on the one hand, it seems there is such a small half-life that i even hesitate to respond, on the other hand... (that hand being, 'on a personal note') i simply love the fact of even finding a site engaging these questions. so, i'm an ass again, who *has* to respond, if only to tell myself.

as a person of faith, it really makes me sad, and frankly, downright angry, to see such a misunderstanding/misrepresentation of what *i* believe my faith to be about. this *is not* the fault of the people who conclude what they conclude about the various 'afterlife' faiths. instead, imo, it's the fault of the people holding them.

for the record, not everyone who believes in an afterlife is *banking* on it in the sense that the majority of what they embrace and decide to do is inordinately influenced by where they'll go and what they'll receive in the afterlife.

for myself, the vast majority of what i find comforting and valuable and *relevant* to myself in day to day is not what happens after i die, but how i feel about living now! to put it bluntly, if, somehow, the afterlife i've believed in turns out to be *only* long enough to realize that i was wrong about there being an afterlife, or a God, or anything else, i still won't, in that moment, regret having *believed* in it... even though i was wrong. by the same token, belief in God, for me, does not carry it's main benefit in the thought of receiving eternal rewards of some kind or even any kind of afterlife at all. to me, the experience of living as i do, right here, right now, is *more* than enough to justify my beliefs, whatever happens after i die.

i think, too many times, discussions between atheists, agnostics, and those who believe in some kind of higher power/afterlife degenerate into a 'covering of bets' situation... another poster (i'm *so* sorry i don't know how to use this quote feature yet!) said something about people treating them like changing what you believe is like changing newspapers. i wholeheartedly agree. too often, people of faith present it as something like 'if i'm wrong, you've lost nothing, but if you're wrong, you've lost everything' sort of scenario. this is demeaning, post to the person they are addressing, and to the idea of what true *faith* is at all... faith in the sense of the dictionary term, not just a euphemism for some religious belief or other.

on the other hand, while i must respect atheists for believing what they believe, something that really grinds me (that another poster also, imo, rightly pointed out), is when my Faith (capital=religious/philosophical beliefs) is dismissed by its very virture of being a faith (belief in something that cannot be proven, dictionary type term). this is because, frankly, atheism outright, is also a faith of a kind, in this dictionary sense... and yes, i know i know all about not being able to prove a negative, etc., and that it's on me to prove the positive because only one instance is needed, as opposed to every instance, etc. but really... if science were actually of the essence here, then the challenge would never come down, since no experiment could be set up in the first place to determine it. anyway, sorry for rambling. i just mean that christians, buddhists, wiccans, atheists and everything else that has 'concluded' something are all, at the last instance, in the same 'faith' boat. i *truly* wish that the discussion (in general, not making value judgements about here) could move beyond the realm of the trapeze net of 'prove-it science'... because none of us wins, and frankly, it isn't very useful...

what we all, any of us, believes, or doesn't, or reserves the right to wait and see... well, it's all just filler for what we *can't* prove purely logically... that's the whole *value* of it! so to accuse one or the other of somehow being inadequate for this or that lapse in reason is silly... it defeats the purpose of holding a position of 'maybe' or 'faith' or 'possibility' or 'speculation' or just 'i know because it's mine, and that's enough for me'.

thanks for wading through this. apologies for not being more response specific. and,
seriously,
glad to have found this great discussion.