I'm asking this to see the opinions of atheists.
No one knows if something will happen when we die. We cannot be 100% sure of there being no afterlife, what are the odds you guys think that a murderer, or a person who does terrible things like Stalin is in hell? By hell I mean endless torture of any kind.
We need to take into account some of the visions people have had too. Although the odds are lower they are just illusions, they are not fully proven to be false. Some people have dreams, others have near death experience, other people maybe see afterlife through meditation. Many people say they see hell somehow. So, if we were not to say absolutely zero percent, what are the chances bad people are actually in hell? Tell me that!
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Under christian dogma, if either of them confessed their sins and professed their belief in jebbus, they get a pass on all the evil things they did. Thankfully, there is no reason to believe in a hell.
If there were any such places, Hitler has a pretty good chance of being in heaven since he was a christian. I know christians like to deny that because the don't want to own the evil he did. Well, was he any different than the evil done by the old testament prophets who had the Canaanites wiped out to the last, women, children....babies, save a view young girls they were told to keep as sex slaves. They even had the same excuse. They were obeying their god. Where do we remember hearing that? Nuremberg? "I was just following orders."
There is zero chance because THERE IS NO HELL, NO HEAVEN, NO GOD!!!!!!
This is of course the anti-theist position. I wouldn't say this because I wouldn't care to have to prove that gods don't exist. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that gods exist... but this is not the same thing as stating that there are no gods.
I agree with the meaning of your message. But...
Being a stickler for terms, I would say that the position that mykcob4 represents in his post, is what some label as strong atheism or gnostic atheism, not anti-theism. Anti-theism is more a position of regarding theism as dangerous, destructive, harmful behavior. Technically, you wouldn't even have to be an atheist to be an anti-theist.
But mykcob4 is foolishly making a claim and by doing so he ends up with the burden of proof for that claim. In other words he just set himself up for his own favorite retort: Prove it!!! :)
Nope, I don't have to prove that there is no god by virtue that it is illogical to prove a negative. By stating emphatically there is no god I align myself with the logic that until proven there is nothing. This is the same sound logic that exposes agnostic for what it is. If you assume that something can be even if there is NO prove that that something is, then you can assume that anything ca be. That makes no sense. Therefore, there IS a god or IS not.
you are wrong. Just because you don't believe something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It has nothing to do with belief. It has to do with evidence. Do dragons exist, do billion mile invisible purple cows exist? No that would be ridiculous. The belief in a god, or the belief that a god might exist is just as ridiculous.
Ok, although I don't believe dragons exist or invisible purple cows, you can't prove they don't exist. If you did, you would have a noble prize.
Kiik:
The number of things that we can't prove don't exist is infinite. So should we continue to believe in them, however unlikely? In all the history of the world, nobody has found real evidence of anything supernatural. I think we can safely conclude that there's nothing to find. What do you think?
Algebe: I agree. There is far more evidence that all these things are not real. However, we can never say anything with absolute certainty. That's all I am saying. However, I know exactly what you mean.
While I do agree that you cannot prove a negative I also contend that if something does exist, it is logical that someday some evidence and some means of testing it will be found and devised. But since all evidence for supernatural fails to prove the supernatural and no evidence of it or a means to test for it can be found then it can be assumed it does not exist. Now this is not a concrete fact, but just a logical assumption that the negative is the most likely to be true.
In short, I will believe it when I am shown, or find convincing evidence. Due to the lack of evidence I'm not believing it. Also, I'm not believing it because it depends highly on magic and the psychotic delusions of madmen commonly called prophets.....or shaman, or witchdoctor, or some such other....
My World Religions teacher who's a Christian actually said last week that he wouldn't even bet a single dollar that Hitler wouldn't even bet a single dollar that Hitler is in hell because "you don't know the relationship he had with god". There's zero way of figuring this out even assuming some afterlife is real.
I imagine that a life is like a poker hand dealt out in a round of poker. Various bets and activities go on in that round until the round ends, and then the cards get shuffled back into the deck. The hand is no more. Perhaps, in time, an identical hand might be dealt, but that can't be you if "you" are defined as a continuous entity. If "you" is defined as informational rather than physical, then in some sense you might be immortal but there would be no possible connection between the various "you"s of which more than one might exist within any reference frame. But such "immortality" would be of no benefit to you in that you would never perceive any more than you do now.
Since I lean towards the above view, I judge as absurd the idea that someone who dies begins another adventure in some kind of afterlife. Reincarnation would also be meaningless since there would be no continuation of a life. Each life, like a poker hand, would be defined in the context of the round in which it was dealt. Outside of that realm of time and space, it would not exist.
There's zero evidence for the religious notion of hell or for the survival of human souls, so I think Hitler and Stalin are both non-existent. Good riddance.
If you want to see real evidence for hells that actually existed, do some research on Hitler's death camps and Stalin's Gulags. Also take a look at Pol Pot's Killing Fields, the Kim Dynasty's work camps in North Korea, and the Atlantic slave trade. All hells are created by people, and I think the religious notions of hell are just half-remembered echoes of real atrocities committed by people in this real world.
