Is there life after death or maybe life on other planets?
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The fundamental problem with these big questions is that absolutely nobody living can say for definite that there is or there isnt life after death. How could anybody still alive in flesh and blood form make any conclusions on the hereafter?
There may be something, there may be nothing at all. I personally believe there is a higher energy which you become a part of when you shed this skin but im highly skeptical of anyone who is stating as fact what, if anything, happens to you after death
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There is no 'belief' with atheism though. That's the key difference.
Atheists aren't saying 'I believe there is no god', they are saying 'there is no proof of god's existence'.
Both of the above statements sound similar but they're quite different when you break them down. One requires belief, the other doesn't.
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I believe there is yeah, if when I die there is nothing then I won’t know as I’ll be dead.
In reality I don’t think too much about it, why should I. I will never come to a definitive answer even if I tried.
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I think there is a breath of difference between pedantry and showing that a word is being entirely misused. If I wanted to be pedantic I would point out your inability to spell Santa Claus correctly, or something equally mundane.
Subscribing to the idea of the Big Bang given the evidence we have for it, being listed under "faith" in the same way as subscribing to the notion of a deity which has zero evidence for it, is a rather broad misuse of the words in question. This is not pedantry. It is basic language.
I think many people in my experience are too keen to dilute the meaning of words to the point they are meaningless. If thinking the Big Bang is a susbtantiated and strong scientific theory is "Faith" then the word "Faith" is now so dilute as to be essentially meaningless. EVERYTHING would be "faith" at that point.
One thing you said that is pedantically true is that many things in science are not "seen". At least not directly, or in real time. We do not see evolution happen in real time generally. We were not there at the big bang. No one has actually "seen" a quark. But all these things are heavilty substantiated. They are not matters of "faith" therefore by any definition I know. With your biblical definition, or with Santa Claus. the issue is not just a conviction of things not seen.... but any evidence for those things is ALSO not seen. Because there appears to be none. Which is where your comparison breaks down and breaks down quite badly.
Another bit of useful pedantry however would be to point out that science does not struggle so much with telling you what happened "before" the big bang. Rather the issue there is that "before" becomes meaningless at that moment. "Before" is a temporal word and time is an attribute of our universe in it's current state. So words like "before" have no meaning. The correct way to describe it is that many of the laws of the universe we currently understand break down at that point. But there are people more qualified on this forum to speak to this than you or I. So perhaps they would like to step in on this point.
Not so sure how "organised" you think the exitence of such bodies means they are. As one of the original founding members of Atheist Ireland (which I left when I moved to Germany) I can tell you that keeping them organised was like controlling a herd of cats in a room full of moving laser dots. You claim they have one major beleif in common, but even that is not remotely true. They quite often enjoyed spending hours debating what the word "atheism" even means. The long time "Chair Man" of it Micheal Nugent has a personal definition of what atheism entails that I think is almost entirely wrong.
The one thing they DID collectively seem to have in common was the wish to have an organisation, and chair man, who's job it was to put the general atheistic area of discourse into our media and society. They might disagree on what should be in that discourse. But that the discourse was being promoted was a shared goal and shared ideal. And in fact there was a vote on the name and "Atheist Ireland" barely won in the end as I recall. So much else was suggested including "Secularism Ireland" for example given "Secularism" was a much more shared ideal in the herd of cats than "Atheism" was.
The concept of "the certainty there is no god" is one you have straw manned into their collective mouths too. Many/Most would in fact say that atheism is not a belief there is no god, but a lack of belief there is one. Which might sound the same but is massively different. If you REALLY want me to be pedantic (which I can on request, any time, any where) I would point out to you, and have pointed out to them, that they should in fact therefore be called adeists not atheists, and that atheists could in fact be deists.
It is one of the handful of reasons I never call myself atheist or agnostic or a- anything. Defining yourself by what you are not, rather than by what you are A) is nonsencial to me and B) leave it open to people like yourself to make stuff up and straw man it into my mouth. Instead I am someone who openly listens to any claim you want to make (such as, there is a god) then ask you if you have any reasoning to offer that might make me also believe this claim. If you do not, then I simply dismiss the claim as unsubstantiated imaginary guff.
