Re:Atheism

[Tesiqurasa]

It's real enough for us if we've used scaffolding to build up to the conclusions. That's just how people work. Everything we experience after becoming conscious is relative to our previous experiences. Doesn't mean it's not real, it's just relative.

[bulmabriefs144]

You guys should watch "The Invention of Lying." He tells his mom who is afraid she'll go to nothingness, "you're gonna go to a better place, which has mansions." Though technically, her guess that there'd be nothing there is no more the truth than anything else, just that a culture that has no deceits, has no sense of the uncertain, so it was not so much a lie as a "your guess is as good as mine."

Stripped of all assumptions, I'd guess religion, in terms of afterlife goes something like this:

• You body decays much faster when dead than alive. (Read up on it, without emblaming chemicals half of it degrades within a week or so)
• Therefore, something inside either leaves (we can call it a "soul" or anima), or converts from matter into energy (causing radioactive decay or something)
• If it leaves, it must go somewhere, even if it's just back to the soil (spiritual recycling) or perhaps there is some place for it to go for awhile.
• If it's transformed, it either gets spent to power new lifeforms ("matter can neither be created nor destroyed" so the soil as the body decays grows plants, which are then eaten by critters, which use the energy to birth calves or children)
• Assuming that a soul is different from conventional matter, possibly there's a not-strictly-physical place for this to go (if for instance, a soul is more memories and such than potential/kinetic energy, it would go into a sort of pool that could roughly be defined as an afterlife)
• Such a place, assuming it existed, would be pretty remote from conventional Heaven or Hell, but rather a sort of Grey Waste where people retain whatever experiences they went in with (so if you weren't popular on Earth, that might be unlikely to change, as is a alcohol problem likely to give you the spiritual echo of perpetual stomach ailments) In this case, it's neither good or evil, but bad memories can make it a "Hell", as good ones might make it like "Heaven."

[penguinzrock]

You guys should watch "The Invention of Lying." He tells his mom who is afraid she'll go to nothingness, "you're gonna go to a better place, which has mansions." Though technically, her guess that there'd be nothing there is no more the truth than anything else, just that a culture that has no deceits, has no sense of the uncertain, so it was not so much a lie as a "your guess is as good as mine."

Stripped of all assumptions, I'd guess religion, in terms of afterlife goes something like this:

• You body decays much faster when dead than alive. (Read up on it, without emblaming chemicals half of it degrades within a week or so)
• Therefore, something inside either leaves (we can call it a "soul" or anima), or converts from matter into energy (causing radioactive decay or something)
• If it leaves, it must go somewhere, even if it's just back to the soil (spiritual recycling) or perhaps there is some place for it to go for awhile.
• If it's transformed, it either gets spent to power new lifeforms ("matter can neither be created nor destroyed" so the soil as the body decays grows plants, which are then eaten by critters, which use the energy to birth calves or children)
• Assuming that a soul is different from conventional matter, possibly there's a not-strictly-physical place for this to go (if for instance, a soul is more memories and such than potential/kinetic energy, it would go into a sort of pool that could roughly be defined as an afterlife)
• Such a place, assuming it existed, would be pretty remote from conventional Heaven or Hell, but rather a sort of Grey Waste where people retain whatever experiences they went in with (so if you weren't popular on Earth, that might be unlikely to change, as is a alcohol problem likely to give you the spiritual echo of perpetual stomach ailments) In this case, it's neither good or evil, but bad memories can make it a "Hell", as good ones might make it like "Heaven."

I've seen The Invention of Lying, and its take on religion is only surface at best, despite whatever supposedly meaningful message the ending tried to convey.

And although I agree with some of your ideas about the afterlife, it's difficult to ascribe that broad of a concept of the afterlife to the very specific concept most Christians would like to believe is the afterlife.

[bulmabriefs144]

A better film in terms of shattering Christian norms is A Man From Earth. It puts forth the notion that maybe the reason Jesus was deified rather than just a heroic human, is because nobody actually wanted to follow his example, so they came up with this crap about how there was some sort of magical sacrifice made so we can still be "mostly a good person" (read: a hypocritical, shallow, and essentially lousy person).

That's why I'm a Taoist. Enough of that crap. I'm a mixed person, and I can improve, but I will still have faults along with the strengths (denying that is just delusion). Just accept it, do your level-best to treat other people well, and forget all the abstinence from beer and sex. Have multiple partners if you want, but keep them all happy.

[Watashi]

I don't ****ing care what other people believe in. As long as they don't act like a douche because of their religion.

This. Same with hardcore athiests.

[Merciless]

I don't care what you believe, unless you can back it up with some reasoning

[Watashi]

But.. I thought you don't care?