Poll: Do you believe in the afterlife?
- Thread starter 4RM3D
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Actually no. Darkmatter is a fucking joke. It's a placeholder. The math says that the universe should have 5 times more mass than we can find, so we said that there must be some weird undetectable matter called darkmatter. That's it. Same with the graviton, we know that gravity works, but we don't know how. We know that many of the other elemental forces(if not all) function through subatomic particles, and so someone said that it must be the graviton. When in reality, we have absolutely no idea what it is. It could be the mole people running on giant hamster wheels in the center of Titan. We don't know. And there are numerous scientific theories that we accept as fact, that we don't even come close to understanding.Fluffles said:
You may see a complete lack of understanding, I see our inability to fully understand the human mind as evidence. In fact, to drive home the point I made above, darwinism doesn't really explain everything. Darwin himself laid out a series of assumptions that his work was based on, going so far as to imply that if these assumptions were false, natural selection could not explain certain steps of evolution. Many of these assumptions were wrong. I see that as evidence of god/intelligent design. I see thousands of pieces of evidence every day. But that is completely besides the point because here is the ultimate truth about faith.
Faith isn't something you use to blind yourself to demonstrable fact, it is something you believe in when you face a lack of evidence. I have faith in the afterlife. that doesn't make me less intelligent than you. That just means that I believe in something. And no matter how much you feel inadequate compared to people capable of faith, nothing you say will stop us from believing. And furthermore, nothing you say or do will make your superiority over us into a reality.
This seems to be adequate: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/behavior.shtmltjcross said:
"Behaviors change in response to alterations in biological structures or processes. For example, a brain injury can turn a polite, mild-mannered person into a foul-mouthed, aggressive boor, and we routinely modify the behavioral manifestations of mental illnesses with drugs that alter brain chemistry. More recently, geneticists have created or extinguished specific mouse behaviors?ranging from nurturing of pups to continuous circling in a strain called "twirler"? by inserting or disabling specific genes."
That's an interesting metaphor. Then what difference does it make, since our souls don't really seem to affect us in more than that we have one?
Alright, so the population of the entire universe, according to you, cannot grow? Then there must be some sort of destiny for this to work, otherwise it can't be constant - if someone is born something else HAS to die.
One cannot ask for more in a discussion. I find it easier to argue with someone, since I usually just form theories on my own. Which is more accurate than beliefs, since I trust science!
I voted "nothing", but that's mostly what I hope is the truth. The world is a horrible place full of monsters. If God exists, he's an absolute bastard for allowing all of this shit to exist. There is no hope for justice in the afterlife, because there's no hope for justice in the before-death. Oblivion is literally the best any of us can hope for.
Yeah, so if the memories are formed and stored in the brain, what would the purpose of the soul be? If it serves no purpose, then why believe in it other than "it'd be nice"?4RM3D said:
I've read your post, and considered it. Although, how would we remember dying? In this scenario of dreams and relative observation, wouldn't dying be closer to falling asleep, therefore making it more likely for us to remember birth, assuming some form of reincarnation?
How would we experience anything without the electrical impulses that flow through our brain when we're alive? It is interesting though, since at the moment of death, the brain activity surges, but we're nto sure how long it lasts for the observer. It's possible with an observed eternity, but I don't know if it's likely.
Well, personally I do but I also want to say that if you came here looking for an accurate consensus you made a mistake. The internet is the perfect place for minorities to hate on the majorities they so dearly despise, and the minority of atheists are no exception. In actuality they are probably the most common because of there wrongful persecution throughout history (I say wrongful in the sense of immoral, not the since of right OR wrong on whether their beliefs are true). Its a pretty well accepted by historians that there was a dude named Jesus (well, that wasn't his real name) who went around and preached about God, tolerance, brotherhood and peace and I think that we have strayed from all but the first as humans (and by accepted that Jesus was real means that he existed, not that he was the son of God because that is debatable) and that if we strayed back onto the lessons he taught about morality we could all live in a better world. Jesus said 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.'
Now I included the whole quote for the whole thing to make since but what I want you to focus on is the second commandment. He says love thy neighbour as thyself, not love thy neighboor as thyself as long as he follows the same beliefs, is the same color, has the same sexual oriantation, etc. I think that Christians have fallen off there moral compass set by the one who they are supposed to be worshiping and on the side of morality I think good peron can agree that what Jesus taught was right (before you get the wrong idea, I am not talking about everyone agreeing with his ideas on religion, but on love, friendship, peace, forgiveness).
