Is there Life after Death?

[Diogenes]

Irrespective of one's religious beliefs there are powerful reasons to believe our consciousness will continue after our bodies die. I suggest even atheists may find it difficult to believe death results in absolute non existence, that we, our sense of self, our consciousness, our sense of being is completely extinguished. On a personal note, intellectually I believe we the 'soul,' our consciousness, is absolutely extinguished when the body dies; however, I confess this is hard to accept... and terrifying.

Mark Twain wrote,
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
I agree with Sam Clemens, yet....

So... that is the question for debate, "Is there life after death?

[TRANSPONDER]

It probably won't come as a surprise to hear that I consider such discussions academic. Discussion of organised religion is practical but possible afterlifes, academic. Not uninteresting but academic. If the consciousness
continues after death, it does. No point in worrying about it, once consideration of the Practical aspects have convinced me that there is no religion with the dibs on an afterlife.

Interesting though, but I reckon futile because aside philosophical or even scientific speculation about whether there is a soul (consciousness that survives death), there is no good or persuasive evidence for anything of the sort.

It is not - as I see it - not so much atheists want to discount a soul because they are emotionally involved in rejecting it, but theists who desperately want there to be one because of their emotional attachment to their beliefs in a soul, God and afterlife, even if they have given up on organised religion.

This leads of course to a side issue, or rather, the main issue: atheists cannot let the theists who argue for first cause/creator or a soul/afterlife just cruise to an unopposed faithclaim, because that is the springboard to a religious claim. So the claim of even a non - religious god, soul and afterlife has to be debated because , like a doorstoop evangelist, you cannot let 'em get such a foot in the door.

[Diogenes]

It is not - as I see it - not so much atheists want to discount a soul because they are emotionally involved in rejecting it, but theists who desperately want there to be one because of their emotional attachment to their beliefs in a soul, God and afterlife, even if they have given up on organised religion.

I don't understand how anyone would not want for there to be life after death. I don't dismiss an afterlife because I have no religious belief. I have no belief in the supernatural because there is no evidence of it. If I had a choice I'd opt for eternal life in bliss. But we cannot choose to believe in the supernatural (and maintain intellectual honesty) any more than we can just decide we possesse a $Billion.

I see 'atheism' or non theism as simply a description of what is left after one honestly concludes they can find no evidence of the supernatural. In other words, I don't dismiss gods and ghosts because they don't fit my philosophy. My lack of belief is simply a consequence of viewing the evidence and lack of evidence.

OTOH, if one decides to believe in God or gods, confirmation bias will provide something the believer will accept as 'evidence.' There is an entire industry built up around supplying fake evidence to support the bias of religious belief:
AIG, 'Creation' websites and theme parks, Christian films and fake history and science sites.

There is a concerted effort to prejudice people against science in order support of these phony beliefs. This is why I quit reading Otseng's thread where he uses such sources to try to prove the Tower of Babel, a global flood, the Exodus, and the authenticity of a piece of cloth from the 13th Century as a genuine relic from 33 CE.

Whether in politics or religion, you are entitled to your own beliefs, but not your own facts; however, people and their organizations like AIG and Fox 'News' are making billions of dollars telling people what they want to hear. "What you want to hear" does not equal truth or fact.

[William]

[Replying to Diogenes in post #10]

Regarding the fact we have an emotional or psychic reflex to believe our consciousness will continue, I see that impulse as an argument against the idea of gods and an afterlife; i.e. the feeling that life will continue is an argument against the idea that gods, ghosts, and consciousness continuing after the body is destroyed. Our need to believe explains why we believe. It does not justify rational belief.

I want to take care to ensure I do fall into the fallacy trap of sweeping statements while acknowledging that there is emotion involved – per the Human Experience this Ghost that I am, is experiencing…but it is not what propels my understanding about the possibility that it is a natural aspect of Nature to go through and continue on with...

I also want to reaffirm that I consider the testimony of those who reports their NDE’s OOBE’s and Astral Travelling experiences as evidence and that I understand how subjective experiences of that nature can influence how a personality perceives their self in relation to said experiences.

As mentioned, I see no theory or explanation of how gods and ghosts exist. I've never heard of one. No one has ever even suggested the barest framework upon which to build such a theory... unless you stoop to using those frequent and vacuous claims of "cosmic energy" and "mystery."
Just as we can understand (in general) how AI can appear to reproduce (or improve upon) the product of human consciousness, we can understand how conscious emerges from the trillions of interactions between the billions of neurons of the human brain.
But we have no theory to explain how such organic consciousness continues after the destruction of those neurons.

I argue that any theory on the nature of existence, would be as complex as any other, and impossible to stipulate in one answering post.
I have a theory and have been sharing the theory on the board.
Simply put, the theory is based on the premise that Supernaturalism is the root of the problem and if we discard it from the table of discussion, we can talk about the immaterial mind as being Natural, whether the mind be that of a ghost or a god. The immaterial mind exists within a material universe. There is nothing “supernatural” to observe therein.
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If atheism was defined as "lacking belief in anything supernatural", I would be an atheist.
Even the process of how this post was formed was complex, the details of which are not apparent in the post itself.