Atheism and the Afterlife

kylith · 05-01-2016 12:34PM

Swanner wrote: »

That's my point though. You've mentioned a couple of realistic and valid explanations which have to be thoroughly investigated.

The difference is that I don't discount the idea that it could actually be a consciousness beyond death because as long as there is evidence in both directions and as long as it has not been definitively proven one way or the other, I cannot be in a position to state anything as fact.

I have my opinion and i can try and defend it with the evidence we do have but at the end of the day you'll have just as much evidence to dispute my claim so I just accept that reality that none of us can actually know for sure.

Sure, there could be an afterlife. It could also be that it's the powering down of the computer programme that runs you because we're all just simulations in an experiment. Frankly there's as much evidence for one as for the other.

The evidence that we DO have, the scientific evidence, points to there not being an afterlife. So until someone comes up with better evidence than 'this guy was in a car crash, right? And he swears that he saw a white light and his dead granny was there, and why would he lie?', which is what the majority of the evidence FOR an afterlife boils down to, I'm going to go with the scientific reasoning.

The burden of proof places the onus to prove a claim on the person making a claim. You cannot prove a negative: it can't be proven that unicorns don't exist so the onus is on people claiming that unicorns exist to prove that they do. The same with the afterlife: no one can prove that there isn't an afterlife, but they have come up with verifiable mundane reasons for explaining NDEs. As yet there hasn't been the first bit of evidence for an afterlife that isn't opinion, conjecture, or anecdote.

Mark Tapley · 05-01-2016 12:34PM

Swanner wrote: »

It's hokey to you. That's fine. I can understand why you think it's hokey.

Lot's of things seem hokey to me too. I don't categorically discount them on that basis though. I will happily discount them when presented with definitive proof that they're hokey, but never because "I think it's hokey"..

As to whether it's worthy of debate or not, well, you're here debating of your own free will so...

A licence to believe any mickey mouse crap. You must have definitive proof that there is no god then.

kylith · 05-01-2016 12:42PM

Swanner wrote: »

It's hokey to you. That's fine. I can understand why you think it's hokey.

Lot's of things seem hokey to me too. I don't categorically discount them on that basis though. I will happily discount them when presented with definitive proof that they're hokey, but never because "I think it's hokey"..

As to whether it's worthy of debate or not, well, you're here debating of your own free will so...

What about 'there isn't a shred of evidence to say it's not hokey'? Otherwise you're left not discounting fairies, Bigfoot, crystal healing, or a gremlin called Malcolm who causes mouth ulcers.

Akrasia · 05-01-2016 12:53PM

Swanner wrote: »

Do you mean the original question ? Are they compatible ?

If so...

When I held that view I had not got to the point i'm at today. I had no belief in any god. None whatsoever. I believed that when we die, we rot. End of.

I was 100% atheist yet I was more then comfortable with the idea that an energy within me could continue on after death.

It would be fair to say that it all sits a lot easier with me now that I can accept something "other" whatever that is, but i don't believe the 2 are mutually exclusive.

Energy continues, consciousness ends.

Huntergonzo · 05-01-2016 12:57PM

Akrasia wrote: »

Energy continues, consciousness ends.

Consciousness does indeed end........especially after a couple of bottles of wine at Christmas :-)

robdonn · 05-01-2016 12:58PM

kylith wrote: »

Sure, there could be an afterlife. It could also be that it's the powering down of the computer programme that runs you because we're all just simulations in an experiment. Frankly there's as much evidence for one as for the other.

Actually, we have evidence of computer programmes existing. :P

The Bishop Basher · 05-01-2016 01:00PM

kylith wrote: »

I'm going to go with the scientific reasoning.

And I wouldn't expect any atheist that relies solely on scientific reason to be open to what i'm suggesting. I get that and I have no problem with it. We probably just have to agree to disagree as we're approaching it from such different perspectives with little room for compromise..

But atheists don't have to rely solely on scientific reason. They just have to lack a belief in a god. That leaves the door open for a much wider divergence of opinion within atheism and that's where I was coming from.

So while it may be absolutely contrary to your "beliefs", surely it's conceivable that other atheists may sit comfortably with the idea.

That was what i wanted to figure out.

kylith wrote: »

The burden of proof places the onus to prove a claim on the person making a claim.

I got the impression Mark Tapley was stating the non existence of an afterlife as fact. If I got that wrong, my bad.

In all other circumstances i obviously accept the burden of proof.

looksee · 05-01-2016 01:02PM

I just enjoy bouncing these ideas around and getting other perspectives...

But the rest of us don't- and can't - have any perspectives on your personal opinion that while there is no god there is - something.

You think (am I right?) that there will be some sort of an afterlife, on the basis that you have experienced great peace or contentment or something slightly otherworldly in a forest or countryside. Other than that the 'something' might just as well be described as god, possibly not with the baggage of a religion, but god nontheless.

I can accept that being atheist and believing in an afterlife are not absolutely exclusive of each other, but since atheists tend to not believe in anything for which there is no evidence, it seems unlikely that there are too many that think that way. I would tend to believe that NDEs can be caused by physical reactions in the brain. The commonest versions of this are probably 'deja vu', and the sense when you wake that you have had a long and complicated dream, but brain scans would show that the dream lasted only a very short time. There is also that really weird sensation that just as you are falling asleep a very convincing voice says your name quite loudly and clearly. The first time I heard this as a child I was convinced god had spoken to me. He didn't say anything else though so it seemed a bit pointless.

If it gives you peace and contentment to anticipate an afterlife, then go for it. Why look for anyone else to validate your belief (that's what is called religion), and there is always the risk that they will persuade you against it, which would be a pity if you get reassurance from it.

The Bishop Basher · 05-01-2016 01:05PM

kylith wrote: »

What about 'there isn't a shred of evidence to say it's not hokey'? Otherwise you're left not discounting fairies, Bigfoot, crystal healing, or a gremlin called Malcolm who causes mouth ulcers.

If there's evidence to suggest something is a possibility then it shouldn't ever be discounted.

If there is zero evidence something is a possibility, despite the fact that it is actually possible, it should in that case be discounted.

kylith · 05-01-2016 01:16PM

Swanner wrote: »

If there's evidence to suggest something is a possibility then it shouldn't ever be discounted.

If there is zero evidence something is a possibility, despite the fact that it is actually possible, it should in that case be discounted.

So what's your evidence then? Because at the moment your evidence appears to be 'no one has 100% proved it's not real'. No one has 100% disproved Malcolm the ulcer gremlin either, would it be reasonable to assume that he shouldn't be discounted?

The Bishop Basher · 05-01-2016 01:22PM

looksee wrote: »

But the rest of us don't- and can't - have any perspectives on your personal opinion that while there is no god there is - something.

But you can have a perspective on the situation i described and that's all I was asking for.

looksee wrote: »

If it gives you peace and contentment to anticipate an afterlife, then go for it. Why look for anyone else to validate your belief (that's what is called religion), and there is always the risk that they will persuade you against it, which would be a pity if you get reassurance from it.

You get me wrong. I'm not looking for validation. Believe me. The position I adopt today has come from many years of experience, learning, questioning and at times work. As I said I don't claim to have any answers however i'm extremely comfortable in my own "beliefs" and with that have found I can be a lot more comfortable with the "beliefs" of others no matter how contrary they are to my own or how little I understand them.

But that shouldn't and won't preclude me from continuing to question my own convictions and a huge part of that is seeking out the perspective of others to gain balance.

I think it's shame to be honest that reaching out in such a manner gets labeled as seeking validation although i know you didn't mean it maliciously.

Anyway, on that note i appreciate the input from everyone and i kinda have the answer so happy to leave it there.

Cheers all..

The Bishop Basher · 05-01-2016 01:27PM

kylith wrote: »

So what's your evidence then? Because at the moment your evidence appears to be 'no one has 100% proved it's not real'. No one has 100% disproved Malcolm the ulcer gremlin either, would it be reasonable to assume that he shouldn't be discounted?

I'm going to finish up here but as i mentioned above, until proven otherwise, I believe NDE's could be evidence for a continuation of consciousness.

And that's not an unreasonable position..

There is however, currently, zero evidence for Malcolm the Ulcer Gremlin.

One is reasonable. One is not.

Anyway thanks for your input and i'm going to bow out now and leave anyone that want to have the last word to have it..

Cheers all..

kylith · 05-01-2016 01:31PM

Swanner wrote: »

I'm going to finish up here but as i mentioned above, until proven otherwise, I believe NDE's could be evidence for a continuation of consciousness.

And that's not an unreasonable position..

There is however, currently, zero evidence for Malcolm the Ulcer Gremlin.

One is reasonable. One is not.

Anyway thanks for your input and i'm going to bow out now and leave anyone that want to have the last word to have it..

Cheers all..

No, but I totally feel Malcolm is real. And my mate totally said that he saw him one time. And no one's got no proof that he doesn't exist.

Anyway, thanks for proving my point. Your reason for believing in an afterlife is that it can't be entirely disproven. You haven't offered one iota of actual evidence for why it would be reasonable to assume it exists. If that makes you happy, knock yourself out, but it's not a logical belief.

TheChizler · 05-01-2016 01:32PM

Swanner wrote: »

I'm going to finish up here but as i mentioned above, until proven otherwise, I believe NDE's could be evidence for a continuation of consciousness.

And that's not an unreasonable position..

There is however, currently, zero evidence for Malcolm the Ulcer Gremlin.

Sure there is, I get mouth ulcers the whole time without any medical explanation, until proven otherwise, I believe they could be evidence of Malcolm.

robdonn · 05-01-2016 01:33PM

I understand that you're bowing out of the conversation, I'm just going to throw this out there.

Swanner wrote: »

I'm going to finish up here but as i mentioned above, until proven otherwise, I believe NDE's could be evidence for a continuation of consciousness.

And that's not an unreasonable position..

There is however, currently, zero evidence for Malcolm the Ulcer Gremlin.

One is reasonable. One is not.

Anyway thanks for your input and i'm going to bow out now and leave anyone that want to have the last word to have it..

Cheers all..

The problem is that while NDE's could be evidence of an afterlife of some sort, there is no indication that it is. NDE's more strongly conform to known phenomena about the brain and human behaviour than anything supernatural.

But all the best to you Swanner.

endacl · 05-01-2016 01:33PM

TheChizler wrote: »

Sure there is, I get mouth ulcers the whole time without any medical explanation, until proven otherwise, I believe they could be evidence of Malcolm.

That Malcolm. Little prick.

sbsquarepants · 05-01-2016 02:23PM

Swanner wrote: »

It's hokey to you. That's fine. I can understand why you think it's hokey.

Lot's of things seem hokey to me too. I don't categorically discount them on that basis though. I will happily discount them when presented with definitive proof that they're hokey, but never because "I think it's hokey"..

As to whether it's worthy of debate or not, well, you're here debating of your own free will so...

You're coming at it back to front. There will never be evidence that there is no afterlife, not ever, it's impossible to prove something doesn't exist. You can only prove that things do exist and in the absence of proof for a things existence you can say that you think it doesn't exist - you could always be wrong and the proof just hasn't been found yet.
If you say "I don't believe in giraffes" I can prove you are wrong.
If you say "I believe there are 8 legged flying giraffes" I can not prove you wrong.
At best all I can say is "I don't believe there are, can you show me why you believe that" and make a judgment on the quality of your evidence

Hotblack Desiato · 05-01-2016 11:46PM

sbsquarepants wrote: »

You're coming at it back to front. There will never be evidence that there is no afterlife, not ever, it's impossible to prove something doesn't exist.

But what if someone died, found there was no afterlife, came back and told us?

Canadel · 06-01-2016 01:37AM

seamus · 06-01-2016 10:41AM

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

But what if someone died, found there was no afterlife, came back and told us?

Plenty of people have. They almost universally describe the experience like dreamless sleep. That is, nothing.

A completely unscientific link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/332k1c/serious_redditors_who_have_been_clinically_dead/

sbsquarepants · 06-01-2016 02:24PM

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

But what if someone died, found there was no afterlife, came back and told us?

How would they know?
If you go out looking for gold and don't find any, that is hardly proof that gold doesn't exist.

seamus · 06-01-2016 02:40PM

sbsquarepants wrote: »

How would they know?
If you go out looking for gold and don't find any, that is hardly proof that gold doesn't exist.

I know it's all a bit tongue in cheek, but this is less complex then searching for gold.
If you posit that there is a room behind a door, but you can't be certain because the door is closed, then simply opening the door and walking in and back out should be sufficient to tell you whether or not there is indeed a room there.

robdonn · 06-01-2016 03:01PM

seamus wrote: »

I know it's all a bit tongue in cheek, but this is less complex then searching for gold.
If you posit that there is a room behind a door, but you can't be certain because the door is closed, then simply opening the door and walking in and back out should be sufficient to tell you whether or not there is indeed a room there.

Walk into the room, lose measurable brain functionality within a few seconds, then walk back out. :P

Samaris · 06-01-2016 03:35PM

I don't think it's incompatible. We just don't know.

Humans tend to forget dreams quickly too, because it would be dangerous to "store" dreams in the same place as we mentally store real memories - it could lead to awful confusion. Given humans aren't -meant- to die and come back, we can't actually prove that we don't forget anything after either.

Okay, I'm personally more leaning towards the "dreamless sleep" too, but hey, it's not impossible.

robdonn · 06-01-2016 03:45PM

Samaris wrote: »

I don't think it's incompatible. We just don't know.

Humans tend to forget dreams quickly too, because it would be dangerous to "store" dreams in the same place as we mentally store real memories - it could lead to awful confusion. Given humans aren't -meant- to die and come back, we can't actually prove that we don't forget anything after either.

Okay, I'm personally more leaning towards the "dreamless sleep" too, but hey, it's not impossible.

It could be argued also that since the afterlife experience, by necessity, does not involve the body left behind or it's brain, then any experiences would not be recorded by the brain. So when someone comes back the memories may simply not download back into the brain correctly.

fisgon · 06-01-2016 04:04PM

Swanner wrote: »

My bad..

No one can prove I have any intuition but i know I do because I experience it regularly as do many many others.

I probably should have avoided the term soul as it has such religious connotations but I have experienced, and tuned into during meditation, an inner essence or calm that extends further then the physical body.
.

"An inner essence or calm" is not a soul, it is exactly as you described, a feeling, a sensation. And we all have feelings and sensations, all of the time. It does not mean we have a soul.

And the mind plays tricks on us all of the time, our perception is not to be trusted. Just because you imagine that this sensation "extends further than the physical body" (whatever that means in practice), it doesn't mean that it does, unless there is some way you can prove this.

I also meditate, and can achieve a sense of calm and relaxation, but there is no soul there. It is simply, as I said, a sensation. It can easily be explained (as can Near Death Experiences) by physical processes in the body, the interplay of hormones and chemicals when the body reaches a certain state.

You haven't given any evidence for the existence of your soul yet, beyond a certain "feeling" or "experience". But human beings have been going on their feelings and experiences since time began. The Romans "felt" and "experienced" that their gods were real, members of Isis "feel" that they are doing the right thing, American creationists "feel" that god is calling them to destroy the fact of evolution. People who believe in angels "feel" the angels' presences.

