A question for athiests..

[jmarti445]

LOL!

 

[Broheim]

Electronic equipment was never self aware to begin with. Even "true AI" is not really self aware, it's just a set of instructions based on a preset of conditional checks.

and what makes you think we aren't just that?

 

[Ancalagon44]

Ok, but explain this fact, energy cannot be created or destroyed. And it require's something in order to maintain it. When we die, the energy in our bodies siezes to exist. Where does it go? And more so then not where did it come from in the first place. I'm not saying that you are wrong cause I can agree with a lot of what you have said....I'm trying to grasp of how I want to phrase this cause it could come off the wrong way...

In Japan, they leave departed bodies out due to the belief that it takes 3 days to for the person's essence to completely leave the body. There is a non-theistic belief system in Japan and china but they believe in Reincarnation. There is also a belief in Judaism(more specifically Kabbalaistic beliefs) that the body doesn't obtain a soul until 9 1/2 weeks after you were conceived. Knowing that energy cannot be created or destroyed due to a scientific fact, then an essence would have to be obtained from somewhere or something, if you say your parents then I say how is that possible due to it being threatening to the mother and therefore she would likely die from this process.

I'm not saying that there is a god or that there isn't a god, or that there is an afterlife, cause until you die you don't know, and I don't believe in a Hell or an everlasting Heaven. All I'm saying is this, humanity is flawed in nature, therefore how can one expect to know everything that there is to know when they haven't even researched it or studied it? I have my take on it, but how can you say that my take on things is wrong when you haven't even studied the possiblity that you may have overlooked something?

There is no religion or belief system higher then the truth. What is the truth? Hell if I know, I'm searching for it still.

What does dying have to do with energy? The only energy in my body is the heat in my cells, energy stored in fat (chemical energy) and maybe a little electrical energy. All of that will leave me naturally. Heat seeps out into the surroundings, electrical energy is used by resistance, chemical energy will be converted by micro organisms into something they can use. So... really not sure how energy relates. If you want to refer to a msytical soul energy - prove it exists.

Yes, quite right, we dont know everything. There could well be a pink elephant over the horizon. So how do you decide then? Hinduism could be right, or Judaism, or Christianity, or Islam. But all of those religions have something in common - they presuppose a belief in the divine and the supernatural. In my time on this Earth, I have never encountered anything that made me believe in the supernatural. So to me, those look false. Moreover, they require me to subscribe to dogma and beliefs that I just dont share.

You said yourself, you dont know everything, but why would that make you think the answer HAS to be supernatural? Why could it not be quite mundane - we die and decompose and thats it? When you see an advanced piece of technology, you have no idea why it works. So why would you assume it has to be magic? Could it not be just the result of hard work? Same with death - why does it have to be mystical and magical?

Occams Razor and all that.

 

[jmarti445]

What does dying have to do with energy? The only energy in my body is the heat in my cells, energy stored in fat (chemical energy) and maybe a little electrical energy. All of that will leave me naturally. Heat seeps out into the surroundings, electrical energy is used by resistance, chemical energy will be converted by micro organisms into something they can use. So... really not sure how energy relates. If you want to refer to a msytical soul energy - prove it exists.

Yes, quite right, we dont know everything. There could well be a pink elephant over the horizon. So how do you decide then? Hinduism could be right, or Judaism, or Christianity, or Islam. But all of those religions have something in common - they presuppose a belief in the divine and the supernatural. In my time on this Earth, I have never encountered anything that made me believe in the supernatural. So to me, those look false. Moreover, they require me to subscribe to dogma and beliefs that I just dont share.

You said yourself, you dont know everything, but why would that make you think the answer HAS to be supernatural? Why could it not be quite mundane - we die and decompose and thats it? When you see an advanced piece of technology, you have no idea why it works. So why would you assume it has to be magic? Could it not be just the result of hard work? Same with death - why does it have to be mystical and magical?

Occams Razor and all that.

It could be very mundane and i'm not saying that you are wrong, but the stuff that I've been through leads me to believe otherwise. And I could be totally wrong about it, all I'm going to say is that I follow my own path with stuff and each person must walk their own path in order to make it through life.

 

[Kadarin]

So what exactly do you believe happens after death? Your consciousness/self awareness can't just end, it has to keep going.

Please explain WHY you believe that your consciousness/self awareness can't end when your brain dies.

 

[Jeff7]

I dunno. I wouldn't consider dreams a bug. It's more like a feature. It's like a random screensaver when you go to sleep :^D

Except when you wake up, you find that your screensaver has deposited a few GB of temp files across your hard drive, and inserted some code snippets into a small number of DLL files.

(And I can only imagine what it's got to be like for animals, without anyone around to say, "It was only a dream, it was just your brain screwing with you. So if you're thinking of trying to eat my leg like you were dreaming, you'd best reconsider.")

 

[WelshBloke]

...

And there are no athiests. A true athiest doesnt believe in anything.
Athiests believe in something... not believeing. So they do believe in something.
So they are not athiests.
Athiests organize, hold meetings, raise money. True athiests would never do that.
True athiests would not even know one another. You would only find a true athiests sitting at home on a Sunday morning. Not on some athiests retreat organized gathering.

What?

 

[sourceninja]

Since most people here seem to have that faith, I just have a few curious questions.

Let's assume the Bible really does turn out to be a very well written fiction book, and there is no God and no heaven and no hell. Let's skip over, how the big bang started, and just assume it happened and it's explainable, to keep things simple.

