aidan wrote:1) Because you specifically can only see and be convinced of the existence of matter, are you convinced that that's all anyone else can see or has evidence of?
Well no, I can't assume that everybody sees only what I see. But if somebody else finds evidence for something non-material existing, that's not much use to me unless they can show me what they've seen. If somebody told me that material is made up of subatomic particles, they could prove this to me with a microscope, etc. But if you see a ghost, you can't prove it to me. As has been said, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I do not claim that there is evidence for the non-existence of non-material things (how could there be?) or that it has been proven that the universe consists only of matter. Instead, I believe that the questions, 'do non-material things exist?' or 'is there life after death' are silly.
Getting back on topic, me speculating that there is life after death seems just as useless as me speculating that my mother is a lion in disguise. She might be, but she probably isn't - she doesn't have a tail, for a start. I reject the notion of life after death, not because I claim to
know that 'when you die, you're dead,' but because the idea of life after death is arbitrary and baseless. And it's quite vague as well. We have pretty good evidence for dead people being dead - if you watch someone die, they sort of stop moving, their body stops working, and the corpse rots. It doesn't
look like there's life after death. There is some justification, you have to admit, in believing that death is the end. The theory that we carry on living in spirit, however, is not supported by any evidence. Or if it is, nobody has managed to convey that evidence to me.
'Is there life after death?' is a silly question.
at least the flame war between set and brandon wore off but, i might be to young to be on these boards.. i feel inferior.. lol 
