I’m not religious at all but I find theology very interesting (although I decided not to read about it in school —> I don’t know anything lol).
I don’t believe in an afterlife. I think that when we die we will lose our consciousness and that we’ll just not be living anymore. I don’t like the thought of heaven and hell because who is to judge what is good or bad? There are so many gray areas. Haha, which makes me think about The Good Place.
I do like the thought about karma. It’s simple and nice. I would like the reincarnation ideas from Hinduism if they didn’t have the cast system which says that the reincarnation thing doesn’t apply to everyone. (Or that is what I’ve learnt in school.)
Although I like the idea of that what we do in life will affect what happens in our “afterlife”, I don’t believe in life after death. I also don’t think that we should do good for any type of reward, which is a problem in some branches of Christianity where you can get rid of your sins in weird ways and probably in many other religions too. I wish people just were good and wouldn’t need a reward in the end to be decent human beings.
Then again, nobody can for sure know what happens after death because the dead doesn’t speak to the living lol. So I might be proven wrong when the time comes, we’ll see.
I’m really not religious but I thinks it’s interesting how every religion has a different explanation for the afterlife. My Mum, although she is not religious either, believes that there’s heaven and hell but it’s all one place where everyone can meet everyone else, no matter if they are in heaven or hell.
One of my teachers said he believes that there’s nothing after we die although he was very religious. He just didn’t like the thought of an immortal soul or living forever in heaven or hell. There’s an end for everthing, so why not for humans?
I would like to give you some information about Afterlife according to Judaism:
So as you know, when a person dies he (as his soul) leaves the body and go to the World to Come (in Hebrew, it’s called Ha’Olam Ha’Ba). When someone becomes a soul, he may know everything about other living person, because nothing can be hidden from him. Like, everything is revealed to him. He can even know what the living person is thinking about, and his future. Also, when you leave this world you cannot change yourself anymore, meaning that your soul kind of documents what your were like.
In the Afterlife, there is the heavenly court (called in Hebrew “Beit Din shel Mala”), and there are Dayanim (judges). By the way, a dayan may be alive and not only dead. All the good deeds and misdeeds are shown to the person. When someone does Averot (=sins), he stains his own soul without even feeling it AND creates kind of bad angels (they are called “mal’achi chabala”), and each one is a proof for a misdeed that he committed on this world and they will torture after his death for creating them.
Unlike other religions, the hell in Judaism is kind of a washing and cleaning process level before the person entering in Gan Eden. How long a person can be in hell? Depends on what he did, how many times he did the averah and how severe. Unless the person repented (= made a Tshuva, but made a real one).
Reward and punishment are done middah k’neged middah (lit. Meaning: “measure for measure”. It means, what goes around comes around).
By the way, there is Gan Eden and Gehinnom for non-Jews, but it’s different than the Gan Eden and Gehinnom of Jews.
I’m a Celtic-Hellenic Pagan, so there’s technically two versions of the afterlife that I can draw from:
In Hellenic (Greek) paganism, we believe that when you die, your soul is separated from your body and gets transported to the entrance of the Underworld. You then have to pay Charon to ferry you down the River Styx. When you’ve crossed the river, you will encounter Judges who decide whether your soul goes to Elysium, the Fields of Asphodel, or Tartarus. Tartarus is where souls go to be punished, the Fields of Asphodel are where people who lived ordinary lives go, and Elysium is for souls who have lived great lives
In Celtic paganism, the afterlife is called the Otherworld. In Gaelic, it has many names, including Tir Na Nog, Tir Naill, Tech Duinn and Mag Mell. It’s a place of eternal life where the Gods and our Ancestors live
@Discussions - what does your religion say about the afterlife?
Welp, Hindus believe in karma i.e. “intentional action”. In Hindu scriptures, a soul is stuck in a constant cycle of death and rebirth. So after the person dies, the soul takes birth again as someone else based on what karma they had done in their previous births. If they had done good deeds, they would be born with good qualities and vice versa is it’s bad karma.
Afterlife does exist in Hinduism. When the soul gets detached from body after death, it is taken by Yama (the god of death and righteousness) and he judges the soul for the karma he had done in his past life. Based on those judgements, he decides on what sort of life the soul gets to have.
There are rare times when a soul has attained nirvana i.e. freedom from cycle of rebirth and thus, they finally leave the mortal world to become part of The Almighty (Lord Vishnu or Adi Parashakti in Hinduism, but it could be various deities with other names too).
But there are times when the person has done really bad deeds, so the soul gets to suffer in Naraka (Hell). There are also sometimes when a soul cannot really detach itself from the body as they may have committed self-inflicted death (for instance, a person commits suicide because of a mental illness or some other dreadful incident in life) or died at uncertain times but they didn’t want to (spontaneous deaths such as an ambitious person met with a car accident or a cerebral attack). As such, they have difficulties leaving the mortal world as they have died in a Tamasic (lifeless) state and thus, end up being Bhoot Prethas i.e. Bad Souls, who are ill-willed and torment people on earth (every year, hundreds and thousands of Prethas are freed from the living world by doing yajnas and prayers).
I don’t really have a religion per say, as I don’t worship any gods. However, I believe that after death, ppl kinda just float around on the astral plane, if that makes sense. So they can still do stuff and live for eternity ect., but they also aren’t bound by the laws of one particular god. I kinda think it’ll be like real life, but more ghosty and apathetic
I’m always interested in learning. Will I retain it? Maybe but I have several friends who believe that there is a higher power. But not sure what it is. They’re open to Christianity but I’m not going to shove it down someone’s throat. Each geographic history has their own religion. Just wish the world understood that…
yup
ours used to be irish paganism :D
Then we got colonised and everything went to sh!t
but yea I’m a believer of all, worshiper of none, to make a long story short
but I have several friends who believe that there is a higher power. But not sure what it is. They’re open to Christianity but I’m not going to shove it down someone’s throat. Each geographic history has their own religion. Just wish the world understood that…
