Do You Believe in 'Life after Death'? - General

Do You Believe in 'Life after Death'?

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[QUOTE=TrannyAlert;44805209]Science doesn't prove there's anything after life and I consider myself unreligious but I hope there is something after life.[/QUOTE] Science [I]can't[/I] prove that. Regardless if an afterlife exists or not.

[QUOTE=Jookia;44810479]This is getting off topic, Christianity is a faith-based religion, no amount of evidence will dismantle it.[/QUOTE] While it seems unlikely to us, we can't have the hubris to assume it is impossible for his position to be rational. Maybe he's found some decent evidence to support it somewhere that he just hasn't brought up yet, because I find it difficult to believe bIgFaTwOrM12 feels confident in his position based on the things he has described to us so far.

[QUOTE=Ziks;44810591]While it seems unlikely to us, we can't have the hubris to assume it is impossible for his position to be rational. Maybe he's found some decent evidence to support it somewhere that he just hasn't brought up yet, because I find it difficult to believe bIgFaTwOrM12 feels confident in his position based on the things he has described to us so far.[/QUOTE] It's not rational, but that doesn't matter. It's an emotional thing.

The only hope I have for an afterlife rests on two facts of human nature: 1. While time can be measured as an absolute thing, human time is entirely relative. A second of terror is really as long as a year to those who experience it. 2. When the brain dies, it releases the same chemical compounds as when you dream (DMT, or dimethyltryptamine) This is entirely conjecture, but it's nice for me to think that when I die, that last-second dream will stretch on into infinity. To an outside observer, I'll be dead and buried; from my own frame of reference, I'll be immortal. I hope my last dream isn't a nightmare. :V

[QUOTE=KingGinger85;44811365]The only hope I have for an afterlife rests on two facts of human nature: 1. While time can be measured as an absolute thing, human time is entirely relative. A second of terror is really as long as a year to those who experience it. 2. When the brain dies, it releases the same chemical compounds as when you dream (DMT, or dimethyltryptamine) This is entirely conjecture, but it's nice for me to think that when I die, that last-second dream will stretch on into infinity. To an outside observer, I'll be dead and buried; from my own frame of reference, I'll be immortal. I hope my last dream isn't a nightmare. :V[/QUOTE] The main problem with this idea is that while the perception of time is somewhat malleable you will hit a hard limit when encroaching things like neurotransmitter replenishment speed. For you to experience an infinite amount of neural activity within a second of real-time is simply impossible.

[QUOTE=Ziks;44811426]The main problem with this idea is that while the perception of time is somewhat malleable you will hit a hard limit when encroaching things like neurotransmitter replenishment speed. For you to experience an infinite amount of neural activity within a second of real-time is simply impossible.[/QUOTE] Like I said, it's just a nice thing to think about. Of all the supposed afterlifes available, I consider it more likely than woo-woo explanations and classical religious explanations. Not absolutely possible or true, just more possible.

[QUOTE=KingGinger85;44811448]Like I said, it's just a nice thing to think about. Of all the supposed afterlifes available, I consider it more likely than woo-woo explanations and classical religious explanations. Not absolutely possible or true, just more possible.[/QUOTE] If you want a somewhat plausible implementation of an afterlife your best bet is probably [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading]this[/url].

[QUOTE=Ziks;44811469]If you want a somewhat plausible implementation of an afterlife your best bet is probably [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading]this[/url].[/QUOTE] That has the same problem as teleportation - the original me is dead and a clone/copy is all that's left. So yes, I continue to exist as a singular entity or collection of information and memories, but the meat-brain that is uniquely me still ceases to exist.

[QUOTE=KingGinger85;44811486]That has the same problem as teleportation - the original me is dead and a clone/copy is all that's left. So yes, I continue to exist as a singular entity or collection of information and memories, but the meat-brain that is uniquely me still ceases to exist.[/QUOTE] All that we experience is a sequence of observer moments in a causal chain defined by memories to previous observer moments. Mind uploading or teleportation maintains that causal chain, so preserves all the important relationships between observer moments that make us intuitively feel like a continuous stream of consciousness. The problem is when you leave two branches of a chain to exist simultaneously, like by copying someone while they are conscious. You can resolve that by performing the copying process while the subject is unconscious, then disposing of the original body. In that case there is only one conscious causal chain that starts in the original body and continues in the new one.

[QUOTE=Ziks;44805903]I'm taking us a little out of the topic of this thread here, but am I right in recalling that the primary evidence you believe demonstrates the truth of the resurrection of Jesus is the writing of a set of scholars within the century after the event? I assume Josephus would be one of the more critical ones in your eyes judging by your avatar.[/QUOTE] When I got tired of having a badly drawn cat I decided to simply use images of people I respect as my avatar, there's little more to it than that. Josephus is important in the sense that he affirms certain things that Christianity claims about the Christ, but the bulk of the evidence in support is offered by the apostles in the gospels and various historical occurrences to which the resurrection is a good explanation. [QUOTE=Ziks;44810591]While it seems unlikely to us, we can't have the hubris to assume it is impossible for his position to be rational. Maybe he's found some decent evidence to support it somewhere that he just hasn't brought up yet, because I find it difficult to believe bIgFaTwOrM12 feels confident in his position based on the things he has described to us so far.[/QUOTE] Why do you find it difficult to believe that my confidence cannot be based on what I have presented? What kind of evidence would I have to present in order for you to think my position is rational? Essentially, what makes a position rational to you?

