Atheism and The Afterlife?

[DepressedAnnnie]

I believe in an afterlife because I am skeptic that consciousness expressed with things that "are alive" can be merely a series of biological and electrical interactions. I am willing to accept that nothing is eternal even consciousness, that there is a scientific explanation (which mind you I have already heard a perfect explanation of), but not that it is one and the same.

[14sJakeB190]

This dude is an idiot. One with a crooked nose.

Just because there is no god does not automatically certify the non-existence of CPE "conscious post existence."

There is more evidence for CPE than there is for a god. Although I'm not sure if there is any evidence for god.

Anyways there are many physicists that believe in conscious separation of the brain. Roger Penrose and his Orch-OR theory to name one.

Just because you don't want to believe in something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[DemoraX]

anyone who tells you they know what happens after death is either a liar or a fool (stephen fry)



[BearWindAppleyard]

Death is just an absence of life, absence of existence of awareness. I think finity is much harder to wrap your head around than infinity. That's why death seems so scary I think, the thought of experiencing nothing, or more accurat: not experiencing nothing or anything. The absence of life I think it's much more disturbing than the absence of god or absence of some kind of objective meaning to life.

[jcage007]

good stuff man

[Craydon]

My idea of the afterlife is being worm food.

[thelittlegreenliar]

Kudos Professoranton.. I was not aware there were atheists out there who held relevance of an afterlife. It seems though in our society we are taught to fear the end of our existence rather than accept it as inevitable and move on with our lives. I find it ironic that people can seemingly justify any point of view without evidence of any kind to soothe the insecurities that come with being a living being... Good video, I enjoyed this one.

[Auriclama]

I just love the eastern concepts of reality- intermacy- into me i see! Being raised in a western tradition, it blew my mind when i found out about the eastern concepts. We create our reality from a single point of awareness, if it wasn't for that conciousness, we would be dead or "disconnected" as it were.. but after "death".. until that conciousness finds another awareness to attach its self to, we would be in a state of limbo. Yes death is an illusion i think.

[Drastam]

re transcendent monotheism, lteracy and money or power.

The priest-kings banished the immanent Divine from the earth into exile in heaven (the transcendent Divine), leaving them in charge of his/their business on earth. The myth of the fall is the literary lie they invented to justify their usurpation and the murder of anyone who manifested pagan or immanent Divine signs or practices.

Just a thought.

[apetrowsky1]

Reincarnation is real. Check out DesteniProductions and find out why ,how and who is behind all of this and what is about to happen.

[Jadabh3]

BBC Documentary by Adam Curtis called The Century of the Self... the world reacting to Freud's ideas... says so much about what's wrong with the world to me Prof. In agreement here again. So much arrogance. Rob x

[Jadabh3]

Or maybe it's arrogant and self satisfying to take enjoyment out of someone else express what you know/feel in a way you cannot....an artistic rather than an intellectual question for me :)

Rob x

[OppressiveBoredom]

"You don't need a personal god, you're already a person"

Beautiful.

[fulekkei]

Yo man I can't believe I haven't found you sooner! I have a huge exam I should be studying for but all I wanna do is sit here and listen to you lecture.

No joke--I did something very similar to the dude you described, coming on here and declaring my atheism while simultaneously saying I believed in the afterlife. That was like a month ago and I actually got scared you were talking about me! lol. (I checked the date and know you weren't...but the idea scared me b/c I've realized that

[fulekkei]

position is stupid. I just posted a new video where I talk about this, and discuss why I wanted to stay believing in the afterlife. (Not in that much depth cause I rant about some other shit too, but regardless if you're bored check it out.))

[JNdigital]

if someone can't remember their own birth except through pictures & stories or possibly video; how can one be expected to remember what it was like b4 being born?.. especially by the time they are old enough to talk about or demonstrate it. they probably forgot and have the personality ego structure in place, basically. Many young kids often describe past lives and then more or less forget about it as time goes on.

come to think of it, I can't remember a year ago perfectly, yet I am still me.

[JNdigital]

perhaps in the "afterlife" realm I can remember who & what my energy essence was throughout all time ("past lives" and my evolution). and so my ego will be much less relevant yet still a part of me.

[benalbero]

I would not say you preach nonsense. But what you do preach are mostly theories that you present as facts. Also, you oversimplify the notion of god & the concept of afterlife; which ultimately, brought you to the overgeneralization that 'people who dont believe in God but do believe in an after life are full of BS. Interesting video otherwise.

[Weedleweeb]

you preach nonsense

[khyran]

"Professoranton,

I am an atheist because...."

I liked this comment up here coming from Tommotian. I liked that he's being positive and doesn't try to impose his faith upon others. I think you have a lot to learn from him.

What you said in your video is just as rubbish, absurd and arrogant as what the person you responded to said. Please, both of you, stop trying to impose your faith upon others just to feel confirmed that your own believes are the right ones.

[Professoranton]

You are the self-aware cosmos in an eternal dance with itself

[TheNinerion]

@Professoranton

wow... thats a really great way of reastating the anthropic principal! and it sounds cool too xD

[magritte128]

@tommotian So defensive. I don't think he's criticizing you particularly, considering that you believe both in god and an afterlife..

