what happens after we die?

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Since there's probably no hell you might as well be selfish and evil

And yet there is also no:

Forgiveness: if I have damaged the lives of others, there is not going to be anyone there to pet me and reassure me that I'm really a good person. I just go to the grave knowing what I have done and realizing that this is part of how I have defined my entire existence.

Eternal justice: nobody is there to set things right for anyone that I hurt. I go through life knowing that, if I throw another person's life off-course and that person meets a terrible end, that person will not be given some compensation "at the end." Most likely, that person will die a lonely and bitter person, and in many cases, that person's grave will be spat on by people who have misjudged him. Dad is not there to come in behind me to fix my mistakes. That which is broken stays broken.

Afterlife: I can't take anything with me to oblivion. I have never seen a hearse being followed by a Brinks truck. Even if I earn billions during my lifetime as a Bernie Madoff who Got Away and I went to the grave laughing, here is someone else who will go to the grave laughing: a beach bum who never really cared about anything.

And Hell? Here is the dilemma:

If I am a good person, I could never tolerate the disproportionate suffering of anybody, even very nasty people. Even with people that I would do some pretty mean-spirited things to, there is a point at which I would think, "okay, that's not cool." Therefore, what good is "eternal bliss" to any morally decent creature when needless cruelty is done unto others? A truly moral person could never rest.

If I were a truly evil person, then I would think that the ideal sort of person is someone who, like me, exercises a Machiavellian lack of concern for others, and I must believe that Hell is full of all those "sissies" who get all sad-faced over the "little guy." Believe me, I have known people who are like this. They believe that, if you take your eyes off of the pursuit of personal gain for one instant, then you are a loser and an insect, and they despise you for it. There are criminals who break into people's houses, and they think that their victims are terribly stupid people who deserve to lose their belongings because, out of trust toward their fellow man, they didn't get a home security system. There are rapists who think that men who would not take advantage of a woman on a dark night in a certain situation is a "fag" and deserves to burn in Hell.

The only good people I have known are those who have been exposed to an example of honorable conduct and learned to want to emulate that example. For some of them, it has been Jesus. For others, it has been Socrates. For a few, it has been Mr. Spock.

Last edited by Persimmonpudding on 05 Dec 2014, 9:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Don't forget that you don't actually have to be a good person to go to Heaven, as long as you "repent" and accept Jesus. However, deny the Holy Spirit and your place in Hell is guaranteed; regardless of the good you have done in your life...

OMG, GOD is a three letter word and NOT the ESSENCE OF GOD.

THAT'S JUST COMMON SENSE for folks who have A DIRECT CONDUIT WITH GOD AND NEED NO SILLY LITTLE HUMAN INVENTED WORDS TO GET TO THE TRUTH OF LIFE AND GOD.

SO HELL NO, YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW THE WORD GOD EXISTS TO KNOW GOD, you silly little human.. [sarcasm intended/].. as this SELFISH ABSTRACT 'LANGUAGED' IDEOLOGY IS THE DIRECT CAUSE OF MILLIONS OF HUMAN DEATHS AND COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF HUMAN SUFFERING WHEN FOLKS ARE NOT PART OF SOMEONE ELSES 'GOD' CLUB. :)

GOD AKA MOTHER NATURE TRUE OR ALL THAT IS HATES anti CHRIST CHRISTIANS, OVERALL. [MORE SARCASM INTENDED/]

BUT SOME ARE okay. :)

This is why God has revealed himself in the subtlest of ways rather than proving his existence.

A truly good person will be good even if there is no belief in God or reward in an afterlife, whereas a bad person might pretend to be good out of fear if he believes in the Catholic interpretation of Hell.

The way God has done it is exactly right to separate and judge the good from the bad.
And you dont go to "hell" just for not believing in God:-
Revelation 20 v12
And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God,[c] and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.

At the resurrection at the end of the thousand years everyone is judged, incidentally Hades is another name for Hell which just means the Grave, it is full of good and bad.
People are judged by how they acted, not by if they believed in the right God.

The advantage to being a Christian and accepting Jesus death is that you don't get judged as Jesus has already paid for your sins.
John 3:18
“He who believes in Him is not judged;

Double post

Actually, here is the thing. You have to accept that many non-religious people not only find your god to not be very believable, but we also find your god to be crass. If there were an election for the position of God and everyone who had ever lived were in the running, with ballots where we had to rank everybody who had ever lived in order of preference, your deity would be somewhere between Adolf Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer. This is simply because of disproportionate and unnecessary cruelty toward individuals whose wrongdoing in life was, even if hideous, finite.