[QUOTE=bIgFaTwOrM12;44812382]Why do you find it difficult to believe that my confidence cannot be based on what I have presented? What kind of evidence would I have to present in order for you to think my position is rational? Essentially, what makes a position rational to you?[/QUOTE] I would say a position is rational if it requires the least unverified complexity compared to any known alternatives while possessing the same explanatory power. The position should not be judged on any emotional or aesthetic qualities as those are defined within our minds and differ greatly between individuals. Using that definition, the resurrection of Christ is not a rational belief. All we have as evidence is a number of ancient accounts, mostly by second-hand authors in the centuries after the event with a large probability of the remaining texts being altered during collation or translation. Modern scholars are undecided, and you'll find as many academic papers arguing against the historicity of the resurrection as you will find papers for it. When looking at it objectively, too much time has passed since the hypothetical event for any accounts to be deemed intact, as it would take a huge leap of faith to believe that information could persist to the modern day without any noise being introduced during retellings. The most rational thing to believe about the resurrection is whichever scenario introduces the least unverified complexity, and as a resurrection would violate our current understanding of reality and require the existence of supernatural entities and mechanisms we have to rule in favour of it not having occurred until more solid evidence comes to light. That you can claim to be convinced of the opposite is very confusing to me given the arguments you have presented so far. Would you mind if I assessed the degree to which you are convinced of your position? For each of these claims, do you consider them to be more probably correct than the resurrection of Christ or vice versa? 1. You exist. 2. I exist. 3. The Earth is an oblate spheroid (rather than being flat). 4. A manned mission to the moon occurred in July 1969. 5. Our universe is around 13.8 billion years old. 6. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_inflation]Cosmic inflation[/url] occurred in the very early universe.

[QUOTE=Ziks;44815107]I would say a position is rational if it requires the least unverified complexity compared to any known alternatives while possessing the same explanatory power. The position should not be judged on any emotional or aesthetic qualities as those are defined within our minds and differ greatly between individuals.[/QUOTE] I can't argue with Occam's razor in the sense of how rational a belief is, though I doubt anyone can achieve your second criteria. [QUOTE]Using that definition, the resurrection of Christ is not a rational belief. All we have as evidence is a number of ancient accounts, mostly by second-hand authors in the centuries after the event with a large probability of the remaining texts being altered during collation or translation.[/QUOTE] In the case of the gospels they were altered, but not in anyway that deviated from their central narratives. So the high probability of small differences between translations does not effect the consistency of what they claim. In the case of secondary sources I doubt that the effects of mistranslation are so great that they simply cannot be relied on. [QUOTE]Modern scholars are undecided, and you'll find as many academic papers arguing against the historicity of the resurrection as you will find papers for it. When looking at it objectively, too much time has passed since the hypothetical event for any accounts to be deemed intact, as it would take a huge leap of faith to believe that information could persist to the modern day without any noise being introduced during retellings.[/QUOTE] The fact that people disagree with me is not grounds to say that my position is irrational and you are greatly exaggerating the changes that occur in a record over time when those recording are actively trying to preserve the information as it originally was. [QUOTE]The most rational thing to believe about the resurrection is whichever scenario introduces the least unverified complexity, and as a resurrection would violate our current understanding of reality and require the existence of supernatural entities and mechanisms we have to rule in favour of it not having occurred until more solid evidence comes to light. That you can claim to be convinced of the opposite is very confusing to me given the arguments you have presented so far.[/QUOTE] When you say that the resurrection would, "violate our current understanding of reality," whose understanding do you refer to? It certainly is not mine or others of the same religious persuasion. [QUOTE]Would you mind if I assessed the degree to which you are convinced of your position? For each of these claims, do you consider them to be more probably correct than the resurrection of Christ or vice versa?[/QUOTE] Any conception of something being more probably correct will ultimately be based on non-rational judgement, so all asking me this does is show you where you know my convictions already lie. I do not think that it is fair to use subjects that are of an entirely different discipline to compare percentage of correctness with another either as it adds a whole other layer of arbitrary judgement. I ultimately think that a majority of your list is incomparable based on a strictly evidential basis, the moon landing can be compared, but the fact that it is cross-disciplinary in the evidence of it occurring means it is only partially so. All I will say is that I believe the Christ existed as Christianity states he did just as I believe Julius Caesar existed as ancient accounts dictate.