And thus far in over 30 years of asking theists.... there simply is not a shred of an iota of arguments, evidence, data or reasoning on offer that lends even a modicum of credence to the notion a non human intelligent intentional agent is responsible for the creation of our universe. So I simply shelve the claim. But I remain open that such information might still come in, and am ever ready to change my position on the matter to deism or even theism, given the content. It just has not happened YET.
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I think you are right that CURRENTLY no one seems to be able to say for definite one way or the other. But that does not mean they never will.
For example earlier I mentioned Sam Parnia. He tried to study OBE And NDE. He came up with a good way to do this I think. He looked at all the cases of NDE reported and worked out that the VAST majoriry of them were floating above their body in the room. Usually right at the ceiling. So he simply placed very unmissable and incogruant objects secretly in areas where ONLY people floating above in that position could/would see.
In fact, it was described to me that they were placed so secretly that even he AND his team did not know which rooms and which hospitals had these objects. So when they were all interviewing patients who had NDE they could not mistakenly (or intentionally) trick the patients into claiming to have seen things they did not.
Now IF that study had NDE patients coming back and saying things like "I was floating above my body.... and the weird thing is there was a weird digital display light over on top of that cupboard there with the number 5456 on it!" or "THis sounds mad but there was a bonsai tree made of dildos over there only I could see" and they were right..... I think we would reach a point where "the living" could very much start to discuss these "big questions" with more definites about the ability of human conciousness to seperate from the body and operate indepdently of it!
As far as I know however....... miracle I know........ not one single patient claiming an out of body NDE managed to notice even ONE of these attention grabbing items. Not. One. Single. One. Which means that CURRENTLY your point remains true. We are still in a position where no one living seems to be able to say anything definitive yet.
But I remain open as ever. Maybe the next Sam Parnia will validate some of thise OBE or remote viewing stuff. Any evidence at all that human consciousness can survive independent of... or even following the death of.... the brain would be massively transformative to discourse on this topic. Hell I would probably abandon my current career and go study it myself for the rest of my life, it would be that exciting.
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So you are saying scientific method - the basis every human achievement and progress to this date - from healtcare to education to food to technology that you simply cannot exist without today, including the ones you are using this very moment to read this - is all fundamentally and insentiently flawed - and yet, the idea of a god, of which there are thousands, and more being imagined up by people around the world every day, and many such has came up, had their following and died off over the centuries - is to be trusted? And scientific method is so flawed that it can not begin to try and understand this thing at all?
I think scientific approach has very rationally explained what is going on and guess I will stick with my belief (in science) over made-up beliefs that theists haven't been able to agree between themselves to this date. Peace.
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You can argue without mocking someone. There is many things I do not belief and will have a debate on it but mocking is just cruel and a way for you to lord over someone you are superior
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In your opinion it's a broad misuse that's fair enough but to me there is no bloody difference to believing in the big bang, god, the spaghetti monster or whatever takes your fancy. They all take a bit of faith ! I think what's irking you is the word faith being associated with atheism hence the poorly veiled insults regarding straw man, pedantry etc etc
Anyway, You were a founding member of atheist Ireland but you don't refer to yourself as an atheist ??? Is that not a bit strange ? Did you see the light ?
You have spent 30 years asking theists to prove the existence of a diety.... Why ? You surely know there is no way of proving it the same as there is no way of proving what happened before the big bang ! Again it's a leap of faith !
You do know the etymology of the word atheism is greek and means "without god" so according to your theory above that most atheists "lack of belief there is one " are in fact in the wrong group or should rename themselves ?
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You can have the evidence for a naturalisticworldview but if the worldview is false then all the evidence is just abstract theory. Read my previous comment
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Strawman argument don't help the case bud! There are specific things that require a different approach in science such as human origins.
