Do religious people truly possess knowledge of an afterlife?

Question

I am extremely confused about religion, but I am searching for the truth. How can someone pretend to have knowledge of life after death (i.e., heaven, hell, purgatory, etc.) if they haven't died before? Am I suppose to pretend that I possess knowledge that I do not truly possess? Why delude myself like that? I feel like Martin Luther King, Jr. when he said, "I had doubts whether religion is intellectually respectable."

Answer 1

No Christian will claim to possess absolute knowledge of an afterlife, we simply have faith that it exists and will live according to God's will to ensure that we make it to Heaven in our afterlife. If someone decides to deny anything that he/she has never seen with their own two eyes, then that person will live a meager existence and will never find true happiness. Christians are able to find happiness in the belief that God exists, and that we are all His children. It's never failed to comfort me.

Answer 2

I went through the same thing on my journey. I actually started out catholic! I thought the same thing that you do. I can tell you in my experience, I found that no one has the answers I needed. At first that scared me, then it made me angry. I thought with all that stuff out there about Heaven and magic and science, that we SHOULD know. I should know where loved ones go. But somewhere along the line, I just sort of let go. I became totally at peace with the fact that I don't know what religion or science is right, and that's okay. I was an atheist for a while, until I joined the Unitarian Universalist Church, which recognizes all religions as potentially correct metaphors which can salve the frustrations of the unknown and bring peace to you, to help you make the most of the time you are granted here. The fact is that none of us have the answer, though some of us think we do, and you won't find it on a message board. You can only find it by your own personal journey, by searching out what you believe among the religious and scientific salesmen out there... I wish you good luck. Blessed Be.

Answer 3

How can I be certain that what you are telling me is true? Every thinking person asks, and gets asked, this question. The Vedic philosophy arrives at certitude through pramäna. The Sanskrit word pramäna refers to sources of knowledge that are held to be valid. there are three pramänas. They are pratyakaa (direct perception), anumäna (reason), and sabda (authoritative testimony). Of these three pramänas, sabda is imperative, while pratyaksa and anumäna are supportive.

Therefore, when a devotee of Krishna is asked about the certainty of his beliefs, he usually answers by quoting authority: guru (the spiritual master), sästra (the Vedic scriptures) and sädhu (other devotees respected for their realization of the teachings of guru and sästra). In modern schools of thought, citing authority to certify what we say doesn't seem to count for much anymore. There is a Latin phrase for this kind of proof, ipse dixit (he himself has said it), after the answer that disciples of an ancient Greek sage used to give whenever an opponent called the certitude of the sage's doctrine into question. The problem modern thinkers have with ipse dixit proof is that its evidence lies only in words. And words alone don't prove anything.

Lucy in the land of Narnia
A story by C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, illustrates the modern difficulty with ipse dixit proof. Lucy is the youngest of four children on a visit to the large, eccentric home of an elderly professor. There an odd thing happens to her. She passes through the back of a clothes closet into another land called Narnia. When Lucy returns and relates her experience to her brothers and sister, they conclude that her senses had to have been mysteriously deluded. Finally the children bring the matter before an authority, the professor himself. His decision is that because Lucy is not known to be a liar nor mad, she must be telling the truth. Lucy's brother Peter still cannot believe it. He argues that the other children found no strange land through the back of the closet. What's that got to do with it? the professor asks. Well, Sir, if things are real, they are there all the time. Are they? But do you really mean, Sir, demands Peter, that there could be other worlds all over the place, just around the cornerlike that? Nothing is more probable, the professor replies.* Wouldn't you say Peter has a right to think his sister is hyperimaginitive? As for that authority, the dear professor, bless him, he may be well into his second childhood. At first glance, Lucy's Narnia fantasy seems similar to the Vedic description of worlds other than our own. The Vedas were spoken by sage Brahmä after he had a vision of a transcendental realm called Vaikuntha, the kingdom of God. For a person educated the modern way, the authority Brahmä might have as a sage does not make the existence of Vaikuntha at all certain.

Answer 4

I agree, it's like the religious wait for death before knowing... and so they live their life like they wait for death. You quoted Martin Luther King Jr.... regarding religion being intellectually respectable.. yet he was a christian reverend... what makes people so stupid as to be able to see the reason for doubt yet follow through on stupidity.... No religion is the beginning of seeing the truth... get off your knees and work for the future... life is what happens around you not what is hiding in the dark.

Answer 5

Job, these are very deep questions and they ve been mulled at for thousands of years.
Religion is based on faith, so thats what i think MLK Jr. meant in that citation. You could either beilive in God's existance, or not. Of course, religious people also say that they "know" that God exist, but thats a different kind of knowledge then the intellectual knowledge.
If however you DO except the fact that God exists. Well then you enter the whole new realm of thought. For example, if God is infinite, and you have a soul as part of Him, does it mean that when you die, some part of you still lives?
If I believe in God, its inly through direct experience though, and thats quiete different from what anyone writes or says. thanks! bye.

Answer 6

They do not know. They make something up because they are afraid of dying.

All religions have an afterlife, because people can not conceive that their ego will cease to exist when they die.

The more modern religions (last 4000 years or so) have an exclusive afterlife. So if you do what the priests tell you to, and give them lots of money then you get to go to the good place. Did I say priests? I meant God. The priests are just passing on his divine instructions. (and if you believe that, I have some beach front land in Kansas I can sell you.)

Answer 7

Religion is learned, not born. People who believe they know why they exist and what will be of them, and us, are taught to think the way they do, it is not something they figured, it is something that was written to explain things that are unexplainable and that way, draw people into one belief. If you want to know the truth, don't get involved in religion, because religion is a dogmatic system, so you don't ask, you just believe, through faith. Religion does not emphasizes on knowledge, it emphasizes on emotion.

Answer 8

Spirituality is based on Faith. Faith is obtained by having other events in your life that help you to believe in life after death.

An example:

Everyone has heard the story of David and Goliath. If David had not been delivered, by GOD, through all of the other situations he came into, he could not have had Faith that God would deliver him from Goliath.

If you are honest hearted, pray and God will show you what is right. Seek out a local church and become active, and you will see what you need to know.

Answer 9

Possess knowledge is difficult. No one has ever died and then returned so we really don't have knowledge.

However, Jesus spoke quite a bit about Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. If HE doesn't know, then who does?

Answer 10

Paul was a great religious leader, but not a Christian. He chose to persecute and murder Christians, and was eventually confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus and became a Christian. He wrote:
2Cr 4:6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to [give] the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2Cr 4:7 ¶ But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
2Cr 4:8 [We are] troubled on every side, yet not distressed; [we are] perplexed, but not in despair;
2Cr 4:9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
2Cr 4:10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

to what end, you ask ?

2Cr 4:17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding [and] eternal weight of glory;
2Cr 4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen [are] temporal; but the things which are not seen [are] eternal.

We call it "the hope of Glory"