How would you summarize what you believe about the Bible?

I believe that in the year 2025, if an incident happens and you ask 4 people what happened, you’ll get 4 different stories and often they will conflict with one another. This is in this day and age - so the idea of 4000 years ago, people witnessing events were able to remotely reliably convey what happened is rather ludicrous. So, I think the bible has been pained over for thousands of years trying to understand and interpret the word of God and what it means for humanity, etc, but ultimately, it’s written by unreliable witnesses and lore that is up to 300 years after the fact before it was recorded.

It therefore seems to me that the bible should be looked at as something that traditions, bonding, family, and a sense of community rally around to support one another and to give positive regard to. I think its value is more so in the unity that it brings within its church and it works as a good guidebook as to how a responsible human being should behave in general. I don’t believe that morality starts and revolves around religion, however, but I do believe it serves as a good guide for people to find comfort in their spirituality and happiness in their sense of belonging.

That said, the notion that we can reliably know what is on the other side of death seems insane. What we do know is that what we understand of the universe is microscopic and we know that Earth is in the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way contains all of our planets in our solar system plus all of the other stars and their planets in their solar system. When you look at the sheer size of what exists we can say with what we know, there are more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth. We also know that to get to the end of the universe at the speed of light, would take us in the neighborhood of 45 billion years, and again, that is at the speed of light.

We just had our voyager probe manage to break the speed barrier that is required to escape the sun's gravity and those probes we launched in 1977 and just escaped the solar system into interstellar space now -after almost 50 years of traveling at 38,000 miles per hour. So, this should give you a better idea of the sheer size of the universe,e and knowing that we can safely say we don't know anything about the universe. So with that in mind, I will say that there is no way for us to know if there is an afterlife as we can’t measure it as of yet and we would be crazy to not acknowledge that we’ve been really wrong about scientific conclusions in the past so we would be remiss to dismiss the notion of a creator completely, especially when considering the sheer magnitude of the universe.

That said, I believe that we have it all wrong and our Bibles should therefore be celebrated as cultural centerpieces that bring unity to small communities and churches and is invaluable for that reason.

I get stuck on the notion that if there is this much universe then it would be narcissistic to think that God planned out my life etc. If there were a God he’s busy with other things to do then he is going to be worried about my fate. That and kids get hurt and women raped and what kind of a merciful God would allow for that?

If there is an afterlife I believe we can’t conceptualize it because we don’t have a frame of reference for it. We just can’t describe something that we haven’t seen or done - it’s impossible for us to do that. So, we have to live life within us. We are that life’s universe. Our bacteria in our guts, our skill cells on our feet, we are a universe to all that life. Therefore we are God to it and myself being a God to my own body, I can tell you that I don’t have a clue what any of that life inside me is doing. I know that it’s there, I know it’s good and does things for the universe - but on an individual cellular level, I have no idea what does what or why. Given the sheer size of the universe, if there is a God I believe it’s that type of circumstance. If there was a God, he knows we exist but doesn’t care about us as individuals because he’s got Universe problems he’s dealing with.

So, my theory is that there is some other layer to the universe we can’t detect and until we have the technology to detect it - we will never be able to say indeed there is an afterlife and with what we know of science, we know that when you get brain damage it significantly changes your personality. We also know the brain dies after a short period. So, it’s hard to deny the idea that our brain is directly associated with who we are. Therefore when we die it’s permanent and there is no afterlife.

Besides, if there were we would be thrown into hell with no identity immediately after because we as humans identify with our bodies so significantly that to suddenly have no body and what are you? Can you describe what you are without reference to your body or your preferences? Because remember, your preferences were things you did with your body and you won’t be doing anymore. So, what exactly are you then? That question itself would be a nightmare to grapple with in the immediate aftermath of death and that is another reason why I believe it just ends.