Conversation: "Is There an Afterlife?"

[Recusant]

This video of a recent event held at Whizin Center (what a name    For another, it really isn't in debate format.  This event seemed to have a different feel than many of the theist/atheist debates I've watched. Anyway, I thought I'd go ahead and post it here for any interested parties:

"Is There an Afterlife?" on the Jewish TV Network

[joeactor]

Thanks for posting that - very enjoyable to watch.  Everyone was fairly civil, and good points were made...

[hismikeness]

One of the points brought up by the Rabbi on the far right (Rabbi Artson) was that the body is nothing but a bunch of energy packets. My understanding of the soul is that it is believed to be a spirit of the body, which to me resembles an energy source. So, as I heard him say that, I heard, essentially, the body and the soul are both made of energy.

But, and this is the big but in regards to the afterlife: Are those energy packets arranged randomly by the cosmos, or are they arranged with order for a particular purpose and/or by a designer?

Personally, I believe that the idea of the afterlife, as well as religion, is man made. I try and imagine how that idea first came about, and I get stumped. Was it born of empathy or trying to console another in time of grief? Was it first discussed at a primitive burial ceremony? Was it created as a way to dogmatically control something of which there can never be proof?

Thanks for the video. It was interesting.

[DirtyLeo]

Personally, I believe that the idea of the afterlife, as well as religion, is man made. I try and imagine how that idea first came about, and I get stumped. Was it born of empathy or trying to console another in time of grief? Was it first discussed at a primitive burial ceremony? Was it created as a way to dogmatically control something of which there can never be proof?

The theory of religion's being a byproduct of other natural properties seems accurate to me. In that, we've always had that delusion in us.

Add to this things like fear of death, you have the base recipe of supernatural beliefs. Peppered with more human attributes such as lust, hunger for power and wealth, you end up with full blown religions .

[dgmort19]

I very much enjoyed the theory of "simulated history." If we were, in fact, a simulation run by a biased organization in favor of a particular spirituality, I wonder which one we'd be. Given my own outlook on life and my perceived lack of evidence for religious metaphysics, I might theorize that this reality was a simulation run by atheist historians.