Maddie, Dora, I and death

The average person now days, sees religion no longer as a necessity, but rather as a gift, or a bonus. There are still some that do see it as necessity and as a way that all should live life but even those (the extremists, radicals, or orthodox) have boundaries with the topic of God and on what is the best method used to getting near God. In class yesterday, Maddie and I both got into a conservation debate that was brought on by Dora. We discussed the validity of after life and the concept of being conscious of oneself, even after death. We thought of all the possible ways our "lives" could continue after we died, could it be faintly loosing once self in the abyss, being rewarded for good done, or disappearing completely into nothingness. In the conversation, I learned things about both Maddie and Dora that I otherwise might not have come to meet, or know about.

I felt as if each one of us represented a level found in believe. For example Dora represents the vast majority of people. She is afraid of dying and fears the unknown. If she could, she would live on forever. Maddie represents the minority of people who do not feel fear, who are open to whatever comes, and would be fine if nothing ever came. My way of thinking is one found in the other majority of people, but expressed out load in only a few.  I fear death and the unknown but am willing to face it, I also claim to know more than I actually do know, so i am actually stuck in between Maddie and Dora. But that’s the thing about religion, you can’t classify it into levels and say that is all there is to it because its always changing. Even though we do classify people into such categories, there are also so many sub levels to those, and then more to those sub levels... In my mind, its just something that should not be done because it could go on for a long time. 
But religion it self is so easily split, as was mentioned in class, it isnt just a way of thinking, its a way of reasoning, its a way of analyzing things that are hard to understand, its the way humans have for centuries bonded, connected, and also disperced, split, and died. Maybe its the power religion has, something that many devote themselves to with both fear and love. Maybe that is why we nowadays have shifted away from that because while it has the potential to help mantain order, it also can create too much at a level where it is no longer okay. Death is a very important point in religion because I think that the way death is viewed in ones mind, connects strongly to the way life is lived. So in the end of the conversation, we had gotten nowhere that we could agree on completely.