Open Thread - 12-02-22 - To Whence We Came
"Swear there ain't no heaven and pray there ain't no hell."
What happens when we die. That's the big question that's plagued mankind since, probably, when the first synapse fired. Religion answers that question for the true believers and that, in my humble opinion, explains the various religions' popularity.
I'm not much of a spiritual person, never have been. But I do find solace in my simple belief. My simple belief answers that age old question as well, but my conclusion wont sit well with religion. Although, I guess, it could be considered a religion unto itself, a belief derived from science, mostly cosmology. It works for me.
We are star stuff. Every atom in my body was forged billions of years ago from the cauldron of stars. When I die, those atoms will break up and become other forms, gases mostly. Those atoms wont be destroyed, they'll change form, but they'll still exist. In essence all that comprises my self will be existent, sans consciousness, sans spirit, sans soul if you will.
That's where my belief diverges from religion. Consciousness. I believe that when I die that will be it, consciousness dies with me. That flies in the face of religion. It's that part, losing the soul or spirit, that is unfathomable by most. My answer? What do you remember before birth? I remember nothing. That's the state I'll return to, in my very humble opinion.
Some day, billions of years from now, when the sun blows out and engulfs the solar system, we'll all be returned to whence we came. The stars.
Now let me add this. As I said, I'm not much of a religious or spiritual person. But. In light of the current world events of the last couple of years, if one is honest, one must wonder about the Book of Revelations and End Times prophecies. I reject it, but it has crossed my mind. I think that religion is man made and current events are made to fit those prophecies. But who really knows? For to find out one must die.
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
"Ooh, it makes me wonder"
good morning c99'ers
Interesting topic this morning.
Follow your reasoning.
Seems sound.
Where I would diverge is the essence of consciousness.
I believe it is a part of all of those atoms you mention.
It is not lost with the cessation of biological life.
It is just not being recorded by the individual.
Have some empirical evidence to substantiate this,
but it is a volume too vast to bridge here.\
ymmv obviously
thanks for sharing
question everything
we are stardust, we are golden...
Hi all, Hey JtC, Hope it is all good out there!
As I started reading, I immediately thought of a song... the great one you put and the end...
as well as... 'We are stardust, we are golden...'
I am deeply spiritual, but not religious whatsoever. Except about being deeply spiritual. My passions are consummate. Do everything with the zeal of a missionary. Religion is something that answers all the hard questions, fast and easily, but not necessarily correctly. Without thinking or thought. You can know the answer, without knowing a dang thing. This I think drives its widespread acceptance. Too complex, don't understand? Must be a higher being, or gag, intelligent design, because I'm not that stupid. Guess again sky fairy Sherlock.
Religion is an easy lazy way out of deep thought. It deceives one into thinking they do know the answer, when they don't. And most (western) religion is organized spirituality. Which like in most things claimed to be organized, I see a great disorganization. I'll stop before I get to contradictions.
I agree it is that refusal to accept ones death as the end a major driver of the belief in it, that there must being more, something else. Hate to break the news to them but if you want to do something, make a difference, or leave a mark (not a stain), you better do it now or it will never happen. You get one fleeting chance to leave the world a better place than you found it. It is called life. Where is the altruism that drives that belief in making positive change and influence? In my naive idealism I would have thought it intrinsic, innate.
What is most common here in America amongst the most religious is selfish greed in shiny new cars, drowning in consumaholism if not alcoholism, voting for war and weapons export whilst pretending to be better, and more religious, than your neighbor. Virtually all of the people responsible for all of the major problems we face in the world today would claim to be religious. Most probably have a bible handy. Far over half of atheists believe it would hurt their careers to say so. How can we come to good conclusions or results in such a situation? Here in America we have moneyism as the most popular religion. They call it capitalism so it doesn't sound as bad and stupid as it is.
Meanwhile the full force of the media is being used to keep people uninformed and stupid, instead of educate. To brainwash and propagandize instead of elucidate and enlighten. We're doomed I tell you!
Have a great day all! I gotta fly.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Good morning...
