For those who believe you don't exist before you're born or after you're dead: How do you come to believe that

Question

I'm confused. If there can be no evidence to support your belief yet there is overwhelming evidence of spirit activity, how do you come to your conclusion?

I don't remember what I ate on my 7th birthday but that doesn't mean I starved myself that day.

Spirit acitivity (a very general term): ghosts, OBE's, NDE's, visions, psychic phenomena. I have researched this stuff for over 20 years. Almost everyone I know has experienced something. I definitely have.

Science is still young. It is too young to be the be all and end all. People didn't believe in germs before science found a way of seeing them. Perhaps in 200 years time science will find a way to see the soul.

Answer 1

For those who are ready, no explanation is necessary and for those who are not, no explanation is possible! http://www.psychic-junkie.com

Answer 2

I was raised in a fundamentalist christian family and adpoted the faith until I was 13 or so. I began to question it just before my 14th birthday and went looking for other answers.

The personal journey I undertook (not really knowing I was engaged in any such a thing) took me first to western occultism and then to eastern religions. Without trying to sound like a know-all I tried everything I ever read about. I went from Crowley to Chaos Magic, from Buddhism to Advaita Vedanta and made all the stops in-between - many hundreds in total. I finally washed-up against the work of Ken Wilber and had my Waterloo. I realised that his ideas were probably the best out there, and yet were still riddled with holes, ridiculous oversights and untenable claims. In desperation I turned to the enemy - the hard sciences that promised me nothing - and weirdly found all my questions answered. As a result I've spent the 10 happy years since simply relaxing into my life, and I'd thank god (if there was one) for bringing the whole silly chase to an early conclusion. Otherwise I might still be there yet, throwing money and time into ghosts and bogeymen.

If you want to know why you're here then try Darwinian Science and Cosmology. If you want to know why you experience all this stuff then have a go at Cognitive Neuroscience. If you want to consider the best way to live then have a bash at philosophy--really take your mind out for a run--and if you want to know the truth about religions then study them all carefully without any desire for comfort.

As for 'spirit activity' then what do you really mean by that? There is no evidence to support the term, y'know, and you could spend the rest of your life trying to find gold at the end of a rainbow.

Answer 3

Quite simply, I have come to believe that conciousness
(as defined as the quality of self-awareness,) exists only
while I am alive because my experiences have given me
no reason to believe otherwise. I do not remember any-
thing prior to my birth, and as its impossible to communicate
or interact with a corpse, it is a reasonable assumption that
dead things are not concious, either. I do not believe this
with absolute certainty, however, as I recognize first and
foremost that I am not capable of knowing what it is like to
be dead without first being dead myself.

On the other hand......I still consider myself a spiritual person,
as experience has also shown me that I, and others, too,
posess some capacity for non-physical communication. By
this I mean ESP, clairvoyance, telepathy, communicating with
plants, ect. For those scientifically minded individuals out there
who would immediately say this is a crock, please consider that
science is still in it's infancy, and it is entierly possible that there
is an explanation for this phenomenon that does not rest upon
the shoulders of Gods and Demons.

Or in the the immortal words of Francis Crick, “And so to those
of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what
everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks
will believe tomorrow.”

Answer 4

Beliving is believing. It is not knowing. People who do not believe in spirits, simply have found no reason to believe in them. Everyone believes something different, because we were all made different. If they found proof of spirits, I am sure they wouldbelive in it.
Beliefs vary so much and they are not based on absolute proof. They are whatever we want them to be. Some people believe in fairies, and others believe that humans came from an entirely different species. Some belive in a virgin birth and that ghosts exist only in heaven and hell. And then there are those who believe there is spirit activity here on earth. Everyone thinks differently.

Answer 5

Science still young? Science has been around since man first observed carrion and saw that it meant fresh meat. The "evidence" that there are "spirit" is so weak and full of holes and ad hoc justifications, that there is no way it could pan out in a peer review process. Unless the peers were all crystal-gazing, absinthe drinking fools.
I'll believe in souls and spirits when someone wins the Randi Challenge.

Answer 6

In my 29 years I have yet to witness any kind of "spirit activity".

I have no sense of ever having lived before and for the same reason I find it safe to assume I won't go on living after I've died. It could be a comforting idea, but only if you lack a sense of purpose in the life you're currently living.

Who says there has to be a higher meaning or justifications? Life is what you make of it and this is the only chance you get to let what you do echo in eternity - or at least as long as human civilization goes on.

Answer 7

1) The first Jewish Christians thought of themselves as Jews, with a special understanding that Jesus was the messiah. They didn't have a special name for themselves before they were ejected from the Temple and synagogues. The first recorded term they applied to themselves is, as you say, "followers of the Way", a term which is too ambiguous to have been coined by outsiders. 2) It was the rejection by orthodox Judaism that caused them to turn to the Gentiles in order to survive. These new converts were called "Gentiles", since the term means non-Jew, which they still were. 3) There were Gentiles who intellectually admired the Jewish faith but weren't ready to adopt the more arduous cultural requirements, such as circumcision and the kosher laws. Jews called them "God-fearers". Many of these likely became Christians. Some Jewish Christians insisted that Gentiles must become Jews and observe Torah in order to be proper Christians. Terms used to identify them included "Passagi" and "Circumcisi". We call them Judaizers and you can read in Acts about the controversy they stirred up, resulting in a critical decision to break with Jewish tradition. Perhaps the longest surviving Jewish/Christian hybrid group was the Ebionites. Some were also called Nazarenes (not to be confused with the later Christian denomination). So it still came down to Jewish and Gentile Followers of the Way. It wasn't as if they needed to put up signs or print stationery. The Jews understandably thought of them all as apostates and infidels.

Answer 8

First, you get a scientific education, which uses naturalistic rather than spiritual explanations. Second, you see how much utter nonsense, and often evil, is done in the name of spiritual beliefs. Third, you see (because of scientific training) NO evidence of spiritual activity. Finally, if you're scientifically honest, you neither believe NOR DISBELIEVE in life before birth or after death. You say, "I don't know." But most scientifically educated are only partly so and have absorbed way too much logical positivism and materialism.

Answer 9

I know you don't want to hear from me, but I believe wholeheartedly! I believe that this physical life we're experiencing is merely a fragment of our whole entity, which lives simultaneously in this dimension and the spiritual plane. I also believe that we are living all of our lives and experiences simultaneously, since in true reality, there is no such thing as time.

I am reading a fascinating book right now called The Seth Material by Jane Roberts, a medium through who spoke the spiritual entity known as Seth on the true nature of reality. Fascinating material!

Answer 10

What Philo said but with a little twist.
I believe that there is something beyond my life, I "know it in my heart." But belief is not measurable.

I know in my head only that I am here now and someday my physical being will be gone. I can't prove a negative, that is, I cannot intellectually say there is nothing after life, before life or even on another 'plain' during life. But I have no evidence that there is. Show me the money. Where is this evidence you speak of, because I haven't seen it.

Peace

Answer 11

Actually, there is no hard evidence of "spirit activity" so what is the reason to believe that one does "exist" (in spirit form or as some kind of consciousness) prior to being born in this life or after leaving it?