Life after Death? The mechanics of it?

[daemon]

standards said:

HTP99 said:

However I now remember my father in law suggesting to us that our daughters would be stuck in purgatory because we wouldn't have them baptised. Fortunately he is no longer in our lives after buggering off and getting involved with some extreme Methodists.

I think he'll find it's Limbo that the unbaptised go to, although it's not very fashionable any more.

Extreme Methodists. Now that I would like to see!

Did Jesus change his mind about purgatory?

[standards]

daemon said:

Did Jesus change his mind about purgatory?

I don't think the Good Lord mentions it.
It's a Catholic thing-the least pain in Purgatory is worse than the most pain on earth and all that. To purify one's soul (although minus the body how does it hurt?) to enter the Beatific Vision.

I last studied this full time in the 70s so my memory might be less than perfect.
Again!

Edited by standards on Thursday 7th May 17:03

[daemon]

standards said:

daemon said:

Did Jesus change his mind about purgatory?

I don't think the Good Lord mentions it.
It's a Catholic thing-the least pain in Purgatory is worse than the least pain on earth and all that. To purify one's soul (although minus the body how does it hurt?) to enter the Beatific Vision.

I last studied this full time in the 70s so my memory might be less than perfect.
Again!

Yes, that was my understanding.

It must be great to have a religion whereby you can make up the rules as you go along and pick and chose from the holy books whenever suits.

Genuinely. I chose the wrong profession.

[supertouring]

Blaster72 said:

supertouring said:

Blaster72 said:

I love how all religions are put down to crackpots believing in "twaddle" yet the above from Mr Krauss is taken as gospel despite the fact none of us normal folk can ever prove it for ourselves.

Truth is no-one really know what the hell is going on so all bets are off. A universe that started with a big bang from nothing - total horsest

So which would you back, one with no evidence at all or one with some evidence based upon the observable universe?

And we can prove for ourselves, he has published his findings so if you want to pick holes in it then you can.

Simple answer is I don't back either, there's a possibility Krauss is correct but there's also a possibility he's got it totally and utterly wrong.

Same goes for religious types.

I'd like to believe there is something more but can't imagine how there could be - that's me being small minded as well!

Edited by Blaster72 on Wednesday 6th May 16:18

But they do not fall into the same basket, so why would I treat them the same way?

One is looking at what we see in the universe we live in and attempts to draw conclusions from that.

The other says "have faith" (which is belief without evidence) in something no one has ever seen.

If a scientist came out with a theory with no evidence then I would not believe him either.

[kiseca]

supertouring said:

One is looking at what we see in the universe we live in and attempts to draw conclusions from that

IMO this also explains the origins of gods.

[Ayahuasca]

Europe before Christianity - many small tribal clans engaged in constant warfare, impossible to control, leaders appointed by peers, leaders had short, brutal, lives on the edge of poverty.

---

enter Christianity - love thy neighbour, give unto Caesar, fear hell, if good: reward in heaven once you are dead

---

Europe during Christianity - a few large nation states, population docile and easy to control, leaders are appointed by 'god', leaders have relatively long prosperous lives accumulating wealth.

[Ayahuasca]

Heaven = infinite parallel heavens.

Mine = island, perfect climate, cool woods, warm beaches, tumbling streams, a private race track with a collection of Ferraris for my pleasure, etc, etc.

With a portal to an infinite number of alternative heavens.

Yours = whatever you want.

[daemon]

Ayahuasca said:

Heaven = infinite parallel heavens.

Mine = island, perfect climate, cool woods, warm beaches, tumbling streams, a private race track with a collection of Ferraris for my pleasure, etc, etc.

With a portal to an infinite number of alternative heavens.

Yours = whatever you want.

And have you any religious basis for that? I think the christian heaven seems to be about sitting around reading extracts from the bible and looking solemn?

[kiseca]

Give me a holodeck and I'll be in heaven.

[knitware]

A while ago I was on YouTube looking at a certain car review and after clinking other links ended up watching a Muslim dude converting a man to Islam, like you do, anyway. The converter was explaining about heaven and describing how when you die and go to heaven you will get a house, and that the house will be made of gold and that there will be beautiful woman.

Now here is my problem. I could go along with God chatting to a bloke on a hill and doing good and all the other things but where I thought bull crap was the house and gold.

A house is a human need, something needed to shelter us from the elements, wind, rain and cold even heat, why would I need that if I was dead, a spirit or a ball of energy, likewise I don't need beautiful woman as, well I'll be passed that sort of thing but what upset me more was the gold.

