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Originally Posted by Formendacil
I cannot express my utter dread and horror at the idea of not having an afterlife. What POINT is there to life, if this short span -so easily ended in a car accident or a medical breakdown- is all we get.
Call me whatever you like... the very idea gives me the jibblies.
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Saying that you are guided by reason, rather than faith, makes me laugh at the moment. I'm sorry- it's not the statement itself, but the context I find myself in when I read it. Blame it on a book I just read. Basically, it set about showing how RATIONAL a faith Christianity is, and it got my mind thinking quite a bit about lately about just how true that is.
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Many times even the most learned have never quite thought their personal views to their end... I think we could rephrase your question: "What POINT is there to life, if this short span -so easily ended in a car accident or a medical breakdown- is
only a small part of what we get?"
Do you see it Form? Isn't life's precariouisness just the thing that gives it meaning and depth? Why to care, if this is just an interlude or or an overture? Just play your cards wisely and wait for the next level (like in WW-game, flying under radar and hoping you wouldn't be noticed?).
And to the second point. The fideistic point (called forwards by Kierkegaard & co.) is quite new indeed - but widely held in protestant countries nowadays. They think, that you should make a difference between belief and knowledge. It's an old & new fundamentalist view to call the questions of faith epistemological ie. being questions of truth or falsity - things to be known, or reasoned / proved about... So when you call your belief rational, you line up with the fundamentalists - even though you say the contrary.
Already most of the medieval monks felt quite uneasy with those rational "proofs of God's existence" (brought forward from 11th. century forwards), as they seemed to tie God in logic and (human) reasoning... So there is this tension between rationality and christianity - has been there since Paul, of course, but it has not been done away with quite yet.