DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - If there is no afterlife, there is almost no point.

**Arximedus** · 12-06-2011, 05:38 PM

But if there is no other world and there is no fruit and ripening of actions well done or ill done, then here and now in this life I shall be free from hostility, affliction, and anxiety, and I shall live happily. (Anguttara Nikaya 111:65)

Stephen Batchelor quotes the above when he discusses his own agnostic stance towards rebirth, and also sums up......Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can also blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of hope and fear.

12-06-2011, 05:38 PM	#22
Arximedus Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 451 Senior Member	But if there is no other world and there is no fruit and ripening of actions well done or ill done, then here and now in this life I shall be free from hostility, affliction, and anxiety, and I shall live happily. (Anguttara Nikaya 111:65) Stephen Batchelor quotes the above when he discusses his own agnostic stance towards rebirth, and also sums up......Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can also blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of hope and fear.
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