You speak for me here, as well as yourself. I think the christian hell was imagined in the same way as the christian god. We created god in our image and created Hell in the image of the hell's we made on this earth. But about God, well, that's why he is such a narcissistic evil, hateful, self-aggrandizing little piece of psychopathic sh-t! Because he was created by narcissistic evil, hateful,self-aggrandizing little pieces of psychopathic sh-t!
There is no reason to believe in heaven or hell. It is assumed that the "soul" actually goes somewhere after death. Your soul, spirit, or essence (whatever you prefer) requires two things, energy and your brain. A person who is brain dead does not have the capacity to show who they are or demonstrate what kind of person they were (if you can't do that, then you are not yourself anymore). If you walked into a patient's room of a brain dead human being, you would never know their soul, spirit, or essence. So, when the brain dies so does the soul. If energy leaves the body, it's not taking the brain with itself. It cannot go anywhere without the brain because then it would become something different and it would especially not be the same "soul" that was inside that person. Therefore, your soul could never be sent anywhere. The majority of people that claim to have these near death experiences (where they talk about "going somewhere") are almost always religious. Proclaimed "miracles" and things of that sort never happen to non-believers. For those who claim that they weren't believers at first and have had these experiences and now believe.... at some point it is learned that they have had some type of connection with religion and normally its through family. Lastly, if God loves all of his children equally...then why does he only let some experience things that may prove his existence? For those who have more than one child, as loving parents don't you teach and love all of your children equally regardless of where they are at in life? To only let some experience supernatural things and not the others would be God playing favorites. I'm sure we are told that he doesn't do that.
Yo Biggus is a Neurosurgeon (no really I am). If you would like Biggus can give you a long detailed explanation on why people have near death experiences. I would also add that there are some people who just make it up sense there is allot of money to be made of gullible people.
Hi Biggus,
If you really are a neurosurgeon, that would explain the projected size of your ego.
@Biggus
Sorry no need to explain to Focus about near death experiences. I'm not interested. Whether people have them or not doesn't explain anything to me about the world or "god" for that matter. I was just trying to bring attention to the fact that the mind can be conditioned to receive what it wants. It is also understood that dreams exist and sometimes you dream about the subject you saturate your mind with. It even happens when you watch television, sometimes you watch and see something on screen and that image gets into your mind.....next thing you know you have a dream about it. There is no evidence to believe that any of it is of a supernatural kind. Btw....not trying to come off as being rude...but if you are a neurosurgeon (which I highly doubt) how can an educated person like a neurosurgeon have bad grammar and spelling? I'm just saying. sence (since) allot (a lot).
wallll I fink if ben car son ca do i t biggus can. but yeah imm not really although i am studying to be. imm also pretty lazy and never had good spelling to begin with. or perhaps I was just testing if your bullshit detector was still working.
This idea that "educated" people are good spellers seems to make sense, but just isn't born out by experience.
@ Kiik
- "We cannot be 100% sure of there being no afterlife"
Right, and there is zero evidence to support the notion of an afterlife, so why assume that there is?
We cannot be truly 100% sure that there is no fleeg foob flart. Should we all just assume that there is?
@Pragmatic What about deathbed visions and near death experiences people see fire and the devil? Even atheists and hindus and all faiths see it. If you look it up it's there. Even books published of people become ministers because they say it felt too real to be dreams. Tell me that!
People raised to expect fire and the devil sometimes see it when they are not of sound mind and body. People from different religions/cultures see different stuff (stuff from their cultures). Not surprising.
@Nyarlathotep I looked that up. All of the non-Christian stories are said to be popular literature. More focus is used for the Christians. So many examples.
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/notable/howard-storm.html
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/notable/ian-mccormack.html
http://www.near-death.com/religion/christianity/don-brubaker.html
All these men published books. We see their lives changed. How can mans brain come up with hell for atheists? If they don't believe in God, they should not see fire or harm. Why then do these see it? Tell me that!
For the same reason that people who don't believe in witches, demons, ghosts, and aliens sometimes see them during sleep paralysis.
In Egypt they saw Jinns, in Japan it was a special sleep demon, in Europe it was night hags/witches. In Indochina it was ghosts of dead ancestors.
After the space race people started seeing aliens. It's cultural.
Have you ever been under a very strong anesthetic, like for heart surgery? Death bed visions, tunnels of light, and a spirit that tells you to go back are hallucinations, a temporary neurosis.
@ Kiik
- "What about deathbed visions and near death experiences people see fire and the devil? Even atheists and hindus and all faiths see it. If you look it up it's there. Even books published of people become ministers because they say it felt too real to be dreams."
You will find the exact same conviction among people who claim to have been abducted by UFO's.
People sometimes have "visions" and dreams that resemble widly spread conscepts like of heaven, hell, god and the devil. Just as there are widly spread conscepts of ufo's, gnomes, goblins, ghosts, voodoo spells, black magic, etc...
Is it surprising that concepts that are already in books, movies, paintings and immersed traditions, superstition and even in our languages, would have an effect on how we interpret things?
People have all sorts of contradictory beliefs, and all variants have those people that are convinced beyond a doubt that it is real. How can any one of these be shown to be correct when none of them seems to be possible to prove?
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