Afterlife?

And you are a bit sneering of people of Faith.

I see a lone spitfire pilot going down during the Battle of Britain.

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A "tentative conclusion" is a belief. Nothing more; nothing less.

Wrong.

I believe that the body is a machine because it appears to be one. Organs function by electro-chemical processes which are capable of being understood and interacted with. At some point it breaks. Believing something because it appears to be true isn't zealotry.

Scientists function by gathering evidence, uniting it in a theory which explains it, then performing tests to see if it behaves as it would if the theory were true. Scientists do not believe things for which there is no evidence.

Give me one single piece of evidence that there's an afterlife.

I presume you've never heard of the Theory of Evolution. That provides an adequate explanation.

It's interesting because when I first encountered him many years ago — probably twenty — he helped me to clarify my thoughts about the supernatural and the existence of a personal creator of the universe. I never cared for the term "agnostic" because it always seemed sort of wishy-washy. But reading some of his critiques of atheism I had to admit he had a point. Further research on my part led me to discover the distinction between implicit and explicit forms of non-belief. And that's when I adopted the implicit (or weak) atheism tag. It's not that I claim that there is no personal supreme being — a claim that can neither be proven nor disproven — but simply that it was one of many beliefs to which I did not subscribe.

I don't mind having a militant agnostic around but as a philosophical stance I don't find it very fruitful. Practically any conjecture about the nature of reality can be subjected to hardcore skepticism. If you say that no gods exist they'll shoot back, "Maybe those gods are influencing the data you receive in a way which hides their existence." When I suggested that an afterlife violated all we know of terrestrial biology, Frank shoots back, "Do you suppose it impossible (or improbably) that there is much more left to know about biology than we already know?" With that kind of systematic doubt we really can't be sure of anything, and all hypotheses are equally suspect. There's something cognitively hygienic about that perspective and the argument always ends with an unanswerable question, but ultimately it ends up with smug self-satisfaction as his side always gets the last word. Yeah, well I still say that transcendent incorporeal existence isn't really a matter of biology.

WHAT IS YOUR POSITION ON THE QUESTION?

I do not know if any gods exist or not;

I see reason to suspect gods CANNOT EXIST...but not that the existence of gods is impossible;

I see no reason to suspect that gods MUST EXIST...that gods are needed to explain existence;

I see some evidence upon which to base a tentative guess in the direction of non-existence...but little convincing evidence in the other.

...so I'm not averse to expressing my doubts but I'm not interested in de-programming those with a faith-based view.

That's well-expressed. Our positions are close but not congruent.

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I do not know if any gods exist or not;

I see reason to suspect gods CANNOT EXIST...but not that the existence of gods is impossible;

I see no reason to suspect that gods MUST EXIST...that gods are needed to explain existence;

I see some evidence upon which to base a tentative guess in the direction of non-existence...but little convincing evidence in the other.

...so I'm not averse to expressing my doubts but I'm not interested in de-programming those with a faith-based view.

What reasons could exist to suspect that gods CANNOT EXIST?

What evidence do you see that would make you base a "tentative guess" that there are no gods?

And why would the "evidence" in the other direction have to be "convincing?"

Yeah, you can always say "I'm agnostic with regard to that subject," and avoid the capital "A" self-labeling.

What reasons could exist to suspect that gods CANNOT EXIST?

There is a stunning lack of solid evidence for supernatural events and supernatural beings and nearly all of the as yet known natural world can be explained by our knowledge of biology, chemistry, and physics.

I see no need to complement a working system with an invisible and undetectable blanket of supernaturalism. These are reasons to suspect but not enough to disprove.

It is understandable that primitive hominids, when attempting to explain the world around them, would infer human-like intentions and emotions to the natural processes which affected them. Origin myths are universal yet distinctly different, each reflecting the cultures from which they sprung, and Genesis is no more realistic than the elephants standing on the stacked backs of turtles..."turtles all the way down". If the stories aren't convincing and there's no solid material evidence, I don't feel remiss in remaining skeptical.

But, yes, a bunch of hidden playful gods could be pranking us — you can never be too sure. I realize that my answers skirt around the notion of "can or cannot" and will try to reformulate them if you ask me to.

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What evidence do you see that would make you base a "tentative guess" that there are no gods?

Materialism, parsimony, and lack of necessity.

All the purported evidence for the existence of supernatural beings comes from the testimony of human beings. Humans are notoriously bad witnesses and quite adept creating rationalization mechanisms to deal with contradictions and suspect facts in verbal accounts. You might ask what I would accept as convincing evidence. That's very difficult as I could have a conversion experience and claim that God spoke to me and there's no way I would accept that it might be a hallucination. Nor would I expect God, accompanied by Satan and maybe a few angels, to show up at the UN, perform a few miracles, and submit themselves to questioning. Even convincing evidence would be suspect if it only convinced me.

My guess, for what it is worth, is that "the Bible" is a very self-serving history (of sorts) of the early Hebrew people...a relatively unsophisticated, unknowledgeable, superstitious people who had many enemies in the areas where they lived. Their enemies worshiped barbarous, vengeful, wrathful, unforgiving, demanding, murderous, petty gods. And to protect themselves from those gods, they invented an especially barbarous, vengeful, wrathful, unforgiving, demanding, murderous, petty god...and worshiped it.

The fact that modern theists feel the way they do about it...is disappointing and disheartening.

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I presume you've never heard of the Theory of Evolution. That provides an adequate explanation.

You obviously have not studied biology nor evolution nearly enough.
Darwin’s Evolution has nothing to do with the design of 'life'.

Brandon9000 wrote:

I believe that the body is a machine because it appears to be one. Organs function by electro-chemical processes which are capable of being understood and interacted with. At some point it breaks. Believing something because it appears to be true isn't zealotry.

Scientists function by gathering evidence, uniting it in a theory which explains it, then performing tests to see if it behaves as it would if the theory were true. Scientists do not believe things for which there is no evidence.

There is no evidence that we cease to exist when we die. Therefore there is no scientific reason to believe that we cease to exist when we die.

Brandon9000 wrote:

Give me one single piece of evidence that there's an afterlife.

There is none.

But, as I noted above, there is also zero evidence that there is not.

Thus agnosticism.