Is there life after death or maybe life on other planets?

paddyisreal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121606087#Comment_121606087

Pol Pot was born into a Cambodian Buddhist family, and while he had early exposure to Buddhist teachings, his ideology and the policies implemented during the Khmer Rouge regime reflected a departure from traditional Buddhism. The Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot's leadership, pursued a radical form of communism that aimed to eradicate traditional social structures, including religious institutions. Despite his personal background, Pol Pot's regime implemented state atheism, suppressing religious practices and institutions during its rule in Cambodia. The same was implemented in Russia, china, Albania.

Karl Marz and Friedrich Engels the founders of communism hated organised religion. Didn't Marz refer to it as the opium of the people ? Marz influenced Lenin, Stalin,Pol pot, Mao Zedong, Enver Hoxha all ran communist atheist states and that my friend is a fact

nozzferrahhtoo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121606125#Comment_121606125

Even if not, and they showed up being pretty magnaminous and friendly.... I have always wondered what our species would do in the opposite direction. I fully expect that our species will have groups.

Some will want to murder and kill the aliens. Some will want to cut them up and study them. Some will want to eat them and consider it a delicacy even if they taste awful.

Others will very much want to have sex with them, willingly or otherwise.

And another large set of groups will want to enlighten them on one religious conversion or another. While another large group will create a religion around them and start to worship them.

And I have absolutely no doubt at all, that above all those other groups, there will absoultely be a group which rushes to sell them insurance of one form or another.... or seek to get them to endorse one product or another.

Quite possibly the first question we will ask them is not the meaning of life, what level of englightment they have reached, or any deep philosophy. Someone is probably gonna get up there and find out how many Genders their species has.

On a relatively related note if anyone is looking for a good book to read I strongly recommend "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell.

randd1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121606276#Comment_121606276

In theory they ran communist atheist states, in practice religion was very much involved and heavily influential. None of them would have achieved anything near the power they got were it not for religious assistance in the first place. That they came back and suppressed the religious that helped them as it was the only power left to challenge them and needed removal was no surprise. They then created the State religions around a cult of personality, which although aimed to be atheist, became a religion in of itself and were still propped up organised religious figures supporting them.

And Marx and Engels are unfairly viewed by history; neither ever advocated for the horrors committed in their names. The believed in workers rights, and while they understood violence would probably be needed to achieve that, neither advocated the systemic brutalizing and oppression of the people, and state-run slavery it became. It was often said that Marx and Engels are the very type of people that communism would have executed first given their distrust for those in power.

Jesus Christ and Buddha, whose teaching are primarily and almost exclusively peaceful, were also influences on Lenin, Stalin, Pol pot, Mao Zedong by the way.

And Hoxha pushed atheism, brutally, callously and culturally destructive as it happens, as a means to prevent civil war and the break up of his country along fractured (guess what) religious lines, albeit as a means to also consolidate his own power.

nozzferrahhtoo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121606276#Comment_121606276

What Marx said in his oft misquoted and oft misused speech on the subject is interesting enough in it's own way. People tend to only quote the line about religion being an opiate. That is not all he said. What he said, and I defer to another writer greater than I here:

Karl Marx was neither a determinist nor a vulgar materialist and never said that religion was "the opium of the people." What he did say, in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, was that it was at once the expression of inhuman conditions and the protest against them:

"the heart of a heartless world; the sigh of the oppressed creature; the spirit of a spiritless situation." 

Secular criticism, he said, had endeavored to "pluck the flowers from the chain, not in order that man shall wear the chain without consolation but so that he can break the chain and cull the living flower." 

It was only in this context and with these metaphors that he described religion as an opiate, and even then not as we would now define a mind-dulling (or mind-expanding) 'controlled substance,' but rather as an analgesic on the Victorian model.

