The atheist is just a blank space waiting to be filled.
Looking to atheism as a source of "worth" seems misguided to me. There are many things in life that make it worthwhile. The atheist has as many options in that realm as anybody else, minus devotion to mythical deities.
Church bores me, so what do I have? I have a brain.
What Recusant said.
Find something worthwhile, then label yourself by it if you so wish - looking for worth in labels is... A bit backwards.
So, can Atheism add value to your life? Sure. Does it have to define your life? Preferably the opposite.
(https://www.trackie.com/track-and-field/img/layout/icon_quote.jpg) William James:
Is life worth living? Depends on the liver.
...Which, in turn, depends on the level of boozing and general carousiness, sooo...
...Is life worth living until the liver is gone, or as if it were already gone?
See, we's getting into some deep philosophizing right here. :smilenod:
I think that my liver is my own problem, thanks all.
Blank spaces are meant to be filled with colour and life. Something only faith offers. No faith is saying we have no true purpose and focus in life. Goals are meant to be consistently achievable. Having a family is achievable but stops mental and relationship growth after a certain point of bonding. The process to bonding is consistent and eternal. Spirituality offers a bonding process which promotes consistent growth and personal development.
30 day ban for preaching, again.
Quote from: Prycejosh1987 on August 23, 2023, 07:34:32 PMBlank spaces are meant to be filled with colour and life. Something only faith offers. No faith is saying we have no true purpose and focus in life. Goals are meant to be consistently achievable. Having a family is achievable but stops mental and relationship growth after a certain point of bonding. The process to bonding is consistent and eternal. Spirituality offers a bonding process which promotes consistent growth and personal development.
The Asmo looks at a blank space on this here *point* sheet of paper, grabs a bunch of crayons and starts furiously colouring with His tongue poking out at the "concentration" angle.Crayons, it turns out, are
faith. Or maybe The Asmo is..? :smilenod:
The above
is a metaphor, for those who wonder. Emphasises the role of
self in filling them blank spaces.
I've been away from the forum for a while so forgive me if I'm commenting on some old posts.
As for the OP, atheists don't believe there's an afterlife. We believe that everything is in the now. This life is all there is.
So, we have everything to live for. We have nothing to die for.
Nothing wrong with a speck of constructive necromancy.
I must disagree with you that "we" have nothing to die for - we absolutely may have causes to both live, die and kill for, just like everyone else. Not having one's priorities codified by scripture does not remove the priorities themselves.
For example, many a parent would die for their child if the circumstances so dictated - atheist or no. If the upside of [the action that leads to] you no longer existing is greater than the downside... Therein lies the mental calculus.
why cant atheists believe in an afterlife?
theres evidence of ghosts, communication with the dead, all that stuff. evidence, but no proof that i know of.
no reason for religion to get involved. maybe we are just an early instar of something else
Quote from: billy rubin on March 13, 2024, 12:01:06 PMwhy cant atheists believe in an afterlife?
theres evidence of ghosts, communication with the dead, all that stuff. evidence, but no proof that i know of.
no reason for religion to get involved. maybe we are just an early instar of something else
Are you, do you designate yourself as an atheist Billy?
Quote from: billy rubin on March 13, 2024, 12:01:06 PMwhy cant atheists believe in an afterlife?
It's too convenient.
Quote from: billy rubin on March 13, 2024, 12:01:06 PMwhy cant atheists believe in an afterlife?
They can, though that would necessitate the same sort of mental gymnastics that the religious go through to "marry" the afterlife with the real world. That, or believe it "for the feels," and avoid thinking too much about it like the proverbial plague.
Quoteno reason for religion to get involved. maybe we are just an early instar of something else
That's the thing though, unless it is purely "for the feels," as I put it above, curiosity would have one dig for the way it functions and then reality would beg to differ in one way or another.
for instance, if you are still
you after death, then what is a dementia sufferer, who lost most of "himself" to dying neurons long before whatever degree of organ failure constituted death? If he is just as "mentally reduced" in his newly-dead state, then how was he more than the processes running in his brain and the systems connected to it in life? If he "regains himself" upon death, then why did he degrade mentally from neuron death in the first place?
Conversely, if you are
not you after death... Well, there is an argument for reincarnation. Rather than be cremated or buried, get yourself disposed of somewhere you can literally push daisies and you will get recycled back into the biosphere. Become all kinds of bacteria, plant, fungus and animal that eat each other until such a point where perhaps most of what once was you has become a whole bunch of other humans - well, parts of them anyways. If that is the idea, then "life after death" has a completely different meaning, devoid of all rewards, accountabilities, seeing loved ones, thinking thoughts and so forth. It's just...
