A Plan to Determine What Happens After I Die
The approach taken here is to first answer the question of "How did we get here". Another way of saying this is to ask "Which World View is Correct?". In other words; Is Science or one of the Religions of the world the true explanation for why we are here? Since each approach has an explanation of what happens to us when we die or an implication, as with Science, the answer to what happens to us after death follows from answering the World View question.
This is one possible plan for answering the question of what happens to me when I die. Add or remove steps as you see fit. What's important is that you systematically step through the different explanations that have been offered, carefully evaluate each of them, and reject those that have not made a good case. With persistence, you should be able to reach a single answer that is better than all the rest.
- Be Serious - Realize that your eternity is at stake, so you need an answer.
- Be Confident - You can come to a conclusion about why we are here. You don't have to be an expert on anything. There are plenty of experts out there studying the details and providing us with easier to understand summaries.
- Be a Detective - Insist on Good Explanations for every claim.
- Be Reasonable - If you really need an answer, which you do; then it's just smart to work with the level of evidence that is available and not the level you wish you had.
- Be Open-Minded - Be willing to seriously consider different points of view and explanations.
- Identify Candidates - Which are each of the World Views that attempt to provide an explanation for why we are here.
- Examine Each Candidate - Study each World View enough to get a basic understanding of what it claims.
- Throw Out the Unlikely - Remove each World View from your consideration which you really don't feel has a chance of being the true explanation for why we are here.
- If Only One is Left, You Have Your Answer
- If Two or More are Left
- Congratulations, you've put more work into this than most people do. The question of "How did we get here?" is one of mankind's most important. It is worthwhile to look for an answer and you're probably a lot closer than you were.
- You don't have to finish this right now. You might want to take a break to rest your mind and reward yourself.
- Try to get back to this sometime because there is so much more to be gained by getting down to a single answer instead of having several possibilities.
- Seek Experts on the Candidates - Sometimes an expert can provide a bit of information that is all you needed to make a decision.
- Question Your Standards of Evidence - Many people cannot make a decision because they recall the "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" line from the courtroom. The meaning of it is that there's not much of a chance I could be wrong. We're dealing with the most important issue in our life; and none of the people with explanations can stand up and provide an unquestionable case for their position. Science has no sound theories for several of the key steps to how we got here and most religions are thousands of years old. They have no living eyewitness. There are no YouTube videos to end the controversy.
- Lower Your Standards of Evidence - This sounds bad but try it to see where it leads. Maybe you won't have to give up as much as you thought. You're not selling out and accepting something you don't believe. You are a detective looking for an answer. Sometimes the answer is where you didn't think you needed to look. When we reject evidence, we don't even look in those places. We have the evidence we have and that is it. Let's not give up because we don't have the evidence we think we need. Let's make good use of what we've got and see if we can get an answer from it.
- Could our Standards of Evidence be too high?
- We may not have the evidence we would like to have but do we really need the evidence we want?
- Our eternity may depend on us getting a creation answer.
- Given what is at risk, our dissatisfaction with the evidence and our inability to do anything about it; isn't it reasonable to lower the standard from what we want to what we have. Holding out for better evidence means we'll very likely die without an answer.
- Dig Deeper - The only way it doesn't matter if we answer the question of our creation is if there is no god. If there is a god, you always have to do something to get his reward, which you won't be doing if you don't even recognize him as THE god. Next, do a more in-depth study of each of your candidates to see if an answer comes from that.
- From Science - Look at the big creation steps that it doesn't have an answer for. Look at scientific evidence that contradicts popular scientific theory. Shouldn't there be a level at which this disqualifies the explanation that Science offers?
- From a Religion - Appeal to its god for an answer.
- Question Yourself - Ask yourself if you really do want an answer. The evidence that is available to us at this point in history is what it is. It is good to insist that a level of evidence exists so that we intellectually believe that an explanation is true. It is not good or beneficial for us to refuse to come to a reasonable conclusion based on not having a level of evidence we have arbitrarily decided is necessary. Sometimes people don't want an answer to the creation question right now for entirely different reasons. Such as, they worry that if they become more convinced that there is a god they will have to make some lifestyle changes.
- Your Answer - The World View you have picked as the true explanation for why we are here either states or implies what will happen to us after we die. In the case of:
- Science - You cease to exist. The implication for the present is that it doesn't matter what you do now. Enjoy your life. It's all you've got.
- Religion - You need to study the religion you chose to discover what its god expects from you. Each religion's god requires something different of you for the reward that is offered after death.
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3/21/13