It is a beautiful image. An image that tells us there is a baby in the bath water, but the water has gone fetid and rancid. We can throw out the water, and keep the baby. You can keep the water if you want. While I want to watch the baby grow, thrive, and excel anything that the water itself will ever produce. What people implementing "State Dogma" be it an enforced state religion or a state atheism are doing is clinging on to the water and caring not a jot for the child inside.

Starfire20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121601891#Comment_121601891

faith is believing something without good evidence because if you had good evidence, you wouldn't need faith.

Slightly Kwackers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121606125#Comment_121606125

Yes and could we blame them? I mean how could you stand up in an intergalactic court of justice and argue that a species with an IQ differential of 200 from the target species wasn't entitled to eat it if you had just had your bacon and egg brekkers that morning?

On a slightly different tack, I watched "Dominion". It was thought provoking and upsetting. The pack of bacon in my fridge will be the last one I ever buy.

Pigs were just the start. I stopped watching when the poor porkers were lowered into the CO2. It really was shocking.

Methinks that any deity that encourages its muppets to sacrifice animals has serious mental health issues.

Frank Bullitt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121599774#Comment_121599774

There is evidence for the big bang, you can literally measure it. No need for any faith.

Ask a person of faith for evidence (of any kind) for a god...best of luck.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121606385#Comment_121606385

"Communism" has never, ever, been achieved by any state no matter what they're called or choose to call themselves. Communism is, pretty much, an impossibility on a nationwide level. At best, these states can be considered "Socialist" of some sort. And you're correct, neither Marx or Engels lived to see any of these states in effect and neither would have advocated their realities in any way. The Socialist states we call "Communist" are an anathema to the writings of Marx who would have been appalled at the level of oppression they exerted. These states use the idea of Communism because it appeals to the "masses", but none of the leaders or parties of these, so called, Communist countries even remotely fit the bill. The "isms" these countries exhibit would be "Leninism", "Stalinism" or "Maoism", for example, all of which would have been firmly rejected by Marx because each example is against Communist principles because they are all statist powers.

As for Stalin, he actually trained to be a priest in Tbilisi and was wedded to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Church he grew up in. But he later came to reject it because he viewed it as an oppressive organisation in its own right, after he was expelled from the Tiflis Theological seminary for possessing "illegal literature". But there's no real evidence that he completely ceased to believe in a god or that he was an atheist in the sense that we know it. Historians still quibble over this, but a rejection of a church and being anti religious doesn't necessarily mean one stops believing in a god of some kind. Plenty of Irish people rejected the catholic church after the revelations of their systematic child abuse (and other routine abuses) but they would still consider that there is or maybe is a god.

But it's true that both Lenin and Stalin tried to reduce the church's influence and power over the Russian people, without necessarily wanting to eliminate it altogether, because both leaders realised that the peasantry, as it were, were still deeply religious. Also the wealth that the church hoarded was largely confiscated. However, Stalin could never replace the hold that the church had over the Russian people and came to understand the folly of trying to do so. Even after a decade of Stalinist rule, the vast majority of Russian people remained part of the church. Stalin later changed his mind again with regards to the church during WWII. After the Germans invaded in 1941, they began to reopen churches in the Ukraine and Stalin thought he'd follow suit lest the Russians came to see the Germans as the saviours they claimed to be. Wehrmacht soldiers marched into Russia with Gott Mit Uns on their belt buckles and had no qualms about telling the Soviet people that god was, indeed, on their side.

dxhound2005

Marx had a bit more to say about religion beyond it being the opium of the people.

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

I see that he wrote it in 1843, 16 years before Darwin's Origin of Species was published. But he could have been aware of ideas opposing Creationism. With evolution always striving to improve species, I wonder what was the evolutionary imperative involved in giving humans the brains able to come up with stuff like Marx did. Like all current life, and all the extinct species, we started out as single cell organisms. The branch which left the oceans and came on land eventually produced humans, but only very recently. And who knows what we will turn into if given the 165 million years the dinosaurs got. Some version of AI which is a human "creation", may turn out to be the God that humans always seem to need.

randd1

Will we become our own gods? And with it unravel the mysteries of the universe?

