to be saddened when people tick the 'no faith' box.

[Funsponge]

on forms when there is a Religion or Faith box and people put none.

No faith.

Realy?

No faith in anything?

It makes me feel sad for them. How empty and meaningless and small they must feel. Poor things.

Twinklwtwirl- and God was exactly where while all this as happening?

twinkle
Bloody hell! God really had it in for that Polish woman didn't he!

How do people without a faith cope with death. In my case partly by living in the present and trying to value every moment rather spending your whole life living as a preparation for something better.

BTW I lost one parent as a teenager and have lost my other parent and a much loved step parent too so I know a bit about dealing with death - oh and they were cremated so the microbes missed out on their eyeballs but the roses did well!

I am totally faithless and it pisses me off that people think aetheists are somehow lacking a moral compass, or the ability to deal with grief .

I'll be telling my daughter that yep, when you die, that is it. Tis very sad but if you love someone they live on in your memories and the love in your heart yada yada. Not so terrible a thing to tell children?

When I lost a baby last year believing in God would not have helped. In fact it might have confused things - I didn't ask how he could have let this happen.

MsGee

Sorry for your loss

Interestingly, we don't know whether that Polish woman believed in God or not. Maybe she was a believer who still couldn't cope when her daughter died. But even if she was an unbeliever, Twinkle seems to be saying that it's better to be a believer because then she could have thought that her daughter had gone to heaven and everything would be OK. Which, as someone pointed out earlier, is confusing the way you'd like things to be with the way they actually are.

Oh - and I agree with Chaz a more sensible response to death is to focus on living in the present.

Thinking that its all in God's plan and that you'll see them again in the afterlife is just plain odd to me. What exactly is the plan.

Also - I have always been confused as to how you find your family in the afterlife. Is there a telephone directory? I guess you have eternity to find them but surely there needs to be a system. Y'know with excel spreadsheets and shit.

Yes, I believe my cat will go to heaven.
Heaven is supposed to be full of animals. The biblical vision tells about a lion cuddled to a lamb and a child playing with a serpent.

Why would God create animals on earth now, let them go to total waste, only to create new ones.

My cat has an amazing personality and God would love to have Him in his kingdom.

I believe few people go to hell, they reject God themselves, they corrupted their souls so much on earth that when faced with the absolute goodness and love of God, they cannot stand it, they hate it and ultimately condemn themselves, through choice.
God is always ready to forgive, to the very end, when you face Him.

I absolutely believe in purgatory, which always ends with heaven, where the soul can purify and learn to love God.

I would never ever judge who goes where, that's between the soul and God alone.

I have faith. Faith in myself, my family, the kindness of strangers ...

Chaz you too . Thank you - I am not very lucky with the pregnancies but I have a DD who is wonderful. So lucky in many ways.

Oh - I also work with a traumatic bereavement. Apparently a lot of people find God in those situations and as many again lose faith. Its very simplistic and naive to say that faith helps those suffering greif.

Was the Polish woman religious?

OP - you are craaAAAAaZZzzzzzzzzzzzy?y*y!!!
Faith to me represents delusion.
Faith by definition is to believe in something in the absence of evidence.
Can't spell "Realy".
Feel sorry for yourself luv. Poor thing.

Is that why you're religious, twinkettwirl? Because you find the world frightening and don't know how to belong in it? (I mean that seriously, btw, not as a piss take)

If so, might it be better for you to see a counsellor yourself rather than pass your religious delusions onto your DCs?

No twinkle that isn't what HoneyDragon said.

She said Anyone feeling righteousness, smug or sorry in the outsiders nativity is a cock

A sentiment I agree with.

happy...you can't spell 'crazy'......

twinkle: "Heaven is supposed to be full of animals."

You do realise that that's not a standard part of Christian theology, don't you? What denomination do you belong to?

twinkle

I suggest you don't ever become a literary critic as you can't interpret text properly unless you are deliberately misinterpreting HoneyDragon.

I read HD's comments as covering people who are self-righteous and smug and condescending to others because they have a faith and the others don't as being the cock.

I don't know how you managed to extrapolate that to a depressed person.

Not secretly think of them at all. Anyone who cannot go without judging the faithless, or thinking less of them is a cock.

Your statement is an idiotic statement. My friend is dying, she won't see out July. I shall immediately stop being with her as according to you I am clearly not cut out for the job

According to Chrisian doctrine, animals don't have souls, so can't go to heaven.

And you avoided the question about where God was when that poor woman was losing her mother and child and the killing herself and the rest of her family.

Yes, YABU.

Should we have a box that says:

'well, yes I suppose I do have a little faith in something but I am still trying to define it, do you know what I mean? I have always felt deeply spiritual but I have never quite found the thing I am looking for and I dabbled in Buddhism for a bit but I really missed the meat, and I did go to a few spiritualist meetings when my mate wanted to contact her dead brother, oh and there was that time I had a spooky premonition, but I'm very deep me, you know? I just can't be pigeonholed. Maybe one day I'll have an epiphany and then I'll just KNOW, you know? So I'll get back to you.

Very funny, HerMaj.

Does god have to build lots and lots of extensions to cope with the overcrowding that must be going up up there?

Did the cat believe in God? Perhaps that is the missing link.

twinkle I am sorry about your cat but you seem to be making up the rules as you go along.

So now animals are ok for heaven, despite people stating that is not the case.

Or your cat is in heaven because its amazing personality ? I thought it was about believing, not being awesome. I'm pretty awesome but I don't believe, do I get a free pass too?

Agatha there is a special Ikea up there.

God has His hands tied if people don't want Him to help, if people don't seek Him and pray, pray themselves or others pray for them.

God is all powerful but only with a combination of our will.

If all people sought God and His deliverance, the bad things would stop now.

There are some rules of the universe that we don't understand, God, even though all merciful and good, cannot work in this world without our cooperation.

And yes, sometimes He can allow someone to die despite the prayers because He knows more than us, He knows it is for the better, don't forget death is not the absolute catastrophe for God and believers.

Yes, atheists can have good moral compass, but I wish they were honest and come clean, the majority of their moral compass comes from being born to a culture influenced by centuries of christian thought. If it wasn't for this, their compass would be telling them to go to the arena were Simon Cowell organized a fantastic spectacle of bloody gladiator fights and people eaten by lions and to make a great day out of it.

Their compass would be telling them to throw their disabled children off cliffs and push their elderly parents off as well to put them out of their misery .
Hang on a minute......Oh yes, sadly we are now living in mainly post christian culture.