Post by rizdek on May 25, 2020 11:40:26 GMT
"Believe in" is an ambiguous loaded phrase. It can seemingly range from thinking something likely and pondering the hows/whys/wherefores or simply thinking it possible in some way given broad enough definitions. For example, I think we'd find that the broad category of "theists" includes everyone from those who believe that Jesus was a god who became a person who physically walked among people and that he now sits at the right hand of the heavenly father making intercession for us, to someone who believes that maybe there is some sort of power force that might've made the world, as we know it, possible...ie some sort of deist god. Yet, to me, those two concepts...while all generally considered under the umbrella of theism are further apart than my atheism is from that latter form of theism. I certainly don't believe Jesus was a god who walked among people, but I am much less certain there isn't something out there that, if people knew about it, might not agree that THAT is what they thought god was all along.
I consider myself an atheist, but in no way do I think that that not believing there is an ultimate being who looks 'down' from on high and involves itself with humanities activities precludes believing other things...particularly about what is termed the human spirit. I don't think that the human spirit...eg MY spirit will somehow live on (long) after my human body dies so that I...my consciousness...will reawaken in a... rat. I don't think it will somehow migrate 'in total' to some other life form. However, that stems from my rather traditional 'view' of what a spirit is. What if we were to say that consciousness is the human spirit and lets assume consciousness is at its basic level, a part of the natural universe? IE what if it stems from some unknown aspect/realm/field of the natural physical world. If so, then that means that which I call my consciousness didn't just up and begin to exist the day I was conceived. It or its components had to have been part of the physical world BEFORE my body grew from the union of a sperm and egg. So, just because I die, it doesn't mean the particular portions of whatever consciousness is that was mine will never become part of another life form's consciousness. Just like the molecules in my body may eventually become part of another animal or plants body the elements of my consciousness may eventually become part of another organism. Of course, that way of thinking about it is pretty useless when one wants to think of reincarnation as a way for someone's 'self' to somehow survive death and live on. BUT it could be another way of looking at reincarnation.