Chemistry.
Quote from: The Magic Pudding.. on March 13, 2024, 12:05:00 PMQuote from: billy rubin on March 13, 2024, 12:01:06 PMwhy cant atheists believe in an afterlife?
theres evidence of ghosts, communication with the dead, all that stuff. evidence, but no proof that i know of.
no reason for religion to get involved. maybe we are just an early instar of something else
Are you, do you designate yourself as an atheist Billy?
by my definition, no. i consider atheism, in practice, to be more of a positive assertion of knowledge than a statement of ignorance. i am an agnostic, using the older defintion of huxley
"it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty"
in practice, the definitions arent really important to me. i just ask people what they personally think and believe, and dont try to classify them.
Quote from: billy rubin on March 13, 2024, 12:01:06 PMwhy cant atheists believe in an afterlife?
theres evidence of ghosts, communication with the dead, all that stuff. evidence, but no proof that i know of.
no reason for religion to get involved. maybe we are just an early instar of something else
Yes. But, using info I have is" after life is when all religions and governments are removed", after of which life goes on under a different social form, which would be a forth generation/age. Whether true or false is for the individual to decide.
im not defending the idea. im just saying that i try to distinguish things i know from things i dont know.
i suspect a great deal but i know very little.
I consider knowledge to be fluid and prone to change. I might know something today which will be some-degree-of-debunked tomorrow. Then, I might know that something.
There is a case to be made that the distinction between that and agnosticism is one without difference, though I think that that is not always the case.
It "all" works in a similar way though - updating mental models of reality. A square may represent a cube well enough in some circumstances. Then the cube may be changing into a pyramid with time, its base square unchanged. In this case, I know that the square is a square, but recognize that there may be more to it. That said, there may also not. Not every square is a base of a pyramid or even a cube.
A bit of an esoteric example, I guess, but such is life. Substitute geometry for pretty much whatever, and it still holds.
Quote from: Asmodean on March 13, 2024, 08:35:11 AMNothing wrong with a speck of constructive necromancy.
I must disagree with you that "we" have nothing to die for - we absolutely may have causes to both live, die and kill for, just like everyone else. Not having one's priorities codified by scripture does not remove the priorities themselves.
For example, many a parent would die for their child if the circumstances so dictated - atheist or no. If the upside of [the action that leads to] you no longer existing is greater than the downside... Therein lies the mental calculus.
I think I worded my thought wrong.
There are certainly priorities that many place higher than their own lives, our children being one of those.
I was speaking of having a better life after this one. We don't look forward to that.
Quote from: billy rubin on March 13, 2024, 12:01:06 PMwhy cant atheists believe in an afterlife?
I suppose they can. I certainly don't speak for us all. Even atheists can have outlandish ideas.
I'm sure there's an atheist somewhere who thinks pineapple belongs on a pizza. SMH
yes.
Quote from: Skeptik on March 22, 2024, 03:31:31 AMI was speaking of having a better life after this one. We don't look forward to that.
Indeed. I like to think that "this being it" makes
this more precious, even when it hurts.
why is life precious?
if you lose it, you will experience no loss.
if you can experience no loss, a thing cannot be valuable.
A bar of gold in the bank is not valuable because the bank may lose it.
Life is precious because it offers a very limited time to do everything one may consider worth doing to the degree one wants to do it.
There not being a sensation of loss after it ends... I don't see how that's relevant to its value. My old pair of shoes had value, and yet they ended in a dumpster with not a second thought - well, until their use in this example.
Quote from: billy rubin on March 22, 2024, 12:14:47 PMwhy is life precious?
if you lose it, you will experience no loss.
if you can experience no loss, a thing cannot be valuable.
Not to the dead person. But that is not necessarily true of others. We are what we are. Can we put a value on ourselves or is that really the prerogative of others?
i think the perception of value in case of loss must always be assigned to others. in asmo's example, a gold bar can feel no loss whether it exists or not. i can feel value in life only while i experience life. the instant my life ends, my investment in its continuity goes to zero value, because i am no longer there and have literally nothing to lose.
having nothing to lose means that what i have is not precious, whatever it is.
practically speaking, it means that while i reflexively seek to preserve my life while i have it, i am not in the least afraid of dying.
i suspect that the people afraid of dying are actually afraid that their life wont end with their death, and that they wont like it.
but then i like pineapple on my pizza.