Materialism is a belief system. You have to believe there is no god which itself takes faith. This is not a form of atheism but rather a totally denial of the possibility, a denial which requires belief.
As I will say again. The Scientific method is flawed due to siding with a particular view of reality. This is a known fact for anyone with a basic understanding in the philsophy of science. All naturalistic explanations(The big bang theory, macro-evolution are ALL derived from naturalistic thinking). It's all evidence within a specific framework of a worldview that doesn't hold any objectivity is the view is incorrect.
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No, it was an answer to your question, just one you didn't like because you appear (like millions of others to be fair) to have bought the lie of Christianity and think that somehow this makes you superior to those who have bought the lie of Islam. I'm quite happy to point out that the Quran depicts Mohammed as a paedophile if that makes you happy? I can even go so far as to say that Islam as a belief system is almost certainly responsible for more violence and murder in the world today than Christianity is (but would point out that this hasn't always been so and there have certainly been times in history when Christians were the more violent group).
I have an equally low tolerance for any collection of superstitions that the deluded who choose to believe in (despite a total lack of evidence and all logic pointing to the contrary) demand respect for because they've bundled them up into a belief system they call a "religion".
After all, that's all "faith" is: a choice to believe something when no good reason exists to do so. It's not something I respect, in fact, such self delusion is something I hold in disdain. I'm not going to go into a place of worship and start shouting about it but I will admit, I get quite angry when religions demand the "right" to enshrine their delusions into law.
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Lol, I ain't any religion I just found it hilarious how it's easy to mock jesus but leave mohammed out of it . Why blame all the world's evils at the door of religion anyway ? Pol pot, Stalin, amongst numerous other communist dictators killed millions and we're atheists.....
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Where did I blame all the worlds evils on religion? Oh, that's right, I didn't. Another strawman argument from you.
I consider religion (of all flavours) to be a dangerous delusion that the world would be a safer place without but I'll leave fantasies of utopia to the theists. There are many motivations for war, violence and barbarism. Religion is arguably the easiest to harness since those who believe in it have already identified themselves as lacking in rational thinking and are easily convinced that their deity will reward them for the evil they do it his/her/it's name.
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Muhammad was a war lord. Christianity is a soft touch, a sort of an indifference to an extent. If Christianity was militarized/radical then people would think twice. Then again it teaches a doctrine of eternal hell so which is worse?
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My dad's family came from the Soviet Union (Communist USSR). I think Marxism has become the most dangerous delusions due to the fact that if you criticized it in Russia you faced the gulag and other crimes like subversion of the state, they would also have your family testify against you or else you would be faced with crimes yourself if you didn't do what they wanted, etc.
The west slanders and criticizes their religious roots but you have never known or want to know a militarized godlessness like Marxism (Marxist-Leninism) . The fantasy of socialism is the worst of the delusions especially in Ireland and the United States.
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Is it Important for civilizations to believe in something because with out this belief in something there is nothing, I would love to believe but sadly I don't, I do have to sit through the odd mass Holly commun and confirmation for family and community reasons and find it very difficult to take in such crazy makeyupy stuff that there is this great man in the sky that loves us all but likes to see us suffer as well, for some of us this suffering starts the very minute you are born. Buy anyway all will be grand and we will live on in this magical place in heaven where we will have the biggest family reunion and we will be meeting ancestors that came down off the trees and we will all have great fun together Amen.
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Life after death. Who knows there us no way to prove it but I like to think there is in an alternate universe. We die and our soul goes on as the alternate version. We might be able to see our old lives for a while and eventually we fade away.
I like to think when we die we get to see our whole lives all over if we want too.
Do I believe in an almighty God? No I do not.
Life on other planets=Yes. We will never meet real proper Aliens from another planet but maybe generations of us 4, 5 or 6 plus centuries from now might if we have not destroyed ourselves first.
Live long and Prosper
Peace and long life.
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Travellers have a much higher fertility rate than the wider community.
