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this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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Not only is there no proof Hell exists (I know, edgy online atheists, actual Christians just mad at God they were sent to bed without dessert, etc), but what is written about Hell in "official" texts (say, holy books) and what was written later (e.g. movies, but also classic literature such as Dante's Inferno and whatnot) differ a bit.
One of the big misconceptions about Hell is that the Devil (Satan, Lucifer, whatever) is the warden of Hell, or the leader or something. No, he's just prisoner #1.
It's more accurate to say that Hell is just a purgatory that is far from God's light. An endless void.
I'm no Biblical scholar, but most of what we commonly think of as Hell comes from movies, and has been used to scare Christians into giving more than they can afford at the collection plate so the priest or pastor can buy this year's Cadillac.
As far as where you go when you die? Nobody knows, but science's best guess is it's where you were before you were born. Nowhere. You can read about how life was like before you were born, but you can never experience it. Add 100 to the year you were born: anything after that is similarly conjecture and stories. It will never exist for you. Dream about it all you like, but at that time, or somewhat after (people have lived to around 120? but it's rare) you won't be here. It's what you do here that matters.
Instead of worrying about what happens after you die, worry instead about how you will live. Or spare a thought for the trillions who will never live. In your place, a great artist who united the world could have been born, or a great scientist who cures cancer. But instead, you live in their place. That's not to say your worth is lower; in your place it could have been another serial killer as well. But no, you're the one who lived... so live.
That last paragraph wasn't me. I was summarizing and paraphrasing Darwin.
Speaking about assumptions about the afterlife, people who believe in reincarnation typically believe that after you die, you get reincarnated. The assumption there is that it happens right away. What if it happens like a thousand years after you die or maybe an entire universe goes by?
I'm not sure how many people who believe in reincarnation believe that it happens instantly. Some do. I think for a lot of them (I couldn't put a number or percentage weight on it), it's a variable time.
It's nice to think that the baby who was born down the hall at the moment of your loved one's death got the soul of your loved one, especially if, as they grow, they exhibit similar traits. Comforting, I mean. Like they will never remember you, but their soul lives on.
I always had this wild idea when I was a kid that there was a sort of "lobby" that souls waited in for a set amount of time. This idea came about in the early 1980s, long before gaming lobbies, but... same idea. The idea being that in this lobby, there are other things you can do, but the main thing you do is pick a life and live it. Like when you're a new soul, either one of two things happens. Either you get to pick, and you pick an easy one. Or you don't get to pick, and you get given a shitty one. As those lives end and you come back, you retain the memories and lessons learned, but they don't carry through to the next life. But in the lobby, they accumulate. And after a few lives, you start picking more creative ones. Like maybe you want someone who has an epic death. Or someone who is one of the 0.01%. Just for the experience. I dunno. It was a theory I thought of when I was a little kid. Probably nothing to it at all. I don't actually believe it. I just remember making it up. Might have even pieced it together from movies and TV.