[QUOTE=bIgFaTwOrM12;44828622]In the case of the gospels they were altered, but not in anyway that deviated from their central narratives.[/QUOTE] How do we know that the original narratives were supernatural and genuine? [QUOTE]So the high probability of small differences between translations does not effect the consistency of what they claim.[/QUOTE] Appending a couple of zeroes to the end of a number is a small change that has a large impact on its meaning and consistency depending on the context. [QUOTE]In the case of secondary sources I doubt that the effects of mistranslation are so great that they simply cannot be relied on.[/QUOTE] Not just mistranslation, but many instances of the story being passed by word of mouth before being committed to writing. You find hugely exaggerated accounts of urban legends originating a decade or two ago due to the natural selection of more impressive sounding retellings, why would the myths of your particular religion be immune from this? [QUOTE]The fact that people disagree with me is not grounds to say that my position is irrational and you are greatly exaggerating the changes that occur in a record over time when those recording are actively trying to preserve the information as it originally was.[/QUOTE] What evidence do you have that they were actively trying to preserve the information rather than their mythology? Their word? Did we send a time traveller back to see what they were actually doing? [QUOTE]When you say that the resurrection would, "violate our current understanding of reality," whose understanding do you refer to? It certainly is not mine or others of the same religious persuasion.[/QUOTE] Our current scientific understanding of reality, the various laws we have formulated to describe mechanisms that have so far been observed to apply universally. A violation of those laws just to support the literal truth of a myth involving a single individual coming back from the dead and spooking a few people a couple of thousand years ago should be obviously absurd, and yet the narrative is so culturally ingrained that it is unjustly put in a different category to other ancient myths. [QUOTE]Any conception of something being more probably correct will ultimately be based on non-rational judgement, so all asking me this does is show you where you know my convictions already lie. I do not think that it is fair to use subjects that are of an entirely different discipline to compare percentage of correctness with another either as it adds a whole other layer of arbitrary judgement. I ultimately think that a majority of your list is incomparable based on a strictly evidential basis, the moon landing can be compared, but the fact that it is cross-disciplinary in the evidence of it occurring means it is only partially so.[/QUOTE] That's what I was going for, a range of statements backed by varying degrees of different forms of evidence to help me gauge what kinds of evidence you value. Your existence is kind of a control as all other assumptions rely on its truth, and my existence should be apparent as it is the simplest complete explanation for the appearance of these words. The Earth being round is something that I assume you haven't directly observed but is hugely supported by evidence from various disciplines that can be intuitively understood, and the moon mission involves a more cultural form of evidence that again can be easy to understand. The age of the universe involves slightly more esoteric forms of evidence with the extra step of relying on the calculations performed by other individuals being correct (but that we can verify if we so desire), and then cosmic inflation currently has a lot going for it in the sense of it being our best explanation for many observations about the early universe but currently has only a few pieces of direct evidence. I'm not asking you to evaluate the exact percentages relating to your beliefs, just to compare two beliefs and say which you intuitively feel most confident in. I have no problem picking any two statements and deciding which I personally feel is most likely to be correct, so I don't think it's too unreasonable to assume that you can do the same.

From a historical perspective the only real things we know about Jesus (outside the Gospels) are that he was baptised by John the baptist, and crucified by Pontius Pilate, there's no real evidence for anything else.

Let's spell this out. Here's a random excerpt from Mark, which we currently believe is the oldest of the gospels written by an anonymous author (not Mark obviously, but you knew that) around 66-70 CE. [QUOTE=Mark 8 14-21]Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, ‘Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’ They said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve.’ ‘And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ And they said to him, ‘Seven.’ Then he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?’[/QUOTE] Given that the original passage was written half a century after the events it describes, how probable is it that the original untranslated dialogue is actually what was said? The dialogue was invented by the author, extrapolating from tales he's heard from people who knew people who knew people who were there (although what about dialogue said by Jesus when he was alone?). Even in the best case scenario of the author actually being an eye witness who decided not to write it down for 50 years (although obviously this cannot be true for all events they described - the author would practically have to be Jesus himself for that to be possible), for the dialogue to be even close to what was actually said would be a savant-like feat of memory. How many conversations can you remember down to the word from even one year ago? Actually you may believe that you can remember some, but then again the human mind has been demonstrated to gradually mutate memories over time to the point where we can't even trust our own recollections of past events. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_effect[/url] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-monitoring_error[/url] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation[/url] [editline]17th May 2014[/editline] Also [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_memory[/url]

Never did and never will. There's no way anything happens from Scientific view. We need energy in our brain in order to make it work, and when we die everything is just gone. So, believing in some sort of a magic is stupid. Just have to live with it and enjoy life at its fullest. #YOLO

