Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
This is not a popular belief. There are more religious people in the world than none religious people.
But to your point; there exists no evidence that there is something after death, certainly not in the wishful thinking way people do. Ergo, there is nothing after death.
You had me right to until the last sentence. Without evidence of anything beyond death, all interpretations of what's beyond death are equally valid. Some require fewer assumption than others so you could say by Occam's razor they're more likely, but making fewer assumptions still means making assumptions.
A shared experience constitutes good evidence. But the experience might involve a special technique for getting the experience. So if you don't do the technique then you don't get the evidence.
The technique might involve serious time and effort. So most of us will never do it.
So now we have 2 sets of people, those who did the technique and those who didn't, with different evidence in hand, arriving at different conclusions.
Why? Things in reality don't work that way.
Occam's Razor is not the only tool; Hitchen's Razor makes for a very good bullshit filter. And so far anything about the afterlife, or even the entire concept of the afterlife to begin with, is entirely asserted without evidence.
Correct, and so is the assertion that there is nothing following death.
For clarity, I do agree that I think there is nothing and that any concept of anything following death is a coping mechanism, but I'm not going to pretend that a lack of evidence for an afterlife is evidence towards nothingness.
But it is. The lack of evidence for unicorns is evidence there are no unicorns. That's how evidence works.
If someone makes the claim they are required to provide proof, they have the burdon of proof. If no proof is to be found it can be rejected. Hence, Hitchen's Razor.
And yet you claim that nothing exists beyond death without evidence. You provide no evidence and assume that a lack of evidence on other theories is evidence of your theory. This is the same methodology theologists used as "evidence" for the heavens. By assuming a default position exists, you're allowing a lack of evidence on any other position of the argument to support your own position.
My point is that nothingness as a state of being (or lack thereof) beyond death is its own theory that also has no evidence. This is the same for all theories of what's beyond death and therefore all theories are equally valid, or invalid if you prefer.
From my perspective in programming terms, you're seeing a variable without a value and assuming no value means 0 whereas I'm saying 0 is also a value which is different from "no value was defined".
I have never, in my 48 years, had anyone I've known in real life try to assert their beliefs on me. Perhaps I'm just lucky. My own mother is a Christian, whereas my father is agnostic. Neither have tried to tell me what is or isn't. They tell me what they believe, which is fine. It's only a certain type of atheist, of which I've met several, who feels compelled to loudly and confidently tell me about the nature of existence with absolute certainty.
To believe that we die, that's it and there's nothing more to it is perfectly reasonable. But to assert it as a fact implies that they have knowledge beyond others, which I find difficult not to interpret as arrogance.
I've had everything and everyone try to assert their beliefs. If nobody has ever approached you about anything then you've been very lucky indeed.
Anything from Jehova's Witnesses and their dumb little pamphlets, Muslims blaring prayers across the street while displaying billboards on intelligent design, to scientologists starting the most disingenuous arguments.
These are fairly normal occurrences in cities. Perhaps not so much in the countryside, but even then I've had the Christian priest always casually bringing up joining Sunday mass.