Share your worldview?

[vulcanlogician]

Great responses - very helpful and well argued! I appreciate it.

All in all, quite interesting and a lot of similarities. I need to do some deeper thinking on a lot of what was said, but a couple questions do jump out -

1) How do you deal with the idea of ceasing to exist after death - or doesn't it bother you?
2) How do you explain what could be considered evidence of intelligent design (such as DNA) - or the statistical improbability we could have happened by random occurrence.

Another is - Can you explain why you became an atheist? But that could easily be a topic for another thread.

1) I assume that I will cease to exist after death, but I don't know for sure. Nobody does. Sure, people claim to know, but people claim a lot of things. People claim to have knowledge that we will be reincarnated after death. I don't assume that they know what they are talking about. How could they know? Same deal with heaven/hell. Nobody knows what happens after death. Nobody.

2) Intelligent design? Have you studied our solar system? Rocks flying all over the place, crashing into one another... balls of gas coalescing into ringed mega-planets. Yet an orderly system emerges from it. To say it was intelligent design is to focus on the order and ignore all the disorder.

With biology, we have natural selection. Think about a game of king of the mountain. The guy who struggled to the top didn't get there by design. He just had the right set of attributes required for the task. If you ran a tournament of king of the mountain where all the losers were eliminated, you'd see a common "design"  emerge when you inspect those players who were able to remain in the game. For instance, they'd be strong... or perhaps nimble, or both.

I had probability explained to me in terms of Yahtzee. Rolling a Yahtzee is rare, right? Yes... it is unlikely. But guess what? So is rolling 1, 2, 2, 3, 5. It is just as unlikely that you will roll 1, 2, 2, 3, 5 as it is that you will roll a yahtzee... but when you roll a Yahtzee on your first roll you say "Wow! I got lucky! There was a slim chance of that happening." But, really, the chances were no better (or worse) than rolling 1, 2, 2, 3, 5.

I became an atheist because it seemed like a reasonable position to hold. After looking at both sides of the issue, atheism seemed far more plausible. This process started when I was around 12 years old and started thinking about things for myself. Before then, I simply accepted theism because I was told by family and others that God exists.

[The Grand Nudger]

1) I assume that I will cease to exist after death, but I don't know for sure. Nobody does. Sure, people claim to know, but people claim a lot of things. People claim to have knowledge that we will be reincarnated after death. I don't assume that they know what they are talking about. How could they know? Same deal with heaven/hell. Nobody knows what happens after death. Nobody.

Speak for yourself, lol.  

[Astreja]

Great responses - very helpful and well argued! I appreciate it.

All in all, quite interesting and a lot of similarities. I need to do some deeper thinking on a lot of what was said, but a couple questions do jump out -

1) How do you deal with the idea of ceasing to exist after death - or doesn't it bother you?
2) How do you explain what could be considered evidence of intelligent design (such as DNA) - or the statistical improbability we could have happened by random occurrence.

Another is - Can you explain why you became an atheist? But that could easily be a topic for another thread.

1.  It used to disturb me a bit until I loosened the grip on my ego a bit, realizing that there wasn't much of a qualitative difference between "my" ideas and the same ideas thought by someone else in another place and time.  Since so much of us is comprised of the things we enjoy and the way we see the universe, and since other people can enjoy similar things and have similar insights, I'm already part of a de facto group immortality just by being here and experiencing stuff.

2.  I work in medicine.  I hear a lot of things that gainsay intelligent design, such as the finickiness of the gastrointestinal system and the batshit-insane way the endocrine system is set up.  I also do not see either randomness or improbability in our biochemical origins, as chemistry works on rather consistent principles and the Miller-Urey experiment from the 1950s demonstrated that complex organic molecules can form from simpler inorganic compounds.

Why did I become an atheist?  I think I was one all along.  I tried to cultivate religious belief at varying times in my life, but for whatever reason the skeptical "Yeah, riiiiight..." part of my brain is locked in the "on" state.  I've never at any point in my 60 years been able to experience genuine religious faith.

[vulcanlogician]

1) I assume that I will cease to exist after death, but I don't know for sure. Nobody does. Sure, people claim to know, but people claim a lot of things. People claim to have knowledge that we will be reincarnated after death. I don't assume that they know what they are talking about. How could they know? Same deal with heaven/hell. Nobody knows what happens after death. Nobody.

