- Cover of What Happens When We Die
A forum member asks:
What happens if the child dies before knowing God?
++++++++++
This justification for forcing religion on children is commonly offered as a knock down — end of discussion, type reply when we assert that only adults should make decisions about whether to adhere to a faith. Forcing faith on small intellectually vulnerable children is unethical because it destroys any chance they have of making an unbiased choice when they mature. The weakness in parents argument is that it is dead easy to find historical examples of faith practices that had to give way. Slavery, miscegenation, and the assignment of women to second class status are just three of many examples the faithful justified with their bible. Not to mention that we are a secular country, so religious justifications should hold absolutely no weight. Here is how I responded. Can you strengthen this approach?
__________________________________________________________________
I don’t know what happens and neither do you. You obviously have been taught to fear there might be dire consequences. However, you have absolutely no basis for being fearful other than faith in ancient texts, dictatorial clergy and group pressure to believe what is in those texts. No person on our planet *knows* what happens when we die. Yet billions of people are walking around confidently telling us that they know such things. There is absolutely no obvious way of *knowing* the answer to this question — if there was, we would not still be asking it. Once we derive a satisfactory answer to a question we drop it in the “solved” box and move on. Obviously, the question is still very much alive so *no one* has an answer.
I can offer my conjecture, and the difference is I am willing to call it conjecture. Nothing happens. Medical science knows exactly what happens to our bodies. If given time, our brain systematically shuts down our individual organs, and finally that includes the one we think with. You lose awareness and never awaken. The grand adventure of life on earth is over for us. These profound thoughts are offered by Richard Dawkins:
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”
The difference between you and I is that I don’t make crucial life decisions based on what cannot possibly be known. I reserve a special wariness towards people or institutions that have agendas and that implore me to believe what they claim is the truth. Psychological control mechanisms such as fear, guilt and wishful thinking are easily detected. I refuse to live my life driven by the fears, guilt and hopes of others. While we are at it, you don’t *know* god. I am always suspicious of this claim. Tell us please exactly what you mean by this.
Might this be the same indecisive god that centuries ago informed his Catholic followers that unbaptized babies don’t go to heaven? Then finally changed his mind and recently said: “hold up on this, I have new instructions”. Who can count the number of parents in years past who wailed and wept for their unfortunate sinful infants.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/04/20/limbo-in-limbo.html
What Happens When We Die
http://www.amazon.com/What-Happens-When-Die-Groundbreaking/dp/1401907105/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book , April 6, 2006
By Jennifer Riley “jennifer” (Boston, USA) – See all my reviews
I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who has ever thought about the ultimate question of what happens when we die… Especially those who want answers based upon the objectivity of science.
Ever since he was a medical student, Parnia MD, PhD was fascinated by what it is that makes us all unique as individuals, in other words what is the relation between the mind and the brain? Later he was touched by the experience of seeing his patients’ die and was left with the question of what happens to the human mind and consciousness at the end of life? Disappointed that science had not seriously tried to study this question, he developed a scientific model i.e. cardiac arrest and started research into this field. This was almost 10 years ago…
| Posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 6:34 pm in Childhood Indoctrination, Parenting. | |
Share/Save
|
|
Comments (1)