A lesser insight into subject grandeur

I find it incredibly injust and comptemptable that I don't have an eternal soul.

The idea that I, a living being capable of learning and sensing and understanding and love, will simply cease to exist after a short time is one of the most offensive ideas I have ever heard.

Maybe it is just deceptive not to be a God...

Naiveté and simplicity are nothing more than slightly more polite and emphatic terms than my own, though the aim and target seem to remain the same. Is there another form of deception that is not contemptible, albeit self-deception the most vulgar of all?

Perhaps the offensive nature of this idea is the barometer of truth it harbors. Such that feelings of injustice are the marks of personal desire for fairness versus the reality that justice is a completely human conception. Thus, ultimately revealing man's own selfish desire in a vain attempt toward eternal self-survival. Of which, survival is arguably one of most basic of instincts however metaphysically contrived man has made it.

However deceptive it may or may not be to be God or not be God, an eternal soul and/or an afterlife is not antecedent for a God to exist of any nature or temperament. What does God owe man versus man owe God such that man be just in possessing the expectation of an eternal soul and a form of after-life, such that it is not a humanly contrived concept derived from the selfish desire to survive. The contemptibility of such is measured in the wasteful expenditure of this life in a selfishly vain attempt to achieve a non-existent immortality.

Yeah, what he said.

If you lose information from your brain when you get hit on the head, or get old, or get brain disease etc... how is it that when you die you dont lose any information and continue to exist as a spirit with all your thoughts intact?

The idea that you will continue to live on 'as a spirit' without your PHYSICAL brain is unreasonable.

Wasteful would be to abandon hope of eternal life and live as if it didn't exist, even as the most far-fetched possibility. Without eternal life, there would be no purpose with our existence. If there is no purpose, in what sense would it be wasteful to live a life where one hopes for an afterlife? If your guess (that people's desire for eternal existence is a result of the "selfish desire to survive") is true, then there will be no regrets, and our "wasteful" lives will have been of no consequence whatsoever anyway.

My point: If there's even the slighest hope that corporeal death is not the end, it would certainly be wasteful not to cling to it. Considering the sheer amount of scientifically inexplicable near-death experience testimonies in existence, I'd say that there is sufficient proof for anyone to seriously contemplate this possibility.

So you don't think it would be a waste to spend maybe 100 years of life preparing for another which may or may not exist?

If there's even the slighest chance that death IS the end, then I'd rather make the most of the life I've got.

How can so many people not understand what a wonderful thing "life" is?

Not at all. The human life span is comparatively very, very short. If there is no afterlife, our lives will have been in vain anyway (I know people may make positive contributions to the lives of others, society etc that may last for many generations, but ultimately humanity will perish, and they will still have been in vain). If there is eternal life on the other hand, our actions here on Earth may echo for eternity.



And what would you say it means to "make the most of life"? Seeking perishable knowledge? Acquiring skills that will be void when you die? Creating a legacy that will last for generations to come?



Of course life is wonderful. Only that it's not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Everything that is perishable is ultimately futile.

I just posted the bulk of this elsewhere, but just to show how brilliant I am, I post it here too.

Scientists ask how and why. And if God didn't give us a brain, we couldnt even formulate the questions. Now you might well say you thought I didnt believe in God.

I don't know. The more we look the more we see and the more we can explain. What is of interest to me is how come it is explicable? Why is it that there is order in the Universe such that atoms and molecules hang together, and that we can explain how they behave with mathematics.

I have no picture of God as a physical being up in the sky and looking down. But on the other hand when you look at the stars and are struck with wonder and awe about the billions of stars in this one galaxy and the billions of other galaxies out there, then any intelligent person has got to be impressed.

(I've often used the analogy with my cat...not that I talk to the cat about such things, but if he could say what he thought about stars I'm pretty sure he would say, "yep see it, its not frightening, cant eat it, cant **** it, not interested in it". OK cat fair enough, you're a cat. But I'm a mammal too. Where does this sense of awe and wonder come from?)

The above is about as near as I can get to describing what I mean by God. And normally I am very reluctant even to attempt such a thing.

But I'm also interested in the opposite position...that of atheist. I cant say "there is no God" for two reasons.

