By enabling so many people to neglect their rather clear responsibilities because their hubris on their certainty of another life gets the best of them, mainly.How does it hurt your ability to have hope in humanity?
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
By enabling so many people to neglect their rather clear responsibilities because their hubris on their certainty of another life gets the best of them, mainly.How does it hurt your ability to have hope in humanity?
Because it is so alienating and so easily misused. Not too few people actually bet that behaviors that they might otherwise recognize as immoral will eventually pay off because they are so certain that there will be a reward or compensation in an afterlife.That's an interesting idea.. disgusting? Why is a belief in an afterlife disgusting?
Maybe you could elaborate.
How could I truly be eternally happy in an afterlife if, say, my children were not there with me?
Problem with that is that if I'm an atheists, and I consider the WAGER.. and I BET on heaven so that I can avoid Hell... and that's the ONLY reason I choose to believe?.... ah...... I'm not too sure that St.Peter is going to let me through dem pearly gates...
So, I'd better be able to convince myself that I believe when i really don't... IN A HURRY... because I can get hit by a bus...
Or is God really that shallow, according to Christians who think Pascal had a good idea?
He and everyone is aware that children can have imaginations. That is why he also focuses heavily on verifiable specific facts that are not reasonable to believe the child could have learned through normal sensory input. I have read his book cover-to-cover and concluded that something not understood by science does occur in these cases. Read and form your own opinion.In the post, the author asks "So why aren’t scientists taking Stevenson’s data more seriously?"
- Maybe it's NOT due to some bias against reincarnation, but for his methods. We know that children are easily influenced, and that false memory can't be ruled out, for example.
You are saying what science could and should accept should be the extent of human's understanding. Your position sounds like scientism.Prior probability says that science is rigorous in it's evaluation of data, and that no evidence for any afterlife exists so far. The author of the blog wonders if science is TOO skeptical. Well, science usually fails ONLY when it is NOT.
So, it's no use complaining that Stevenson's data gets dismissed too easily. IT HAS TO. Otherwise, we would believe in way too many bogus claims of all sorts. And that doesn't help Stevenson's credibility ONE BIT. may he rest in peace.
If someone makes an extraordinary claim as in this case, extraordinary proof is needed. The issue is not that his methods and data should not be rigorously reviewed and serious attempts at replication made. The issue is that his and followup findings are being ignored. If you go to Google Scholar as I have done and search on reincarnation for the past few years, you won't find any other site trying to replicate his results or to do research that deals with any methodological issues that some have found.In the post, the author asks "So why aren’t scientists taking Stevenson’s data more seriously?"
- Maybe it's NOT due to some bias against reincarnation, but for his methods. We know that children are easily influenced, and that false memory can't be ruled out, for example.
We have to believe a huge bias against some position from all of science and NOT believe that Stevenson's data is bogus.
Prior probability says that science is rigorous in it's evaluation of data, and that no evidence for any afterlife exists so far. The author of the blog wonders if science is TOO skeptical. Well, science usually fails ONLY when it is NOT.
So, it's no use complaining that Stevenson's data gets dismissed too easily. IT HAS TO. Otherwise, we would believe in way too many bogus claims of all sorts. And that doesn't help Stevenson's credibility ONE BIT. may he rest in peace.
We can live with hope in things that we know are possible.. and we can stop hoping for things that we can't possibly know are possible. We don't have any reason to believe in a heaven or a hell or anything else after we die.
To me, it's utter foolishness to hope for something that we can't possibly know is even real. TO ME.. that's like hoping for Santa .. or any other ungrounded belief..
Please understand. When I say your god beliefs are like believing in Santa, I am not trying to offend. I am saying that TO ME and to many atheists, an unfounded belief is as good as any other unfounded belief, and that is .. not at all good.
I think the difference between you and I might be what we can accept as evidence. I think you lower the bar way too low so that you can allow even what I would consider the worst kinds of evidence serve for your beliefs. And so you believe in it all.. and I don't believe in it AT all...
AND.. you seem to imply but don't actually spell out that people who don't believe what YOU do about the afterlife have to live without hope of any kind... is that what you mean?
Please explain how.
I couldn't disagree more.If there is no god, then theists will lose nothing since there will be no judgment day or anything. But if there is god whom atheists deny his existence, then they will be in extreme loss when they are faced with his judgment in the hereafter
If god is just, Agnostics will be the biggest winners.Atheists will be the biggest losers in your scenario
Our mind and emotions are tied to our brains.Losing your mind and emotions...quite something else.
How do you know this?Next life is mind to mind....heart to heart.
We share our dreams.
If god is just, Agnostics will be the biggest winners.
Our mind and emotions are tied to our brains.
How do you know this?
Thank you for your feedback.
