Do you believe in the afterlife?

rTz said:
The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?"

Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is.

Gogetters said:
Which means nothingness?

Aironic said:
For an existence that has no meaning, the most logical thing to assume is that nothingness awaits when the flesh is no longer useful. What would be the point of people without a point gathering together endlessly in some sort of spiritual paradise, without there even being the option of suicide to escape?

Immortality is a punishment; not a reward.

Angelkin123 said:
yes, i do believe in the afterlife, i believe their is a heaven and hell

hajime-eli said:
I don't believe in afterlife nor in reincarnation. To tell the truth I don't believe in any form of religion (and their contents), but I respect who does and I think they live better than me.

smokes said:
yes i do

feder said:
Yep. I'm Christian and we believe in Heaven and Hell, so I definitely believe in an afterlife.

Aironic said:
Immortality is a punishment; not a reward.

ukonkivi said:
Maybe not the most logically, but more enjoyably.

evilantman said:
if i did believe in the after life i would be on my knees day and night scoring points for the after life.

Baman said:
I don't make a habit of believing in completely nonsensical fantasies, and afterlife is about as nonsensical as it gets. Why would we even die in the first place if we actually somehow didn't die after all?
It's nothing but baseless speculation all hailing from mankind's fear of death.

Death is something we should acknowledge and accept, so that we may live our lives to the fullest. I don't see the point of running away from reality in a world of fantasies.

ukonkivi said:
Well, if it makes a person more happy while they're alive, it is helping them to live their short life to the fullest. Maybe not the most logically, but more enjoyably.

wnr said:
Baman's posts about this kind of subjects are quite curious.
He really embodies the bad/unaware side of the positivism which has been dominating western culture since it was born about in 1850; I think he even believes life is a configuration of chemical processes, which is something the science itself (I repeat it, the modern technic technologic representative science) helps to prove wrong.

Baman said:
I suppose, but still, I'd think it generally more healthy to face and accept reality rather than seeking refuge in a more comfortable illusion.

Baman said:


So tell me, how do we gain actual knowledge about the objective reality if not through science?
And no, sorry, unproven heresay of miracles and magic or ancient propaganda scriptures doesn't count.
And so long as you have a belief that goes far beyond what is scientifically provable, which includes most religions, gods, demons and afterlives, it will always be an illusion.

wnr said:
What is objective knowledge? What you think are "proofs" aren't really proofs, you think they are because you have FAITH in machines/people that tell you about them; you have faith in the fact that what you see in a mycroscope is the true reality, or faith in the people that certificate that mycroscopes are reliable.
Moreover, you have faith in the ridicoulous fact that what you see is exactly what "it's there"; like if colors existed before you see them or sounds before you hear them.
When you are in a dark room, you don't see any object, though we suppose they are there, and when you dream, you see many objects when there isn't any; yet you believe that the simple sunlight is enough to make your sight a reliable tool of "knowledge".

wnr said:
What is objective knowledge? What you think are "proofs" aren't really proofs, you think they are because you have FAITH in machines/people that tell you about them; you have faith in the fact that what you see in a mycroscope is the true reality, or faith in the people that certificate that mycroscopes are reliable.
Moreover, you have faith in the ridicoulous fact that what you see is exactly what "it's there"; like if colors existed before you see them or sounds before you hear them.
When you are in a dark room, you don't see any object, though we suppose they are there, and when you dream, you see many objects when there isn't any; yet you believe that the simple sunlight is enough to make your sight a reliable tool of "knowledge".
Your positions would sound a little less ridicoulous if you tried to argument some of them, though it's obviously you don't, since what you say is clearly a "position" born from taking from granted what seems to be the cultural condition in which both you and me live.

... matter is made of atoms and nothing else, right?

Kaiserpingvin said:
You are of course right to scold Baman-tan for using the word "objective", it's as useless as "subjective". Oh the day we can exile these words, what a glorious day it will be ;_;

"Baman" said:
There exist one objective reality that humans can perceive. Whether or not there is something else that lies out of our perception is completely irrelevant, as that is not a part of our reality.
However, the reality that we do perceive is obviously very much in tune with the "real" reality. We know this because we have survived this long. If we were not able to perceive reality, our ancestors would have been wiped out by predators and hazards they could not observe.

Questioning the reality of reality like this is completely absurd and pointless.

"Kaiserpingvin" said:
When I am in a dark room, I can touch things and thus know they are there. When no one sees anything, we do not have any evidence that it is there, but nor do we have counterevidence, and it is very hard to figure out what such counterevidence at all would look like. Because, urr, we'd have to check. You live your life on this assumption, that things stay while we do not look, and indeed they do. After all they are there again when we look, and they are also there if someone who doesn't know walks into the room and sees them. Object permanence is one of the best-proven theses about reality there are - and if there was no object permanence, well, we wouldn't be alive, but if we were, then science would figure out there was no object permanence. Then we'd die as the air around us vanished.

Tachii said:
I don't see it as being useless. Sure, absolute objectivity doesn't really occur even in science experiments, but to minimize subjectivity as much as possible (when it matters) is a rather important fundamental uh, damn I dunno the word here, idea? structure? in science. To eliminate as much bias as possible, like with several repeats of the experiment by different people, to review and question the results. To eliminate the term altogether seems a bit silly. Again, if there's an alternative, I'm happen to hear, but just suggesting to remove it sounds a bit extreme...

wnr said:
How does your touch assure you they are there? You can touch them in dreams too.
It's true that we have no counterevidence, but without evidence either, dumb "I believe in what I see! Science tells me all the truths and explains the most real world! I don't see a divinity so it doesn't exist!" and similar things are pointless.
I'm just saying the most concrete and practical experience is already a good starting point for further reflections and something that should discourage from making assumptions without arguments like Baman-tan does.

Returning to what you said, "someone that walks in and sees them" is again an assumption taken from external and sensitive reality, like the assumption that if there's no thing, we couldn't see it.
I myself do believe in the existence of external reality, but again using it to prove other assumptions (first of all the existence of the external reality itself) is just a dumb (badside positivist) point of view that leads to arrogant positions.

I don't want to look like a metaphysics freak that wants to uselessly put in doubt the existance of external reality just for the sake of it; I kinda am a metaphysics freak, but not in those terms XD
I just want to show how science doesn't "shut down" speculations or proove anything, and how instead it "stops" one step before speculative and abstract questions; that's the good side of positivism, science as a tool of bringing better living conditions to human beings.



The question about matter being made of atoms is one of my favourites when discussing this subject: science itself tells us matter is made of atoms, which are "just" a configuration of matter itself.
I wonder, how can a living being (even the simplest one) be explained in these terms? When a worm moves, why and how does this bunch of atoms start moving? The standard ridicoulous answer I would expect is "nervous system of the worm sends an electric impulse to the worm's muscles, which contract". Why this is ridicoulous if put in a materialist context, I think doesn't need to be explained.

Kaiserpingvin said:

Well, that's not my issue with them. My issue is that they mean so many things by now which really do not have anything with each other to do.

Objective/subjective means, by now, also inherent/external, permanent/impermanent, essential/inessential, non-arbitrary/arbitrary, mind-independent/mind-dependent, invariant over perspectives/variant on perspectives, has to do with grammatical object/has to do with grammatical subject, perhaps even true/false and oh so many other things you need to distinguish. And the confusion you end up because you combine all these things into single words can't be underestimated; you can find any single one of these concepts being lacking in a certain case, and then extrapolate that it is "subjective" or "objective", and then conclude the other concepts are also involved.

It is confusing enough that back when the words were coined, they meant the exact opposite of today...

...So yeah.