1) as an atheist, what will happen when I die because I reject faith and superstition, through lack of evidence.

a) When you die, nobody knows what happens. Nobody really knows what heaven is. It is all speculation and conjecture. I would suggest that aloving God would judge you on your actions and not your sensible reaction against the words of religions which (though I am a Christian myself) have been run over generations for the benefit of men and not for the word of God.

2) what will happen to my children as they haven't been christened, baptised or genitally mutilated?

Again, these are actions dictated by men and not equivocably by God. No rational being would enforce any on you as a precondition to being a good person. Genital mutilation is based on superstitious nonsense. Baptism is purely a rite of passage, like any jocks drunken initiation and should be regarded as no more or less important.

3) my mum is a dead atheist who was a wonderful moral person, kind and accepting of others beliefs, a socialist and altruist who spent her life helping those with mental difficulties. What would happen to her?

Same thing as question 1. We judge people everyday by their actions. You can tell your partner loves you by their actions. You don't need to demand they say it 5 times a day, have regularl sacrifices or drink wine and eat bread to prove it once a week. Any God worthy of love would no doubt be as sensible. That being said though, every once in a while, it is nice to receive flowers, chocolates or be told "I love you" (especially when you don't expect it).

4) because atheists are not gullible enough to believe things without proof and we cannot force ourselves to believe,(I have tried) would god be nice to us because of this?

I cannot force you to belive in God as much as I can't force you to love Sarah Palin. I don't want anyone to feel forced to believe anything. I don't see God as an egomaniac who demands everyone must love him either. If you haven't seen evidence of God, then why would you believe? Because someone told you without evience? No. Belief comes from within through your experiences. If you haven't experienced God, why would you believe God exists? Will you ever experience God? Maybe not. Is it essential? Probably not. Only God knows and if you have any religious freaks battering your eardrums telling you otherwise, send them my way! How do THEY know the mind of God? They don't. They might believe flawed texts written by flawed people for the purposes of control, but I say God is more than a focal point for tribalism.

I hope that gives some answers to your questions.

Minor correction to 1a.

When you die we know exactly what happens, and heaven is a fairy tale, never proven to exist. It's wishful thinking leveraged towards a desire to avoid mortality, which is pretty common.

Well, sorry to disagree but no, we don't know what happens when we die. We know what happens to the body but we don't know what happens to the consciousness that was once within. For you to say it just stops is equally proved or disproved as an opinion to the contrary because we cannot prove either way.

We do not understand the nature of consciousness. To postulate on what occurs at death is akin to postulating on the nature of the universe before the Big Bang. Currently, it is simply un-measurable. As a proper scientists, when I cannot measure something and have no consensus of a theory based upon reliable experiential parameters, I fall back on the only reasonable statement which is "we don't know yet".

Oh we don't? Disagree all you like, but disagreeing on the basis of a favored fairy tale isn't exactly compelling.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environ...dying3.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decomposition

I think a much more accurate way of expressing your disagreement is that we don't know how to reconcile your fairy tale with observable reality. That's not exactly "not knowing what happens when we die", is it?

It boils down to burden of proof, chadster1976. You'll have to prove if an afterlife exists.

Well he said he doesn't know - no claim = no burden.

That's something you seem to have down to an art. Making claims without expressly stating those claims. It would be clever if it weren't so transparent.

(November 9, 2011 at 9:51 pm)Rhythm Wrote: It's only circular if you assume some objective morality, which I don't, no soup for you. What is morally righteous? Whatever any given culture decided to describe as such at any given time (subject to revision, abandonment, etc). I present the entirety of cultural anthropology as actual evidence of this statement, instead of mental masturbation under the charming (but in your case inaccurate) guise of "logic".

Ah, so if the people living in Nazi Germany deem genocide against the Jews as morally acceptable then it was?

(November 10, 2011 at 10:33 am)Rhythm Wrote: Minor correction to 1a.

When you die we know exactly what happens, and heaven is a fairy tale, never proven to exist. It's wishful thinking leveraged towards a desire to avoid mortality, which is pretty common.

Argument from ignorance again.

Saying you don't know the answer to a question is an important part of science. It leads us to experiment and seek the truth. To blindly say "nothing happens" closes the door to potential knowledge. I didn't claim there is an afterlife, only that WE don't know. I stand by that.

They deemed it to be morally acceptable, and summarily began exterminating people, didn't they? Sounds like it was morally acceptable to me. Thankfully I don't have to agree with what the Nazis deemed morally acceptable, and in this case, many people did not. Enough people to form an army large enough to crush Nazi Germany underfoot. Again, you're assuming that because someone deems something to be morally acceptable that I would believe this to be an objective decision, or that such a thing even exists. I do not. What one group of people feel is morally acceptable is in no way proof of, or a statement of "objective morality".

An argument from ignorance? Perhaps you should google death, the dying prcoess, decomposition, and fairy tales. I've already handled two of them for you. You do appear to be suffering considerable amounts of difficulty with the concept of the final subject. The op has modified his statement to "we don't know if there is an afterlife" which isn't exactly his original statement. Even this new modification is unsatisfying. The minute you begin to describe an afterlife you've begun to make claims that can be criticized. We don't know that Russel's teapot doesn't exist either. What a compelling argument! Strong, positive, falsifiable claims. Why is this so difficult to elicit from the faithful?

"We don't know" isn't some double door that grants anything that can be asserted access into the realm of reality. Nor should one claim that we don't know something that we do, in order to make their assertions seem more plausible, because they don't. It's disingenuous, and you'd know a little about that wouldn't you Stat? "We don't know-......, but, let me tell you what we know about souls, heaven, god, and all the rest" Bullshit. You aren't actually criticizing what we know, you're replacing it with what you wish to believe (because what we do know disagrees with you on a fundamental level) and then assuming the mantle of reason or inquiry. Absolute bullshit.
(yes, I realize that you haven't done this OP, I'm dealing with Statler, who has never seen an opportunity to troll he hasn't taken)