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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
January 25, 2015 at 7:01 am
Haha, well yes. If you have infinite time, there's not any sense of urgency!
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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
January 25, 2015 at 7:50 am
(January 24, 2015 at 10:18 am)Davka Wrote: The prospect of eternal life would be torture if it was mandatory.
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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
January 25, 2015 at 4:28 pm
(January 25, 2015 at 7:50 am)h4ym4n Wrote: (January 24, 2015 at 10:18 am)Davka Wrote: The prospect of eternal life would be torture if it was mandatory.
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Atheism is a non-prophet organization join today.
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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
February 4, 2015 at 1:20 pm
Why do you not believe in an afterlife? How can you have any knowledge of the afterlife? It's a total unknown to you. You have absolutely no evidence to show that we don't exist in some form after this life. You should be just as open to the possibility of an afterlife as not. I think an atheist would view the afterlife as an unknown rather than a foregone conclusion that we simply don't exist after death.
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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
February 4, 2015 at 1:38 pm
(February 4, 2015 at 1:20 pm)Lek Wrote: Why do you not believe in an afterlife? How can you have any knowledge of the afterlife? It's a total unknown to you. You have absolutely no evidence to show that we don't exist in some form after this life. You should be just as open to the possibility of an afterlife as not. I think an atheist would view the afterlife as an unknown rather than a foregone conclusion that we simply don't exist after death.
Sam Harris explained it best.
Quote: There are very good reasons to think it’s not true and we know this from now 150 years of neurology where you damage areas of the brain and faculties are lost. It’s not that everyone with brain damage has their soul perfectly intact, they can’t get the words out. Everything about your mind can be damaged by damaging the brain. You can cease to recognize faces, you can cease to know the names of animals but you still know the names of tools. The fragmentation in the way in which our mind is parcellated at the level of the brain is not at all intuitive, and there’s a lot known about it.
And what we’re being asked to consider is that you damage one part of the brain and something about the mind and subjectivity is lost, you damage another and yet more is lost, and yet if you damage the whole thing at death we can rise off the brain with all our faculties intact, recognizing grandma and speaking English.
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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
February 4, 2015 at 1:40 pm
(February 4, 2015 at 1:20 pm)Lek Wrote: You have absolutely no evidence to show that we don't exist in some form after this life. There are a great many things that we do not have evidence for. How many of those do you accept because someone claimed that it's true without providing any evidence?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
February 4, 2015 at 1:59 pm
(This post was last modified: February 4, 2015 at 2:06 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Waited a bit to post this...but....is it possible that these things being "unfaceable" is actually -part- of the indoctrination so many received?
The "first invent the disease" part of "then sell the cure"?
My first reaction to the OP was, "I don't face the unfaceable, nothings unfaceable". I don't have to find a second solution to a problem because I never bought the first solution -or- the problem to begin with. Alot of the implication here seems to surround death.....and this is only anecdotal, but I've seen people face death.......and it looks alot like the way they face life, identical, really...and I've never noticed anyone who stood out in this regard, nor have I ever seen an occasion where I could determine their underlying belief structure by the way they reacted.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
February 4, 2015 at 2:04 pm
(February 4, 2015 at 1:20 pm)Lek Wrote: Why do you not believe in an afterlife? How can you have any knowledge of the afterlife? It's a total unknown to you. You have absolutely no evidence to show that we don't exist in some form after this life. You should be just as open to the possibility of an afterlife as not. I think an atheist would view the afterlife as an unknown rather than a foregone conclusion that we simply don't exist after death.
An afterlife requires dualism. There is not only no evidence for dualism, the scientific evidence is completely against it.
Therefore, belief in an afterlife is not rational.
Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.
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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
February 4, 2015 at 5:33 pm
(February 4, 2015 at 2:04 pm)Chas Wrote: An afterlife requires dualism. There is not only no evidence for dualism, the scientific evidence is completely against it.
Therefore, belief in an afterlife is not rational.
How can science be completely against an afterlife when it has never studied it? To me it seems very reasonable that the "life force" (for lack of a better word) is separate from the physical body. If we acquired all the materials that a human is made of and created all the organs, etc and put them together would we have a living human being? What would it take to start it up? When a person dies, all of the material substance is still present; just the life is gone. I see nothing illogical in remaining open to a non-material existence.
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RE: Atheists: Facing the unfaceable
February 4, 2015 at 5:40 pm
(This post was last modified: February 4, 2015 at 5:41 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
You used the terms reasonable and "life force" in the same sentence. /argument.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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