The poll is basically to know if it is worth it wasting time believing in God if He didn't exist with the stipulation:
If yes it is worth it, then it is the option #1, and of no it's not worth it, it is not worth it, it is option #2.
My own choice was that yes it is worth it if my believing in God was for nothing as I won't be losing anything if I die, while if I didn't believe in him and He turned to be real, I'd go to hell. I know other scenarios exist, but I'm interested in these two only. Simply put, it is as if you are an atheist came to me, a Muslim, asking me "what if your God turnes out to be not real and you wasted you time worshiping him resulting in you don't go to heaven?" (for option #1), then I reply to you: "it is better than not believing in Him like you do and He turns out to be real resulting in you going to hell" (for option #2). Of course I'm not judging that non Muslims will certainly go to hell, I'm only giving it as an example.
I didn't say it was to engage atheists. I wanted to know their opinion along with the opinions of believers.
Please keep in mind that I'm not claiming that the poll is perfect. I do look at it from time to time and do fixes to it.
I love getting feedback too. So you are very welcome.
My criticism of the poll was in it's structure. I don't think that you're going to get what you seem to be asking for.
I believe that you should fix it. It's not refined enough.
Allow me to re-iterated your question in order to demonstrate what I mean:
Which case scenario do you think is better?
You neglected to give us the option to pick from at least 4 other possible cases:
- Believing in God and the after life, but it turns to be not real.
- Not believing in God and the after life, but it turns to be real.
3. Not believing in God and the after life, and it turns out to be not real.
4. Not believing in God and the after life, and it turns out to be real, but not the way the theist expects.
5. Believing in God and the after life, and it turns out to be real, but not the way the theist expects.
6. Being honest, and not actually form a belief based on something that can't possibly be verified.
To me, these are perfectly good cases.You can clearly see that at least I can think up a few more. Maybe others could come up with more options than those. In any case, it seems to me that when you insist that we answer your question with the only options are the two you offered, it makes a false dichotomy in the assumption that there can only BE those two options.
And I have another criticism about your question. The religious position that we would go to heaven or hell based on our BELIEF of heaven and hell is.. very difficult to reconcile with the idea of a sane god. Why would it matter to a god if we believe in it or not?
Worship of burn.. very odd. I can't see this as moral or reasonable. I certainly can't see it as a loving stance, either.
So, what kind of god are you describing here.. some kind of evil, unreasonable, unloving god?
AND another thing.. which you didn't address... the whole question of this demanding, vengeful, all knowing god who insists on total devotion and belief would ever be IMPRESSED by a belief founded on some kind of statistical opinion?
Your holiness, I chose to believe because it was a better BET?.. That's a fatal flaw in my opinion about Pascal's wager. Accepting the wager would mean that the belief in question would be grounded on something like an understanding of a probability.. I don't really think that's what the Bible says that God is all about.. God is mostly concerned about our ability to put our eternal soul down on some bet?
So, life is a gamble, life is a game of chance, God and Satan really DO make bets like it describes in Job, you claim to have won, and that we have all lost that bet? And we can't know if we won lost or that there is no game whatsoever until we are dead?
To me, that's describing a god who really doesn't want the most people in heaven. It seems to me that it describes a god who wants the MOST people in hell..
That could describe a perfectly evil being.
Judgement from which god? Yours? Jehovah? Krishna? See how that works? A Jehovah's Witness has the same level of faith in the existence of their god as you do, however both are very different. IF there is a god, you could very well be worshiping a non-existent version giving you the same chance as an atheist.If there is no god, then theists will lose nothing since there will be no judgment day or anything. But if there is god whom atheists deny his existence, then they will be in extreme loss when they are faced with his judgment in the hereafter
Because it is so alienating and so easily misused. Not too few people actually bet that behaviors that they might otherwise recognize as immoral will eventually pay off because they are so certain that there will be a reward or compensation in an afterlife.
It is a singularly obscene situation, occurring with an obscene frequency.
Thank you for the informative response. The subject turned out to be much bigger than I expected. Which one of the possibilities you provided would you choose?
We will have to agree to disagree, then. My personal experience is very much at odds with such a belief. Aftelife beliefs are poisonous and corrupting.I don't think there exists an immoral act that would pay off with a reward, but putting that aside, the way I see it is that the idea of an afterlife deters people from doing bad things more than what you have mentioned.
We will have to agree to disagree, then. My personal experience is very much at odds with such a belief. Aftelife beliefs are poisonous and corrupting.
3, 4 or 6.. not necessarily in that order.. probably 6 is the most rigorous as we can know nothing at all about either gods, heaven or hell.
Remember, that to an atheist like myself, there is no evidence that a god exists of any kind. And, that heaven and hell all pretty much seem like fictions.