Firstly the atheist says this not as a proposition, e.g. it is my contention that there is no God...he makes it as a bald statement of fact. That coming from a mere speck of dust in the universe is a trifle arrogant to say the least. Its means I have absolute knowlege. I am omniscient and I tell you there is NO GOD. But of course such a being making that statement, omniscient all knowing all pervading would be GOD himself. So there is something of a logical paradox here.

If on the other hand the atheist means it as a proposition, then it could be taken as

The propostion is...there is no God. So far so good. No assumptions about any conclusion.

But again anyone with a rudimentary understanding of how the scientific method works realises that you dont start with a negative proposition. Its not possible to prove a negative. Its only possible to establish a theory based on certain axioms, that theory being disprovable and liable to be junked at any time by anyone who comes up with the evidence to do so.

So where is all this going? I don't know what God is. There is no hard evidence that such a Being exists, and yet there are things that literally make you wonder. On the other hand its silly to say you KNOW such an entity does not exist.

The answer to my mind is to say that I have certain ideas about the divine, and they will remain with me.

And if anyone challenges me to answer the question "do you believe in God", I say I do not understand the question. You define what you mean by God, and when you've done that, I'll give you my answer. That should put it off for at least one lifetime.

Hey Steve!
Thanks for declaring your position. I'm always interested.

Just to clarify things;

Very few athiests declare "I believe there are no gods" and you are right, they cannot know. It's a belief system open to the logical flaws of all belief systems.

All athiests declare "I do not believe there are gods". That is the meaning of atheism "without theism" The onus of prove is thereby on those who make extraordinary claims such as "I know there is a god".

I am an atheist but I also believe there are no gods (which I cannot prove)

You might find these guys useful to clarify an atheists position:

http://www.positiveatheism.org/index.shtml

Steve - It's not my intent to minimize your brilliant exposé.

However, it was about people having a soul and therefore live forever.

I dont know if there is a God.

But some connect the existence of a God with the fact of having a soul.

How do you view this connection?

In what sense would the existence of God be more extraordinary than the nonexistence? Would it really be less spectacular to say that man is the result of various cosmic events, evolution, chain effects etc with an origin in chaos rather than being the result of a supreme intelligence and will?

In the sense that I have not seen one, nor any convincing arguement for one. That the notion seems ridiculous to me. In fact the thing that finally convinced me in my teens was this: "If gods did not exist, would we create them? Yes. What form would we imagine them? In forms that fit our concepts of the world at the time." Guess what I see when I look at the world? And also in the sense that we slowly uncover natural physical causes for things that were always known to be the works of gods and this process continues. I do not need to know everything. I do not fear death being the end of all that I am.



Oh it's spectacular alright. I'm in total awe of the universe. I just wish god had left one tiny little mark that says..."I did this, it could not have come about naturally" but instead he seems to be saying "I will keep throwing you ordinary explanations for everything just to trick you into thinking I don't exist"

Order springs automatically from chaos all the time ref:James Gleick "Chaos"

And finally, the idea that a living thinking being (a god) should come into existence without either evolution OR a creator is the most ridiculous proposition of all.

What other form would have been more suitable for God to manifest Himself in than that of an Eternal Father if He wanted people to be able to have a meaningful concept of Him and relation to Him?



That is not true unless order is affecting the chaos. In chaos there is no meaning, and meaning does not simply arise from non-meaning automatically.



In my opinion it's the only sensible proposition. If God wasn't uncreate, then he couldn't be the cause of causes, omnipotent, self-existent etc. The reason why this may sound ridiculous is probably only a result of the limited intellectual capacity of a finite being trying to comprehend the infinite. Time is after all something connected to the material universe, and therefore God isn't subject to it.

Yes it does. I take it you didn't read "Chaos" in the last few minutes.

Stupid words like "uncreate" demonstrate nothing.

You guys argue in non-logical circles that make no sense, without responding to the arguments presented.

The universe could have come about on its own. Your response will be everything has to have a cause....except some gods.

In my mind it's your arguments that are illogical and not mine. To me the notion that order can emerge from chaos without being affected by some kind of external order is absurd and contradictory, since order implies information, and information implies intelligence.

Besides, chaos, randomness and potentiality also need an origin. Without these there would be no likelihood of anything at all coming into existence. If one follows this chain to its beginning it inevitably ends up with that at one point (point in what? Surely not time) nonexistent nothingness must have changed (I really can't understand what would cause this change) into existent beingness, for no reason whatsoever (reason implies that some kind of order is already in existence). Given the option between this and an uncreate supreme intelligence, I'd find it a lot easier to believe in the latter any day. Although I cannot truly understand infinity, it makes a lot of sense to me on a conceptual level.

