| snakenobi said: I have been reading alot about different religions and how they describe afterlife. Western religions state that there is eternal heaven or hell afterlife and the eastern side believes in nirvana(equivalent to heaven) and rebirth(they think repeated rebirths are as good as hell). The problem is that they say afterlife is dependent on your deeds in this life. What I don't understand is who define's what deed is good and what deed is bad? Our society defines what is good or bad according to the time period in which we live in.Simple example - nudity and greed was seen as something else before than what it is seen as today.And as we all know,good and bad are very much effected by the economic condition of this world. We can all go back to the old moral values that life should be just about benefiting humanity but where does that leave room for enjoyment if we are just working.I mean whats the point of living. The question here is why does GOD have to create such a world where we just fight each other based on money and work.Its like we are his playtoys.Some people here might argue and say he is just testing us but why is he testing us,for his own enjoyment?
I strongly believe in afterlife but have serious problems figuring the connection between rebirth and previous life and your status that you get after rebirth.The western religions way of heaven is much easier than eastern religions but fact that once we go in heaven,what do we do out there?If there is no time then how will we enjoy things in heaven as time is closely related with what you do with your life. |
That is a difficult question to answer and one that I can't answer completely, but I'll try to explain it a bit. Most theologians are not going to say that God determines what is good or bad. Plato's Euthyphro addresses this problem extensively. The question essentially comes down to why God would say an action is good. There are two options: 1.) God commands the action to be good. 2.) God determines that the action is good based on an objective moral law. Most theologians have rejected the first option because it would seem that God is being arbitary in his decision. He would essentially be saying, "action A is good because I say so" (hardly the type of response you would expect from a supremely rational being).
To answer your questions, God does not define what is good or bad. Neither do humans. The objective moral law is unchanging and eternal, so there is no redefining it. This obviously raises the questions of how people have access to the objective moral law. The answer, at least to me, seems to be that humans don't have access to the law because of the subjective nature of our experience. The only entity that has access to the law would be God, but there is the problem of communicating this objective moral law into terms that humans can understand (this is the reason why metaphors and symbolism play such a huge role in religions).
From a theological viewpoint, I think the communication gap between an infinite being and a finite being makes it unlikely that humans will gain access to the objective moral law. The best we can do is work towards improving our ethical system as we gain more knowledge and experience (I also think this goes a long way in explaining why moral norms have changed throughout time and why we would not call our moral system objective).
Note: Just to clarify, the first section is mostly me explaining Plato's Euthyphro. The second sections contains more of my conjecture, so it might not represent the views of most religions.
Edit: I tried to answer your question as I think someone from a religious background would answer it. However, there are so many ethical systems out there that are both valid and consistent that the answer to your question really depends on what ethical foundation you choose to start from.