Had to cut up a big poplar that came down in the storm this week. Just finished. That tree like us all will break down slowly and return to the Earth (it was already rotting, that's why it fell).
I'm not religious nor spiritual, but I do find beauty and meaning in the natural cycles and Earth systems. I feel a part of that cosmos much like an atom in the tree I cut today. In other words, we are each a small part in the fabric of nature.
Like Groucho, I don't want to join any club or religion that wants me as a member, but scientific Pantheism sounds near my state of mind
So much for the philosophizing, still have chores to do.
Thanks for the OT!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Good morning, JtC
Humankind's oldest and longest running April Fools Day joke that people still believe to this day, there is a God. Thankfully I never fell for the joke. Man is quite the bullshitter and has always said whatever would be believed in order to gain power and control over the masses.
My belief. There is no before life, there is no after life. There is only the here and now.
If you know what life is worth, you will find yours here on earth _ Bob Marley, Get up, Stand up
I'm great at multi-tasking. I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at the same time.
Lifelong atheist
here. I was raised in the absence of religion, so I developed my own approach to spirituality without a lot of the embroidery that comes from that context. I also believe that at the moment of death, consciousness simply ceases- that is it a function of the neural circuitry. I fully expect my final thought to be "Oh shit!", followed by a fade to black. Or perhaps white, depending upon the circumstance.
I had a friend in college who was much more of the evangelical-atheist type, and who liked to get into long-winded arguments with genuinely religious folks on this topic. He would invariably steer the argument towards the very elaborate concepts of heaven and hell, and end it by stating "That's all very nice, of course, but who's going to pay for it?"....
Your mileage will most definitely vary! Interesting topic, for sure.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Charlie Brown agrees with you
If there is a Fox hole close by when my time comes I’m pretty sure I’ll dive into it. It’s taken me a lifetime to shuck the teachings of the Catholic Church that I learned from a wee age and were instilled in my brain, but I still hold on to a belief in a higher power. I agree too that religion is just a made up concept and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Looking at you, Francis. And most of your predecessors over the ages.
One thing I’ve come to appreciate over the last 3 years with all my readings of the human body is how incredibly amazing it is with its trillions of cells that have to all go in the right place for us to be healthy humans and that so many of us are. I first got amazed at the body when I was learning about the anatomy of the eye. The cornea has 5 different layers and the retina has 9. All have to work perfectly so that we can see. Just a few things go out of wack and that’s not possible anymore. Now add in the rest of the eye and our body’s makeup….simply amazing to think about when we started off as just one cell.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Impermanence
When I drove OTR, I enjoyed listening to the interviews of two physicists from the Copenhagen school describe the congruence of their theory with eastern metaphysical beliefs. They were guests on the Stars channel on satellite radio. I have difficulty describing a physics theory or belief system such as this. I once read The Physics Of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind And The Meaning Of Life by physicist Evan Harris Walker, who approached this topic as the theme of his book. It was pretty much along the Copenhagen theme (note- I'm not a physicist or scientist). I think the author was prompted to dwell on the metaphysics of consciousness, because of the impact of wife's death.
This is from the Amazon description of the book:
I know some scientists disagree with Harris, they're sticking with the chemistry of synapses theory. In any case impermanence is in the nature of experience. There is impermanence in the conception of self. This is the source of the eastern belief that all is illusion including the concept of self. At best, the mind vs. no mind quandary is always with us, along with the particular v. the universal, transience v immutability.
Art forms can transcend the observing mind which is always measuring things. I like the imagery in some popular (Korean) Buddhist songs.
무생화(보현스님) Lifeless Flower - Bohyun Seunim
명사십리 해당화야 꽃 진다고 서러 마라
At Myeongsa beach, rugusa rose flowers fall, don't be sad
명년 3월 봄이 오면 너는 다시 피련만
In March, coming year, when spring comes, you will bloom again,
우리인생 한번가면 다시 오기 어려워라
Once our life goes, coming again is difficult,
빈손으로 나왔다가 빈손들고 가는 인생
Life emerged empty handed, with empty hands it leaves
어디에서 왔으며 어디로 가는가
From somewhere we came, but where do we go?