[magritte128]

@tommotian I see. I'm having some difficulty understanding his position as well. As best I can tell, he's advocating a really idiosyncratic species of monism, ie. "you are a manifestation of God but don't quite realize it". By 'God' he means the cosmos, I guess, which would be in line with his description of himself as a neo-stoic. I think.

The above is the one post of yours I've been able to find here , and I can't discern where you've "laid out the full consequences of what he's saying."

[magritte128]

@tommotian I don't think there's any despair to be found in that all. Your awareness ceases, you're kaput. All these concerns you've listed, they fade into nothing along with the rest of you. The fact that death is a permanent end should serve as an impetus to live your earthly life as fully as you can, right now. Do your duty, etc. That's a standard stoic position. I love life too, but I don't want to live life indefinitely (not this one, at least - I'm Buddhist, and I believe in reincarnation)

[magritte128]

@magritte128 In summary: I don't share his position regarding the end of life, but I can appreciate the use of many of his arguments.. stoicism and buddhism have an awful lot in common.

[tooltime9901]

I don't believe in an afterlife BTW. none the less, a afterlife is still possible without god.

[tooltime9901]

as money and literacy arouse thousands of year before even the existence of monotheism, let alone it's rise, i find your scenario somewhat implausible in that regard.

[tooltime9901]

so right from the start, and I have a script of my video if you want to look at it, show me one statement I made where I asserted that there was not god.

second, i did not say an afterlife was likely, only possible.

[jogayot]

nah, he was just lessenig the blow and poiting out logical incongruity. the same way he differentiated atheism from naturalism. in the matrix of inconsistencies there is a logical space of no-god and afterlife or god and no-afterlife, together with god and afterlife or no-god and no-afterlife. you pick and win or lose ;)

[gerontodon]

By commenting again, I'm protesting too much, and maybe my opinions are based in fear. I had a panic attack once where I was convinced I was dying. Not sure if I expected oblivion or a reckoning. I remember an impression of imminent doom and grey, lifeless meat - morbid is the word. I just feel you're ascribing motives I've thought of, and giving an academically-correct interpretation of mystical ideas. If we don't exist now, what does eternal existence mean anyway? Need it be one or the other?

[99minerkc]

Unfortunately most if not all people are AFRAID of death at some point in life! I think the intelligent are able to come to grips with the reality of death and push on in life, but many can't cope with the thought of dying thus they grab onto the primitive solution, eternal life! I personally will welcome death when my body gives out on me! Nothing can be a great thing! why? eternity would get painfully boring for me!

[Professoranton]

agreed.

watch?v=C5_GKE1W85M

[99minerkc]

@tommotian Actually I had a ot of questions, but I sought out answers for them which left me to my conclusion. What you call inquisitive is really a hope and a prayer, but alas I don't buy into that BS

[99minerkc]

@tommotian Yeah, you who was a JW for "man years" has a lot of room to talk. ROFL you're a joke. Consider joining the church of scientology, you and your so-called inquisitive mind should fit right in,

[99minerkc]

@tommotian You're nothing more than a hypocrite, and you don't deserve to be taken seriously by anyone. Speaking of ad hominem attacks, who took the first shot with this comment? "not much of an inquisitive mind there! Not in any of you.

How boring!"

[14sJakeB190]

@99minerkc Then the entire point of life is meaningless.

[99minerkc]

@14sJakeB190 Maybe for you life is meaningless but for me it's full of meaning. It's sad that theists miss out on life's richness in the hope that a "possible" afterlife will somehow bring them meaning. SAD, VERY SAD

[14sJakeB190]

@99minerkc First, I'm not a theist.

Second because I know whatever meaning I give life is only in my head. Same for you and everyone and everything else. There is no meaning for it, we give things meaning, but it's only in your head. Once life is over, it will be as if you never existed.

If I wanted to believe in things that didn't exist I would just become a theist and believe in my own made up fairy tale. hmm... That might be an idea... I might actually do that.

[99minerkc]

@14sJakeB190 you said, " I just become a theist and believe in my own made up fairy tale" hmm.... interesting. :p

[14sJakeB190]

@99minerkc It is actually. But seriously. Why not? Really? It's not going to matter one way or another if I'm right or wrong. Maybe I can make my own religion. It's called The Matrix. In my religion, to put this in simple terms. We're all trapped in a realistic virtual video game. So all this is not real, it's an illusion. Anyways our real bodies are connected to a machine that harvests are energy to fuel robots because in some war a long time ago we blotted out the sun in a war against robots.

[kennyjuggling]

maybe when we die, it would be nothing, just as we were before we were born. that really sucks it just like its the end of our lives, absolute nothing! So, enjoy our lives people!

[99minerkc]

Why does it suck? You will have NO PAIN, NO DUMB THEISTS pushing their BS, there will be NOTHING to which I am fine with!! : )

[kennyjuggling]

well.. for me, it sucks because if there were eternal life i would enjoy food, sleeping and seeing my next generations enjoying their holidays or sumthing on earth. & life is good for me rite now and would b better if it was eternal. and if we die, we were like before we were born, we will miss some good stuff. I know that "NO PAIN, NO DUMB THEISTS" is good but i just think that with eternal life would b better. But actually I don't mind with either.

