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

[The Grand Nudger]

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?

Neither of those two things is strictly coherent with the idea of vicarious redemption, or of divine command - the two overriding ethical narratives of the old and new testaments.  

In the old testament, you absolutely must kill whomever god tells you to kill, and more often than not, god is telling his chosen people to kill their neighbors.  It's a moral imperative, and failure is actionable.  In the new testament, the neighbor that we're told to love is strung up to satisfy our debts, and that neighbor had a very low view of his fellow man.

Consider the ethical and existential predicament that a non believer may find themselves in, with respect to the abrahamic god. If we refuse to follow the divine commands, and utterly reject the notion that our misdeeds can be paid for with another persons blood, we will be condemned to hell for the immutable goodness of our being.

Why, then...should we be good?

[Silver]

Guess who won the Pascal wager.

[Porcupine]

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?"

Keep worrying like that, I say. The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

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).

I don't try to believe in anything. I wouldn't even if I were to become a theist (not that I'm not. What is God?). There is no trying---there is only being. Mental strife is an illusory thing based on a false conception of the mind that only serves to bewilder us and make us suffer. I hope that one day, you shall be free. Persist in your folly. Eventually you will give up .... that may be painful. But eventually you will give up in a way that doesn't resist your life and doesn't resist your being. You will not only give up but you will give up on giving up, too. You will realize that even hope is a sort of surrender and acceptance once you stop fighting yourself and you remove all wishing and grasping and 'if only' and 'why me?' from the picture. And I am not asking you to change or to try harder. It's okay to feel such things. I'm not telling you what to do. Persist in being the way you are as it's all you can do anyway. Go ahead. Keep at it. See what happens. See where that leads you. And maybe one day you will be free by realizing that you are unfree but you will be okay with that. There is nothing more liberating than no longer feeling the need to be at war with your self.

[Sal]

Guess who won the Pascal wager.

I was confident they would pull some semantical bullshit (ontological argument) out their ass, given how they claim to be a psych student. Guess we 2 owe ya 100 bucks.

[Silver]

Guess who won the Pascal wager.

I was confident they would pull some semantical bullshit (ontological argument) out their ass, given how they claim to be a psych student. Guess we 2 owe ya 100 bucks.

No, not to me. Boru won the bet.

[Sal]

Oh, right. Mb

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that, ultimately, the "what if" question has an unsatisfying answer. What if atheists are wrong? You tell us. If a good person who doesn't believe in heaven, or hell, or god, dies..what then? What is the what if? Vague threats of eternal damnation?

If a god wants to throw me in the pit, there's nothing that I can do about that. It's going to happen. Trying to believe isn't going to change the fact that I don't anymore than trying to flap my arms is going to turn me into a bird, and even if it could...I'd have to pick the right god to believe in. Assuming that, somehow, all of this did work, and I could try my way into belief, and I did pick the right belief, and I did get the cookie....so what? What does any of that have to do with right or wrong, or being good to people?

That's a scheme for sneaking into a themepark in the sky, not ethics.

[polymath257]

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).

And there's Pascal's Wager!

It is false that you have nothing to lose. By choosing to believe in one version of a deity, you choose NOT to believe in all the other versions.

And that isn't even to mention the rank dishonesty involved.

Also, for me, belief isn't a choice. I am either convinced by the evidence or I am not. I can take certain ideas *tentatively* to investigate them, but I don't say I believe them in such circumstances.

So, belief isn't a matter of 'trying'.

[Shazzalovesnovels]

Shazza is female FM ; )

---

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?

I'm only 19 and still seeking answers but so far I've got this.

1. Hope (that he's real)
2. It makes a LOT of sense that he would exist, meaning I find it plausible based on the Bible 
3. Too many coincidences
4. The Big Bang DOESN'T make sense 
5. There is a limitation to man's knowledge. We don't even have the cure for cancer, how can we be so sure that's not all we don't know about? If we don't even have definitive answers on religion vs the big bang and the Genesis and end of mankind, it means there's a that we're not aware of certain things.

What are your thoughts on this?

[chimp3]

Are you saying you wouldn't be able to distinguish between good and evil without threat of punishment or promise of reward?

I was wondering why we bother to be good, if we'll all just end up in the same boat in the end. I could be completely horrid to people and not suffer 'eternal damnation'.

Actually, you could be completely horrid to people then accept Baby Jesus and go to heaven. The best of both worlds!