한조각 뜬구름이 모였다 흩어지는 것
Fragments of clouds gather and then disperse
풀잎에 이슬이라 공수래 공수거
On blades of grass, morning dew comes and goes, leaving nothing
물위에 거품이라 일장춘몽 꿈이로다
Bubbles on water, a spring fantasy scene we dream
어디에서 왔으며 어디로 가는가
From somewhere we appear, but where do we go?
한 조각 뜬구름이 모였다 흩어지는 것
Fragments of clouds gather and then disperse
풀잎에 이슬이라 공수래 공수거
On blades of grass morning dew, comes and goes, leaving nothing
물 위에 거품이라 일장춘몽 꿈이로다.
Bubbles on water, a spring fantasy we dream
물 위에 거품이라 일장춘몽 꿈이로다.
Bubbles on water, a spring fantasy we dream
語必忠信 行必正直
Comedian Taylor Tomlinson on religion:
“The loyal Left cannot act decisively. Their devotion to the system is a built-in kill switch limiting dissent.” - Richard Moser
Comedian George Carlin on religion
“The loyal Left cannot act decisively. Their devotion to the system is a built-in kill switch limiting dissent.” - Richard Moser
does your god love you?
and is he broke? Saw this guy on the bike path the other day holding a JESUS sign.
Scammer to the bones. Kinda weird and out of character with the whole free flying
old hippie vibe going on. He actually caused a fist fight and the cops descended and
cut-off the path for us free riders. Wasn't pretty. But hey, Jesus saves at the local
credit union, so who am I to bark?
question everything
That's a great story! For you --
-- Roger Waters on religion:
“The loyal Left cannot act decisively. Their devotion to the system is a built-in kill switch limiting dissent.” - Richard Moser
Also Roger Waters
though I like the other song better:
“The loyal Left cannot act decisively. Their devotion to the system is a built-in kill switch limiting dissent.” - Richard Moser
I have no interest in
religion, and wouldn't even know how spirituality worked.
I will say, I am lucky to be alive, and not only appreciate every day, but I have always thought that since I was spared an early death, I should strive to do something good while I have the chance. I have no children, so my legacy is whatever positive difference I can make, and how I will be remembered after I die.
I recently lost a friend to cancer. To say she was religious is an understatement. She once said, "We will all be surprised when we die." For all her devotion to gaining entry into Paradise, she was apparently unconvinced it exists as described in the Bible.
I hope she was pleasantly surprised.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
From a new book that just flashed into existence
An excerpt:
.
By Caitlin Johnstone
Excerpted from: Lao Sue And Other Poems @ Amazon.
Published with permission.
Psychedelic Christianity—a thing? Thesis, antithesis, synthesis…
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=psychedelic+christianity&t=osx&ia=web
In the Bhagavad-Gita, G~d (speaking as Krishna) seems to suggest that one gets whatever sort of afterlife / reincarnated life one has believed in.
so, if I pray with the mantis
will we pray together next season?
question everything
Yep! “You asked for it; you got it!”
Afterlife! It’s like Toyota ads in the 1970s.
It’s all there in the manual (at least for devotees of Hindu Vedic culture).
I think you are close to the existential reality
As you said, JtC....
.
In light of world events, I think there is One single revelation that is explored in secrecy by small influential groups of chosen people (mostly men) down the ages. Groups like the Masons, cults related to the Catholic Priesthood, ancient Egyptian cults, and several other groups both ancient and modern, who closely guard this secret. These groups are currently associated with global power, although they are largely unnoticed by the masses. In early times, members of these groups were associated with the erection of very tall structures; in latter days they are vaguely associated with global finance, the accumulation of wealth, and with control over essential natural resources. The US was their brainchild. Their closely guarded secret is simply this: The minds of people, in disciplined communal focus, have the power of gods (the ability to manifest whatever reality they envision).
