Where do we go when we die and are you afraid?

[The Grand Nudger]

What's the point of being good to people if killing the better man will cleanse our sins? What's the point of being good to people if being good to people isn't what gets us into heaven? What's the point of being good to people if divine authority is aligned against them?

These are all far more interesting questions than what the point of being good to people may be for an atheist. As you may have noticed, atheists (or at least the kind of atheists you're dealing with here) tend to give straightforward answers. People like to be good to each other. We like to feel good, we like to make others feel good. For some, it's habit or nature. Others may lean in and propose that there's no particular reason, when they think about it, they just are good to people- but maybe only by circumstance. None of these answers are remarkable. That people are capable of being good to people and are good to people is a brute fact, and we can safely assume that people's motivations for this are as varied and as malleable as anything else.

[Shazzalovesnovels]

Psychologically, I would be more concerned about the delusional ramifications brought about by thinking religious faith is better for humanity.

But the Bible does have some pretty good ideas don't you think?

You know, "thou shalt not kill" and "love thy neighbour"  

What do you disagree with?

[polymath257]

Psychologically, I would be more concerned about the delusional ramifications brought about by thinking religious faith is better for humanity.

But the Bible does have some pretty good ideas don't you think?

You know, "thou shalt not kill" and "love thy neighbour"  

What do you disagree with?

Most societies agree with those. Again, no deities required.

But those things that are special to the Bible? THOSE are nasty, brutish and horrible. Read the OT sometime.

[Silver]

But the Bible does have some pretty good ideas don't you think?

You know, "thou shalt not kill" and "love thy neighbour"  

What do you disagree with?

Except those ideas existed culturally well before the Bible and can be understood especially without the Bible. The problem is in thinking that the Bible alone has ever had the only source of wisdom or morality.

[Porcupine]

Psychologically, I would be more concerned about the delusional ramifications brought about by thinking religious faith is better for humanity.

But the Bible does have some pretty good ideas don't you think?

You know, "thou shalt not kill" and "love thy neighbour"  

I'd replace "pretty good" ideas with "blatantly obvious" ideas.

[Fake Messiah]

Psychologically, I would be more concerned about the delusional ramifications brought about by thinking religious faith is better for humanity.

But the Bible does have some pretty good ideas don't you think?

You know, "thou shalt not kill" and "love thy neighbour"  

What do you disagree with?

Don't tell the only reason you are not killing people is because Bible forbids it. I mean Bible also forbids homosexuality, so is the only reason keeping you to jump naked on some guy because Bible forbids it or is there something else beside the Bible?

[Porcupine]

Heh. For me... being told not to do something only increases my curiosity about it.

[Duty]

Shazza is female FM ; )

---

Lawz
Shazza - next to "religious views" you wrote "he exists" - which god are you referring to? Thor? Zeus? Perseus? Ganesh? Vishnu?

He with a capital 'H'

And I only know Him by God/Jesus/Jehovah. The rest are fictional.

What evidence do you have that Jehova is any less fictional than the rest?

[Shazzalovesnovels]

We don't go anywhere ... we just change form. The mind-matter we are made of may eventually unite into a complex consciousness again in the vast future---just as all organisms came out of mind/matter---and there may be your conscious self once again, even if it takes billions or trillions of years into the future (or much, much, much longer than that), but 'you' will have no memory of it, you will not be human and is it really you? It would be you only in the same way that one of 'your' past lives would be you if there were many universes prior to the big bang, stretching back far further than 11 billion years, but the energy itself that everything is ... still remained. Just in another form---and 'you' already were some sort of strange alien lifeform in some pre-big bang state of existence. If we have future lives they are no more or less us than any past life that we would have no memory of and certainly wouldn't be human.

Then again, it may be such that the laws of the universe don't allow for any metaphysical possibility that your mind-matter will ever combine again into another complex consciousness .... there's still the mental buzzing arranged throughout your body but there may never again be a 'you' ... even one that would never ever have any memory or psychological continuity with you as a human now.

It just all depends on how the metaphysical laws of reality are set up (when I say 'metaphysical' read it as 'mental and physical'). It's certainly logically possible that you will become conscious after death but that doesn't mean that it's metaphysically possible. Something will always exist it will just change form. So the question is: are the laws of reality such that it is metaphysically possible for the matter that you are made to recombine into a sort of complex consciousness in the future? The answer to that may be yes or no. But if the answer is yes then I believe it will eventually happen given enough time because it is my belief that metaphysical possibility + infinity = metaphysical actuality.

In any case, it may not be metaphysically possible and even if it is you will certainly have no memory of it. So whether you would consider it to really be 'you' or not would depend on if you would consider past lives to be you even if you could never have any sort of memory or connection or knowledge of them.

To answer  your second question: No, I am not afraid. Not even one tiny little bit. I neither have a desire for nor a fear of death. Epicurus put it best:

"Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not."

Thank you for taking the time to write that even though I am thoroughly confused now    : )

And in regard to not fearing death, how I wish I had your confidence. It would be great for my mind to be at ease but I'm always wondering "what if?"

By the way, I've always wondered, Why don't atheists TRY to believe? The way I see it is, you've got nothing to lose. (Although false faith is not a good thing).

[brewer]

But the Bible does have some pretty good ideas don't you think?

You know, "thou shalt not kill" and "love thy neighbour"  

What do you disagree with?

It also has some very bad ideas (genocide for one).

Cherry picking from a book of stories is not helping your position.