No doubt other population groups also do, but I dont see what relevance this has to the existence of an after life?
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Indeed I do. I did not "mock" anyone here. Even once. In fact you are replying to my post where I was calling out a user for calling holders of this belief "weak". Because that user is therefore attacking not the belief, but the holders of the belief. So you are replying to exactly the wrong person here. Go reply to the person who is ACTUALLY mocking people, and teke it up with them perhaps? Why take up mockery with someone who has employed no mockery?
Once again just so it is clear: Mocking a belief and mocking a person are two different things. You might find me doing the former. You will not find me doing the latter. There are however, alas, many people who can not tell the difference between the two.
One mantra I live by has always been "insults demean the insulter never the target".
In your opinion there is no difference between the two that's fair enough but to me there is a massive bloody difference between believing things that are substantiated and the things that take your fancy that are entirely unsubstantiated. If YOU think that belief in the substantiated is the same as belief in the unsubstantiated then that's on your not me. And pretending things are insults when no insult was made, intended or to be found is one of those unsubstantiated beliefs you would appear to hold. Faith in things unseen indeed!
No there is nothing strange AT ALL in not calling myself atheist but founding or being a member of Atheist Ireland. I do not consider myself a woman but I am the founder of, and member of several charties with "women" in the name too. I am the member of a GAA organisation and I do not play ANY GAA at all. It is quite possible and not at all strange to be a member of an organisation which has a name that you yourself do not use or associate yourself with.
You really do need to stop putting words in my mouth though. I very specifically said more than once on this thread that I do not ask anyone, let alone theists, to "prove the existence of a deity". You simply made that up. What I DID say however was that over the last 30 years I have very often asked them if they have ANYTHING at all that lends ANY CREDENCE at all to the notion there is one. I think it is unfair and unwise to ask them to "prove" anything at all. I simply want to know if they have anything whatsoever on offer to even SUGGEST that this "god" thing of theirs exist. So far the answer is a clear "No". They really have nothing.
I am well aware of the etymology and meaning of the words being used here though yes, thanks for asking. You see the "A-" part means "without". But the funny thing is that the second part "-theism" does not ACTUALLY mean god. Or at least not solely. It means beleifs ABOUT a god or gods specicailly. So if one did want to play a game of pedantry then one could do so by looking into the difference between "atheism" and "adeism". It is my contention that given the definitions and meanins of the words it would be entirely possibly to be an atheist and a deist at the same time. But less possible to be an adeist and a theist at the same time. But alas dictionary defintiions of these words (and the word agnostic) vary widely so the pedantry there would be for play rather than to actually create a hill to die on.
If you want to comment to me do. If you want to reply to me do. I am not about to read comments you made to others simply because you want to reply to huge posts to me without actually saying anything to me. Case in point, you want to discuss materialism and naturalism but nothing in my posts involves either or is limited to either. I repeat: If you have any arguments, evidence, data or reasoning to offer that lends credence to the claim that a non human intelligent or intentional agent is responsible for the creation of our universe.... I am agog to hear such substantiation. Note nothing there mentions or limits your reply to "naturaliticwoldview".
Moaning about naturalism at me when I never discussed it, is not gonna substantiate anything or answer anything I actually wrote here today.
Ah "Fatwa envy" that was called some years ago. The whole "You say that about religion X but would you say it about Islam" move. The answer though usually kills the attempt. Yes. Most atheists I have met will just as openly discuss Islam and it's failures as readily as Christianity if the subject comes up. But as another user pointed out to you already: This is Ireland where Islam is very much a minority religion and so it does not make much sense to bring it up unless someone else does. Similarly no one here has brought up much in the way of Indian religions either. Because they are just not relevant to a discussion on an Irish Forum.
But not bringing up a minority subject in every breath that Christianity is mentioned is NOT the same as being in any way reluctant or scared to do so or in any way "leaving Mohammed out of it". Mo and his religion is every bit as worthy of mockery and dissection as Jesus and Christianity and is every bit as lacking in substantiation too.
