Tag: Randy Stocker | Recap Episode

Ep 411: Eternal Life Part 1 | Strategy for Defeating Death

RV (00:00:03):
What is your strategy against death? I mean that seriously. What is your strategy for dealing with defeating or overcoming death? What is your philosophy about death? What do you believe about what happens after death? Ironically, this is probably one of the most important, if perhaps not the single most important questions for you to answer during your life. And yet, many of us speaking, at least for myself, my friends, my family, many of the people that I know and interface with, many of us spend a shockingly little amount of time thinking about or answering or even having any crafted philosophy at all about what happens after we die. And to me, from a logical standpoint, you put all religion and spiritual spirituality and, and, you know, theism, aside from a purely logical standpoint, this seems like an important question, one that we should spend a little bit of time thinking about, because one thing that I know is that 100% of humans that have ever lived have also died.
RV (00:01:36):
death has a 100% success rate. There is nobody that death hasn’t gotten right, like nobody who is still on this planet, who once was born, who is still here now, hundreds or thousands of years after they’ve been born. Everybody is gone. They have all died or disappeared or died and disappeared. And so there’s a pretty high likelihood that you and me and everyone we know is going to die sooner or later. And I don’t mean to be morbid about that, but I do mean to present you and to present myself with the sobering reality that we’re gonna die. We’re not gonna be here we are at some point. Our bodies, in their current form, in this current place are going to cease to exist in the way that they exist now. And so my question is, what is your strategy for that? What, what exactly do you believe about the afterlife?
RV (00:02:42):
Do you believe in reincarnation? Maybe you do. If you do, though, why? Like, what evidence is there for reincarnation? What, what logical or academic or scientific support beyond just your own personal convictions, beyond your own feelings, beyond your own instincts, beyond your own emotions, what evidence is there to support that? That’s real. I’m not saying that you have to have evidence for that. All of us, of course, you, myself included, we are all welcome to have whatever beliefs that we choose. But for me, as an analytic, not somebody who’s a pastor, but as someone who is a critical thinker, someone who is logical, someone who is systematic and pragmatic and practical, I just am curious to know, is there any evidence for what you believe? And what is the evidence for what you believe? Maybe you believe in heaven. So what evidence is there for that?
RV (00:03:45):
And how do you get into heaven? And is heaven really real? And if there, if there is a heaven, how confident are you that you are going to get in , right? Like, and what is that based on? So a lot of people, you know, I’ve, I’ve had these conversations, right? Anecdotally here, I’m, I’m speaking. But you know, I’ve, I’ve been around for more than 40 years in my life and, and have had a lot of, again, I’m, I would consider myself a critical thinker somebody who explores difficult and tough topics. And so, as I’ve asked people, you know, like, how do you get to heaven? A lot of people will say something like, well, you just have to be a good person. Which, you know, that’s a big part of me that goes, yeah, I, I buy that, that, that makes sense to me.