I want to believe
I'm going to be brief here, while also trying to put my thoughts into words, which may be hard to do.
I was raised Catholic. As a child I believed in the soul. I believed in God, and I believed God was loving. We were kind of progressive Christians, not into all that hellfire and damnation stuff. We believed other religions were totally legit, that everyone was on their own spiritual path.
As I grew up, I started rejecting bits and pieces of my religion that I didn't agree with. I considered myself vaguely Christian, then drifted into atheism and agnosticism.
I'm an old guy now. My best friend is dead. I've been reading and listening to a lot of NDE stories, because I want to believe the soul doesn't die with the body. I want to believe there's something better than this life. I WANT TO BELIEVE MY FRIEND STILL EXISTS.
But I know I NEED to believe in the soul, because not believing in the soul makes life unbearable. I CANNOT handle the thought of my dear friend simply not existing. Like maybe it's that opiate for the masses thing.
It's so easy for me to entertain the idea of the soul when I think of human beings, our beloved pets, and other highly intelligent and social species like dolphins, apes, wolves, elephants, etc that we as individuals may never interact with.
But when I consider the history of life on this planet, how long the now extinct life forms were around before us, how many life forms there are/were that don't even have brains (like sponges), it all just seems kind of silly. Like, dinosaurs were around far longer than we have been around, and wanting to see them as souls having a dinosaur experience just sounds silly to me.
Seriously, if I die and there's absolutely nothing, I'm fine with that. But the thought that this dear friend, or my parents don't exist just terrifies me. So I feel like I'm getting spiritual in my old age simply as a means of coping with the death of those I care about, and the loneliness I now experience. Like me wanting and hoping for something to be true (the soul), doesn't make it so.
Thoughts, anyone?