Speak for yourself, lol.  

I am speaking for myself. I've always liked how it was put in Plato's Apology:

For to fear death, men, is in
fact nothing other than to seem to be wise, but not to be so. For it is
to seem to know what one does not know: no one knows whether
death does not even happen to be the greatest of all goods for the
human being; but people fear it as though they knew well that it is
the greatest of evils.

You gotta be at least 1% agnostic about it, Khem. After all (unless you're going to put credence into NDEs like Rik) we have no information. My pet theory: we see a screen-- "Game Over (please insert coin)" ... I simply find oblivion to be more plausible.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not, and we have plenty of information. "We" may see all sorts of things..hell, we may even see an eternity stretch out before us..but whatever we do see..we are seeing it while we're alive. We see nothing when we're dead, there is no longer a we -to- see even if there were something to be seen.....which...there isn't.

[vulcanlogician]

True, but you've merely challenged all gnostic positions. Me having a dream about winning the lottery in no way makes it more likely that I will win the lottery. I get that, and that's why I place NO credence into ANY tales about the afterlife, reincarnation, or the "great beyond."

But, by the same token, me having a dream about winning the lottery doesn't make is LESS likely that I will win either. I like this example because the fact is, winning is unlikely-- just as any sort of afterlife is. My 1% agnosticism about the afterlife is simply an acknowledgment that I don't know... in no way does not knowing tip the scales in favor of an afterlife existing or not. But not knowing is not knowing.

[The Grand Nudger]

True, but you've merely challenged all gnostic positions.

-I- haven't.    Are you 1% agnostic about there being a real dc universe full of real dc superheroes?

Me having a dream about winning the lottery in no way makes it more likely that I will win the lottery. I get that, and that's why I place NO credence into ANY tales about the afterlife, reincarnation, or the "great beyond."

But, by the same token, me having a dream about winning the lottery doesn't make is LESS likely that I will win either. I like this example because the fact is, winning is unlikely-- just as any sort of afterlife is.

Likely?  Who said anything about things being likely, or unlikely?  Imma insist on seeing the math.............

The afterlife isn't unlikely, it's non-existent...just like the gods and ghosts it's supposed to be brimming with.

My 1% agnosticism about the afterlife is simply an acknowledgment that I don't know... in no way does not knowing tip the scales in favor of an afterlife existing or not. But not knowing is not knowing.

OFC, but you not knowing is not the same as nobody knowing. I'm sure there are plenty of things you don't know that somebody else does. This..apparently, is one of those things.

[vulcanlogician]

Okay 1% is a little strong, and I chose it arbitrarily. The DC universe example is even better than my lottery example. I am exactly as certain about the real DC universe as I am about any afterlife. (Hopefully that clarifies what I am saying here.) We are talking 0.00000X% with many more zeroes than shown. 

I hope you realize that my pushing the agnostic position was an attempt to get a theist to reconsider his/her position, and not something that drives my consideration of possibilities when contemplating the afterlife.

Let me put it like this: Which is a more reasonable position? Certainty of heaven/hell or agnosticism?

[polymath257]

An aspect of this: does anyone contemplate their non-existence before they were born/conceived? Do they find it bothersome?

I figure I was non-existent for billions of years prior to this life and will be non-existent again for billions more.

I might as well make the most of this brief period of life I have.

[The Grand Nudger]

Okay 1% is a little strong, and I chose it arbitrarily. The DC universe example is even better than my lottery example. I am exactly as certain about the real DC universe as I am about any afterlife. (Hopefully that clarifies what I am saying here.) We are talking 0.00000X% with many more zeroes than shown. 

I hope you realize that my pushing the agnostic position was an attempt to get a theist to reconsider his/her position, and not something that drives my consideration of possibilities when contemplating the afterlife.

Let me put it like this: Which is a more reasonable position? Certainty of heaven/hell or agnosticism?

b-mine

Certainty would be the more reasonable position..but it's not always the most useful, as your explanation for offering agnosticsm in this regard, in bold, suggests.  You negotiated with the truth, by way of nonexistent probabilities and math you have not done and cannot show, in order to sway a person with a contravening opinion to reconsider their own fanciful beliefs.

That act of negotiation is what lends fairy tales the patina of credibility required to persist as they are in the first place.