So whatever you find "hilarious" seems not to even be remotely funny to me. It's just a failure of understanding on your part. You are simply imagining that not mentioning something barely relevant is the same as avoiding mentioning it intentionally. It is not.
If anything I would find Islam worse than Christianity to be openly honest. And I think most people in Ireland would too. After all if you asked someone a simple question "You are about to get a new neighbour, a single male. If you had to choose from the following, would you choose him to be an Extremist Atheist, an Extremist Christian, an Extremist Muslim, or an Extremist Jain" I think you know in which order most people would answer. And I suspect you know exactly why too. In my experience, if anyone wants to know, the last on the list is always the Muslim. Second last always the Christian. And 1st and second place tend to alternate between the other two. Given the choices I myself would err towards the Jain I think from what little I know of them.
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I take that as a misunderstanding on your part. As I will say for the second time. The Scientific method is flawed due to siding with a particular view of reality. This is a known fact for anyone with a basic understanding in the philosophy of science. All naturalistic explanations(The big bang theory, macro-evolution are ALL derived from naturalistic thinking). It's all evidence within a specific framework of a worldview that doesn't hold any objectivity if the view is incorrect. There is no evidence for naturalism so all your arguments and rambling-ons about evidence based frameworks/theories(Big bang theory and macro-evolution) are invalid. To simplify it even further for you, the big bang theory and macro-evolution are theories within the orbit of this worldview. There is no objective evidence without the validation of the worldview. Your premise of "evidence" is flawed.
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Well, you can’t be more than 100% sure of anything. So 1million% is a bit of a silly bench mark.
And sure many things require a bit of faith. That doesn’t make all faith equal, you understand that right? If I’m 99% sure of something based on the info I have, then that last 1% isn’t much of a leap. But if I’m only 50% sure, bigger leap. And if there is zero info, then it’s a complete leap of faith. To the point of being useless.
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Would a supernatural presence be measurable? Yes. Of course.
Where does the bible or any holy book say god is invisible or can’t be detected? You’ve just made that up. They are literally full of stories of God appear (this visible) or speaking (this audible). Funny how those stories stop once we had the ability to record.
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Nope. The misunderstandings are all yours. Because you keep going on and on about things I have not limited my question to AND going on about things I have not even mentioned once at all. I think you are confusing me with someone else and are forgetting who you are even talking to.
Once again I have asked one question and one question only. And that question is not answered by you dodging it and talking about the Scientific method or naturalism. Because the question I have asked does not even mention those things or suggest the answer should be limited to those things. I will repeat the question for you once again just to help your current lack of understanding out:
Is anyone aware of any arguments, data, evidence OR reasoning that lends any credence whatsoever to the claim that a nonhuman intelligent intentional agent is responsible for the creation and/or ongoing maintenance of our universe?
To simplify it even further for you: I do not mention naturalism in that question. I do not mention the scientific method in that question. So all your arguments and rambling-ons about them are invalid.
Same too for your comical claim that my premise of "evidence" is flawed because one again I do not mention ANY of these things in MY premise of evidence. Explain to me how a flaw in X means there is a flaw in Y, if Y has nothing whatsoever to do with X, never mentions or refers to X and is specifically designed to have nothing to do with X? You are either putting things in my mouth, or mistaking me for someone else. Once again MY premise of evidence is simple. It is a process and that process is simple. It is:
1) State as clearly as possible what your claim is.
2) State as clearly as possible what things you think support that claim.
3) Explain as clearly as possible how the things listed in 2 are, in your view, supportive of the claim made in 1.
Shock horror, once again, I mention neither naturalism or science here and I do not limit your answer to either of those things. So once again to simplify it even further for you, all your arguments and rambling-ons about them are invalid.
Wanna try again? Or do you want to go find the person you think you are replying to, who is CLEARLY not me? If you want to change tack and reply to things I have actually said, and ideas I have actually espoused, rather than things you are imagining on my behalf.... I am here for you. Or at least I will be in the morning. Its night night time now. So you have time to go back and read what I have ACTUALLY written on the thread and not in your head.
