Afterlife?

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I just read this article the put succintly why all religions basically should have an afterlife (and why atheists are correct in saying their worldview is not a religion).
"If this world is the final say, and evil is allowed to prevail, than God cannot be good."
Translation: even if your religion doesn't have a notion of gods (like Buddhism), or even if it doesn't have a strong tradition of afterlife, you basically have to have one. Why? Because having a loved one get murdered in the street provides unsatisfactory answers. That's the problem of atheism in fact. They can debate all day about God is real, but at the end of the day, they have giant elephant in the room. If all there is would be this life, the only thing left is to try to get revenge on that murderer, and then kill yourself. But their family might get revenge on our family, and so on. And if they die by tragic accident, one is left with the conclusion there is no hope in this world.

This is why secular science always makes the claim that it will cure death on day. But is that a good thing? You see, this world sucks. Now you learn to appreciate some things, but what is being proposed there is closer to a jailer trapping us in torment and throwing away the key. You could nix the idea of afterlife, and say something like "death is a rest from the horrors of life" mirroring some sentiments of reincarnation/rebirth, although you could also just think of it as being put out of misery. But without either a theory of why death exists or an afterlife, even living forever is problem not a solution.

Any decent worldview without a theory on what happens with death one should require themselves to make one up. So, what awaits us when we die? And why does death exist?

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View best answer, chosen by bulmabriefs144

@bulmabriefs144,

Quote:

"If this world is the final say, and evil is allowed to prevail, than God cannot be good."

So what? Why does a supreme being have to be "good"?

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If all there is would be this life, the only thing left is to try to get revenge on that murderer, and then kill yourself.

No, I don't buy this. Why must revenge be taken? Didn't someone counsel his followers to "love your enemies" and to "turn the other cheek"? And why must it end in suicide?

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And if they die by tragic accident, one is left with the conclusion there is no hope in this world.

No, it's an accident. One could simply hope that it doesn't happen again.

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So, what awaits us when we die?

Decay.

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And why does death exist?

Death exists because life exists. It's not an issue. Deal with it.

1 Reply

@bulmabriefs144,

bulmabriefs144 wrote:

even if it doesn't have a strong tradition of afterlife, you basically have to have one. Why? Because having a loved one get murdered in the street provides unsatisfactory answers.

How is belief in an afterlife connected to someone being murdered, or dying in any way for that matter?
Unsatisfactory answers? To what? What does that even mean?

That's the problem of atheism in fact. They can debate all day about God is real, but at the end of the day, they have giant elephant in the room. If all there is would be this life, the only thing left is to try to get revenge on that murderer, and then kill yourself. But their family might get revenge on our family, and so on.

Again, What? Why would the only thing be revenge? And/or to kill yourself? This makes absolutely no sense

And if they die by tragic accident, one is left with the conclusion there is no hope in this world.

This is getting monotomous. Why would that conclusion be drawn?

1 Reply

@bulmabriefs144,

1. Secular science makes no such claim.

2. There are many religions that don't propose an afterlife including Judaism.

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@hightor,

I'm not talking about Christianity. I'm talking about humanity. And by "good" I mean a God that creates not just out of sadistic whim to watch us die. By "good" I mean that if brutal thugs rape your daughter, if all you have is "there is no God" then you have as sour a taste in your mouth as if there was only an evil God. Which is the point, many atheists actually hate God and are intellectually dishonest to others about it.

If there is no life beyond death, then all we have left is making sure bad people PAY in this life.

Since I've seen a number of petty people, both in supposedly Christian settings and in purely secular ones, I can reasonably say this seems to be the prevailing belief among those people.

If decay is all you have to look forward to, this basically also means everything you do is pointless. Painting apainting? Sculpt a sculpture? Why bother? It'll be rubble soon.
Why bother living, if one day you die like that?

Atheists always try to tell me they have a zest for life, that they live in the moment. Bah! Humbug! The truth is, if all you had to look forward to is your own decay, you won't create art. You won't make anything worthwhile, or if you do, it's because of some vain attempt to leave a legacy. But if you're the only one who cares about that painting, it's gonna get dust from neglect and fall apart. More likely, if death is the end, you live in constant fear, as I've already seen from the response to COVID. You can't live life in a bubble, which is all secularidm offers. To try to be safe from death, because death is decay and extinction.

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@bulmabriefs144,

Quote:

"If this world is the final say, and evil is allowed to prevail, than God cannot be good."

If you start out with a logical fallacy, you don’t get truth at the end.

The very concept of any 'real' God, must assume that this world is not the final say.