[CoffeesIsBack]

Thank you for this.

[mparker18311]

Energy is eternal, but our lives do not begin after we die. When we die that is it. Like it was before we were born, like amnesia... we're gone.

[peanarchist]

...and what makes it feel eternal is the chain of memories which submerge with every experience. Bundle theory

[Mjhavok]

I am fairly confident that tooltime doesn't believe in an afterlife. Are you responding to him?

[Ramiiam]

I hope you're not referring to tooltime's video. If so I think you misunderstood him. I didn't taking him to be arguing for immortality without a personal god, but simply pointing out to a theist that the former does not logically depend on the latter.

[jesterspace]

Life is my one vacation from not being. I'm gonna enjoy it.

[1PercentRDA]

Maybe we could still speculate on the possibilities of an afterlife, I think that there are several that seem logical and plausible, but there are no possibilities for a god to exist.

[IceysMoment]

i dont believe in a god,ever and im 27..

but last 6months or so,i started freak out,about death,never was scared of dying,i dont know about afterlife,that case reincarnation was on old thing i had in mind.but,i seriously need help for this NOT kidding,im really scared,dont know what to think,.if anyone have suggestion plz pm me.*no joke not about death'..thnx -bella-

[Professoranton]

watch?v=yqaO4CJTuic

[Ramiiam]

At some point in our lives the reality of death hits us with a shock. Sounds like you've reached that point in yours. All I can tell you is that knowledge isn't going away. Live with it for a while and you will at least get used to it. As someone in middle age and, I hope, closer to the event than you are, I can tell you that the prospect of death no longer seems quite the enormity. My fears of death are more about the impact on my loved ones than about my own extinction.

[IceysMoment]

can i PM you?

[Ramiiam]

Of course.

[EdwardWhelanPiano]

Why do people fear death? They got on fine during the millions of billions of years when they didn't exist before they were born! The most important thing for humans to do is to get everything they want to do done, so when it's time we are ready for a state of non-being.

[FeelFreeToArgue]

I have to admit, in my heart of hearts, that I'm unhappy that my consciousness will end some day. That's scary. It depresses me that there's nothing after, enough so I can honestly understand how other people would allow themselves to be manipulated by ideologies that gave them a chance at something after, never mind something great and grand.

I guess I can acknowledge the intellectual possibility of a godless afterlife, if only because of the inherent difficulty in proving a negative.

[Professoranton]

Thanks for the thoughtful comments.

Take your fear and realize that it is ground in identifying with your small self rather than the Big SELF you are, and love others.

[gerontodon]

Waffled on too much already, but it was because I thought that in this video your indignation came from a position of relatively affluent Western liberal guilt, and you were saying that for a relatively affluent Western person to believe in an afterlife without believing in God was trying to have your cake and eat it. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I don't like being told what I deserve to believe. I think you should challenge beliefs on the basis of whether they seem to you to make sense.

[gerontodon]

I believe that I do and don't exist now, and that I will and won't exist after I die, and that there is and isn't a God, and that I am and am not the same as God. I don't know if my motives for these beliefs are better than the motives I'd had for any others, but if I had those other beliefs that'd still be true. Also, it's not obvious to me that how good your motives are for holding a belief is the only indication of how true it is.

[gerontodon]

I jumped the gun, I didn't realise it was tooltime you were responding to. I think you've misunderstood him, I don't think he said that there's probably an afterlife. I don't share his general worldview at all, but I don't think you could accuse him of spoiled and shallow pick 'n mix spirituality. All these concepts are open to interpretation. I don't think I'm bursting with integrity, but there are probably Buddhists that believe in some kind of continuation without 'God', who are.

[swifter358]

tooltime9901 never said he believed in an afterlife without a god he just said its possible not plausible.

interesting video

[dewonthegrass]

I've seen people on you tube, who don't believe in god, but believe that there is a "mind" outside of us...

I usually ask: "Whose mind?", "What mind?", "Where?"

[Professoranton]

You are so thoughtful. Thanks for this.

[Alterna123]

well, you said in the video what could be more natural than death you do know organisms are not supposed to die you were not made to die we were made to live there are things in genes they make you live less and less over time but nothing that makes you die

[AnomalousDataPoint]

I used to think that certain members of what we might describe as 'the youtube atheist philosophising community' were actually spoofers that were having a good old laugh at people who made an effort to engage with them and discern any meaning in their utterances. But then I saw they generated so many videos that actually perhaps no, surely the joke would have worn thin, it iis quite worrying really.

[2bsirius]

Brilliant!

[godlessmessiah]

an afterlife without some form of god.....how would that work exactly?

[FeelFreeToArgue]

It's the gift you grant yourself, by virtue of your own awesomeness!

[AdmiralPeacock]

Nice

[gratex]

I believe that when I die I will evolve into props for medical school pranksters.

[oojamaflipper]

great video