One of the benefits of religion is that it is a coping mechanism for most people. Life throws a lot of pain and suffering our way during our brief time, so I personally don't want to challenge, judge, or disrupt whatever helps people to survive the difficult times. I'll engage in debate with those who feel inclined to discuss their religious beliefs, but it doesn't really matter to me that people believe things I do not. I am a strong atheist in that I think there is positive evidence against belief in gods, but I am not an evangelical atheist. People need to be allowed the space to take comfort in whatever works to give them comfort when it doesn't interfere with my own journey through life.
I ah. I accept that there's probably no afterlife and probably a good thing too. Was reaching out cause this all is happening in my life.
I would say my life partner has around a year. But when you're gone you are gone, there's no coming back in some other form.
Like Morgan Freeman says you're here, you're not here period.
Even THAT is a little fuzzy. In some ways people survive in the empathetic reflections others develop to understand and relate with those folks.
I've mentioned a few times how parents can end up trying to dominate their children and shut out other sources of personal enrichment and development.
This is because these reflections become a part of us and our own personalities.
This is, to me, roughly the reality behind the claims of heaven, not in the eternity of a whole real life but as a partial imperfect copy living in someone else's memories.
It is the "them" we interact with when we know already that they will be happy with us, or perhaps disappointed. Of course it's us, but it's a part of us we wholely gave for their happiness and for the sake of understanding them.
It doesn't go away when they die, because it's not a part of them it's a part of
you,
and it always will be and always was. Depending on how much you invested into the relationship, it can be more or less complete, and yes, these things are capable of haunting you.
Once you think of it that way, it makes a lot more sense why people try to leave behind a book or a story embedded with some part of them that will get re-absorbed and live empathetically again in the heads of others.
Roughly speaking of you want to research more, see "Lamarckism" or "Neo-Lamarckism" or "Lamarkian evolution".
The general idea is that social and communicative entities (of which we are a subclass) have evolutionary strategies that involve passing "self" out to other compatible platforms laterally, rather than vertically as in darwinian evolution.
It may not be exactly what is meant with the overflowing promises of eternal heavens, but it is also a material reality, unlike the promises made by the religious.
Perhaps it might help both of you to tell their story somewhere.