Suppose for a second we don't, as a species destroy ourselves, and evolve by our own hand. Think about it, in a way we already have.

20,000 years ago we lived until about 40,maybe 10 years longer in some cases, 20 years longer in a small number of extreme circumstances, not unlike our great ape cousins of today. 10,000 years after that we'd started civilisations, farming, sciences (mostly religious), and added more years. Another 10,000 years or so after that up the industrial revolution, we're up to 65 years life expectancy for the majority. We're heading towards 80 these days. It's likely a good chunk of children born after the year 2000 will live to 100, and their grandchildren to 125 if the trend continues.

Science is pushing out the boundaries with regards medicine and understanding of the human body, and you'd have to think that will eventually be pushed further with AI, biomechanical technology and genetic manipulation. It may even be a case that we amalgamate the biological and the technological into one, and as we do, unravel more and more understanding of what we don't know.

The point is, at some stage, we could potentially become somewhat superhuman, based on altering our genome and amalgamating with technology.

With the advent of what medicine has done, in a relatively short time, I could see us as a species moving beyond anything we can possibly envisage. The humans of 1000 years time my be designed biologically and technologically to the point that we look like Gods compared to what we are today.

And with that advancement, we'll have the ability, understanding and lack of biological limit to go beyond what we can't see right now.

Or maybe we're there already, and the "Gods" we hear and see are merely our future selves observing their own past.

Or maybe I shouldn't have that chocolate bar with the best by date on it from the other day.

believer11

This is a great thread. Some really good answers so far.

believer11

I tend to agree with you randd1.

I think we would become to aliens like cows and chickens are to us.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121606125#Comment_121606125

I would love if it were all true, that it’s all beyond my comprehension but that there is a rewarding life after death, for all the sh1t most of us put through, and that we would meet our loved ones and keep apart from those who did us wrong or else that they get to offer us their sincere remorse and all ends up like a fairytale.

There is so much misery & suffering beyond our own control as individuals, surely there must be something better?

Yeah.. I know

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121599786#Comment_121599786

Dawkins has literally stated that he is not a 'gnostic' atheist i.e. someone absolutely certain that no god exists. He says that rather he regards the existence of a god as extremely improbable.

Being honest, very few religious believers would claim to be totally certain that their god exists, either (that's why they talk about faith, not knowledge)

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121599617#Comment_121599617

Do they? do they really?

Ever had someone knock on your door and ask you if you've heard about no god?

or try to push a leaflet in your hand about no god when you're walking down the street?

set up a microphone in your city or town centre and start roaring for hours on end about how there is no god?

ring a bell on a Sunday morning to remind you to worship no god?

rattle a collection box under your nose to support their work spreading the word of no god to the 'unfortunate' masses in the developing world who might not be aware of no god?

In real life it's something which hardly ever comes up, once friends/family know your stance what is there to talk about?

Now if someone starts a thread on here saying I'm going to hell, or that my kids must have religious instruction in school, or I'm not really Irish if I'm not catholic, or I should emigrate if I don't like a church-dominated society, etc etc then you're damn sure I'm going to have an opinion on that nonsense

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121599774#Comment_121599774

The difference is evidence, so no, no faith required to believe that the Big Bang occurred.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121629650#Comment_121629650

I meant in person, I've never had an atheist call to the door. I'd happily have a chat with them though! 😄

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121606276#Comment_121606276

Marx did describe religion as the "opium of the people" in the sense that it relieved the pain of the working classes (who mostly then lived in horrific conditions to be fair).

Is pain relief bad? Only if you rely in it and don't bother trying to investigate or cure the underlying illness.

