Atheists and the afterlife,

[claymore]

Guy I work with is a dyed in the wool atheist,hardcore. Having one of our many discussions on the subject he admitted to me that he believes in life after death.I told him he couldn`t have it both ways but he insists there is no conflict with his beliefs. Do any ABers feel the same way?

[chakka35]

An atheist who believes in the afterlife is in some confusion. One presumes that he rejects God, as I do, because it is a supernatural concept (pace naomi) for which there is no evidence, yet does not reject the afterlife which is also a supernatural concept for which there is no evidence.

In the case of the afterlife he must believe that someone or something has altered the standard laws of nature and of reason just to accomodate his belief. What would that be except a god? So all he is doing is coyly refusing to use the term, Isn't he?.

Or.. how does he distinguish between one daft idea which he is, quite rightly, prepared to reject, but an equally daft idea which he is not? Very strange.

[naomi24]

Chakka, perhaps as a man of science it would have been more appropriate to say //the standard laws of nature as they are currently understood.//

And you are sailing dangerously close to the wind when you ask //What would that be except a god?//

Sounds mightily like "I don't know how it happened so God must have dunnit".

[jake-the-peg]

Naomi

You think the concept changes without organised religion?

How exactly?

[naomi24]

We've been here before Jake, but never mind. Because I believe the 'soul' consists of some form of energy, and is not therefore, supernatural.

[LazyGun]

Personally, I am not sure that I can understand how an atheist could believe in an afterlife.
To me, the concept of an afterlife is bound up with religion, heaven and hell, 72 virgins, all that jazz - so since I think that religionistas are wrong to believe in a God in the absence of evidence, I have to think that belief in the afterlife is similar.

Soul, essence - none ring true for me, nor have I seen any quality evidence to support such concepts.

[KARL]

Perhaps, while being an atheist ("there is no such thing as a god") he/she can be agnostic when it comes to other concepts that are neither proven to exist or not ("I reserve judgement on something/anything else yet to be established") or even chooses to see a likelihood (i.e. more likely than not) that some concept will ultimately be proved to hold. In one sense at least, atheism amounts to something very similar to religion - a belief in something (including a belief that is rejection). After all, atheists have not been nor are they ever likely to be proved right - many of us tend toward their point of view because for us on balance it feels better to accept the absence of proof of a god as an indicator rather than swallow the repetition of statements that there must be one because it makes lots of questions less bothersome (not to mention "it says so in the book which lots of people believe").

[naomi24]

A question. Energy cannot be destroyed so when someone dies what happens to the energy that was once vital to their living body?

Wyz, hopefully I'm going to order it tomorrow - along with two others. I was waiting for Christmas to see what vouchers I got - and sure enough Father Christmas brought me several for Waterstones. You seem quite taken with the whole idea.

[naomi24]

Incidentally Keyplus, that's no revelation - simply confirmation that you haven't been reading the posts properly.

[keyplus90]

So could you please be kind enough to confirm it once again.

"You said that you believe in hereafter".

Simple yes or no would do this time.

[starone]

So, ludwig, would you pray to both sides just in case? (If you were on a sinking ship) I read once long ago that if you believed in a heaven then you would have to also believe in a hell.

[Andyvon]

An atheist refuses to believe in the existence of a god Claymore. In the same way a monotheist believes in one god and a polytheist in many.

The issue of a superior being such as a god is completely different to the existence of an afterlife or a spirit world. I don't believe in a god or Creation - I believe in the world of cosmology and physics which have satisfactory explanations for almost everything in the universe.
However, as a result of various experiences in my past I have been forced (against my every instinct) to accept that the spirit world exists. That's not something I wish to debate here or be pillioried for. What I am saying is that I fully understand your colleague and he is right to assert that there is no god but there is an afterlife. The two are completely different subjects.

[mibn2cweus]

I'm an atheist and believe in an afterlife . . . more appropriately referred to as death. Life beyond the present moment is inherently uncertain but the past informs us of the benefits of being prepared for the most likely outcome, that as long as we are alive the quality our experience of the next moment and the next depends on our understanding of the requirements of life and that which makes it worth living, knowing what is possible and what is best. Knowing what is possible is essential to the process of determining what is best and entails a knowledge and understanding of what life is, its requirements, demands and limitations.

Life is the self-sustaining, self-generating process of an organism endowed with the means to accomplish these essential tasks. When the organism ceases to function and is no longer capable of performing these essential tasks the organism dies and life the self-sustaining, self-generating process of the organism ceases. While most people seem to implicitly understanding that, a explicit understanding is essential to going to the next level, an understanding of the mutually supportive and interdependent nature of consciousness.

Consciousness is a result of the means by which an organism becomes aware of its surrounding and ultimately of its self and the nature of its own existence. It involves and relies on organs capable of sensing different aspects of those surroundings, of interpreting and integrating those sensations into perceptual data it can then use to find what it needs to maintain and promote the existence of the organism. That there is no purpose for consciousness beyond the need of an organism to be aware to survive is beside the point. Without the organism that provides the highly evolved complex physical structure in which and with which to perform the processes required for consciousness, there can be no consciousness, no awareness, no sensation, nada, zip, you're dead.

[mibn2cweus]

To better understand the interdependent relationship between consciousness and the highly evolved complexity of the organism in which it arises and which make consciousness possible, perhaps it would be helpful to consider why living entities exist at all if consciousness without or apart from a living organism makes such organisms redundant. What is the point of a physical universe with exploding stars and chemical compounds if energy can simply arrange it self out of thin air into the complex structures required to manifest consciousness?

But then to truly know and thoroughly understand anything, it is the highest level of consciousness, the process of reason, that one must first learn to comprehend. For many, if not most, perhaps it’s much simpler to simply believe in whatever the hell it is they believe in without going to all the trouble of actually learning how to know anything, let alone that they exist at all.

[oranger]

Will reincarnation make a comeback?

[mibn2cweus]

. . . you mean as a recreational or spectator sport?

[jake-the-peg]

No I understand that Naomi.

What I don't understand is how the involvement of some sort of organised religion - like say the spiritualist church changes the nature of the concept

[Ankou]

because it can and it wants to?

a shame claymore never came back. was this just a cat among the pigeons q ?