Pre-Life? And Interpreting the Bible

Some random late-evening thoughts:

Religious people are so focused on the afterlife. What about the pre-life? As I understand it, there is no reincarnation in Judaism, Christianity or Islam. God breathes your soul into your mortal body at conception or birth, and then you live a mortal life and then live forever after with God and his buddies in heaven or suffer eternally in hell.

So, if there is no reincarnation (which oddly seems to be a popular theme in movies...hmmm), then you and your soul don't exist before your date of birth or conception. Past lives are also popular in movies, but I digress...or do I? I was going to state that people don't have a problem with not existing before their conception, but apparently some do.

Well, the point I was trying to make with logic is that if you have no problem believing you didn't exist before birth/conception, then why would you have trouble believing you don't exist after death? However clearly there is some popular fantasy that people's souls have lived mortal lives before and may yet again.

Clearly people are neither logical nor literal about their bibles.

And speaking of bibles, why is there so much effort at interpreting the bible and disagreements over it's interpretation? This god guy clearly had some issues with clear communication! You'd think the creator of all would be able to get his point across unambiguously.

After Life: Oblivion?

In Faithinate's debate and Lewis Black's book I noticed that at least these two people can't accept the idea that there is nothing after death. I suppose at one time that bothered me, but I really don't worry about it anymore.

I have seen no evidence that anything--aside from a corpse and others' memories--will be left of me after I die. And if there is something, how am I expected to prepare for it with no information?

I certainly have no memory of anything that happened before this life. As far as I know nothing that defines who and what I am existed before I was born, and that doesn't seem to bother anyone. Besides, if oblivion really is what happens after death then I will be unable to care, won't I?

I think the thing that really got me over worrying about the afterlife is that billions of people have already died and faced whatever happens next, if anything. Whatever will happen has been happening and will continue to happen. Until I have some verifiable information I don't see the point of using what life I have to worry about what comes next.

And if you're curious, yeah, from the information I have my best guess is that we just "wink out".

Lewis Black: Me of Little Faith

I just read Lewis Black's book Me of Little Faith. I wasn't all that into it because I've been over a lot of the themes lately, but it wasn't bad.

Lewis claims he is not an atheist, but he doesn't really believe in his Judaism, either. His belief in an undefined higher power seems to be based on some drug-induced blissful trips and his inability to accept the possibility that your life force just winks out and ceases to be when you die.

I found it an interesting window into the minds of believers. He notes himself that many hard-believing Christians show the same blissful, happily and willfully ignorant high that drug users obtain. Interestingly he quit drugs because he had nothing more to gain from them, yet he seems unable to consider atheism a viable alternative to undefined feelings of a higher being.

Regarding my own awe at the universe and my inability to grasp and understand it all at times in the past had led me to the same fuzzy belief in some undefined greater force of nature. But recently I realized I don't define that as a god so much as just there are so many things I'll never understand them all. This life is awe inspiring, and I don't get why so many of the faithful seem to be so eager to get it over with and move on to the next thing.

I also am no longer bothered by the idea of winking out at death. I'm not sure that happens, of course, but I don't see evidence of anything else. It doesn't bother me because there have been billions of humans before me who have already died, and it's just the way things are. I should be able to handle it on average as well as they all did.