Confessions of an anxious Athiest.

Morbius said:
No, we can't rule it out, but the time to believe in something is when there is evidence for it.

Suppose someone claims that unicorns exist. To prove it, all you need to do is present one unicorn. To disprove the statement is effectively impossible. You can't examine the entire universe simultaneously in order to say definitively that unicorns don't exist. The burden of proof lies with the person making the claim.

The hypothesis that we are testing - Unicorns exist.
The null hypothesis - Unicorns don't exist.

Suppose a unicorn is presented. Then we accept that unicorns exist and reject the null hypothesis. Suppose a unicorn isn't presented. Then we reject the hypothesis that they exist as there is no evidence to support that. This does not mean that we accept the null hypothesis. The best we can do with our limited knowledge is fail to reject it. This is why we have "not guilty" rather than "innocent" in a court. Innocence is the null hypothesis, but you can never prove innocence outright. The best we can do is to say that the prosecution have not met their burden of proof, hence not guilty.
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Q.F.T
 
robgmun said:
More the fear i'm going to get roasted (in both sense of the word) in hell for all eternaty. I made a deal with god to live forever, i'm going to try my hardest to keep my end of the bargin.
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That begs the question though, who is more moral? The man who is good because he's afraid of the consequences, or the man who is good because he feels it's the right thing to do? I get that the two aren't mutually exclusive but you shouldn't need to hold eternal torment over people's heads to get them to act in a moral way.

Quite often religious people will suggest that atheists will be more likely to commit crime because there is no higher power (bar society) for them to answer to. For me that's missing the point entirely.
 
I consider myself an agnostic. My entire way of thinking, lifestyle and career are based around the scientific bent of things but I also retain an open mind. To be honest, there is no conclusive evidence one way or the other and so closing your mind completely seems rather ridiculous to me.
I am not afriad of death but I do not look forward (and that is my thought-out word choice) to dying. Purely because I do not like pain and there are family histories of cancer and heart disease (yippee!) so I suspect I will check out in a rather unpleasant manner. The real pain for me though is the worry about those I will leave behind. My inevitabel death concerns me less than thinking of my children losing their Dad. That chokes me up but I am doing everything I can to ease that transition for them. After all, I won't be able to do much after I'd dead. :)
 
Ann Druyan on her husband Carl Sagan's death...

When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.
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My own immersion into atheism, philosophy and religious study ended with an existential crisis which left me severely depressed for a long time. It took a lot of work to get my head round and claw my way back from.
 
Morbius said:
No, we can't rule it out, but the time to believe in something is when there is evidence for it.

Suppose someone claims that unicorns exist. To prove it, all you need to do is present one unicorn. To disprove the statement is effectively impossible. You can't examine the entire universe simultaneously in order to say definitively that unicorns don't exist. The burden of proof lies with the person making the claim.

The hypothesis that we are testing - Unicorns exist.
The null hypothesis - Unicorns don't exist.

Suppose a unicorn is presented. Then we accept that unicorns exist and reject the null hypothesis. Suppose a unicorn isn't presented. Then we reject the hypothesis that they exist as there is no evidence to support that. This does not mean that we accept the null hypothesis. The best we can do with our limited knowledge is fail to reject it. This is why we have "not guilty" rather than "innocent" in a court. Innocence is the null hypothesis, but you can never prove innocence outright. The best we can do is to say that the prosecution have not met their burden of proof, hence not guilty.
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Is there evidence for conciousness not existing after death then?

With your Unicorn analogy we can at least reasonably rule out the possibility of them existing on Earth. However we can't really rule anything out when it comes to the brain as we still don't know enough about it yet. Especially when you consider how little we understand things at a quantum level.
 
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It would have to be a very vain and evil god that would comdemn someone to the fiery pits of hell just for choosing not to follow religion and praise his name wouldn't it? I don't want to be part of any system like that.

If that is the case though and I am sent to hell, at least I didn't bend to the will of a tyrant.
 
fus said:
To those who are atheists, how do you reconcile the inevitability of your end? How can the thought of this ending not be a frightening one? .
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There is nothing I can do to stop it; freaking out being especially futile in that regard. There are plenty of distractions to keep me busy along the way, when it comes the 'oh noes!' moment won't last long enough to be of any significance.
 
robgmun said:
More the fear i'm going to get roasted (in both sense of the word) in hell for all eternaty. I made a deal with god to live forever, i'm going to try my hardest to keep my end of the bargin.
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I've lived a good life I think. I've never deliberately tried to wrong people. If I have then I have apologised and tried to make amends. According to Christianity I'm still going to hell because I haven't accepted Jesus Christ as my saviour.