Why gold? Gold is only precious because man decided it's precious, it's an element and that's it. It doesn't give us energy or life, it's nothing but perhaps shiny and a good conductor of heat. Why not a house made of another element like yttrium or lead?

This dude's gambit was 'what does the bible say about heaven? The bible says nothing'. Well, in this instance the bible is more believable than a house made of gold. Is that really what a billion people are praying for? Ludicrous.

[daemon]

knitware said:

A while ago I was on YouTube looking at a certain car review and after clinking other links ended up watching a Muslim dude converting a man to Islam, like you do, anyway. The converter was explaining about heaven and describing how when you die and go to heaven you will get a house, and that the house will be made of gold and that there will be beautiful woman.

Now here is my problem. I could go along with God chatting to a bloke on a hill and doing good and all the other things but where I thought bull crap was the house and gold.

A house is a human need, something needed to shelter us from the elements, wind, rain and cold even heat, why would I need that if I was dead, a spirit or a ball of energy, likewise I don't need beautiful woman as, well I'll be passed that sort of thing but what upset me more was the gold.

Why gold? Gold is only precious because man decided it's precious, it's an element and that's it. It doesn't give us energy or life, it's nothing but perhaps shiny and a good conductor of heat. Why not a house made of another element like yttrium or lead?

This dude's gambit was 'what does the bible say about heaven? The bible says nothing'. Well, in this instance the bible is more believable than a house made of gold. Is that really what a billion people are praying for? Ludicrous.

Its almost like religion is man made#

Having said that, Islam seems to be a better reconciled religion as they go for the line that God has sent prophets all through history to give man the religion he needs. Hence they get around the whole thing of their religion being formed a relatively short time ago and all the old historic religions because its just the next generation of religion, given to them by the prophet Mohammed, and as such they respect all other religions.

As opposed to the "we're right and everyone else is wrong" view of Christianity.

I mean if you're going to form a Sun God religion then its good to loop in other faiths.

Edited by daemon on Wednesday 6th May 21:18

Edited by daemon on Wednesday 6th May 21:19

Edited by daemon on Thursday 7th May 13:30

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Blaster72 said:

RobM77 said:

Blaster72 said:

Wow, that drew out the fanatics. As suggested above, I probably chose a bad example but just as the origins of the Universe are merely speculative as no one actually witnessed it or can prove their theory without doubt - religious types cannot prove what they believe.

Firstly, nobody will ever prove a scientific theory "without doubt", science is not maths, so the concept of 'proof' strictly speaking doesn't exist. However, the degree of certainty can be very high and 'prove' something 'beyond all reasonable doubt'. Secondly, what you say about cosmological theories of origins being merely speculative is not true - what cosmologists do is make predictions based on their theory and then look for signatures that match their predictions (then of course everyone tries to disprove it - we test things by trying to pul them apart). For example, the Big Bang theory received a huge dollop of evidence in the form of the discovery of microwave background radiation in the 1960s - that was something theorised and then found in the manner expected and it still stands today. On the other hand, more recently of course we had all the excitement about the BICEP2 experiment finding polarisation in the CMB of the sort predicted by inflationary theory. That latter example was showed to be false by results published by another team concerning the dust the signal had travelled through, and that shows nicely what I've said about science advancing through the scientific method and critique etc - it's the way we move knowledge forward.

Blaster72 said:

Someone above suggested they could learn more in half an hour from an author of a scientific paper that they could in a lifetime from a religious scholar. I'd suggest they have an extremely closed mind to other possibilities.

The exact same traits people on this thread seem to think religious types have when regarding all things scientifically proven.

For what its worth, I'm an Atheist despite being brought up as a Christian. I don't mock people who choose to believe because when it comes to it no one actually knows for sure.

Oh and apologies for drifting off topic slight but this is the sort of thing I'm talking about

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/large-hadr...

I suggest that you read my post above, specifically the second paragraph about pop science reporting niche theories, and my previous post about probabilities instead of beliefs. That Telegraph article is sensationalist and merely trying to get people to read the article. If you actually read it, she's picked that idea as a headline and then reports on the startup of the LHC instead. It's highly unlikely that we'll disprove the big bang theory, but yes, it's possible, and that's what's so exciting about science - it advances knowledge.

Ergo, it could be total horsest and disproven in some future scientific paper. Thats the original point I was trying to make.