Self-fulfilling Prophesies. Religious thought is designed to neutralizes this power because the focused of attention of the congregation is directed away from the planet into empty space, based on people's delusions about divine intervention. The knowledge that humans are inheritors and the sole possessors of the Power of Creation in the earthly realm, is taboo — a blasphemy. Thus, religion is financially promoted to hold humanity in bondage. Communism must be destroyed at all costs because it leads to a shared visions of the future. This would conflict with the world that the secret groups have manifested — a world where humanity serves their purposes as workers toiling in production, soldiers in the wars of resource capture and empire, social workers maintaining the human livestock, academics and religious workers taming and training minds to conform, and millions of hangers on.
That's the world in a nutshell, and that's the one revelation that means something. That's the reasons for the current wars. Plato discovered 2,500 years ago that democracy doesn't work without a meritocracy (the election of philosopher kings), and it rapidly devolves into a dictatorship (while still referred to as a democracy).
And for death: One reason it makes no sense is because humans age and die too soon after their offspring reach adult maturity and independence. Unlike other big brained species. Humans age and die before they can fully evolve their minds and gain wisdom, before they can do the real work that society needs to become collectively independent, before they can refine and complete their support for their adult offspring, before they can come to terms with completion and death.
It's a genetic flaw that we are right on the cusp of repairing.
Just thought I'd kick in what I have discovered.
Hi Pluto
I think most of us are born naturally with an ingrained/collective consciousness, of a 'mature and independent' nature. Unfortunately much of society isn’t geared to recognise or respect it, and it gets crushed along the way.
The collective knowing
...that runs through the universe was deliberately crushed by religions. Pagans in harmonic convergence with the tides of the heavens (natural religions) were wiped out with a vengeance. The idea of a New Age philosophy horrified religious leaders. As you say, all those things are crushed out of human thinking. But as we approach quantum realities and entanglement in the way we design thinking machines, the revelation of the power in the collective harmonic focus of sentient minds starts to make scientific sense. The potential to shift timelines and wormhole physical matter becomes probable. To determine the future before it arrives is how creation works. These are pressing concepts whose time has come. They solve mysteries. This is not an unfamiliar landscape to theoretical physicists. Intuitive "knowing" is an intellectual skill.
It is cognitive dissonance, introduced early by both the church and the state, that ultimate damages the human mind. Holding (two or more) conflicting beliefs as both true (hypocrisy is one example), or holding beliefs that conflict with the laws of physics (religious super-natural narratives) undermine logic functions and critical thinking abilities. This is how people are broken and infiltrated. We can see the political and social damage in people all around us. Human life is cheap. Punishment is in-human. The injustice is breathtaking. The US is overflowing with the mentally injured. They are armed to kill.
It's not hard to see where this is going.
Hi Pluto
This rings true to me ...
"To determine the future before it arrives is how creation works.”
I think that to some extent we personally have the capacity to determine our future before it is formed. For example ... by noting those thoughts we sometimes have that seem to come out of nowhere, and paying attention to them, we can create the direction our lives take.
How are we on the cusp to
repair a genetic flaw? I am curious!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
This is where the money of the tech elite is invested.
The DNA can be cleaned up to provide an extended life span. Cell division is leaving dangerous debris behind that needs to be cleaned up to slow aging. The number of times a cell can divide needs to be reset higher. Tasks like that using existing technologies, at first.
Planarians (a kind of flatworm) and hydra (a kind of cnidarian)
seem to have the regeneration and immortality thing knocked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_%28genus%29#Non-senescence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian#Regeneration
So yeah, with a little intelligent DNA diddling with the genes involved …
Of course, with the usual caveat of “Be careful what you wish for” …
To anyone who is interested in
being genetically modified by the genius tech created by TPTB, I say, "You go first!"
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Yes, but
don't those brain chips guarantee life everlasting?
I mean you can't die as long as the AI program does
not need a reboot right? And they can 3D print your
failed organs, replace the joints and program you to
want to live for eval! All-in-one package*
*Some restrictions apply, not sold in some states, some assembly required.
question everything
I want to do an extensive cost comparison,
read the reviews.