I note you ignore the very valid point that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim etc etc all had cults of personality created around them which were to all intents and purposes a compulsory state religion. Of course communists didn't appreciate other ideologies competing for the hearts and minds of the people. The Catholic Church right here in Ireland certainly didn't, either (and it was not just hearts and minds they were competing for but wallets too).

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121629789#Comment_121629789

Oh I'm sure you've had loads, but they didn't mention it, and were there for another reason 😉

Hawkeye123

I do believe there is life after death and that life will be more than we can imagine.

Life on other planets is a completely different question as that pertains to mortal life. I do believe there is life on other planets but the distances are too great for us to traverse. Also, of all the planets discovered so far, none of them is anywhere near as good as earth. Even if a full scale nuclear war were to happen, this planet would still be a far better place to live, than anything yet discovered.

SouthWesterly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121629686#Comment_121629686

I've no issue with the big bang. "God said, "let there be light" and there was" No one has been able to tell me what caused it (other than God) and where the materials came from that were within it. It's almost as if big bang theorists believe the big bang came from nothing.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121713746#Comment_121713746

It wasn't so nice back in the day. Millions of years as a fireball, millions of years as a snowball. And an occasional whack since from some big bit of rock from space. Down the line the Sun will engulf the Earth. We are living in a Goldilocks time in between.

God works in mysterious ways. He/She might be doing the same sort of stuff to other planets out there, but we are not seeing them at the right time.

Hawkeye123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121714462#Comment_121714462

Goldilocks is a fairy tale and so is the notion we will ever get to colonize another planet.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121713746#Comment_121713746

We accept that every other living thing dies.

We have no reason to believe that it's any different for humans, apart from very wishful thinking.

We are living on a tiny blue dot in a universe vast beyond our understanding, almost all of which is completely inhospitable to life. The notion that it was created all for us, or we have "souls" or a special purpose, etc. is ludicrous. Do your best to enjoy your life, it's the only one you'll have.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121713975#Comment_121713975

Common misconception.

Space and time and matter as we understand them all began at the Big Bang. To ask what came before is like asking about what possible parallel universes in our own time are like - by definition we cannot have any knowledge of anything outside of our own universe.

Maybe it was all kicked off by a god? Possibly. We have no evidence whatsoever of a god intervening since though - stars, galaxies, planets, indeed life all arose through entirely natural processes.

If a god kicked off the Big Bang, that'd be a deist god, not a theist god. The Christian / Jewish / Muslim etc etc god(s) are decidedly theistic and there is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of any of them.

A deistic god, who kicked off the universe but never intervened again and doesn't care about the existence of humans or what they get up to? Quite possible. But it makes absolutely no difference to my life or how I live or anyone else's life either if a deistic god exists. Worshipping a deistic god would be pointless.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121611317#Comment_121611317

Let's say you divorced and remarried, are you stuck with your first spouse or your second?

Maybe your parents preferred you when you were 8 instead of the obnoxious teenager you grew into - are you permanently stuck in that state? Do they get their wish, or you?

It's all very very silly, really.

SouthWesterly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121722390#Comment_121722390

For all your words you don't actually know a lot. As a believer in God, I just have to look up and see his handiwork all the while on knowing he intervened in human history quiet notably 2000 years ago and had his hand on it since it's creation.

Whether you believe in Him or not makes no difference to His existence. He doesn't cease to exist just because someone doesn't believe in Him. Indeed since He existed before the creation of anything, someone's believe doest give any substance to His existence.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121722543#Comment_121722543

Any thoughts on why he waited 10 billion years after the Big Bang to create the Earth. Then left it a billion years before he created single cell life, and eventually dinosaurs and all that came later. Only creating humans in the last 5 minutes of a 24 hour clock, as the analogy goes.

And he has arranged the future destruction of the planet when the Sun becomes a Red Giant. What is His master plan all about?

SouthWesterly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121722643#Comment_121722643

Who said it's 10 billion years? Where's the evidence as opposed to a load of theories?