If God is omniscient and responsible for my creation then he must have created me and as such is responsible for me not accepting his existence without evidence. So either he is non-existent or he is a sadistic tyrant, in which case I wouldn't want to worship him anyway.
 
You live, you die, you become worm food.

What's the problem?

Religion for some* seems to be nothing more than a convenient comfort blanket simply to make death appear more manageable.
 
m4rk84 said:
Is there evidence for conciousness not existing after death then?

With your Unicorn analogy we can at least reasonably rule out the possibility of them existing on Earth. However we can't really rule anything out when it comes to the brain as we still don't know enough about it yet. Especially when you consider how little we don't understand things at a quantum level.
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This is one of things that believers fail to grasp about atheism though. Atheism is a lack of belief, it literally translates to 'not a theist'. That's different to what I suppose you'd call Anti-Theism, which would be the belief that there definitely ISN'T a god.

It's a subtle difference but is the source of a lot of the confusion about the subject. Most atheists would happily believe in a god if evidence was provided to support the existence of one.

It's an often quoted statement but it rings true. 'You're just as much as an atheist as I am, I just believe in one less god than you do.'
 
m4rk84 said:
Is there evidence for conciousness not existing after death then?

With your Unicorn analogy we can at least reasonably rule out the possibility of them existing on Earth. However we can't really rule anything out when it comes to the brain as we still don't know enough about it yet. Especially when you consider how much we don't understand things at a quantum level.
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Exactly. We don't know enough about it. So the time to believe in a claim is when we know enough to be able to demonstrate it.

At the moment, there is no evidence of consciousness existing after death. What we call consciousness is understood to be comprised of electrical activity within the brain. This terminates upon death so the evidence we have points to the consciousness ceasing to exist. I reject the claim of an afterlife based on a lack of evidence. If we have more evidence in the future then I will gladly evaluate the new evidence and reassess my position.
 
m4rk84 said:
Is there evidence for conciousness not existing after death then?

With your Unicorn analogy we can at least reasonably rule out the possibility of them existing on Earth. However we can't really rule anything out when it comes to the brain as we still don't know enough about it yet. Especially when you consider how little we understand things at a quantum level.
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You really didn't understand the point of that post you quoted did you?
 
The more i read of Buddhism the more I connect with it and the way I feel about things.
Quite interesting really :)
 
OhEsEcks said:
Ann Druyan on her husband Carl Sagan's death...



My own immersion into atheism, philosophy and religious study ended with an existential crisis which left me severely depressed for a long time. It took a lot of work to get my head round and claw my way back from.
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Great quote there from Sagan's missus. I concur entirely. I empathise with the existential crisis, perhaps that's where my question comes from. Really enjoying people's debate about this. Thanks. :)
 
RationalGaze said:
Be careful with assumptions - I got married just over a month ago, and we have an epic son who I would kill for, so I know exactly what love is. I just don't attribute it to something supernatural, any more than a heroin addict attributes their high to something supernatural.
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No but you presumably don't just attribute the love of your son to chemical reactions either.
 
ethan said:
No but you presumably don't just attribute the love of your son to chemical reactions either.
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Actually he probably does. And he wouldn't be wrong to. You can understand the mechanics of how something works without it detracting from the experience.

We know that 'love' as we understand between partners is caused by addiction to oxytocin and other feel good chemicals as a way of promoting bonding in sexually mature humans. We also know that this process is a result of millions of years of natural selection. Love for your children follows a similar, evolutionarily beneficial role.

That doesn't make love feel any different than it does.
 
[Damien];22859561 said:
Actually he probably does. And he wouldn't be wrong to. You can understand the mechanics of how something works without it detracting from the experience.

We know that 'love' as we understand between partners is caused by addiction to oxytocin and other feel good chemicals as a way of promoting bonding in sexually mature humans. We also know that this process is a result of millions of years of natural selection. Love for your children follows a similar, evolutionarily beneficial role.

That doesn't make love feel any different than it does.
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Thanks, exactly my thoughts.
 
You are not thinking broadly enough OP you have viewed the information from two polar opposite camps but it is the information that sits in the middle where you need to study more.

I'm not religious at all I believe in evolution and natural selection but there is still no understanding of consciousness that convinces me it is a material quantifiable substance.

I believe there is more to life than the material view, I guess it is a form of faith that keeps me happy and if I am wrong I wont know anthing about it.
 
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