[QUOTE=Ziks;44828945]How do we know that the original narratives were supernatural and genuine?[/QUOTE] That is a question of what your personal world view is, supernatural inspiration is not a measurable quality in literature. [QUOTE]Appending a couple of zeroes to the end of a number is a small change that has a large impact on its meaning and consistency depending on the context.[/QUOTE] Not if those small changes have no effect on the central narrative. [QUOTE]Not just mistranslation, but many instances of the story being passed by word of mouth before being committed to writing. You find hugely exaggerated accounts of urban legends originating a decade or two ago due to the natural selection of more impressive sounding retellings, why would the myths of your particular religion be immune from this?[/QUOTE] It isn't, that's why we have the Muslim Jesus being born a talking neonate and later turning clay pigeons into living ones. That's also why we have the countless heretical sects that branched of of Christianity. Christians have historically held their canonical scriptures at very high value and put anything that might be added under the highest level of scrutiny, that's why the Church has always distanced itself from beliefs that deviate from the canonical text. [QUOTE]What evidence do you have that they were actively trying to preserve the information rather than their mythology? Their word? Did we send a time traveller back to see what they were actually doing?[/QUOTE] What do you mean by preserving information or mythology? Is there a point to the distinction from your perspective? Also canonical copies of scripture can be found quite far back into history. [QUOTE]Our current scientific understanding of reality, the various laws we have formulated to describe mechanisms that have so far been observed to apply universally. A violation of those laws just to support the literal truth of a myth involving a single individual coming back from the dead and spooking a few people a couple of thousand years ago should be obviously absurd, and yet the narrative is so culturally ingrained that it is unjustly put in a different category to other ancient myths.[/QUOTE] So it violates your current understanding of reality, which is limited to physical existence. Also how easy do you think it is to convince people that someone raised from the dead when the followers of said person were being put do death for what they believed? Do you think people who originally did not believe this would suddenly be convinced of it because those condemned by society told them so? [QUOTE]That's what I was going for, a range of statements backed by varying degrees of different forms of evidence to help me gauge what kinds of evidence you value. Your existence is kind of a control as all other assumptions rely on its truth, and my existence should be apparent as it is the simplest complete explanation for the appearance of these words. The Earth being round is something that I assume you haven't directly observed but is hugely supported by evidence from various disciplines that can be intuitively understood, and the moon mission involves a more cultural form of evidence that again can be easy to understand. The age of the universe involves slightly more esoteric forms of evidence with the extra step of relying on the calculations performed by other individuals being correct (but that we can verify if we so desire), and then cosmic inflation currently has a lot going for it in the sense of it being our best explanation for many observations about the early universe but currently has only a few pieces of direct evidence. I'm not asking you to evaluate the exact percentages relating to your beliefs, just to compare two beliefs and say which you intuitively feel most confident in. I have no problem picking any two statements and deciding which I personally feel is most likely to be correct, so I don't think it's too unreasonable to assume that you can do the same.[/QUOTE] My confidence in the Resurrection is not an evidence based one, there are theological explanations for this. So regardless of what kind of argument can be placed against the resurrection, my view is that we simply lack the understanding to fully defend it, its happening is not at question to me. So essentially the confidence in the evidence does not reflect my confidence in the resurrection (which is solid). With that in mind, I would consider all the items on your list to have far more evidence backing them up than the resurrection, I also believe that the quality of evidence for them is better, but that does not at all cover whether there is reasonable evidence for the resurrection. [QUOTE=Ziks;44831545]Let's spell this out. Here's a random excerpt from Mark, which we currently believe is the oldest of the gospels written by an anonymous author (not Mark obviously, but you knew that) around 66-70 CE. Given that the original passage was written half a century after the events it describes, how probable is it that the original untranslated dialogue is actually what was said? The dialogue was invented by the author, extrapolating from tales he's heard from people who knew people who knew people who were there (although what about dialogue said by Jesus when he was alone?). Even in the best case scenario of the author actually being an eye witness who decided not to write it down for 50 years (although obviously this cannot be true for all events they described - the author would practically have to be Jesus himself for that to be possible), for the dialogue to be even close to what was actually said would be a savant-like feat of memory. How many conversations can you remember down to the word from even one year ago? Actually you may believe that you can remember some, but then again the human mind has been demonstrated to gradually mutate memories over time to the point where we can't even trust our own recollections of past events. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_effect[/url] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-monitoring_error[/url] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation[/url] [editline]17th May 2014[/editline] Also [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_memory[/url][/QUOTE] The importance is not the exact syntax used, but the general idea being put forth in the text. If you found records of the canonical gospels far enough back in history that stated the Christ was nothing but a man (or deviated in any vital way to Christianities narrative or theology) then you would have reason to assume that the narrative itself has been affected. However, syntax is important in terms of reverence, which is the reason why I and many other of my persuasions detest such translations as the Urban Bible. In any case, the apostles were eye-witnesses to the events in the gospels along with many other eye-witnesses, as long as you had all the other eye-witnesses contradicting them when they made a mistake the neural processes that you cite would have little to no effect on the oral tradition.