You could argue that there is no reason God could not be a rock, or as interactive as a rock. But then you are not being serious about a 'real' God, even if you thought it up.

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@bulmabriefs144,

bulmabriefs144 wrote:

I'm not talking about Christianity. I'm talking about humanity. And by "good" I mean a God that creates not just out of sadistic whim to watch us die. By "good" I mean that if brutal thugs rape your daughter, if all you have is "there is no God" then you have as sour a taste in your mouth as if there was only an evil God. Which is the point, many atheists actually hate God and are intellectually dishonest to others about it.

If there is no life beyond death, then all we have left is making sure bad people PAY in this life.

Since I've seen a number of petty people, both in supposedly Christian settings and in purely secular ones, I can reasonably say this seems to be the prevailing belief among those people.

If decay is all you have to look forward to, this basically also means everything you do is pointless. Painting apainting? Sculpt a sculpture? Why bother? It'll be rubble soon.
Why bother living, if one day you die like that?

Atheists always try to tell me they have a zest for life, that they live in the moment. Bah! Humbug! The truth is, if all you had to look forward to is your own decay, you won't create art. You won't make anything worthwhile, or if you do, it's because of some vain attempt to leave a legacy. But if you're the only one who cares about that painting, it's gonna get dust from neglect and fall apart. More likely, if death is the end, you live in constant fear, as I've already seen from the response to COVID. You can't live life in a bubble, which is all secularidm offers. To try to be safe from death, because death is decay and extinction.

The people living "in constant fear"...are people like you. And I don't blame you. If I were as sure as you that the god you talk about actually exists...I would be shitting my pants, too.

As for "atheists" being unable to create or invent or contribute...you are so off-base, it boggles the mind. (I am NOT an atheist, but I can easily see you are all wet on that!)

1 Reply

@chai2,

Okay, here's what I mean about unsatisfactory answers.

Suppose I am a child and see both of my parents get gunned down by some joker in the street, after getting our of some opera.

I have one good belief from this, and alot of bad ones.

1. My parents are good to reincarnate and/or an afterlife. They will be in a better place and not have to deal with scumbags gunning them down.
2. There is no God, there is no afterlife. They are going into the cold cold ground and I will never see them again.
3. There is a God, but there isn't an afterlife. And God is wicked because he lets evil prevail.
3b. If God lets evil prevail, I must become justice. I must wear a bat suit and hunt down others who would do evil. I must do evil to create a world where nobody has to have their parents murdered.

As tempting (and as funny) as the last one is, it basically involves that you become a way worse murderer to basically create justice on this Earth, because you don't trust that there's a plan for the dead. Regardless of what you think of Batman, that's a pretty sad life. And there's a fourth one.

4. There's no God and no afterlife. And nothing matters. I should live for the moment.

This too is an unsatisfactory answer as it really translates into...

4. (I want to have meaningless romantic encounters that potentially screw up alot of lives, saddle my self with debt, and live my last days in tension and despair, before possibly dying of a ddug overdose or getting killed by someone I am in debt too)

Or this.

5. There's no God an no afterlife. You only live once and you need to take care of yourself.
5. (I am a china doll, and will live without taking any risks, ever. I will eventually die of boredom, either in old age or by suicide)

All of these answers suck, except the first. The last one is no risks, the one before is self-destructive, and the one before that has a problem of justice. What about the second? Well the problem of that is misery. Everyone who dies, hits you hard, and you have no coping means.

Even if #1 is false, it's an essential belief in order to retain sanity.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Yeah, nice try.

"You must fear death, that's why you invent an afterlife."

No. All of us fear death. But you have no hope of anything else.

Could hope be false? It could. Is it? No. How do I know?

Because I've seen someone die, and a sort of reiteration, I'd call it. Where I meet someone virtually the same after their death. Do I know that the conventional afterlife notions work? No. But I know there is something going on. And I know there necessarily must be an afterlife (see my previous 5 points).

2 Replies

@bulmabriefs144,

Quote:

All of us fear death.

That’s just not how I feel about it.
I don’t feel a need to rush it.
But truth be told, I’m kinda looking forward to it.

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@bulmabriefs144,

Quote:

By "good" I mean that if brutal thugs rape your daughter, if all you have is "there is no God" then you have as sour a taste in your mouth as if there was only an evil God.

So you decide to invent an nice imaginary supernatural entity to remove a sour taste in your mouth?

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If there is no life beyond death, then all we have left is making sure bad people PAY in this life.

What compels you to do this? Like most of your worldview, it reads like something from the Dark Ages.

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If decay is all you have to look forward to, this basically also means everything you do is pointless.