I wonder if I get to change my eye color? How about teeth?
I have so many questions to pose to the automated bots.
What happens when the power goes out?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Cue the appropriate musical interlude … ♫
[video:https://youtu.be/k99bMtg4zRk]
There are geniuses
walking among us, Lot! Great stuff!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
So, it’s heaven or hell?
I wonder now whether the polarity we see more clearly today than ever before is a result of the duality religion propagated? How is it that everything in between is negated, when in reality that’s where life exists?
Oh well.
One musn't forget
Purgatory. That "place" sounds so dull, I think it is to be avoided.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
That Dawkins quote is a
That Dawkins quote is a variant of Sam Clemens (Mark Twain): "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
Consciousness seems pretty obviously to be an emergent property of our bodies. Look at how it can be changed, or even snuffed out, by changes to the brain. So when the body dies, the consciousness goes with it.
As to souls, deities, afterlives, etc, the people making those positive claims have the burden of proof, and as Laplace, Jefferson and Sagan (to name a few) have noted ""Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". I think it especially true when a human claims to know the intentions of some postulated transcendent being that is beyond space/time/knowing.
I used to be interested in pointing that out to people I met, but you largely can't reason people out of something they didn't reason themselves into, and since the most likely determinant of what religion someone practices is what they were brought up to believe, it is pretty hopeless to show them reasons why they might want to change their mind. A lot of politics seems to operate about the same way, with taking "received wisdom" from someone standing in front of a crowd of people.
I don't think I've ever been to Missouri, but I'm in accord with it being the "show me" state:
https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/missouri-show-me-stat...
Doesn’t explain the most salient feature of consciousness though
Why this body for “me” and that body for “you”?
Whence cometh our respective “me”-ness?
There are “emergent phenomena” happening all over the physical universe, but how is it “you” are directly experiencing “from the inside” what it’s like to “be” a particular one?
@lotlizard How about "beats me"?
How about "beats me"?
I'm with Richard Feynman: “I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”
Religion always seems to end up with dogma. "Spirituality" may avoid dogma but mostly seems to be handwaving/woo/"clap louder to keep Tinkerbell alive" fantasy, especially when "quantum" gets mixed into the patter.
Frankly, I really don't see how "knowing the answer" would make any difference in my life, unless of course the answer is "vengeful deity who demands worship or else dire consequences". But I want some proof of that, not just assertions, before I modify my behavior. So far, I've not seen anything even beginning to get past the assertion stage and moving towards proof.
cheers,
Michael
Aren’t these two completely separate questions though?
1. Whether there is some kind of supreme being or deity
2. What philosophers call the unsolved “hard problem” of consciousness
One can, as I am urging, acknowledge the inadequacy of purely materialist explanations for (2) without necessarily conceding any ground on believing that the affirmative case on (1) remains unproven.
@lotlizard I guess I'm not
I guess I'm not following you very well.
A deity is an aspect of the "supernatural", and it seems that once you move past materialist reasons for consciousness then you move into the supernatural, so the deity is just an extreme case.
Consciousness seems to arise only in living organisms (and I'm not limiting it to homo sapiens) and goes away when the organism dies or the brain is severely damaged. Why not just accept that and not go making up stories that involve fairies at the bottom of the garden? If we can't detect something and have no evidence that there's something "extra" then go with what we can know. Having an ever multiplying number of stories based on no evidence and that have no predictive value doesn't improve things, but rather muddies the waters and makes it even harder to understand what little that we can see going on.
It’s just that Life’s elephant in the room, Fact #1 so to speak,
is our respective subjective sense of self, of “being here” at all, willing things and experiencing things…
BUT perhaps there are some truths human minds aren’t able to know or express; perhaps the nature of that subjective “presence” within each of us will remain forever ineffable and mysterious. Perhaps all that can be said about it at our present state of development is empty fallacious academic-sounding word-tricks and hand-waving: nothing that holds water or could be tested one way or the other…
Then indeed, accepting one or another specious explanation — if only to get what seems like a stupid or pointless question out of the way — would be the “practical” approach, so that one can get on with life…
For the non-philosophically / non-spiritually inclined, old-time religion, New Age mysticism, and everything in between always did come across as pure bunk, anyway.