[QUOTE=bIgFaTwOrM12;44863055]That is a ques[QUOTE][/QUOTE]tion of what your personal world view is, supernatural inspiration is not a measurable quality in literature.[/QUOTE] So then why are you so quick to believe in it? [QUOTE]Not if those small changes have no effect on the central narrative.[/QUOTE] How so? They have a large effect. [QUOTE]It isn't, that's why we have the Muslim Jesus being born a talking neonate and later turning clay pigeons into living ones. That's also why we have the countless heretical sects that branched of of Christianity. Christians have historically held their canonical scriptures at very high value and put anything that might be added under the highest level of scrutiny, that's why the Church has always distanced itself from beliefs that deviate from the canonical text.[/QUOTE] But who decided what cannonincal was? Who decides what "eye witness" accounts were actually real 50-100 years later? [QUOTE]What do you mean by preserving information or mythology? Is there a point to the distinction from your perspective? Also canonical copies of scripture can be found quite far back into history.[/QUOTE] Even the oldest writings of the bible don't exist in a time frame with jesus or anyone who would have been alive to see Jesus do the things he did. Ergo, the tales that exist in the bible had to be passed down orally in some manner until they were written down. How do we know, how do you know, that they wrote down history, and not a mythology? How do you know that the resurrection isn't an extension of a 50 or 100 year game of telephone? [QUOTE]So it violates your current understanding of reality, which is limited to physical existence.[/QUOTE] I don't think that's really a fair criticism. It's basically a "well you can't argue with it so it's true". No, I can't argue with mythologies or events we can't be certain about in absolute terms, but you apparently can see them as truth and not question them and still call that totally rational? There's no reason to believe Jesus was resurrected in a literal sense because it literally breaks all of human history, and then there's also the issue of the other resurrection stories in our history and the inlaid hypocrisy of this one being true and those being false. [QUOTE]Also how easy do you think it is to convince people that someone raised from the dead when the followers of said person were being put do death for what they believed? Do you think people who originally did not believe this would suddenly be convinced of it because those condemned by society told them so?[/QUOTE] Pretty easy actually. People are highly maleable and people in that time frame knew less than what you and I did as we were children. Think about that for a moment. They had less knowledge of how the world worked, what was happening in it, they had less mobility, less ability to learn, less information in general. Yes, they very easily could have been lied to, they very easily could honestly believe in something that they misunderstood, or mis remember, they may have had seriously traumatic experiences that they were affected by and that changed their memories and made it seem worth fighting for. I just never understand why you think that the history you know is the right, true, correct history. I don't even think that. I think we've forgotten and lost a lot of history but you seem very content to believe that the history we have is complete enough to know for a fact that the origins of christianity are divine, and every other religion in history was not. [QUOTE]My confidence in the Resurrection is not an evidence based one, there are theological explanations for this. So regardless of what kind of argument can be placed against the resurrection, my view is that we simply lack the understanding to fully defend it, its happening is not at question to me. So essentially the confidence in the evidence does not reflect my confidence in the resurrection (which is solid).[/QUOTE] So you don't actually care about evidence, or anything. You're 100% set in stone in that view? That's terrible. I'm sorry you've decided that there's no further discussions to be had of value(as no value can be had of a discussion you have already decided you have won) [QUOTE]With that in mind, I would consider all the items on your list to have far more evidence backing them up than the resurrection, I also believe that the quality of evidence for them is better, but that does not at all cover whether there is reasonable evidence for the resurrection.[/QUOTE] So to you there is reasonable evidence of the resurrection, as you have already said, but what can this be based on if as you just said, there is no evidence? Theological arguments, as you just said? Well then you've won the argument because I can't argue with that in a way that matters in your eyes. Even if I argue with you on a scriptural basis, you'll always have a one up on me in that "this is what the church says, that's what this part of this passage is about, that's why it's fine" which is, to me, at best a cop out. [QUOTE]The importance is not the exact syntax used, but the general idea being put forth in the text. If you found records of the canonical gospels far enough back in history that stated the Christ was nothing but a man (or deviated in any vital way to Christianities narrative or theology) then you would have reason to assume that the narrative itself has been affected. However, syntax is important in terms of reverence, which is the reason why I and many other of my persuasions detest such translations as the Urban Bible. In any case, the apostles were eye-witnesses to the events in the gospels along with many other eye-witnesses, as long as you had all the other eye-witnesses contradicting them when they made a mistake the neural processes that you cite would have little to no effect on the oral tradition.[/QUOTE] Do we not have many gospels that the church has declared non canonical from such "eye witnessess"? There's also much, much debate as to the idea of there being eye witness accounts. At the very least, the eye witness accounts that we do have access to, are certainly not eye witnesses. I heard a figure today that the gospel of mathew wasn't written for at least 80 years after the death of jesus. The "eye witnesses" who would be involved in writing this would be old and very unreliable in their accuracy.

Newbie here. Apparently diving in at the deep end. I'm liking that this forum addresses such a range of deep ideas though. I apologise if I'm echoing someone else's sentiments (I really can't be reading 15 pages of posts). My position is that it's very unlikely there's an afterlife but even if there is, it's quite important that you assume there isn't. If you don't, you're not going to be someone who gets the most out of life. I'd also add that I don't necessarily buy the supernatural/natural split of opinions on this subject. We'll ignore the part where I think supernatural is a completely incoherent concept and I'll just point out that it's entirely possible that we have immaterial souls in the way various religions have claimed BUT that there's still no afterlife. The souls are somehow necessary for consciousness but they also die when the brain dies. On the flip side of that, and far more interesting to speculate about, is the idea that there's a completely natural afterlife. This is an interesting idea of that sort: [url]http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html[/url]