Ok so that said now let's talk about death. So what exactly do you believe happens after death? Your consciousness/self awareness can't just end, it has to keep going. When you sleep, you are either dreaming, or time "Fast forwards" to when you wake up, either way there is always a full path of self awareness. So how would death work? Does your life just repeat itself but you just don't remember? Or do you get reincarnated and just don't remember your past life? I suppose you could get reincarnated to another planet, once this one is gone such as when the sun burns out. Or do you just see a void for eternity? (that would seriously suck, you can't even be bored to death, because you're already dead!) Something has to happen. What is it?

First, what is "I". Define consciousness.

Are we a collection of memories? Cut out part of the brain and we lose memories. Are we a collection of morals? Cut out part of the brain and we can lose morals. Are we a personality? That too can be altered by cutting the brain. Continue cutting and you can remove everything that you think of as you. We are just a very complex algorithm.

We assume that we are real intelligence. In fact, we could just be a really complex AI programed to think it is really intelligent. Are we really self aware or do you we just act like we are and programmed to think we are?

Personally, I hope I'm wrong and there is a wonderful afterlife (I'd like viking please). But I'm not going to change how I live my life and impact my decisions without direct scientific evidence.

 

[Broheim]

Saying there are athiests is like calling people pro-abortion.
No one is "pro abortion". No one says "hell yeah, kill that unborn sucker...please!".
There are pro women reproductive rights people, and those against women rights.
No one is pro or in support or wants abortion to happen.

And there are no athiests. A true athiest doesnt believe in anything.
Athiests believe in something... not believeing. So they do believe in something.
So they are not athiests.
Athiests organize, hold meetings, raise money. True athiests would never do that.
True athiests would not even know one another. You would only find a true athiests sitting at home on a Sunday morning. Not on some athiests retreat organized gathering.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like

 

[soulcougher73]

Seriously? Have you been eating retard sandwiches again?

Your life just ceases to exist. That is it.

 

[soulcougher73]

Ok so if your consciousness can really end, how can you even explain that? So you are self aware how does that just, end?

And yes it takes as much faith to be an atheist as it does to be any other religion. IMO it's just any other belief system. Some religions worship certain Gods, some worship animals, some worship things, others worship nothing, but at the end of the day, it's a belief system.

Oh and this is not to bash atheists, I'm legitimately curious. Not that I'm planning to switch over, just curious, is all.

Oh trust us. With your brand of logic you are not bashing us in the least. Just giving us more reason to not believe.

You might want to go educate yourself before you spout of nonsense.

 

[soulcougher73]

I'm coming back as a Twinkie? Cool.

What they hell kind of twinkie are you eating with animal in it?

 

[polarmystery]

OP is an idiot.

learn2science.

This.

 

[dank69]

You get reborn as the animal you ate the most in your previous life.

Time to take a serious stab at cannibalism. I hope this stuff tastes good. Anyone got any recipes? Do fat people taste like bacon?

 

[olds]

Well, if you are buried, you lay in the ground and rot. Bugs and worms eat you. That's it.

If you are cremated, you get burned up and placed in an urn. Eventually your ashes get passed on to someone that doesn't want them and they dump you in the trash and use the urn for a flower vase.

No conscious/subconscious/re-incarnation.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I think your consciousness and self-awareness probably just end. Despite your opinion to the contrary, you've never experienced an ultimate end to all workings in your brain. As an entity that has only ever been alive and conscious, you cannot imagine what it would be like. It wouldn't even be an experience at all, because there would be no mind there to experience it. It's lies completely outside of human comprehension. That's what makes it so terrifying.

 

[BeauJangles]

I think your consciousness and self-awareness probably just end. Despite your opinion to the contrary, you've never experienced an ultimate end to all workings in your brain. As an entity that has only ever been alive and conscious, you cannot imagine what it would be like. It would even be an experience at all, because there would be no mind there to experience it. It's lies completely outside of human comprehension. That's what makes it so terrifying.

Agreed. Sometimes I wish that I believed there was something greater after life, but the reality is that I believe we just cease. And that scares the poop out of me.

 

[soulcougher73]

Agreed. Sometimes I wish that I believed there was something greater after life, but the reality is that I believe we just cease. And that scares the poop out of me.

That is my belief as well but it has never scared me at all. What is their to be scared of? We know we cant stop it from happening and we just admitted we wont remember it anyways since we cease to exist

 

[BeauJangles]

That is my belief as well but it has never scared me at all. What is their to be scared of? We know we cant stop it from happening and we just admitted we wont remember it anyways since we cease to exist

Right, it doesn't make logical sense. What scares me is trying to think about not existing forever. Eternity is a concept that humans cannot internalize or, at least, I cannot internalize or understand and I think that lack of understanding elicits fear.

 

[Jeff7]

That is my belief as well but it has never scared me at all. What is their to be scared of? We know we cant stop it from happening and we just admitted we wont remember it anyways since we cease to exist

I guess the scary part comes from the fact that you have no idea when or how painfully death will come. (Unless you opt for suicide right now. Then you'll at least have narrowed down the options.)

 

[Ns1]

So what exactly do you believe happens after death? Your consciousness/self awareness can't just end, it has to keep going.

it just ends.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

You get reborn as the animal you ate the most in your previous life.

I'm quoting this for when my girlfriend questions me about my new "all shark" diet.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to enjoy the stripper factory & beer volcano. R'amen. And, if I get there and the beer is cheap beer, I'm coming back to be one of those mischievous ghosts.

At least cheap strippers are ok

 

[Broheim]

I'm quoting this for when my girlfriend questions me about my new "all shark" diet.

I'm going with butterflies


nobody ever suspects the butterfly

 

[RedRooster]

I had a dream once that I was falling out of a plane and hit the ground head first. I burrowed in, like a fence post and my body died. But my consciousness stayed alive. In my dead body, underground. For presumably forever.
I woke up shortly after that, that was concerning.