No gainsaying it — in the end, ’tis a matter of personal taste, like rap music or modern art.
Timely essay on religion
Heh I wonder if he’s ever visited a Catholic mass? You not only have to sit and stand, but kneel a lot in between. I call it Catholic aerobics when my friends questioned why we did that.
Funny how one of the first things we learn about gawd is the 10 commandments where the first commandment is Thou Shalt not kill! Okay I could be wrong that it’s the 1st one, but….then over the many ages the Catholic Church started one war after another or killed millions just because they weren’t Catholic? Be an uppity woman? Ye shall be burned at the
steakstake…I remember when some men wanted to go with Jesus and he told them to leave all their possessions and now we have the big pubas in the Vatican all dressed out in silk finery and they play with gold chalices and candlesticks and eat fine meals while there still are starving children in Africa. Then there’s their hypocrisy. Thou shalt not kill, but if you vote for every war that comes along you can still take communion..umm I don’t think one’s soul is in a state of grace. THOU SHALT NOT KILL doesn’t seem to be a suggestion. I could go on…..
Apologies..just had to get this off my chest. It’s one of the MANY reasons I walked away from the church.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Heh, that's only one sect, Pluto. Another holds that the
foist commando is some variant of "I am the lord they god and thou shalt have no other gods before me". We will never know because the original copy, though written in stone, hasn't stood the test of time. We will also never know which other commandment in the alternative variant was left out to make room for that one.
That is likely a mistranslation of the original mumbo-jumbo, but it is highly problematic for all the true believers out there, in any of the cults known colloquially as "peoples of the book".
"I am THE lord", as in THE only; compare and contrast with
"THY god", as in yours' but not necessarily anybody else's.
No clarification comes from:
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"; ie you, but not necessarily anybody else
must hold me as having primacy above and among all the other gods, but seemingly
admits that they exist and possibly implies that polytheism would be ok as long
as mr. bad ass war god was numbah 1, el jefe, and not any of the lesser gods, who, btw, are not to be cornfuzled with lesser evils.
BTW, I'm back, good to see ya.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Catholics aren't the only ones
This is also a feature of High and most if not all Broad Church Episcopal (Anglican) services. (I think Low Church skips the kneeling whenever the congregation agrees.) Now that the Catholic liturgy is said in the vernacular - and very plain vernacular at that - High Church has cornered the market on pomp and circumstance.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
“Smells and bells”
https://www.qwant.com/?q=high+church+smells+and+bells&t=web
Speaking of bells
I'm on a read-through of Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors, which has much to do with the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul (a fictional Broad/High Anglican church in East Anglia). The church has a ring of eight, a vicar who is enthusiastic about change-ringing, and a congregation with enough volunteers (usually) to do a proper job of it. The story starts one New Year's Eve when things go amiss for everybody, including Lord Peter Wimsey (who gets stuck in a ditch just outside Fenchurch St. Paul). He gets co-opted as an emergency bellringer, and -- oh just read the book already.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
I want to tell a little story about religion serving some good.
Years ago, my client, a mom, lost custody of her son to dad. Seems he just had the better home and family support to raise this kid than did my client.
Years later, the son was about to graduate. He had become a very popular student, friends with everyone. And then, driving home, in daylight, 50 yards from his driveway, he went off the road, hit a pine tree head on, died instantly from the impact.
The dad and his family had been my friends forever, didn't hold it against me that I had represented the mom. I did some probate work for the deceased for his family.
I asked this dad how he was managing the horror of outliving his only child. He said, "Well, God needed him up in Heaven more than we needed him here."
Well, if that family's religious beliefs helped them get through the huge trauma, good for religion.
I respect anyone who walks the walk.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
“The Egg” (based on the short story by Andy Weir)
Seems to fit this general topic…
[video:https://youtu.be/D1VN5zICGeU]