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;44863447]So then why are you so quick to believe in it?[/QUOTE] So quick to believe in what? The scriptures? Their supernatural inspiration? [QUOTE]How so? They have a large effect.[/QUOTE] One example might be how a lot of English translations state that Pilate was the governor of Judea when Christ was crucified while older translations simply state he held a powerful position in Judea. Also what have a large effect? [QUOTE]But who decided what cannonincal was? Who decides what "eye witness" accounts were actually real 50-100 years later?[/QUOTE] Ultimately the remaining apostles, most likely near the end of their lives as a transmission of the oral tradition to a text. Of course soon after, the Catholic church would have been determining what was to be placed among the apocrypha. [QUOTE]Even the oldest writings of the bible don't exist in a time frame with jesus or anyone who would have been alive to see Jesus do the things he did. Ergo, the tales that exist in the bible had to be passed down orally in some manner until they were written down. How do we know, how do you know, that they wrote down history, and not a mythology? How do you know that the resurrection isn't an extension of a 50 or 100 year game of telephone?[/QUOTE] This is not even addressing what I said in my response (or what I was responding to), I was responding to Ziks' claim that there was no way of telling that the original information recorded in the gospels had been preserved. My point of bringing up how far back we can find canonical copies of the gospel was to illustrate that there's very little reason to assume that the information has been significantly altered. I also inquired as to what he meant by distinguishing mythology and information. [QUOTE]I don't think that's really a fair criticism. It's basically a "well you can't argue with it so it's true". No, I can't argue with mythologies or events we can't be certain about in absolute terms, but you apparently can see them as truth and not question them and still call that totally rational? There's no reason to believe Jesus was resurrected in a literal sense because it literally breaks all of human history, and then there's also the issue of the other resurrection stories in our history and the inlaid hypocrisy of this one being true and those being false.[/QUOTE] Could you explain to me how the resurrection "literally breaks all of human history"? What does that even mean? Also there are no other resurrection stories that nearly have the same amount of evidence that can support them, some are even directly inspired off of the Christ's resurrection. [QUOTE]Pretty easy actually. People are highly maleable and people in that time frame knew less than what you and I did as we were children. Think about that for a moment. They had less knowledge of how the world worked, what was happening in it, they had less mobility, less ability to learn, less information in general. Yes, they very easily could have been lied to, they very easily could honestly believe in something that they misunderstood, or mis remember, they may have had seriously traumatic experiences that they were affected by and that changed their memories and made it seem worth fighting for.[/QUOTE] This is just blatant modern hubris, the idea that we are enlightened and that people before us were babbling impressionable idiots. Sure they had less knowledge of the world than we do now, but if they had never seen a person raise from the dead before don't you think that would be a little hard for them to believe? Do you really think that if the Christ died and never rose, yet the disciples preached that he did (and were ostracized for it), people of the Jewish faith who not long ago had just witnessed his death would suddenly decide to follow the cause of the apostles (which would most likely lead to their deaths)? Do you really think that if a body was still in the tomb anyone would have been convinced of his rising? If the Christ had not risen again the followers of the Way (the earliest Christians) would have barely gotten the movement started before it collapsed due to the penalties of their blasphemies and shear amount of evidence against their case. [QUOTE]I just never understand why you think that the history you know is the right, true, correct history. I don't even think that. I think we've forgotten and lost a lot of history but you seem very content to believe that the history we have is complete enough to know for a fact that the origins of christianity are divine, and every other religion in history was not.[/QUOTE] Of course I understand that current historical discoveries are subject to future change, I don't discount them because of that though, that would be akin to discounting scientific discoveries because they are subject to future change. Also most other religions are so vague when it comes to the time and place of critical events that they can't even be verified. [QUOTE]So you don't actually care about evidence, or anything. You're 100% set in stone in that view? That's terrible. I'm sorry you've decided that there's no further discussions to be had of value(as no value can be had of a discussion you have already decided you have won)[/QUOTE] Oh I care immensely about the evidence as it fortifies my faith so-to-speak, think of it this way: You assume that there must be a natural cause for any effect, if someone claims otherwise, it is because we simply don't have a full understanding of the natural cause. That is essentially what the god of the gaps argument is, the acceptance of a conclusion even though the conclusion fails to explain everything. Likewise, I approach from a conclusion with the resurrection, I simply hold a different conclusion to you. That doesn't mean that I am not open to discussion, I'd think the fact that I am having a discussion about it would kind of prove that? Just because you are not going to change my mind does not mean the conversation is pointless, perhaps it just means that you should approach such discussion from a different perspective than just trying to convert the believer. [QUOTE]So to you there is reasonable evidence of the resurrection, as you have already said, but what can this be based on if as you just said, there is no evidence? Theological arguments, as you just said?[/QUOTE] I genuinely have no clue what you are talking about here, when have I ever claimed there to be no evidence for the resurrection? [QUOTE]Well then you've won the argument because I can't argue with that in a way that matters in your eyes. Even if I argue with you on a scriptural basis, you'll always have a one up on me in that "this is what the church says, that's what this part of this passage is about, that's why it's fine" which is, to me, at best a cop out.[/QUOTE] If by church you mean the Catholic church then you are wrong as I am not a Catholic (I also do not blindly accept information on scripture from any [i]single[/i] Christian institution), though I will hold that the resurrection must be correct as it can only explain the witness that the Holy Spirit has given me of it. That is purely personal matter though, it is not important to what is being debated. I am not here to convert people through arguments as it is only God's place to convert those who do not believe, I come here merely to educate and to witness. [QUOTE]Do we not have many gospels that the church has declared non canonical from such "eye witnessess"?[/QUOTE] Yes. [QUOTE]There's also much, much debate as to the idea of there being eye witness accounts. At the very least, the eye witness accounts that we do have access to, are certainly not eye witnesses. I heard a figure today that the gospel of mathew wasn't written for at least 80 years after the death of jesus. The "eye witnesses" who would be involved in writing this would be old and very unreliable in their accuracy.[/QUOTE] That is a reasonable assumption to me, I do not believe that we have the actual inspired texts of scripture available to us, rather we have copies of them only. However, there is reason to believe that they are eye-witness accounts given the much closer dates of the epistles to the Christ's death (within 5 years) and how the claims of the gospels are of course constantly affirmed within them.

