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The concept of an afterlife with no religious significance

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    #32
    dominiquecruz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 236 ✭✭dominiquecruz


    WolfgangWeisen wrote: »
    So you don't believe in a creator, but aren't 100% sure there isn't one, but you are sure (or almost) of something that has an equal amount of evidence supporting it (i.e none)?

    I don't believe you sound like you're "on drugs", you do however come across as someone who isn't entirely sure what they believe nor are confident of their convictions in said belief.

    I'm certainly not attacking you on the matter but something seems awry when someone claims to be satisfied that there most likely isn't a God, yet at the same time is holding on to a belief of equal improbability and is actually derived/a fundamental part of the aforementioned and discarded belief.

    Let me clarify a bit; perhaps I should have defined myself as an agnostic (atheist). I don't believe it's possible for us, as humans, to ever know or attempt to comprehend what lies behind the make-up of our universe, but I like to believe that there is something else. I can't even define exactly what this belief entails, but I have an inherent sense that that this life is only a very small part of our experience.

    Of course, this means I must be open to the idea there is also nothing. I am indeed open to this, but I don't believe it to be true. Just looking at the complexities of every system we know, from the structure of capillaries to the design of the cosmos, I don't think it is without purpose.

    Actually, maybe someone could tell me how I should label myself? :rolleyes: I don't believe in a God as such, just some kind of undefinable creative force or energy. I couldn't possibly elaborate on what constitutes my beliefs, because again I don't know what happens after, I just think that something does.

    I'm not religious; don't practice or observe any spiritual rituals.


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    #33
    blatantrereg
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,743 ✭✭✭blatantrereg


    dominiquecruz wrote: »
    Let me clarify a bit; perhaps I should have defined myself as an agnostic (atheist). I don't believe it's possible for us, as humans, to ever know or attempt to comprehend what lies behind the make-up of our universe, but I like to believe that there is something else. I can't even define exactly what this belief entails, but I have an inherent sense that that this life is only a very small part of our experience.

    Of course, this means I must be open to the idea there is also nothing. I am indeed open to this, but I don't believe it to be true. Just looking at the complexities of every system we know, from the structure of capillaries to the design of the cosmos, I don't think it is without purpose.

    Actually, maybe someone could tell me how I should label myself? :rolleyes: I don't believe in a God as such, just some kind of undefinable creative force or energy. I couldn't possibly elaborate on what constitutes my beliefs, because again I don't know what happens after, I just think that something does.

    I'm not religious; don't practice or observe any spiritual rituals.
    You're a taoist


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    #34
    dominiquecruz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 236 ✭✭dominiquecruz


    blatantrereg wrote: »
    You're a taoist

    Really? News to me! Hope this doesn't mean I have to do anything.

    Just doing some Wikipedia reading I discovered the terms Ietsism and Ignosticism, both of which feel relevant to me. Should have put them on the census.


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    #35
    WolfgangWeisen
    Closed Accounts Posts: 238 ✭✭WolfgangWeisen


    What is the rush to stick labels on yourself, dominique? You're asking for others to label you, then you had a brief look on wikipedia and decided that that is what you are and indeed you should have put on the countries national survey?

    Relax.


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    #36
    blatantrereg
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,743 ✭✭✭blatantrereg


    dominiquecruz wrote: »
    Really? News to me! Hope this doesn't mean I have to do anything.

    Just doing some Wikipedia reading I discovered the terms Ietsism and Ignosticism, both of which feel relevant to me. Should have put them on the census.
    Not at all. Non-action is a central principle of it

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism#Principles


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    #37
    dominiquecruz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 236 ✭✭dominiquecruz


    I was being facetious about the census. I've no urge to label myself, never have, but the OP asked if anyone who didn't believe in a God believed in an afterlife, and I thought I should state my position! Besides, labels can be handy, it's nice to be able to concisely express your persuasions when someone asks if you're a believer. Not that I'll be telling anyone I'm an ietsist, mind :P


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    #38
    blatantrereg
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,743 ✭✭✭blatantrereg


    WolfgangWeisen wrote: »
    What is the rush to stick labels on yourself, dominique? You're asking for others to label you, then you had a brief look on wikipedia and decided that that is what you are and indeed you should have put on the countries national survey?