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Yes. This is my mistake. Closing this, my bad.
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As a scientist
Life after death: no, sin e.
Life on other planets: Almost statistically imposssibe there is not given the scale of the universe
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Sure, although not a deity. He appears to have been motivated by good. Although, the story was written by Christians decades later, it's mostly an attempt at being good (some parts horribly archaic obviously).
But also bare in mind that regardless of his intentions, it's pretty clear that all religions have been the catelyst or justification for countless horrific acts. Which is literally continuing in 2024.
It's pretty clear that you don't actually know why Jesus was mentioned. I'm the one that mentioned him, and Jesus was the obvious example given the context. Who are all these other prophets that could have ben mentioned? You're making things up here to be aggrieved at.
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You need Trumps evangelicals.
I'm sure you can have a customised afterlife of your own choosing for as long as the tithe money lasts.
Far better than the indulgences preferred by the Catholic church as the tithes can add up to a quite nice private jet. Not as economical as angel wings, but they seem to be the transport of choice for the pastors.
There have been evangelicals who have been taken to heaven, just the odd one or two though, most seem to be taken to prison cells instead.
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Has life been produced in a lab?
It seems difficult to postulate that life can flash into being based solely on the number of chunks of matter observed.
Methinks that if life were anywhere close, maybe 100 light years radius of earth, the likelihood is that they could be more advanced and in that case humanity would be toast.
Anyone seriously believing in extraterrestrial life needs to think in terms of the old WW2 style blackout curtains and of course disable the wifi and link the car ignition key to the vehicle with a long screened cable.
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No, they weren't, that's a lie that's been perpetrated for decades, usually by religious nuts threatened by atheist views.
Pol Pot was a Buddhist. Stalin joined the communist party because he couldn't make the priesthood, and his power was helped greatly by the Russian Orthodox Church. Nearly all the high ranking Nazi's were Catholics. Papa Doc was a voodoo priest and used to scare Haitians into submission. Most brutal regimes are based around religious ideology. Chairman Mao abandoned Buddhism early on, but the Chinese Communist Party were very much in thrall to Buddhism when the cultural revolution took hold.
Nearly always when a dictator comes to power, he has the strongest religious group at his back. Hell, the same could be said for a lot of democracies that religion played a role in some governments. Look at our history, the Bishop told people how they should vote, and that's how people voted.
And of course, these dictators/communist overlords, all were heads of State-based religions where the state rulings became the religion to live by, and they were held as saviours and God-like figures, much like the Kim's in North Korea. In effect, they became the heads/Gods of their self made religions. Just because more mainstream religions were put in the background by these regimes, it didn't mean religion wasn't still central to their power, or that it made them atheist.
They only became to be seen as anti-religious when some brave religious people (and there a few in fairness, most paid with their lives) dared speak out about their brutality or threatened religious blowback, and were brutally snuffed out, usually with the help of religious rivals. The Spanish Civil War is a classic example, the Catholic Church sided with Franco because it felt threatened by the other side, and Franco's forces brutally supressed opposition from religious figures who opposed him.
Religion has played a vital and role in shaping the outlook and horrors of modern dictatorships in the last 100 years than atheist ideals ever could. In fact one of the reasons they're often so brutal is because it's believed they're doing the work of God/religion.
And the less said about religions influence on war, mass murder and brutal dictators past the last 100 years the better, it's practically the reason for most of humanity's inhumanity throughout history. Hell, even one of the major world religions (Islam) is based on the teachings of a warlord, and look what that's doing to the world today, so many Islamic dictators and brutal medieval regimes backed up by religious authorities.
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On the whole alien thing in general.
Imagine if they came here in the near future, and were still of a biological. Obviously they'd be so far ahead of us in terms of technology that we'd look like simple animals to them.
And as animals to them, do you reckon they'd see us as a food source? Would we become to aliens what cows and chickens are to us?
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