NVDL: In The Lord's prayer we pray that it will be on earth, 'as it is in Heaven'. In fact, we all pray that rather the opposite is true. That the good life we're living here will continue in the life after life. That if we are 'good' people, we will be rewarded with eternal life. Of course, good is subjective, and so is this idea - a rather fanciful one - of being rewarded by someone watching us, as though life is a homework assignment, and death is a long holiday period we get to reward us for the act of living. Please.
The majority of people on Earth though are miserable, and are hoping they will be rewarded for their misery and suffering in an afterlife of comfort (apparently deserved).
Neither belief holds much water unfortunately, but have the thing in common that the uncertain future will be 'happy' and 'good' if we simply make our minds to be 'happy' and 'good'. There is a slim chance that our beliefs may manifest some sort of reality, but we ought to remember that no matter how dearly we wish we could fly like Superman, the law of gravity applies equally to one in all. That's reality.
In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.
The evangelicals complained that people must not have understood the question. The respondents couldn’t actually believe what they were saying, could they?
So in August, Pew asked the question again. (They released the results last week.) Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them.
And they didn’t stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.
What on earth does this mean?
|
No comments:
Post a Comment