Some quotes from Jesus about everlasting life

[DeterminedJuliet]

Interesting, thanks Stevil. 

[xSilverPhinx]

Cool post Stevil, thanks for adding it. And I agree with him, the way that religions are set up are more than diabolically clever, they're freaking genius when it comes to hijacking people's mental makeup.

As a side note (and going back to chain mail), I know intelligent people who still pass on their mail, even though I suspect they know that the odds of there being a causal link between not sending it and dying is practically zero. I think it has to do with much more piece of mind than actual "reasoned" belief, though in a way that is very similar to Pascal's Wager for Chain Mail. Costs a few seconds to send and probably a few minutes to read annoyed replies in contrast to not sending it and having compulsive thoughts about what might happen and "what ifs".

If you've concluded contradictions, you've weighed both sides and have made your choice.  Or am I wrong on that?

I think you're wrong on that.  Atheism seems to me a default position when you're not given evidence or at least a good reason to believe otherwise.  It's hard to say I choose this or that when "this" is an apparently empty space and "that" is saying "this" is an apparently empty space.  It's not an authentic choice -- I have no where else to go but "that".

I don't quite agree that atheism is always the default position, I'm more of the opinion that given the right circumstances, people will become religious in some form, evolutionarily speaking without the coercion or indoctrination of a manipulator. Of course, religions do take on a life of their own once they have a class of parasitic manipulators and indoctrinators, but that's at a later stage.

Apparently not everybody places as much importance on real (scientific) evidence as others.

[Amicale]

As a side note (and going back to chain mail), I know intelligent people who still pass on their mail, even though I suspect they know that the odds of there being a causal link between not sending it and dying is practically zero. I think it has to do with much more piece of mind than actual "reasoned" belief, though in a way that is very similar to Pascal's Wager for Chain Mail. Costs a few seconds to send and probably a few minutes to read annoyed replies in contrast to not sending it and having compulsive thoughts about what might happen and "what ifs".

Just wanted to respond to this. I rarely ever send on chain mail (never letters, what with the cost of stamps!). But sometimes, I'll send on a chain e-mail, never one of those 'do this or you'll die' emails -- I actually don't seem to get those. But I do sometimes get 'forward this to all your friends and the one who sent it to you, so that you know you have a circle of friends' type of chain letters. So, why do I send that along? Because usually, I might read one of those emails and it has a really cute poem, or story, or picture in it. I try to make it less annoying, though -- if I can, I remove ANY references to it being a chain letter at all, and just send the story. But hey, even if I didn't remove the chain letter reference... I suppose I can see someone happily forwarding along a 'good' chain-mail letter, in the hopes that something good will happen to them.  Like you said, it just costs a couple seconds to send.