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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: tejek who wrote (141342)1/8/2002 3:28:37 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 1586030
 
Tim, believing in an afterlife is denying the reality which is that we die at the end of our lives.

Believers in the afterlife do not deny that the body dies. As questions like - Is that it? Is there anything after that? The answers to those questions are undetermined. One could just as easily say that the belief in no afterlife is the denying the reality that there is an afterlife.

When a religious person is confronted with the specter of death, they have no doubt that the person has gone onto a better place so firmly is their denial in place.

1 - Religious belief in an afterlife may be true. If so they would only be denying something that is false.

2 - Most or at least many religious people's belief in the afterlife does not resemble a psychological defense mechanism.

Eventually, she refused to talk about it. I believe she refused to talk further because
her denial was beginning to take on leaks, and if it fell apart, a lot of her belief system would fall apart with it.

Even if that one example was denial (and I am only sure that it was only denial if you are talking about the second order belief that her main religious beliefs were completely supported by available facts and logic) that shows nothing about religious faith in general. It would be like me using an example of a confused emotional liberal democrat to claim that all or at least most liberal democrats are confused and emotional. It can be used to highlight what you are talking about but it doesn't provide much support for your argument.

You can certainly find examples of confused emotional religious people, and you can probably find (and may have already found) examples of religious people in denial, but there are also sensible, intelligent and logical religious people. Presenting the anecdotal evidence of either group doesn't tell us how many people fit in to each group. If you merely contend that denial as a defense mechanism against thoughts of death can be a motivation for belief in the afterlife then I am inclined to agree with you, but your posts in some places seemed to imply that you thought it was the sole source of belief in the afterlife. At the very least you seem to be saying it is the main source.

Tim
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