RE: Am I Going To Hell?
August 3, 2015 at 5:08 pm
(This post was last modified: August 3, 2015 at 5:10 pm by Fidel_Castronaut.)
(August 3, 2015 at 12:20 pm)ktrap Wrote:Quote:Pandæmonium
And what about the 'I don't know' conclusion holds less validity and intellectual honesty to the presumption of knowledge without evidence to you?
Why is saying 'I don't know' ruled out when someone rejects a claim (yours) about something that definitely happens following death but 'ergo nothing' is immediately viewed as the default?
I don't believe in any deity. Am I thus doomed to believe that 'nothing' happens as a result? Is my actual answer of "I don't know" ruled out?
Also, Redbeard didn't actually say 'nothing happens', as evidenced by the crucial 'what if' at the beginning of the quote.
A retraction of your claim that Shuffle believes nothing happens would also be welcome as there is no evidential basis for holding the idea that that position is his.
I have no issue to the "I don't know" answer. However, the reasoning applied by atheist to say God does not exist due to lack of evidence should also be applied to the afterlife.
Scenario A
1) God does not exist due to lack of evidence
2) Nothing happens after I die due to lack of evidence
Scenario B
1) I don't know if God exists
2) I don't know what happens after I die
Scenario C
1) God does not exist due to lack of evidence
2) I don't know what happens after I die
Scenario A & B is consistent, Scenario C is not consistent. That is all I am saying. If in your own mind Scenario C is acceptable then fine with me, but I would not consider that consistent reasoning from an Atheist.
One can reject an unevidenced positive claim but not reject the overarching concept. For example, an abrahamic christian god can be rejected (to date) owing to the self-refuting and obvious anthropomorphic traits it contains. This is an aside from the inability to meet the basic minimum requirement for making me think there might be something to said claim, ie, something testable, verifiable and repeatable. But that doesn't therefore mean that *no god* exists, as I haven't seen or heard every god claim that has ever been (or will ever be) proposed.
The problem with your scenario C is that it automatically assumes only one God, most likely *yours*. If that's true, I can say *your* God does not exist due to lack of evidence (to lend weight to your positive claims) and maintain my stance in 2.
You are still strawmanning every other poster on this thread by presuming what they believe rather than simply listening to what they are saying. If someone says they don't know what happens to them when they die but they don't believe in an afterlife, then who are you to say that equates to "ergo nothing"? If we're bound only by our imagination, then an almost infinite number of things might happen to us when we die. The only logically consistent statement in lieu of evidence being presented is to admit we don't know, and may probably never know.