    Relax.
    Your dislike of labels is also Taoistic.
    Core Taoist text says that thinking in labels are like looking at the finger when someone points to the Moon.
    So yep - you're a Taoist too.


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    #39
    dominiquecruz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 236 ✭✭dominiquecruz


    blatantrereg wrote: »
    Your dislike of labels is also Taoistic.
    Core Taoist text says that thinking in labels are like looking at the finger when someone points to the Moon.
    So yep - you're a Taoist too.

    Hmm, then do Taoists acknowledge themselves as so?


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    #40
    WolfgangWeisen
    Closed Accounts Posts: 238 ✭✭WolfgangWeisen


    blatantrereg wrote: »
    Your dislike of labels is also Taoistic.
    Core Taoist text says that thinking in labels are like looking at the finger when someone points to the Moon.
    So yep - you're a Taoist too.
    No you're a taoist

    And so's your oul one


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    #41
    TomKat
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 128 ✭✭TomKat


    We just go to sleep forever. Everyone knows that


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    #42
    dominiquecruz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 236 ✭✭dominiquecruz


    TomKat wrote: »
    We just go to sleep forever. Everyone knows that

    Asides from the few billion who don't.


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    #43
    blatantrereg
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,743 ✭✭✭blatantrereg


    dominiquecruz wrote: »
    Hmm, then do Taoists acknowledge themselves as so?
    I dont know.


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    #44
    dj357
    Registered Users Posts: 70 ✭✭dj357


    I'd much rather live for ever (and be able to choose when I wanted to die) than experience an afterlife. I'm scared to death of dying, but only because I don't want life to end. As is the common atheist refrain, I wasn't inconvenienced by my lack of existence before I was born, so I'm not going to mind any much more when I cease to exist, but I enjoy life to much to be anything but churlish and fearful of letting it end.


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    #45
    wylo
    Registered Users Posts: 2,214 ✭✭✭wylo


    Its really a question of whether
    1. consciousness exists only personally,
    2.or on a universal scale,
    3. or if it exists at all other the idea of it by living things with brains.

    Science hasn't gotten far enough to answer that question definitively. No point making assumptions based on what we know right now.

    Im 99% sure Ill be slated for this weirdness!!:D:

    If you make the assumption that consciousness is just you/the self/ and you alone, as in that feeling of being awake, the central ownership of your body is the same as the feeling of self/"I am" ,then its only natural and obvious to think that when you die that will be the end of the ownership/I am/conciousness.

    But if you kill that assumption then you are really are left wondering is stuff possible that we never even imagined possible, personally I do think it is like everyone is saying, i.e. we die, and that is it, absolutely no acknowledgement of existence. But I dont know, neither does any of us and to lay claims based on a very limited neuroscientific understanding is pointless.

    I watched Morgan Freeman "through the worm hole " on conciousness last night, some decent strange experiments being done at the moment that would throw alot of views out of place.


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    #46
    Helix
    Closed Accounts Posts: 17,661 ✭✭✭✭Helix


    WoundedRhino wrote: »
    True, but during those 13 and a bit billion years, you'd never experienced existence so you didn't know what you were missing! It's not the act of dying that frightens me. It's the not existing part. I like existing :(

    as soon as you stop existing though, there'll stop being a you. so there'll be know knowledge on your part that you ever existed and then didnt exist


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    #47
    TomKat
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 128 ✭✭TomKat


    dominiquecruz wrote: »
    Asides from the few billion who don't.

    No they don't


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    #48
    yellowfish
    Registered Users Posts: 33 ✭yellowfish


    Dades wrote: »
    Read Surface Detail a few months back!

    I always thought that "backing you up" doesn't really change the fact that you're dead. It just creates a clone of your actual self that thinks its you.

    http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=ringworld%20series&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRingworld_series&ei=ciCLT4izKJOFhQenooy0CQ&usg=AFQjCNFOID-Q8-6bVaBhOiive1RIVELcgw

    Ringworld, loved reading this as a boy, they used to kill themselves as a method of travel.


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    #49
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    ^^ Loved Ringworld, too. The 1st sequel not enough to keep going, though. :)


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