So this is turning into a giant religious thread. But anyways, life after death seems sort of stupid. You know what, let's just ignore some shit and say life after death exists. Who the in the fuck said it was going to be ruled by a strict set of morals and some benevolent force who judges you cosmically on whether you get to suffer eternal shit or eternal happiness? Religion after religion has had these guidelines on what to follow- Norse with their warriors, Zoroastrianism which was the first religion to sort of develop those traditional religious Evil/Good things- who's to say they weren't right? Why won't we be reborn, as Hinduism said, shittier or better depending on what we did in this life? In any case, I don't care, I'll be dead, and I'll be in whatever afterlife or no afterlife there is.

Some of you may not like this, but here goes nothing; Imagine that in the future, the human race advances to such a civilization that it is able to co-exist for ever. This society, but sheer force of SCIENCE, comes about the ability to retroactively reincarnate anyone who has died, with memories and character intact. What sort of people would they bring back? Would they allow a murderer, or someone who causes trouble by sleeping with people's wives? All of those things cause problems in a society when present. Perhaps the moral code requirement does not make sense to some, and perhaps I am not aware of the moral code that would be used by such a society, but to me it seems that reincarnation goes hand in hand with the ability to co-exist in a society forever. I would imagine life extension would be a walk in the park for such a society. Now, it may be utterly impossible in all worlds. But if not, then there is food for thought on how morality could have anything to do with an afterlife.

Meaning a human constructed "afterlife" which is really just life anyways? Afterlife at least to me has a spiritual connotation to it. That's a different form but perhaps the term applies. I don't think anyone objects to a moral code existing. I think the objection is that any system we use is at the end of the day subjective and has to be created on some form of principle but can never be truly objective. I think the objection is that we need to have a bigger discussion about morality in that sense.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;44883621]Meaning a human constructed "afterlife" which is really just life anyways? Afterlife at least to me has a spiritual connotation to it. That's a different form but perhaps the term applies. I don't think anyone objects to a moral code existing. I think the objection is that any system we use is at the end of the day subjective and has to be created on some form of principle but can never be truly objective. I think the objection is that we need to have a bigger discussion about morality in that sense.[/QUOTE] I think this draws an interesting parrallel in our expectations. I believe we when we were arguing about free will, you insisted, or perhaps ziks (I don't remember), that for free will to exist, it must be some external magical factor that overrides normal causality. There would have to be a floating "free will" bubble somewhere in the nether that allows a human to makes its own choices at the expense of physics. Similarly, with an afterlife, you expect some magical bubble existing somewhere indescript. Humans do not become eternal when they are reborn by most descriptions. They simply become relocated to another space and time. Have you ever gotten surgery? The gas they use to put you out is a nice example of this. One moment, you exist in the prep bed, the next moment you exist in the recovery bed. Your body may be different depending on the surgery, but your consciousness jumps instantly. Ofcourse there is the whole ship of thesseus thing, but I tend to lean on the side of, if it is, by all descriptions, a ship of thesseus, then it is just that. If what is me, the information that describes all that I am, becomes aware of something tens. hundreds(thousands?) of years into the future, it is still me. In between, you could say you only exist in a sort of purgatory of ideas, provided that information is never annihilated by, say, fire.

[QUOTE=Zenreon117;44883698]I think this draws an interesting parrallel in our expectations. I believe we when we were arguing about free will, you insisted, or perhaps ziks (I don't remember), that for free will to exist, it must be some external magical factor that overrides normal causality. There would have to be a floating "free will" bubble somewhere in the nether that allows a human to makes its own choices at the expense of physics.[/QUOTE] That's not quite how I phrased it, but I also qualified my position by explaining that the definition of free will is subjective. Some people may define free will in a way that's possible in a deterministic universe, some define it to be possible in a purely natural but non-deterministic universe, and some would require a supernatural element to be involved. [QUOTE]Similarly, with an afterlife, you expect some magical bubble existing somewhere indescript. Humans do not become eternal when they are reborn by most descriptions. They simply become relocated to another space and time. Have you ever gotten surgery? The gas they use to put you out is a nice example of this. One moment, you exist in the prep bed, the next moment you exist in the recovery bed. Your body may be different depending on the surgery, but your consciousness jumps instantly. Ofcourse there is the whole ship of thesseus thing, but I tend to lean on the side of, if it is, by all descriptions, a ship of thesseus, then it is just that. If what is me, the information that describes all that I am, becomes aware of something tens. hundreds(thousands?) of years into the future, it is still me. In between, you could say you only exist in a sort of purgatory of ideas, provided that information is never annihilated by, say, fire.[/QUOTE] I completely agree with you here!

