A Good Omen

I believe in the automatic reciprication of goodwill, but love the excitement of omens too.
I hope it comes to fruition!

Thank you blighters rock. It is a bit like waiting to open a Christmas present and you don't know what it is...

These are the days of miracles and wonders...

I agree that these are the days of miracles and wonders...
and I too have had a few good omens recently.

It's a time of Blessings.

I wish I could have one.

me too

I just like the phrase "These are the days of miracles and wonders..."

I feel a little mixed about this. I'm not in the least superstitious... and yet I can't deny that there have been occasions when things have happened that have just been... strangely apt. Little signs. Warnings. Messages.

Maybe there is more to all this than meets the eye...

Indrani

Signs in the Heavens, perhaps?

Indrani

"Maybe there is more to all this than meets the eye..."

Call me superstitious but I do believe there is...

I'm not sure about signs in the Heavens. I have no religious beliefs as such - no beliefs in any concepts of God, Heaven, Hell, angels, Paradise, Purgatory or anything else like that. I don't believe there's a divinity that shapes our ends and watches over us, or that our lives are all pre-determined. I do, though, think there are dimensions beyond the physical realm - and I do believe that there are certain people who are sensitive to them and are able to communicate with them. And yes... certain things have happened to me that seem almost too apt or fortuitous for me to believe they're completely coincidental.

So... I try to keep an open mind!

Thank you stan.

Things will happen while they can...

It seems that Clint Eastwood has also been thinking about signs, portents and the 'Hereafter'...

I bought ‘Hearafter’ as an ’Eastwood’ film but I’ve only just got around to watching it: he wrote and directed it but doesn’t appear in it himself.

I was quite surprised by the theme but as always Clint gets some great performances while also providing food for thought.

For me, it served to strengthened my belief that we in the West have learned to put too much faith into the pessimistic views of those who wish to extinguish our spiritual hopes and faiths because the do not have any themselves…

I can’t decide if this is simply caused by a version of cynicism in which life has disappointed such people so many times that they expect death will do the same and reckon that if they refuse to believe in anything good at the ‘end’ then they will not be disappointed again…
doesn’t make much sense since if death is the end they will never know that they were right and if it isn’t…

The other main possibility is that they are extremely manipulative and it is far easier to manipulate people into doing things which they would not do if they believed in a ‘Hereafter‘ if the people's beliefs are taken away and replaced with a materialistic, pseudo scientific, dogma which maintains that existence is the product of a random accident which, through an unknown principle, somehow evolved, over millions of years into awareness, consciousness and intelligence.

I take it you mean militant atheists, Mangone. Atheism in itself, though, needn't necessarily preclude spirituality. For me, spirituality consists of such qualities as compassion, empathy, love, selflessness - all qualities that can and do exist outside any formalised, faith-based belief system. One might even say (though I wouldn't) that not having the moral framework of religion behind you (e.g. Christian charity), but instead being charitable or compassionate for its own sake - that is, self-motivated - is perhaps more honourable. I don't think that the alternative to religious faith is necessarily empty, soulless materialism.

That's why I prefer the term 'humanism' to 'atheism'.

'it is far easier to manipulate people into doing things which they would not do if they believed in a ‘Hereafter‘' Is it? There are legions of God-fearing people out there. Would you not also say that they have been manipulated? I was indoctrinated into religion at school, before I'd developed the intellectual capability to question any of it. I regard that now as the grossest form of manipulation. I feel it was essentially mind-control. Control, full stop.

I agree with a lot of what StanTheMan says because I too was indoctrinated into religion in school. We were taught that the Catholic Faith is the only true religion and I got into many an argument with the Priest attached to my school. However, I still got married in a Catholic church and I never had my girls christened because I couldn't bring myself to go against the promise I made to the Priest to bring up any children in the Catholic Faith so I got round that difficulty by not having them Christened at all.

I also think a secular morality has more inherent goodness in it than one that teaches hell and damnation awaits those who do not follow Christian doctrines.

I finally gave up on Catholicism when the extent of child abuse by Catholic Priests was covered up by the church. Such hypocrisy is mind blowing!

However, I do believe in God. For a while I couldn't as I had read David Hume's "Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals which convinced me there was no such thing as miracles and that there was nothing to prove there was a God. I was left feeling bereft until I realised the existence of God can never be a matter for reason it requires blind faith! An interesting debate.

I suppose I should have made it clear that the "Hereafter" is not about God or religion and mostly deals with the deep feelings of "Loss" that the death of loved ones can cause... but it does, nevertheless, offer the belief that
death is a 'passing on' and not an end...

Anyway, I didn’t want to be accused of thread rustling again so I’ve moved my reply to an old thread of mine where those who are interested can continue the religion/morality discussion if they wish…
http://www.abctales.com/forum/2012/02/13/are-we-blessed-or-cursed

I was surprised to find that although modern Wall Street bank fraud appears to be rewarded, modern cattle rustlers face up to 20 years in prison and a $20,000 fine… weird priorities or what? :O)

Now, back to Good Omens.
The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.

"A comedy and a quasi-parody of the 1976 film The Omen concerning the birth of the son of Satan, the coming of the End Times and the attempts of the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley to avert them, having become accustomed to their comfortable situations in the human world.

A subplot features the gathering of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — War, Famine, Pollution* and Death...
*Pestilence having retired in 1936 following the discovery of penicillin."
Courtesy of Wikipedia.