If I Had My Druthers

If I had my druthers, I would druther  spend eternity right here on Earth. I wouldn't mind getting old as long as I had reasonably good health and enough money to live comfortably, kind of like I do now. I wouldn't want to be young again, too intense and chaotic for my taste. Of course the best scenario would be to be young again but knowing what I now know. I wouldn't let on either, I'd play dumb to keep people from getting suspicious. Every time they wanted me to do something that wasn't in my own best interest, I'd just say, "Yeah, right", and then go about my business as if I hadn't heard them. They'd all be scratching their heads trying to figure out how I was able to evade their shit so smoothly, while I would just smile innocently and not tell them. Wouldn't that be fun?

Since you don't believe in God, I suppose you don't believe in human immortality either. Doesn't that bother you, knowing that, when you die, you just go out like a candle? I think I'd rather burn in Hell for eternity than to have my consciousness extinguished forever. Burning in Hell might not be a lot of fun, but at least you would be aware that you were burning in Hell, so that would mean that you were still kind of alive. You might be able to fight back too. You would certainly have nothing to lose, being already dead and in eternal torment. What more could they do to you?

When I said that the Unitarian-Universalists believed in everything, I meant everything pertaining to religious beliefs. According to Wiki, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, an Atheist, or even a Catholic could walk into a Unitarian-Universalist church and feel right at home. They would be welcomed with open arms and not be required to change any of their beliefs to gain acceptance. I understand the Hindus are like that too, at least on paper. Of course they don't get along with the Muslims, but even the Muslims don't get along with the Muslims.

I wish I could tell you that I was confident about my own immortality, but I'm not. The Deist position on the subject is not very comforting. As with their other beliefs, lacking material evidence or divine revelation, all they've got to go on is logical speculation. Thomas Paine said that he believed in an afterlife because, without it, this life didn't make any sense. What would be the point in learning all the stuff we learn if we weren't going to get to use it and build upon it in another lifetime? The thing is, Paine didn't know anything about the Theory of Evolution, where Mother Nature doesn't seem to care about the individual, just the species. We believe that it's God's plan that we improve ourselves and our environment, but that could be accomplished without granting us eternal life. Maybe we're supposed to pass all our hard earned knowledge to the next generation, whose job it is to use it and build upon it after we're gone. The human species would continue to advance just fine without us. Of course that's also just logical speculation, but it's at least as logical as what Paine said.

People mostly believe whatever makes them feel good, but feeling good is not enough for me, I want to be right. It would be nice to both feel good and be right but, if I could only choose one, I would rather be right than feel good. Being an objective realist, I don't believe that I can make something true just by believing that it's true. If it's true, it would be true whether I believed in it or not and, if it's not true, no amount of believing is going to make it true. Lest you should boast, the same goes for you. If God exists, you can't make Him cease to exist by not believing in Him. Of course, if God doesn't exist, then all bets are off.