I didn't say I looked forward to it in a sense of happy anticipation, simply acceptance. If anything, knowing this makes me all the more satisfied when I accomplish things I set out to do. Creative activity is hardly pointless just because we all die in the end. Our mortality makes our accomplishments sweeter, more fulfilling, and ultimately more valuable.

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Why bother living, if one day you die like that?

Because I still have lots to do, much to see, many things to enjoy.

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The truth is, if all you had to look forward to is your own decay, you won't create art. You won't make anything worthwhile, or if you do, it's because of some vain attempt to leave a legacy.

That's simply untrue, belied by all the creative minds and skilled hands of people who never accepted the "eternal life" fairy tale or saw the need for it.

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But if you're the only one who cares about that painting, it's gonna get dust from neglect and fall apart.

So what? Why should you care if no one else does? It's only important that creating the work was an enriching experience for the artist and those observers who appreciated it at the time.

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More likely, if death is the end, you live in constant fear, as I've already seen from the response to COVID.

Do you really think that every person who donned a mask did so out of fear? Economic uncertainty and worrying about the health of you, your family, your friends isn't really the sort of abject, existential, gut-gripping fear you speak of.

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To try to be safe from death, because death is decay and extinction.

So you don't care if you die because you believe your body will escape corporeal decay? Honestly, there are far more pertinent reasons to try to stay alive. And at the end of one's life, your body wracked with pain, your mind blurred and confused, there are far worse prospects than extinction, which, if anything, is the ultimate relief from suffering.

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@Leadfoot,

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But truth be told, I’m kinda looking forward to it.

Sure. As opposed to looking at it in hindsight.

1 Reply

@bulmabriefs144,

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Suppose I am a child and see both of my parents get gunned down by some joker in the street, after getting our of some opera.

Your whole scenario is childish. Your five reasons are simplistic. Your conclusions egocentric and unfounded.

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@hightor,

It’s Batman’s origin story.

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@bulmabriefs144,

bulmabriefs144 wrote:

Yeah, nice try.

There is no "try." Either do...or do not.

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"You must fear death, that's why you invent an afterlife."

You accused others of living in fear. I am accusing people like you of fear of a god that is so monstrous ANY sane person would fear it. I am assuming you are sane...so I am assuming you fear that abomination you pretend to worship.

If you want to "invent" an "afterlife"...go for it. You may be right...you may be wrong. I have no idea if there is any kind of life after what we humans call "death."

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No. All of us fear death. But you have no hope of anything else.

Bullshit! I have hope that the Giants will win the Super Bowl next year. I have hope that you will say something reasonable rather than that claptrap you seem stuck in. I hope the dentist I am seeing in about an hour will not have to stick needles into my jaw, but I am almost certain he will.

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Could hope be false?

I say "no." If you have a hope...you have a hope. It may not be met, but that does not make it false. Try to keep up.

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It could. Is it? No. How do I know?

If you are talking about whether "an afterlife" or that god of yours exist...it is almost certain that YOU DO NOT KNOW.

But you have made a blind guess that a god exists...and nothing I am going to say will stop you from pretending it is not a blind guess...but rather something you know.

Okay...whatever gets you through the night.

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Because I've seen someone die, and a sort of reiteration, I'd call it. Where I meet someone virtually the same after their death. Do I know that the conventional afterlife notions work? No. But I know there is something going on. And I know there necessarily must be an afterlife (see my previous 5 points).

No you don't, but as I said: You have made a blind guess that a god exists...and nothing I am going to say will stop you from pretending it is not a blind guess...but rather something you know.

Same thing goes for an afterlife.

1 Reply

@hightor,

Quote:

Leadfoot Quote:
But truth be told, I’m kinda looking forward to it.

hightor replied:
Sure. As opposed to looking at it in hindsight.

That would imply reincarnation here, something I would not look forward to.

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@Leadfoot,

I was envisioning you with harp and halo, gazing benevolently down upon us poor lost souls from your celestial vantage point...are you saying there's no hindsight in heaven?

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@hightor,

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I’m not there yet.

But true, I don’t think I’ll ever forget this experience.

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@bulmabriefs144,

Quote:

"If this world is the final say, and evil is allowed to prevail, than God cannot be good."

bulmabriefs144:

This world is not the final say, and evil will not be allowed to prevail. Since that is the case, it equates to God is good.

bulmabriefs144 said:

Quote:

But without either a theory of why death exists or an afterlife, even living forever is problem not a solution.

The Judeo-Christian Bible provides a credible answer to why we die. This is not theory. This is fact.

Alter2Ego

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

0 Replies

When I die I'm going to haunt everybody on a2k.

1 Reply

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