So you think it's quite possible that the Earth is flat after all, and the sun goes around the Earth??

[Troubleatmill]

Scientists don't just test that something is right. They also try bloody hard to disprove it. And they ask everyone else to try it out for themselves and disprove it. It is actively encouraged.
Religion.... I don't know of many that actively encourage you to doubt their message. None spring to mind.

We do know that the galaxies originated from a single point of origin. ( as mentioned earlier )
Even the Catholic church recognises the big bang - and origin of the Universe.

The concept of "a universe from nothing" is fascinating.
Will it ever be proven? Who knows.
As our science progresses - and we understand more and more - new observations and understanding about how it happened may emerge.


Another Krauss quote - which boggles the mind on just how big the universe is.

“In 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe will have progressed to the point where all other galaxies will have receded beyond detection. Indeed, they will be receding faster than the speed of light, so detection will be impossible. Future civilizations will discover science and all its laws, and never know about other galaxies or the cosmic background radiation. They will inevitably come to the wrong conclusion about the universe......We live in a special time, the only time, where we can observationally verify that we live in a special time.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

[vonuber]

This 40 virgin thing has always puzzled me. Where do they come from? And is it only the men who get them?

[vanordinaire]

ewenm said:

We live on after death in the memories of our friends and relatives and in the ongoing results of our actions when alive.

Sixth post of the thread. This is the answer to the OP's question. All the rest is nonsense or irrelevant.

[Ayahuasca]

vanordinaire said:

ewenm said:

We live on after death in the memories of our friends and relatives and in the ongoing results of our actions when alive.

Sixth post of the thread. This is the answer to the OP's question. All the rest is nonsense or irrelevant.

That is somewhat unsatisfactory as Marcus Aurelius pointed out, "the memory of everything is soon overwhelmed in time."

In the case of memories of you, in the brains of your friends and relatives, maybe just two generations?

[Blaster72]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

So you think it's quite possible that the Earth is flat after all, and the sun goes around the Earth??

I've flown around most of the world and can agree that it isn't flat, as for the Sun I can observe our movement relative to the sun for my self so no reason to believe the sun orbits around the Earth.

I do however struggle to believe there is such a thing as the afterlife but can't rule it out as no one has proven there isn't. In much the same way many scientific theories sound all fine and dandy but have not been proven or observed and are just sitting there ready to be debunked.

How, for example, do you feel about the Man made global warming theory?

Back to the OPs question, anything is possible as no one has come back to let us know what happens.

[vanordinaire]

Ayahuasca said:

vanordinaire said:

ewenm said:

We live on after death in the memories of our friends and relatives and in the ongoing results of our actions when alive.

Sixth post of the thread. This is the answer to the OP's question. All the rest is nonsense or irrelevant.

That is somewhat unsatisfactory as Marcus Aurelius pointed out, "the memory of everything is soon overwhelmed in time."

In the case of memories of you, in the brains of your friends and relatives, maybe just two generations?

Ironic that you quote someone who died 2000 years ago to demonstrate that everyone is forgotten in a couple of generations. Every one of us is a 'memory' of our ancestors from thousands of years ago.

[Chimune]

You seem very confused Blaster72. Your statements don't add up...

Blaster72 said:

I've flown around most of the world and can agree that it isn't flat, as for the Sun I can observe our movement relative to the sun for my self so no reason to believe the sun orbits around the Earth.

Two very poor reasons to believe either tbh, yet you take them as read - because your experience appeared to match the stated proposition. Not because someone proved them to you.

Blaster72 said:

I do however struggle to believe there is such a thing as the afterlife but can't rule it out as no one has proven there isn't.

Firstly, you rule nothing out that hasn't been proven to be false ?
Proven by what ? Science ? Or just an experience you have that appears to support the proposition ?

Secondly, everything you have written in this thread points to you being agnostic, not atheist.

[ewenm]

Chimune said:

Secondly, everything you have written in this thread points to you being agnostic, not atheist.

Agnostic and atheist are not mutually exclusive. I'm an agnostic atheist. I don't KNOW there's no God - that would require FAITH. I think on the balance on probabilities there is no God, but if testable, repeatable, observable evidence comes along to the contrary I'll re-assess.

Unfortunately for the faith-peddlers, they're not very open to testable, repeatable, observable evidence. Unlike scientists who rely on it.

Edited by ewenm on Thursday 7th May 10:14