Back on the historicity of Jesus's resurrection and other assorted miracles, I just found a video by Sam Harris on the subject that I think makes a pretty important point. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHot6Bm9-P4[/media] People will believe with complete honesty that their favourite guru / messiah has miraculous powers because they want it to be true and don't look for other natural explanations, even with gurus living today. If you feel the evidence is sufficient for the miracles of Jesus (a few ancient gospels written decades after the event taken from the accounts of maybe a few hundred eye witnesses), you have to agree that the evidence for modern gurus like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba]Sathya Sai Baba[/url] being supernatural would also be sufficient ([i]millions[/i] of eye witnesses, documenting what they saw immediately after the supposed miracles). I think you'll agree with me that Sathya Sai Baba probably didn't perform any supernatural miracles, but then why would you continue believing that Jesus did despite the evidence being even weaker?

[QUOTE=Ziks;44895290]Back on the historicity of Jesus's resurrection and other assorted miracles, I just found a video by Sam Harris on the subject that I think makes a pretty important point. People will believe with complete honesty that their favourite guru / messiah has miraculous powers because they want it to be true and don't look for other natural explanations, even with gurus living today. If you feel the evidence is sufficient for the miracles of Jesus (a few ancient gospels written decades after the event taken from the accounts of maybe a few hundred eye witnesses), you have to agree that the evidence for modern gurus like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba]Sathya Sai Baba[/url] being supernatural would also be sufficient ([i]millions[/i] of eye witnesses, documenting what they saw immediately after the supposed miracles). I think you'll agree with me that Sathya Sai Baba probably didn't perform any supernatural miracles, but then why would you continue believing that Jesus did despite the evidence being even weaker?[/QUOTE] I have already stated that the gospels are affirmed by the epistles, which were in some cases written within 5 years after the Christ's death. The styles of writing between certain epistles and certain gospels are similar as well, providing even more evidence that they were most likely written by the apostles. It very much seems that the gospels were written by the apostles, so your line of refutation will have to rely on claiming that they are not telling the truth (knowingly or unknowingly). People who believe that their Guru's have magic powers are constantly criticized, especially when said Guru has millions of followers. When anyone makes a claim that is out of line with the facts and it gains enough momentum it goes without saying that it will be challenged openly. If the early Christians were so out of line with the facts, then how come there is not a single record of the Jewish authorities of the time challenging their claims (apart from trying to come with explanations for where the body went)? Surely if Christ's body was still in the tomb it would have been easy to snuff out the disciples and the witness they professed? I have never heard of Sathya Sai Baba before and thus do not know what kind of criticisms have been made of his supposed miracles, but I have no doubt that there are many none-the-less. While I consider it unlikely that Sathya Sai Baba himself has performed any supernatural acts, I do not deny that such acts are possible outside of Christendom (I simply do not believe them to be of the same origin as the people conducting them claim). So in the case of Sathya Sai Baba (assuming that there is extensive critique of his practices), the fact that his critics have given reasonable alternate explanations for his acts is a clear difference from the resurrection (which is free of critique from authorities of the time). In any case, I have never defended the resurrection purely on the fact that there were eyewitnesses alone, in fact the only reason I try to support that claim is to show that the gospels were not simply stories devised long after the fact.

[QUOTE=bIgFaTwOrM12;44898476]It very much seems that the gospels were written by the apostles, so your line of refutation will have to rely on claiming that they are not telling the truth (knowingly or unknowingly).[/QUOTE] You appear to disagree with the majority of modern biblical scholars here. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_canonical_Gospels#Authorship_and_date[/url] [QUOTE]So in the case of Sathya Sai Baba (assuming that there is extensive critique of his practices), the fact that his critics have given reasonable alternate explanations for his acts is a clear difference from the resurrection (which is free of critique from authorities of the time).[/QUOTE] What do you mean by authorities? Are you only counting Christian ones? Or do you permit the non-Christian authorities that hadn't even heard of the myth until several decades afterwards, which absolutely did criticise the authenticity of the resurrection by persecuting Christians? [QUOTE]In any case, I have never defended the resurrection purely on the fact that there were eyewitnesses alone, in fact the only reason I try to support that claim is to show that the gospels were not simply stories devised long after the fact.[/QUOTE] Are you purposefully straw-manning my position? I've explained before that it's entirely likely the people that supposedly witnessed his resurrection honestly believed they saw Jesus after his burial; through misidentification, confusing a dream for reality, memory recall fault or any of the other possible natural explanations. Just like with Sathya Sai Baba, they wanted to see a miracle, or other people they trusted told them something ambiguous was a miracle, and then their imaginations ran away with the idea. If you honestly care about analysing the historicity of the resurrection on fair terms I think this is worth reading: [url]http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html[/url] I really hope you read it, but it's worth considering something before you do. You can still be a Christian without believing Jesus literally rose from the dead, you just have to appreciate the resurrection as being spiritual rather than physical. [editline]24th May 2014[/editline] Actually I might become a Christian, honouring Jesus for his insightful teachings of peace and tolerance, while discarding the supernatural baggage that trivialises his achievements to the point of insulting him.

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