If the Christian deity had been a figure that actually demonstrated to bad people why their behavior was wrong and brought them around to understanding, thereby making them happy and also good people (or otherwise just sectioned them off somewhere that couldn't bother anybody), then I might have remained one.

Furthermore, if the Christian deity had been a little more like Winnie-the-Pooh, then I might have remained one. Winnie-the-Pooh has actual humility, among other traits that I would actually consider to be divine.

Beyond that, you would have to convince me to believe that, whenever my natural curiosity about the true nature of the universe happens to conflict with a religious doctrine, I ought to feel guilt-ridden. The truth is that a person who is truly interested in truth will assume many different stances, some of which may be wrong, and will change his-or-her views many times, preferring to be on the side of truth rather than the side of a preconceived notion of truth that is not true at all.

In other words, to make a statement of faith would be to make a statement that I am infallible, and I am not. The truth will be what it will be, regardless of what I think it ought to be.

It ought to be that the universe was created by Winnie-the-Pooh, and at the end of things, Winnie-the-Pooh will give a Pooh-talk to all of the misguided people out there, upon which they will say, "Well, I never looked at it that way. I realize now that it really does make me feel better about myself if I'm out there trying to make people happy and make the world a better place, and helping people grow is more noble than selfish love. Thanks, Pooh!"

But that is not going to be so just because I proclaimed it to be so.

Yes, Winnie the Pooh truly is GOD cause GOD invented Winnie the Pooh. :)

OR a MagicK Blue Turtle, take your pick. ;)

You'll have to ask someone who has been there.

its either heaven or hell, hebrews 9 says it is appointed for men to die, and then after judgement. Romans 1:18-32 says that men know the truth of god, yet they suppress it in wickedness, god hardens people so they will not believe

This is one of those questions which assumes a great many things. One of which is that anything happens to us after death except for decomposition. We have no evidence that death isn't final and no reason other than fear of the unknown to create any other scenario.

It is disturbing to think that someday, sooner or later, I will cease to be. I can't really conceptualise what that would be like. I can imagine dying but not death. That is probably why I have thought about it so much. It is an insoluble problem.

The cost of Pascal's wager: http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2007/04/18/the-cost-of-betting-on-faith/6906
Aside from the cost, which I have seen in my own life of believing for 35+ years, there is also the loss of genuine integrity and honesty. You cannot choose what is illogical, for the sake of salvation, and still remain honest.

This is a seriously good question! And it deserves more than a glib response.

And as an atheist, I have to be honest, there is one thing about death that does scare me. And that is, wasting the life I have, and not achieving something of worth before I'm done. But why do we feel this way? Do we want some sort of notoriety? Do we want people to remember us? And why would it matter if we're not going to be around to see it? I think for me, I don't want to feel like I've just been present and done nothing but survived life.

As for death itself, the older you get, the less that worries you. This actually came as a surprise to me.

+1

http://genealogyreligion.net/the-earliest-moral-ethical-laws-were-not-religious

What about this?

Quite simple, I do not fear death, once I am dead I will know nothing about it. It a bit like that asinine "pro-life argument "but what if you had been aborted?" I would know nothing about it!
I do have a certain envy of what others will discover in future generations, I am envious that space travel may become common place, or we may discover an interact with other sentient life forms. I am especially envious of the future generations who will undoubtable live far longer and with much better health than us.

And this I think is the difference between myself and the religious, I do not look forward to death. Death is the end, there is no afterlife, this is it so enjoy it, find out all there is to know because this is the only chance you will get to understand life. I do not fear death, rather the circumstances of my death and a little sadness that I will no longer be alive.

As to those who suggest that if we do not live forever then what is the point, there is no point. Now you can go around with that nihilistic value or you can say, life is the point and it is finite so I might as well enjoy it.


This is why we need laws, some people "enjoy" hurting and killing others so we rightly prevent this as it is an incredibly selfish perspective.

As to pascals wager I have always found this and similar concepts strange as it implies a god that is not omniscient. Same goes for believers in the Devil as this surely should tell you that god is neither omniscient nor omnipotent