What arguments are you referring to that I have not responded to by the way, and what exactly is it that you find circular about my reasoning?

I did not refute the belief and/or existence of a God.

I merely stated that man's belief in an eternal soul and/or an afterlife is a contemptible self-deception.

The first logical question, why is it contemptible? For which I answered, isn't any form of deception contemptible, especially self-deception.

The second logical question, why is it self-deception? First, it is quite easy to argue that man's most basic instinct is that of survival, to live, though I do not intend to argue that point as it would certainly be a wasteful use of drive space and network bandwidth; someone else can start another topic on that subject. The motivation for man needing to harbor the belief in an eternal soul or afterlife is therefore a vain attempt at self-survival. We have awareness of our living condition beyond action/reaction to the environment unlike that of any other creature. We have conscious awareness that we will cease to exist one day and that is in direct opposition with our most basic of instincts toward survival, to keep living our life. Our mechanism for dealing with that is a self- serving survival oriented belief in an eternal soul and an afterlife, because at this point we have no other solution to the problem that has plagued man; which is death. If you would entertain me and allow me to personify nature or evolution, good old nature through evolution has blessed us with awareness and is now thus aware. As well, to satisfy the more religious folks, I pointed out that humankind has no rights to an expectation of an eternal soul and an afterlife. What right does man have to expect such from his God? An eternal soul and afterlife do not follow logically from the existence of God. The postulate is that these concepts exist so that man can cope with something so utterly inconceivable to his mind, his impending death and non-existence in the face of an overwhelming urge and instinct to survive. Therefore, it is a self-deceptive self-survival mechanism.

The third logical question, what makes a human life wasteful to entertain these self-deceptions. In my reply post, I stated that the contemptibility is measured in the wasteful expenditure of this life toward a selfish vain attempt to achieve a non-existent immortality. In other words, the expenditure of this life on a purely hypothetical contingency is a waste of a life. In a different post/thread, I wrote: "In the struggle for survival evolution is destined for many things much greater than awareness. At this moment, evolution is but a babe in toy land." You may substitute the word man, if you like. This is the answer to why a life spent believing and working toward an eternal soul and afterlife is wasteful and vain. Man is without the tools to cope with his own awareness of life and death while equipped with the primary instinctual drive toward self-survival. It is this new born like awareness and awe of the universe and life in general that blinds the productive nature of man's will to survive. A newborn or a child does not think or plan about their survival; they rely on their parent. It is not until they couple intelligence with awareness that they begin to think, plan, and acquire and build skills and tools to cope and manage their own self-survival. Man is the ultimate toolmaker and without tools to describe or manage his reality, he has traditionally resorted to storytelling, mythology and religion.

So, what is the true wastefulness of a life spent believing or working toward an eternal soul and afterlife? The true wastefulness is missing the point of why we are possessed with the instinct to survive and the gift of awareness. Survival is blind without awareness. Awareness is ineffectual without intelligence. Life is wasted without the application of intelligence. Eternity rests in the palm of our hands, in the form of tools both physical and mental that describe and transform the universe and subsequently reality, as we know it. Man doesn't need a soul. Man doesn't need an afterlife. Man wants these, in order to survive after death. Therefore, it is up to man through his will to survive, his conscious awareness of self, and intelligence to create the tools necessary to guarantee his self-survival, to fulfill his purpose in life, and be the product of a meaningful life by delivering eternal self-survival on his own. Only by Man's own hand and will shall he so be delivered.

A meaningful life is derived from the productive activities of a purposeful life. A purpose in life based on a foundation of hope, either in a soul or an afterlife, places the burden of fulfilling that purpose outside the bounds of provable attainability. Fulfillment of a meaningful life based on hope in an eternal soul and/or afterlife, with a purpose that cannot be proven and by definition cannot be reached in this life, is and can never be reached definitively and is therefore ultimately incapable of delivering true hope. It is nothing more than an illusion. Or rather let us call a spade a spade; it is a self-deception of an utterly most vicious kind. Man must focus on deliverance here and now.

Could you please clarify your stance on true hope vs illusory hope? What exactly is true hope according to you?