I have a question

I would like to start off by saying that if I offend anyone with this post or anything I have to say in response to a response I apologize. I am not trying to step on any toes or put down anybodies beliefs. I also apologize if there is already a post containing this. I looked but could not find one.


My question is how does one know beyond a shadow of doubt that they are going to heaven when they die? Lets say you were plopped on this earth with only a handful of other people here and no history to look at and base your thoughts on. How would you explain "God" and heaven and souls and how would you explain to me that I am "saved or unsaved" or that I am going to heaven or not? Or even that I am going to be reincarnated into??? Who knows what. Maybe I will just die and that will be it. I want answers from the heart please. I have been exploring different religions all my life and I have yet to find any that have not just used bits and pieces of other beliefs and ideas changing them to fit their needs and way of life. Can anyone help me to understand things better?

 

It's helpful to first distinguish between knowledge (which is verifiable by anyone regardless of "belief") and belief (which fills in the gaps where knowledge is missing). Any act of belief or nonbelief is a choice one makes with the knowledge at hand. So the questions become:

What do I know?

What do I believe?

Why do I believe what I believe?

When belief is either verified or disproven, its result ceases to be belief and becomes knowledge. Knowledge is objective; belief is subjective.

This is where religous leaders routinely - accidentally or deliberately - screw everything up. They don't start with the data at hand; they start with their conclusion: "The [Bible, Torah, Koran] is the Word of God." When challenged on their faith-based premises, they support their claims with circular reasoning, moving the goalposts, and just plain, good old making shit up on the fly. This is the fundamental flaw in the claims of contemporary "religion" (i.e., Abrahamic monotheism): the subjective (belief) is confounded with the objective (knowledge/fact).

This is also where the materialist screws up. The materialist, generally speaking, denies the value of the subjective altogether. In so doing he denies the part of himself that makes him uniquely human.

The subjective is the part of us that connects the dots between events and extracts meaning from them. It's the filter through which everything we perceive gets processed. And it's the reason that truth and meaning are ultimately determined by the individual alone, no matter what input others may have in the matter.

The importance of recognizing that division between the objective and subjective is pretty hard to overstate. As Dr. House might say, "It explains everything." It explains the repeated attempts throughout history to reconcile all existing schools of philosophy into one, "universal" model (objective knowledge/"absolute truth"), as well as the inevitable fragmentation of every new ideology into sects and offshoots who perceive and interpret things differently (subjective belief/personal choice).

I think with your question as it's currently stated, you're likely to get more statements of faith than reasoned explanations. You might consider first being clear on what you know versus what you believe, and also what you specifically don't know. Being aware of these alone will put you miles ahead of most people when it comes to understanding yourself in relation to where you stand on any number of compteting belief systems. It will give you a clearer idea of what to ask of other people in explaining their beliefs.

 

I just am asking for any answer from someone who is not using any prior knowledge of religions or beliefs.I am asking for people to forget everything they know, have heard or that they follow and to look inside themselves for the answer. I am looking for someone who looks at the world and says how can one not see "God" in it or looks at the world and says how can one see "God" in this? I want an answer based on this alone and why if you had nothing to base any belief or faith on would you choose the answer you did. I hope this helps.

 

Gotcha. Well, when you put it that way, another potential problem leaps to mind: the tendency of people to automatically call their own perception of any sort of trans-material metaphysical presence or pattern of influences "God"... no matter how radically it might differ from the Hebrew deity YHVH as revealed in the works of the Abrahamic prophets. "God" can mean any number of things to any number of people, and as such has become the standard catch-all name for most any cluster of made-up, stapled-together beliefs imaginable. Thus one simple term has become so loaded with subjective variations and political baggage as to be philosophically useless.

For what it may be worth, you're asking an excellent question that deserves to be addressed. Most religious ideologies are little more than fantasy propped on crutches, and even the more thoughtful variants rely on uncritically-predetermined premises at their core. To let go of expectations and let the data determine the conclusion is to enter uncharted and potentially scary territory. One ceases to be an ideologue and becomes a philosopher.

 

This explains why I can never get a straight answer from anyone. I am beginning to think that this is a question that I will always have because it can never be truthfully answered. At least not in the way it has been asked because people no matter how hard they try not to will always revert back to what they have been taught and have learned from others to answer it.

 

To remove relayed information and history from the equation removes the vast majority of the evidence that leads many people to their respective faiths. That was certainly the case in my life. The knowledge and research is what led me to trust what I do, and discard what I don't because it didn't prove trustworthy.

For whatever reason, it seems that most of the world's major belief systems were designed mainly to be passed from person to person. Short of that, however, God doesn't seem to have a problem with revealing Himself to the individual. This has been claimed in just about every faith I can think of, and I've studied several in depth.

The bottom line is that no one can say with absolute certainty that a person is destined for heaven, or even that there is such a place. It's all about trust. Or to repeat Ecilam's fantastic statement:

Even as a Christian, I don't know with absolute certainty that I'm destined for heaven. I have placed my trust in what Jesus promised to His followers 2,000 years ago. If His promise goes unfullfilled, I may very well be screwed (in a spiritual sense, of course ).

In my humble opinion, to make a decision about your spiritual life based on only a gut feeling with complete disregard for outside information and evidence is foolish at best and dangerous at worst.

 

To admit that one does not know with certainty and is choosing the best possible premises based on the knowledge at hand takes courage and personal honesty sorely lacking in today's religio-political landscape.

 

This is why I asked the way I did. People in the jungle or in secluded areas that still live cut off from the rest of the world (or until recently lived cut off from the rest of the world) have a form of religion or spiritual beliefs. They had and have nothing but the earth and their tribe to explain to them about the human spirit. That was and is the only outside evidence and information that these people have and have had. Almost all if not every religion and spiritual believer has three basic facts. One is that every human has a soul or spirit. Something keeping the body animated. Two when a human dies something happens to the soul or spirit. Three there is always a higher being or beings involved. Be it a human with special powers or a deity. When the world was still cut off from its self how did these people all come to the same basic conclusions. Over the years the stories have changed as have the hows and whys but not the three basic things. I am trying to go back to that point in time. I guess you could say to the first ah ha moment that started the whole thing. I know it is a confusing question and one most people will not answer directly but I am hoping someone out there will try. If you were back in that point in time or born in a secluded area,how would you look at the world and see "God" or look at the world and not see"God". If you had to how would you explain the human soul or spirit. What happens to it and why. How can you prove to me by just using the earth and a basic human body (or animal body) that what you say happens is what really happens?

 

The problem with that premise is that it assumes God (however defined) stopped interacting with mankind long, long ago and everything that's happened since then is folklore. It eliminates the possibility of continuous, repeated experiences and personal testimonies that constantly contribute to the evidence available to anyone willing to examine it.

 

On the flip side one could also assume that "God" is folklore. Or at least started out that way and that people have made the repeated experiences and personal testimonies that constantly contribute to the evidence to keep it going. How come no one is willing to let go of everything they know just look inside and see for themselves not just to see what others have taught them or put forth for them to see? I guess that because I can see both sides of the question or argument (without "God" there would be no humans and without humans there would be no "God") it frustrates me when others can not or will not look at it both ways. Does anybody stop to think about where from a early human standpoint "God" came from other then what they have been told? How, before man had a true understanding of anything, religion and spirituality came about? Not how you were told or what you read about how it came about but what could have really caused it. I am trying to figure all this out and this post has helped me understand a lot. I know that there are thousand of articles on this but most of them are bias. That is why I posted the question here. I was hoping for an in site as to why it is how it is and I got it. So thank you.