For me, the notion of a higher state of being is comforting to me. Whether it's becoming one with the fabric of reality, or floating on a cloud with Hayley Atwell and Scarlett Johanssen, I'm game, but that's because non-existence terrifies me. I'd actually, possibly, prefer "hell" to non-existence, in that, as long as I was feeling pain, I'd at least know that I was still "me," but the idea that it just ends when we die is such an abstract one, for me.
What is it to end consciousness? Is it just an eternal sleep? Are you still cognizant of anything? I don't know. I guess I'm not supposed to know, but the idea of an afterlife is appealing to me. I'd say the best way to describe my beliefs is probably as "scientific with theistic leanings." In my mind, it's as egotistical to flat out deny that there is no power higher than homosapiens as it is to assume that, out of 6 billion people, and hundreds of different religions, your God is "the right one."
I tend to just treat people the way I want to be treated. Not out of any expectation of divine reward, but just out of common decency, and, if it turns out that there is something at the end of the line, all the better. By most religious standards, I'd surely be damned, but that's where organized religion just gets me, because it's so contradictory. They want you to buy into the notion that something is the beginning and the end of everything, and that this being created all of existence, and that's something that I don't necessarily disagree with, but then they assign this being the personality of the most petty individual you can think of.
In my mind, we are so infinitesimal to such a being that I cannot fundamentally understand how it would matter, on a cosmic scale, whether we curse like sailors, drink like fish, or **** like the dickens. I don't know.
That's my biggest problem with religion. At the same time, though, I don't really believe in Atheism, all that much, either, as I feel like the problem with basing everything purely on what we see is that there is so much we haven't seen, or can even begin to comprehend about existence, itself, and thus, it's like believing in an incomplete picture, but that's just me.
I feel like everyone should believe what they want to believe without infringing on the beliefs of others, and there's just so much judgement in organized religion that it isn't even funny. Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Science; I don't care what you call it, just don't be a **** and we're good. I think that's where atheism kind of suffers from the same tunnel vision as religion, because you've got one side looking at the other like they're Godless heathens, and the other side looking at the other like they're superstitious simpletons.
Moral of the story: Be who you want to be, just not a **** to other people.
