(April 9, 2015 at 10:03 pm)datc Wrote:

(April 9, 2015 at 9:35 pm)Sionnach Wrote: Enjoy your mythology.

It's not mythology but an argument.

1. If you don't desire to live forever now, then you have no reason to prepare yourself for eternal life.
2. Even if upon entering heaven or paradise and seeing for yourself what it's like, you change your mind, an unprepared person cannot remain there, as he has not proofed himself again suicide even after "8 trillion" years of existing there.
3. What your fate may be is anyone's guess; for example, you may be reincarnated again and again until you are so eager to live that even eternal life will be worth living while being yourself.
4. A considered and fully informed decision to die forever will likely be honored.
5. Then: If you definitely want to live forever, you can; and if you definitely want to die, you also can. These are mutually exclusive: an eternal life is forever; dying at any point means that life is not forever and so not eternal.
6. The former entails preparing yourself for it. For example, one thing you need to do is to cement your own personality, so that you are not ashamed of anything in yourself and can enjoy your life without guilt.
7. If there is no eternal life, yet you believe there is, then at the worst you'll become a morally good person.
8. If there is eternal life, yet you believe there is not, then you doom yourself (perhaps) to an endless and pointless cycle of disconnected "reincarnations."
9. Place your bet.

I will say this for you; you present your points quite clearly, and the general impression I get from you is that of a decent human being. I agree with very little of what you say, but I am an advocate of credit where credit is due

However...

How did we suddenly get to reincarnation? You're of the christian faith right, I wasn't aware you guys were big on that. At least be consistent in your nonsense.
You must surely see how so much of your faith is built upon wish-fulfillment. An emotional need (or at least, the illusion of one, that many people have liberated themselves from) to have something happen after death, to have that eternal life, is pure fantasy. It goes against all that we know in modern science, it flies in the face of biology, physics and basic logic. Will you at least acknowledge the wish-fulfillment aspect of it?
The wager is not logical, because it is fundamentally flawed as a logical standpoint. No matter how hard people try, they cannot believe anything they don't already, and the punishment for non-belief, no matter how moral you are, is to BURN FOR ETERNITY. I will capitalise that every single time I use it, because it is such an abhorrent thought that God could allow it, I really want to hammer it home into the minds of theists.

(April 9, 2015 at 10:03 pm)datc Wrote: It's not mythology but an argument.

1. If you don't desire to live forever now, then you have no reason to prepare yourself for eternal life.
2. Even if upon entering heaven or paradise and seeing for yourself what it's like, you change your mind, an unprepared person cannot remain there, as he has not proofed himself again suicide even after "8 trillion" years of existing there.
3. What your fate may be is anyone's guess; for example, you may be reincarnated again and again until you are so eager to live that even eternal life will be worth living while being yourself.
4. A considered and fully informed decision to die forever will likely be honored.
5. Then: If you definitely want to live forever, you can; and if you definitely want to die, you also can. These are mutually exclusive: an eternal life is forever; dying at any point means that life is not forever and so not eternal.
6. The former entails preparing yourself for it. For example, one thing you need to do is to cement your own personality, so that you are not ashamed of anything in yourself and can enjoy your life without guilt.
7. If there is no eternal life, yet you believe there is, then at the worst you'll become a morally good person.
8. If there is eternal life, yet you believe there is not, then you doom yourself (perhaps) to an endless and pointless cycle of disconnected "reincarnations."
9. Place your bet.

I suggest living well and morally, because it will make THIS life better.  In the unlikely event you are right that there is an afterlife, I would think that living well now is the best preparation for it.  Living as if a supernatuarlly being will save you from death is not necessarily living morally. 

If you think the argument that takes as one premise the fact that human beings purposively improve during their entire lives and suggests as conclusion that this struggle is not in vain, that all are not made equal in death, so implausible that in your view, the probability of life after death is zero, then the argument will not work for you.

(April 9, 2015 at 10:24 pm)datc Wrote: If you think the argument that takes as one premise the fact that human beings purposively improve during their entire lives and suggests as conclusion that this struggle is not in vain, that all are not made equal in death, so implausible that in your view, the probability of life after death is zero, then the argument will not work for you.

It is implausible due to the lack of evidence for an afterlife and the evidence against dualism.

Your argument is wishful thinking, pure and simple.

(April 9, 2015 at 10:24 pm)datc Wrote: If you think the argument that takes as one premise the fact that human beings purposively improve during their entire lives and suggests as conclusion that this struggle is not in vain, that all are not made equal in death, so implausible that in your view, the probability of life after death is zero, then the argument will not work for you.

Of course it won't, we grew up. The hollerings about hellfire and brimstone do nothing to move us, and neither do the sweet promises of eternal salvation. Because we have realised these stories are just that...stories.
Also, you didn't answer my question Datc. What are your views on evolution? I know it was a few posts ago now, but I'd just be curious.

(April 9, 2015 at 10:24 pm)datc Wrote: If you think the argument that takes as one premise the fact that human beings purposively improve during their entire lives and suggests as conclusion that this struggle is not in vain, that all are not made equal in death, so implausible that in your view, the probability of life after death is zero, then the argument will not work for you.

Automatic bias, that's your argument.

(April 9, 2015 at 10:22 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I suggest living well and morally, because it will make THIS life better.

The demands of being fit to enjoy eternal life, the state of your self and your actions that soul-make you into a member of the kingdom of God, exceed the demands of a good temporal life that pays no heed to the somewhat more remote future.

As a result, the preparation for eternal life must be to that extent more grueling.

(April 9, 2015 at 10:33 pm)datc Wrote:

(April 9, 2015 at 10:22 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I suggest living well and morally, because it will make THIS life better.

The demands of being fit to enjoy eternal life, the state of your self and your actions that soul-make you into a member of the kingdom of God, exceed the demands of a good temporal life that pays no heed to the somewhat more remote future.

As a result, the preparation for eternal life must be to that extent more grueling.

The flying spaghetti monster must be very demanding.

(April 9, 2015 at 10:33 pm)datc Wrote:

(April 9, 2015 at 10:22 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I suggest living well and morally, because it will make THIS life better.

The demands of being fit to enjoy eternal life, the state of your self and your actions that soul-make you into a member of the kingdom of God, exceed the demands of a good temporal life that pays no heed to the somewhat more remote future.

As a result, the preparation for eternal life must be to that extent more grueling.

And yet, the question remains...what if you are wrong? You will have wasted all that effort and time for nothing, when you could have been focused on making the real world a better place both for you and others.
And what if you picked the wrong religion entirely? What if God allows only people from one of the thousands of branches of christianity claiming to be the 'true way'?
What if the hindus are right, or the bloody aztecs?
Are you really sure you want to hinge your entire life around a dusty old book?

(April 9, 2015 at 10:42 pm)Iroscato Wrote: And yet, the question remains...what if you are wrong? You will have wasted all that effort and time for nothing, when you could have been focused on making the real world a better place both for you and others.

The dignity of a life enlightened by religion is higher than that of an atheist life; however, attaining that dignity indeed takes time and effort, and an atheist is unable even to recognize that his life is subpar. His higher faculties are dulled by the very self-contempt that you have amply demonstrated here in the discussion of differences between man and animals above. His incentives toward "making the real world a better place both for him and others" are negated by his own understanding of the "world," "himself," and "others" as hopelessly transient.