I admit that this thread surprised me – I did not know Sar was a Moslem. (“They was all Moslems, Tom said, and when I asked him what a Moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn't a Presbyterian. So there is plenty of them in Missouri, though I didn't know it before.” Huck Finn (Mark Twain),
Tom Sawyer Abroad, Page 1, Paragraph 5)
Belief in an afterlife is not a prerequisite for achieving quality of life. The fact that I do or don't believe in a state of existence subsequent to this one has no bearing on whether this existence is worth enduring.
Why are we here?
Because we are.
It is really that simple.
That's a hard one for people to accept. After all, at least in the West, as children we are taught that "because is not an answer."
Except that sometimes it is. As usual, the fucking grownups were lying.
I dunno about the whole idea of God. Grew up a Christian. Might have read a book or two about other concepts - I'm sure the library records are now in my file in Washington.
It's all just man trying to wrap his head around the whole "why are we here" question, and having been programmed that "because is not an answer" by the lying fucking adults, he comes up with something else (even if that something else is "there is no point"). Then ego kicks in, and the holder of idea A has to denigrate the holder of idea B to make himself feel better about his own uncertainty.
So I dunno what’s true or what’s not true. I am an Agnostic. If you can't prove your idea to me by putting something in my hand, or showing me something under a microscope or in a telescope, then your idea is no better than his or hers or mine. Smug nonbelievers are no more and no less insufferable than smug believers.
What do I believe?
In a silly-ass song from the play "Hair" is a line that goes "I believe in God, and I believe that God believes in me."
To crudely paraphrase a discussion between Anna and the King of Siam, "seven days or seven million years, the miracle of creation is the same."
And to quote a wise man, "Sometimes the light is shining on me, and other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been."
Essentially, that has been the gist of my "theology" since 1970.
Thus endeth the reading of the Word.
Bird is the word.
Um-papa uuuh moow moow.