Now I included the whole quote for the whole thing to make since but what I want you to focus on is the second commandment. He says love thy neighbour as thyself, not love thy neighboor as thyself as long as he follows the same beliefs, is the same color, has the same sexual oriantation, etc. I think that Christians have fallen off there moral compass set by the one who they are supposed to be worshiping and on the side of morality I think good peron can agree that what Jesus taught was right (before you get the wrong idea, I am not talking about everyone agreeing with his ideas on religion, but on love, friendship, peace, forgiveness).
actually that's kind of it in my teens i couldn't sleep due to an inability to cope with the possibility of my existence ending at death after many months of thinking i came upon on the belief of the soul being eternal and that's all i needed after i got the core idea whenever i was bored i'd expand upon it to my current set of beliefs. also yes at some point we will reach a point were one being will have to die for another to be born but again i think that god gave a rather large amount of "extra" souls so that it would be unlikely for that number to be reached.Spectral Dragon said:
ps: thanks for the link i found it interesting
Redlin5 said:
So you only believe it because it's comforting? That's a very poor reason to accept something as true.launchpadmcqwak said:
How is rejecting the claim of an afterlife a religious belief? When there is no evidence to support something the rational position is to reject the claim. That doesn't mean dogmatically holding the opposite position, but instead not granting it any legitimacy until there is significant evidence to support it. The more outlandish a claim is the more evidence it requires.lunncal said:
Yes. However, no one can prove or disprove that there is an invisible, intangible, inaudible, orange unicorn in the room with me right now.Twilight_guy said:
No. I don't believe in an afterlife. In my eyes, it's just another form of immortality, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
The statistics of the poll are interesting, though. The world figure for stating no religion is about a sixth of the population. The poll's results give a figure of more than half. Clearly there's something influencing the demographics around here. What, exactly, I don't know, but it's still an interesting observation.
The statistics of the poll are interesting, though. The world figure for stating no religion is about a sixth of the population. The poll's results give a figure of more than half. Clearly there's something influencing the demographics around here. What, exactly, I don't know, but it's still an interesting observation.
I would like to think that there is so much of this universe left to understand that there is a possibility that a conscious could possibly return to some sort of "mind soup". However, evidence so far seems to point more to no than yes.
First off there may only be 7 billion people on the planet, but what about every single (or nearly every single if you do that heaven/hell thing) that has ever died? We go into the trillions. Imagine 2 trillion people in heaven thats just huge, not to mention the language barrier.
Now what about pets and animals? Are we so mighty of ourselves that we see other lifeforms as less than worthy of the same treatment of death that we give ourselves?
And then theres the psychological aspect, we fear the unknown the uncontrollable. Death is the masters of these forms, it would be natural for human beings to try and create a figurative "security blanket" to make these worries go away. It also makes for much better fighters if you going to war.
I don't know. Despite what I say above I am still neutral on the subject. Can anyone really prove or disprove such a thing?
First off there may only be 7 billion people on the planet, but what about every single (or nearly every single if you do that heaven/hell thing) that has ever died? We go into the trillions. Imagine 2 trillion people in heaven thats just huge, not to mention the language barrier.
Now what about pets and animals? Are we so mighty of ourselves that we see other lifeforms as less than worthy of the same treatment of death that we give ourselves?
And then theres the psychological aspect, we fear the unknown the uncontrollable. Death is the masters of these forms, it would be natural for human beings to try and create a figurative "security blanket" to make these worries go away. It also makes for much better fighters if you going to war.
I don't know. Despite what I say above I am still neutral on the subject. Can anyone really prove or disprove such a thing?
I've already had this argument. I was basically trying to say that believing that there definitely isn't a god is a religious belief.JoCharlie266 said:
Also, more outlandish claims don't require more evidence at all, in my opinion. Many claims that seem to completely defy common sense have been proven over the years, we have no reason to suspect that our universe isn't completely bizarre and outlandish, because so far we've found out that it is.
I.E. The world isn't flat, it's actually a giant ball floating around a much larger giant ball of gas, which is part of a giant system of giant balls of gas (and other stuff) all spinning around an approximately central point, and also there's billions of these giant systems, which for some reason all exploded out of one point billions of years ago.
And that's just the relatively mundane stuff we've already come to accept. It gets really freaky when you start to think about quantum physics and the like. I can honestly say that the presence of a god that just magically created everything one day would be far less bizarre than the truth (or at least, what we've discovered of the truth so far).
I've noticed that, more often people believe not because they think it must be true, but because the alternative's a lot scarier. I understand, anyway, even if I don't share those beliefs. But who knows? Our minds are peculiar things. Something could live on. We'll see, won't we? I'll even make a bet on it. If I see you in the afterlife, I owe you $50. If not, you owe me.tjcross said:
No worries, and have a good life!
It's a belief about religion, but a religious belief? I don't know... unless your religion requires you to hold the position.lunncal said:
Oh man, everything is super crazy, and this freaks me out all the time. But crazy shit is proven by lots of evidence. If we don't require a higher standard of evidence for more extraordinary claims we'll accept things that aren't true constantly. I mean, if someone said they had a dog and I was skeptical, if I was over at their house and saw dog food I'd be like "okay, they probably have a dog." If they said they had a dragon no amount of evidence would convince me of this unless I actually saw the freakin' dragon.lunncal said:
