Aug 6, 2012 -- 9:32AM, jmmevolve wrote:

Some thoughts arose as I looked through this thread........

1.  God is not just for a specific religious following.  This is where all the problems stem.  He is not Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, or any other following.  He is in and through them all.

That is merely a belief, nor does it stand up to close scrutiny. If 'God' was through all religions, then he/she/it would be responsible for all of their inconsistencies and contradictions as well. The only conclusion one could safely draw from the insupportable assertion that God is "through them all" is that the deity is an incompetent communicator.

 

2.  The afterlife (Heaven and Hell) can be examined with or without religion.  And that is the fun part of intellectual exercises like dialogue. 

Heaven and hell are the inventions of primitive religion with its childish 'carrot and sticks' worldview.

3.  What the afterlife is all about will not be fully appreciated til we each arrive and no one gets out of life alive.  The fact is that there are many ideas and concepts.

Yes, but one can deduce, in a scientific manner, the probabilities of there being an afterlife. Given the complete paucity of any compelling evidence, the probabilities that we survive death are diminishingly small. 

 

4.  I believe in communication with the afterlife and have received some interesting information that comes closest to my understanding and belief system.  Try it, you may like it!

You may believe a lot of things, but unless you can come up with some compelling evidence - rather than just the claim that certain communications have confirmed (surprise surprise) some of your a priori beliefs - you are merely passing wind.

Aug 8, 2012 -- 10:24AM, jmmevolve wrote:

The rules and dogma of all religions is MANMADE (maybe if woman had a chance to contribute it would not be such a mess!).  All spiritual literature had a message from God - it is how the particular religion or group chose to interpret the message for their own control.

That still makes the supposed God a lousy communicator. And most of the so-called "spiritual literature" is as inconsistent and contradictory in its nature as the rules and dogma you are attempting to distance yourself from. Another hugely significant fact about the supposed 'spiritual literature' that identifies a titantic omission while identifying its real, and non-divine, source is that none of it got man's true historical context right.

 

Agree!  But there is an afterlife on which the majority of human existence agree - there is something more beyond this life.  The design of it differs at this point.

Unless you are talking about mankind's genetic legacy, there's no evidence for any other sort of afterlife.

And the argument from popular consent is a dud. Most of humanity once agreed - and that for a very long time - that the sun went around the earth and that the earth was the center of the universe.

Science measured a body at death to find a weight loss - perhaps the soul leaving? 

It did no such thing. That's an 'urban myth' propagated by believers who couldn't invoke any real evidence, a myth exposed decades ago as utterly fallacious. It seems that the credulous will grab hold of anything in their desperate need to transmute wishful thinking into reality.

 

The preponderance of evidence brought back from the afterlife (in the form of personal or general comments) is more than blowing wind.  For those who know, nothing more is needed. For those who argue there would never be enough.

There is no "evidence" brought back from some hypothetical "afterlife". All that the supposed evidence amounts to is little more than anecdotes from people recounting largely misapprehended 'experiences'. Most of the reported phenomenon by those 'near' death can be artificially induced and replicated. It is the kind of thing the brain undergoes during extremis. Brain researchers have even located the parts of the brain involved in such experiences. 

But you are right, the skeptics standard of evidence is far more stringent than that adhered to by the credulous. Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.

Moreover, the belief in a soul that outlives the body is anything but righteous. One only has to think of Susan Smith who sent her two sons to the bottom of a lake in the belief that they would have a better life on the 'other side'. Even the emotional comfort of a belief in an afterlife can go both ways. Would life lose its purpose if we ceased to exist when our brains die? On the contrary, nothing invests life with more meaning than the realization that every moment of sentience is a precious gift. How many fights have been averted, how many friendships renewed, how many hours not squandered, how many gestures of affection offered, because we sometimes remind ourselves that "life is short"?

 

 

Aug 9, 2012 -- 9:41AM, jmmevolve wrote:

 God sent a message.

That's a belief some hold, but there's no compelling evidence believers can advance to justify it.

Like all messages received by human beings, they interpret and change.  Haven't you ever played the game where someone whispers something in the person next to them's ear.  By the time it goes around a circle of people and returns it is totally distorted.

Sometimes the story has simply been made up in the first place.

 That is human foible - why blame God?  Perhaps a design flaw?

I don't really blame God as there is no good evidence that even suggests that such an entity exists. On the other hand, there is a good deal of compelling evidence that would imply that God likely doesn't exist.

 

 

And don't forget that the earth was flat!

It never was, although plenty of people believed it to be so. Belief, like faith, can be misleading.

Are you still there?  The point is that most people do not see this life as an ending, but that a continuity exists.

No, the point is that popular belief is neither a guarantee of truth nor, for that matter, even an indication of truth.

What you label it or call it is of little consequence - it exists.

That, again, is merely a belief. There is no evidence that an afterlife is anything but the product of wishful-thinking.

I am sorry you don't believe it happened!

It didn't happen. 

I have the scientific papers where it was written up for posterity!

Then cite them, including all the peer-reviewed papers.

You've either been fooled, or you're fibbing. Which is it?

 

Some people don't believe the holocaust happened either.

Unlike the 'spirit-has-weight myth' you have invoked, there is an enormous amount of objective and empirical evidence that the holocaust happened. Actually, there are very few people capable of analysing evidence who do not believe that the holocaust happened.  

 

When my father died two nights in a row was a time to gather personal experience and evidence of a place of peace. On his return the nurse commented on the usual behavours of someone who had experienced this phenomena and he didn't fit the pattern.  It was real.  There is peace on the other side of death that is welcomed in the right spirit at the right time.

That is anecdotal and carries no evidential weight at all. Anecdotal stories would have us believe all kinds of silly and insupportable stuff. 

I found my husband's dead body.  Standing above it was his spirit which stayed throughout my grief filled organization of a funeral.

I'm sorry about your husband, but your grief and the shock of discovering his body likely caused you to hallucinate. Both my parents and four of my brothers have died. We were all very close. Not one of them appeared to me. My mind didn't demand it.

 

for me the comfort and solace was real.

I'm sure that it was, but that's the kind of thing the brain can produce when it's faced with extreme situations.

For this poor mother who was at the end of her emotional/mental/spiritual rope nothing could have helped her - even a belief in an afterlife - but she did believe they were better off on the 'other side'.  This means she knew there was a place with less pain than the earth plane life.

No, it's not something that she "knew", it was something that she believed. Some people believe in fairies, goblins, and fire-breathing dragons. It doesn't mean that they are true because people believe in them. Reasonable people, as I've said before, have a higher standard of evidence than mere belief.

Humans have two well-known and deep-seated psychological needs: the need for security, and the need for survival. We have invented God to meet the first, and the hereafter to meet the second.

  

That too is how reincarnation got invested with so much hope.

The human need for continuance has manifested itself in many absurd beliefs, including reincarnation, resurrection, and a general belief in an after death. The only thing such beliefs have in common is the utter paucity of any empirical evidence. They are human inventions borne out of human need. 

Life is too short so we want to extend it - there is no doubt that human minds have been a part of the creation of an afterlife and what it is like.

There is no doubt that the human mind is entirely the source of such notions.

 

Even near death experiences are rife with our own belief systems of what we will find - for the positive - which is most of them - there is a peace that brings them back with love - for some there is the opposite and they feel threatened.  With or without science behind it there is the experience.  And there are just too many to ignore.

While no one is denying the 'experiences', they can be satisfactorily explained without invoking any imagined afterlife. Nor do such experiences point to anything outside of the brain, and certainly not to any sort of transcendent realm.

 

 

Aug 10, 2012 -- 2:34PM, jmmevolve wrote:

I FEEL VERY SORRY FOR YOU IN THESE ARGUMENTS.

Or, in other words, you have no coherent response.

And don't feel sorry for me. I'm not the one telling fibs.

You are transparent to me, jmmevolve.