In philosophy materialists would say - Mind is Brain. YOu can say the same about Soul - Soul is Brain. If you experience something as a soul it is simply your brain reaching a certain state that fools you into thinking there is something un-physical there. There is not, there are just synapses and hormones and neurons. Physical processes.

Hotblack Desiato · 06-01-2016 08:53PM

seamus wrote: »

Plenty of people have. They almost universally describe the experience like dreamless sleep. That is, nothing.

Ahh, but they weren't really dead...

Samaris · 06-01-2016 09:31PM

robdonn wrote: »

It could be argued also that since the afterlife experience, by necessity, does not involve the body left behind or it's brain, then any experiences would not be recorded by the brain. So when someone comes back the memories may simply not download back into the brain correctly.

Ah, yes, also a good point. Actually, a better point, since memories are formed by electrical impulses in the brain. The more you think on a certain thing, the more times the electrical impulse travels along the same path (in a simplified version at least), and the more "ingrained" it becomes. So yeah, with no brain involved, nothing to cause electrical impulses.

More likely the visions people have come back from the dead with is something like the brain sparking up again and sending random messages through the mind which gets made into a coherent "vision" by the unconscious, I suppose.

seamus · 06-01-2016 11:01PM

Samaris wrote: »

More likely the visions people have come back from the dead with is something like the brain sparking up again and sending random messages through the mind which gets made into a coherent "vision" by the unconscious, I suppose.

Pretty much.

You know when you're asleep and dreaming and then something external to you makes a noise (like a bell) and that becomes part of the dream?

Or you're in the half-awake, half-asleep state where someone is standing beside you, talking to you and you see something else entirely until you wake up completely?

Yeah, the brain does a lot of crazy crap when it's not all there. In dying or semi-conscious mode it's not even asleep, it's kind of "crashed" like a computer so it won't have shut down various senses like it does when you're asleep. So parts of the brain will still be processing external stimuli which the "crashed" brain is attempting to make sense of and so creates visions and "out of body" experiences to try and build the stimuli it's receiving into some form of coherent reality.

I fainted once. I never completely lost consciousness throughout, I just kind of fell asleep. There was a strong jolt and a loud bang (as I fell back against the wall), followed by crying and shouting and someone shaking me and calling my name. In the ten seconds I was out, my brain convinced itself I'd been in a car accident. I can still recall what I saw in that "accident". I needed another five second after coming to, to realise that hadn't in fact happened and to remember where I actually was.

sbsquarepants · 08-01-2016 12:31PM

seamus wrote: »

If you posit that there is a room behind a door, but you can't be certain because the door is closed, then simply opening the door and walking in and back out should be sufficient to tell you whether or not there is indeed a room there.

Could be just an extremely big room, so big that you couldn't see the walls. It could be expertly painted to look like the outdoors. It could just be too dark to see. There are any number of reasons why opening a door wouldn't be sufficient to know what was beyond it.

seamus wrote: »

Yeah, the brain does a lot of crazy crap when it's not all there. In dying or semi-conscious mode it's not even asleep, it's kind of "crashed" like a computer so it won't have shut down various senses like it does when you're asleep. So parts of the brain will still be processing external stimuli which the "crashed" brain is attempting to make sense of and so creates visions and "out of body" experiences to try and build the stimuli it's receiving into some form of coherent reality.

A fairly fascinating area of research is the nature of how exactly it is we come to "see" anything.

Google Charles Bonnet syndrome - it's where some people in the process of loosing their eyesight "see" all sorts of crazy things. Their brains while trying to make sense of the poor quality information their eyes are sending, basically fills in the holes in the info it's receiving with it's own best guess. They might be walking down the street but see a beach or a forest - it's totally false and very debilitating but they "see" it and experience it as real.

Atheism and the Afterlife

Comments