war. I just don't want you to be let down when you're on your deathbed 30, 40, 50, 60 years from now.
- benjohnson 13y agoAs a Christian, I would agree that there is no heaven in this universe. God is out of place and time.
- MichaelGG 13y agoWhat does that even mean? Making up meaningless deep-sounding statements doesn't really further any argument. Here's some I just made up: "We shouldn't fear death any more than an unborn baby fears birth. Death is our true birth." "Everyone has faith. The only difference is that some people try to define faith, while others let faith define them." "The world absolutely runs on discoverable physical laws - no exceptions! But my freedom comes from knowing God is those laws."
- mietek 13y agoAssume the universe is not just computable [1], but actually computed, that is, running as a virtual machine under a hypervisor. How do we detect the presence of the hypervisor and break out of virtualisation? [2] Bonus: What is the name of the sysadmin? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Pill_(software)#Other_uses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Pill_(software)#Other_uses
- matwood 13y agoSounds like you are ready to start your own church.
- sdegutis 13y agoThanks for your sympathy. But I've done my homework. Jesus did actually rise from the dead. Research it and you'll come to the same conclusion. I don't have many books on it, but I'd probably start with Handbook of Catholic Apologetics[1] by Kreeft and Tacelli. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Catholic-Apologetics-Reasoned-Questions/dp/1586172794 http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Catholic-Apologetics-Reasoned...
- sdegutis 13y agoFor anyone interested in rational arguments for believing in Christianity, I recommend the Handbook of Christian Apologetics[1] by Kreeft and Tacelli. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Christian-Apologetics-Peter-Kreeft/dp/0830817743 http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Christian-Apologetics-Peter-K...
- JunkDNA 13y agoThanks for sharing this link. As a lifelong Catholic, as well as a biologist and software developer, I have often thought my background in this particlar area was not what it should be.
- sdegutis 13y agoAs a fellow Catholic, I would instead recommend The Handbook of Catholic Apologetics[1] by the same author. It's basically the same book, but with an additional ~40 pages about Catholicism. I admit they're not the best apologetics for Catholicism out there, but it's not much of a price difference. Also, this is the one I have. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Catholic-Apologetics-Reasoned-Questions/dp/1586172794 http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Catholic-Apologetics-Reasoned...
- MichaelGG 13y agoAnd what changed? What things stopped worrying you? If I believed getting killed immediately let to perfect joy, and my family would be with me in a sec and be totally happy, yeah, death wouldn't bother me at all. I'd probably try to get us all into high risk jobs and locales, too. I've got the peace that a process that's going to segfault has. At least I know the OS will close my sockets for me.
- polysics 13y agoI have gone the exact opposite path, from a life pretty entrenched in Christianity, to skepticism, to a conclusion that led me towards hard atheism. I feel like I am sure there is no supernatural creator, and the only love we receive is from people. I now thank people for their good, not God, and get angry at them for their bad, not at Satan. Religion starts off by lifting your responsibilities, and that is the worst part in my opinion. That said, it has improved my outlook on death too. I think there is no point worrying about an inevitable event that has no consequences other than the disappearance of a, maybe loved, person. No one knows what you feel, and no one ever has come back from it. That makes death pretty unconsequential, as there is NOTHING you can do about it.
- sdegutis 13y agoMany people have taken the route you've described, and their stories are usually the same. They finally found reason (maybe at 8 or 12) and realized all the "obvious, gaping holes and flaws" in Christianity. But very few people have gone from atheist to Nicene-creed-believing Christian in their adult life, which I did. This seems so backwards, don't you just wonder what their reasoning was? I do.
- polysics 13y agoOf course I wonder which path you went through, it is the point of this discussion, and for all the rampant no-holds-barred religion bashing HN usually sees, this is still an above-average forum for this kind of discussion. I would really like to hear about that, with the only rule that neither of us should try and convince anyone else, and all we say is to be taken strictly personally. I will start by saying that I actually went through the realization that I had no evidence or need for the supernatural about 1 year ago, at 35 and counting, after reading The God Delusion and then starting my own research path across philosophy, theology and science. I feel like I have reached a conclusion, albeit just a personal one.
- sdegutis 13y agoI was raised somewhere between theist and deist, with only the belief that there is some "God" and if you're good you go to Heaven, otherwise Hell. That was it. Before my digits were yet two, I started reasoning about all of this on my own, and came to my own conclusions on them, which were basically uninformed. In my teenage years, I experimented with atheism and settled on agnosticism. Just a few years ago in my middle-adulthood, I turned to "God and Jesus" in a desperate attempt to keep sanity during really hard times (my wife and kids and I were in the brink of homelessness, with no job and almost no cash, 9000 miles away from home). I really believed it was a mental coping mechanism, but I didn't care at that point. Our situation resolved, and I ended up returning back to my agnosticism. But existential panic attacks sent me searching more fervently for an answer. I reached out to a non-denominational (i.e. Protestant) pastor, telling him that I wanted to believe in Christianity, but I couldn't violate my integrity, knowing that it's incompatible with science and history. He gave me a book called The Reason for God[1] which demonstrated that Christianity doesn't conflict with science, and that the Resurrection of Jesus is historically true and accurate as presented in the Gospels. When I finished reading it, I chose to become a Christian. Eventually, as I kept researching different denominations, I settled on Catholicism as the most likely to be correct. For other Christians curious how I could come to that conclusion, I would recommend The Catholic Controversy[2] by St. Francis de Sales. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Reason-God-Belief-Skepticism/dp/1594483493 http://www.amazon.com/The-Reason-God-Belief-Skepticism/dp/15... [2]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Catholic-Controversy-Defense-Faith/dp/0895553872 http://www.amazon.com/The-Catholic-Controversy-Defense-Faith...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sdegutis 13y agoTo almost everyone who replied: Were your responses really in the spirit of HN? I don't believe anything I said deserved the condescending tone I received in response.
- kpmah 13y agoRespectfully, I would instead recommend secular Buddhism and mindfulness for dealing with emotions related to your own mortality. I believe it to be a healthier alternative without the need for a belief in god, an afterlife, or any superstition. I recommend the writing of Jon Kabat-Zinn and Stephen Batchelor.
- sdegutis 13y agoThis approach of "pick what works best for you" only works if it's actually true. Christianity claims that it is objectively true, for all people, regardless of whether they believe it. So it's not like a Christian can just change to a religion that "fits" them better on a whim.
- kpmah 13y agoSecular Buddhism doesn't make any supernatural claims which means it's completely compatible with Christianity. That's why it also works for atheists. Emphasis on the secular - traditional sects of Buddhism can have gods, reincarnation etc. It may be clearer to say mindfulness instead of Buddhism as that has religious connotations. It's medically recognised for handling stress.
- aaronem 13y agoOh, good Lord! I made my previous comment to you before I noticed you'd thrown this rock at the hornets' nest. Good man! Not that bright, maybe, but with moral courage to spare, and that's a rare pleasure to run across in this degraded age.