Quote from: Tank on March 29, 2024, 10:19:47 AMQuote from: billy rubin on March 22, 2024, 12:14:47 PMwhy is life precious?
if you lose it, you will experience no loss.
if you can experience no loss, a thing cannot be valuable.
Not to the dead person. But that is not necessarily true of others. We are what we are. Can we put a value on ourselves or is that really the prerogative of others?
It's easy for him to say you can't because you aren't but perhaps you can't can't because you aren't.
yet even i have limits. i was taken out for artichoke pizza once by an aficionado who assured me it was delightful.
you know those machines that process old automobile tires and turn them into piles of little rubber chips? imagine a pizza covered in a topping of those.
he loved it. i was wishing i could trade mine for little rubber chips
:sadnod: I had a squid (or mebbe octopus. One of them Cthulhu-type-critters) pizza like that once. It's almost like the stuff would make for excellent endurance tyres.
Octopus pizza. You should be ashamed.
Do you know what it means to be an octopus?
It's brain is spread throughout its body and its arms can each think separately.
Well, it was rubbery. :sadnod:
The Asmo has had some excellent squid-like-creature dishes - that one was just not one of them, and He would have reason for shame if He repeatedly ate such rubber pizza, but He does evaluate such like against His Divine taste palette, so when He most righteously calls billy out for heresy most heinous and unjust, it is because He too hath partaken of the apple of pine on a pizza, and declared that pines simply should not grow apples as a result of that experience.
...which, by the way, is why them apples of pine grow on them aloe-looking things in stead of pines. 'Twas The Asmo. One of His greatest Divine Accomplishments. :smilenod:
If you think you only might have ate octopus you still need to repent.
Octopus flesh is rubbery.
https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-octopus#:~:text=This%20collagen%20makes%20octopus%20flesh,they%20become%20soft%20and%20tender.
However I do make allowance for you don't know what you are eating these days.
The Asmo eateth octopi because The Asmo envieth Cthulhu his Unholy Tentacles.
He repenteth NOTHING! ...Eth. >:(
...So its arms can "think" separately. Not if He cooks them long enough, they don't. >:(
Octopus has no tentacles. It has legs or arms.
Go to confession and promise to eat only 4 cheese pizza.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_ai_quattro_formaggi
The Asmo gets His pizza with loads of different meat products :smilenod:
Not octopus tentacles, which by the way they are when worn as a beard by a eldritch god, but those are good for other kinds of food.
If The Asmo meant The Asmo to live off carrots and beans, He would not have created the world with actual food in it. He did though, so... Meat. :smilenod:
Get my own back on the believers who have issued me with afterlife and death threats.
"You will burn in hell."
"I will kill you for that."
Strange how only Christians and Muslims issue statements like this.
My reply:
Ah, so your religion is nothing to do with love and peace.
Quote from: zorkan on April 04, 2024, 01:42:57 PMGet my own back on the believers who have issued me with afterlife and death threats.
"You will burn in hell."
"I will kill you for that."
Strange how only Christians and Muslims issue statements like this.
My reply:
Ah, so your religion is nothing to do with love and peace.
The internet has become something of a curse against mankind. We have thousands of ignorant assholes who threaten judges and politicians through the internet. Most of them are idle threats posted by aforementioned ignorant assholes, but there are a dangerous few of the IA's who actually try to fulfill their threats.
Yeah, but to be fair, if they fulfilled those threats on the Internet, it would have been a crime reducing force like no other.
Quote from: zorkan on April 03, 2024, 12:48:25 PMOctopus pizza. You should be ashamed.
Do you know what it means to be an octopus?
It's brain is spread throughout its body and its arms can each think separately.
Adrian Tchaikovsky is an SF writer with an odd pedigree he was a zoologist at one point. In one of his books he deals with genetically engineered octopi and does a lot with the dispersed intelligence in great depth.
Quote from: zorkan on April 03, 2024, 12:48:25 PMOctopus pizza. You should be ashamed.
Do you know what it means to be an octopus?
It's brain is spread throughout its body and its arms can each think separately.
Like a soggy spider, then. The smallest spiders have some of their nervous system distributed into their limbs as well. I don't eat spiders (that I know of), but I've eaten octopus. It has been decades, though.
i once made octopus curry. not bad.
i used to eat squid regularly at the local cuban restaurant in san jose. the rice was always purple because of the ink.
then they sold to some other cubans and the reciepe changed to a tomato-based thing that was pretty different.