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What did my parents tell me......

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hcaneandrew:
Have any of you ever seen the movie "Always" with Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter and John Goodman?  I really like how they linked the concepts of "spirit" and "inspiration" in that movie - that one affects those who are living long after they have passed on.

As an Atheist, I like to think that what we do when we are alive is carried along by the people who we affect during our lives through the way they live their own.  Perhaps, we could tell children, every time someone learns something from you, they carry with them a piece of you in the actions they take, sometimes only briefly, but at other times permanently, and in such a way to pass you along to yet another generation long after you are gone.

Are we conscious of how we are affecting others after we die?  I'm not sure we are conscious of how we affect others when we are alive, to be honest.  I don't know that we will retain consciousness after we die, but at the movie's core is a sweet idea.  If nothing else, the movie is a good way to start a discussion about what might happen after death from a non-religious point of view.

Aurjay:
Last thought to Aurjay: Beware; Intelligent Design isn't what you think it is....  It's a trick cooked up by Creationists to get religion into schools -- it claims (with extremely shaky and unscientific foundations) that evolution isn't able to explain all of the diversity of life, so an "intelligent creator" (i.e., the Christian God, though they don't say it) must have been involved.  What you're probably looking for is the idea that God planned evolution, and knew beforehand how it would all go (but evolution still operates scientifically, without any supernatural tweaks needed along the way).  I'm not sure if there's a specific name for that idea, but that's the belief of many scientifically-educated Christians.
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Ya thats kinda of where i was going with that. Maybe God planned evolution and then let science take it from there. But even then I find that to be a hard sell. All I know is my lil brother is being hammered with all the church's teaching and since my parents literally refuse to get involved either way I kinda feel it is my duty to make sure he knows there are other beliefs. Again he can make whatever decision he wants but I want to make sure it is a well informed decision. 

pwhodges:

--- Quote from: Aurjay on 15 Dec 2008, 15:00 ---All I know is my lil brother is being hammered with all the church's teaching
--- End quote ---

Funny how brainwashing seems to be acceptable if it's religious...

nutcase:
OK, me too.  I registered to talk about religion.  But I have an excuse: I'm a Unitarian, and that's what we do.

My parents are/were Presbyterians, I suspect because they inherited it, and I don't remember ever having the "what happens" discussion with them.  I don't think I expected them to have an answer.

My daughters are now in their 20's, and they don't seem to have had much difficulty with the "what happens" question, in spite of the fact that we never came up with much better than the rather lame "Nobody really knows for sure; I think that we cease to think or be aware, but those who live on remember us."

I would have liked to have a more comforting answer for them.  As long as I've been a Unitarian Universalist, I've felt that it was a relatively difficult religious environment for kids, because it didn't have crisp (that is, dogmatic) answers to those troublesome questions.  But in watching them grow into strong, confident, smart, and adventuresome young women, I've become less troubled about how their religious upbringing might have let them down.

PixiePirateX:

--- Quote from: Jeans on 15 Dec 2008, 15:42 ---Man, the amount of new people here who seemingly registered only because things got all religious is insane.

--- End quote ---

I admit, I joined because of this set of comics, but not because of the religious part. I am curious, I was raised in a completely non-religious home (except a brief and barely remembered time with Unitarians when I was about 3) with people who felt the same way. So I was never exposed to it, so I was curious what people thought about it all.

I knew from a very young age, that there was nothing after and I never felt any sort of pull toward believing in anything, and it never bothered me. When my grandparents died, I said " Okay they aren't hurting anymore" but they don't go anywhere, they just don't feel anything anymore, I never really felt a death deeply and painfully it was just what happened.

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