Afterlife? What afterlife?

How do we know there is or is not an afterlife, many many people "feel" that an afterlife exists and is just as real and tangible as anything else. Science certiantly doesn't know, though sometimes it claims to know even when it doesnt, so how does the atheist claim differ any,,,a belief, based upon an assumption with not enough data to support it. Sounds just like most religions to me.

Religion has always fluorished in ignorance.

So has science.

What is it but a collection of stories and claims to explain the mysteries of life — wherever there is something we don't understand, that we lack real knowledge about, there is a priest ready to rush in and fill the gap with a story.

Or explain a tried and true well tested tradition.

And it's always a story that gives the answer people want to hear.

Hardely, more often than not it gives an answer that is not what people want to hear...it is most certiantly not all cookies and cream.

It's all about retribution for the wicked and rewards for the godly, and everything has a purpose, even the most arbitrary phenomenon, because people love to believe in a guiding hand that, if they properly satisfy the god behind it, will give them an extra scrap of protection against a dangerous world.

Again lets try to stereotype all religions into the chatholic cookie cutter box? Structure equals function, so everything does have a purpose, even what appears to be random has a purpose, we even know that mathematically speaking.

Sophistry like the authors is an all too common and empty way of making his argument.


Look at the stories they make up: they know nothing of the deep history of the world, so they make up fables about a human deity building it like one would construct a house; they know nothing of disease, so they make up imaginary demons and spirits that torment us; they don't understand geology or the weather, so every natural catastrophe becomes a warning shot from an angry god. They want power, so they pretend that their incantations and rituals will get them the blessings of their god. Most pathetic of all, they fear death, so they've invented fabulous heavens and hells to terrify and tempt.

It's not what they made up, it was what was passed down to them through generation after generation. The historical accuracey for some of which is confirmed more and more everyday, and it isnt as if they didnt understand some of these things, so much as used language and traditons to represent it as a force in our lives. Again I see the author making yet another atheist rant based on much sophistry and little if any actual reason.

They're all lies. They don't know, they can only pretend to knowledge: no one has returned from an unambiguous death to tell us what goes on afterwards, and the people who claim to have visions of an afterlife or ghosts or souls are not consistent with one another. The only reason to invent a story that you have a 'spirit' that will 'live' on after death is because it's what people want to hear — death is frightening, so it's easy for people to believe in an afterlife.

There is a really good reason why so many people do believe in an afterlife and just becuase science has difficulty measuring something doesnt mean it doesnt exisit and stories of people who have died etc and returned are actually amazingly consistent and have been around for a very long time, which how some works like the Tibetian Book of the Dead came into being.

Which in all leads me to believe the author has never held someone's hand and spoke to them as they died nor really read or studied the religious texts and dogma he so vehmently wishes to decry as false.

But here's the truth. There is no evidence at all for an afterlife. There is no logical reason to believe in it; immortality of any sort doesn't even make sense, since a life without growth and change is no life at all, and an eternity of change can only render who we are now rather irrelevant. The available evidence suggests rather strongly that our minds are dynamic processes played out on the substrate of our brains (and a theologian wishing otherwise is no rebuttal), and when the activity stops, we cease to exist. I am a unique array of synapses tuned by my personal experience and neural connections laid down under the dictates of genes and development, and when my brain stops and rots, all those memories, every detail of my personality, everything about my mind will be gone forever.

To argue otherwise is pure fantasy.

So why is he argueing at all if its so obvious then wouldnt everyone just naturally follow such a defeatist path of thinking, roll over and die then since we have no purpose?

It's a hard sell for atheists, isn't it? We offer nothing but the prospect of personal oblivion, while our opponents promise paradise.

Coughs,, excuse me, most religions do not just offer paradise, if anything its more the other way around.

If all we had to go on was belief, (why, in fact thats the only thing any atheist is going on...belief. ) you'd have to be crazy to go with the atheists. But we do have something more than just a desire to believe: we have reason and evidence, and most importantly of all, an overriding interest in the truth.

Then why use every bit of sophistry imaginable to misconstrue and attack that which you do not obviously really understand?

Why, we'll accept the most horrible, terrifying ideas if they are true: that we'll fall if we jump off a ten story building, that we can electrocute ourselves if we stick a silverware in an electric socket, and that someday we will inevitably stop and no longer exist.

OMG guess what...religious people beilieve in the same horrible possibilities that are out there waiting for us all too.

Reality matters. The only way to argue for an afterlife is to argue otherwise, that what is is unimportant compared to what you wish were true.

I am deeply religious and I believe as do most of the deeply religious people I know that reality is paramount and matters a great deal but again I am going to point out sophistry when I see it and the author is attempting yet again to use it to convience us all that atheism is somehow superior becuase it has something or lacks something that religion cant possibley have a grasp of,,,when in fact it does.

I can't do that.

Nope apparently all you can do is twist things and lie where you lack the honesty or vison to see otherwise.

In fact, I can't even offer anyone soothing words and the promise of consolation, because there are none. We stand naked before the universe, a product of its rules, and one of the facts of our existence is our eventual obliteration. Running away won't help.

That feeling just proves that atheists exist at God's mercy too and can sence our smallness by comparrison just like the rest of us.

Believing in a magical savior won't save you. You face reality bravely, or you hide in fear — and that won't help you either.

Believeing in a religion is not hiding in fear,,if anything it sometimes takes more courage than not believeing.

The essential principle, though, the one that the religious cannot abide, is that you can face it honestly. And there's at least a little dignity in that.

Well then lets acctually be honest then for a change instead of manipulative and decietful.