Arguments supporting existence of an afterlife?

[chezlaw]

Lots of good arguments.

- Loads of people believe in the afterlife and have done for a long time.

- Ghosts.

- baysian something or other.

etc

chez

[West]

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You are nothing but a transitional/transient phenomena. To think any other way is ego, or ignorance, talking, based on lack of observation.

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how do you know?

[HighStakesPro]

The first argument is fallacious. Just because a bunch of people believe something doesn't mean it is credible.

You'll have to elaborate on the other two. I've never heard of "baysian", and I could ask the same question about ghosts as I have about afterlife: what reason is there to believe in them?

[chezlaw]

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The first argument is fallacious. Just because a bunch of people believe something doesn't mean it is credible.

You'll have to elaborate on the other two. I've never heard of "baysian", and I could ask the same question about ghosts as I have about afterlife: what reason is there to believe in them?

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The first argument isn't fallacious. Many people believe its true (and have done for a long time) that many people believing something for a long time is a valid argument for something being true and hence it is a valid argument.

Ghosts is obvious isn't it. How could you explain ghosts if there's no afterlife???

baysian is simple. There's a good baysian argument for god existing and if such a god exists then there's a good baysian argument for an afterlife. No-one can doubt bayes therefore there's good argument for an afterlife.

I hope that's clear now.

chez

[DonkBluffer]

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You'll have to elaborate on the other two. I've never heard of "baysian", and I could ask the same question about ghosts as I have about afterlife: what reason is there to believe in them?

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There's a surprising number of people that believe in ghosts or even have 'seen' ghosts, as far as I know. I once talked with a girl on msn who said that she saw ghosts, and it was kind of a problem for her... Pretty weird. She was also hot.

[Dov]

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but even if you believe in God, that still in no way necesitates the existence of an afterlife.

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I do not want to get into a discussion of belief in God here, but I can shed some light on this, at least from a Jewish perspective.

Warning: I'm simply going to present this material to clarify a common position to the OP. I have no intention of delving into this in any great detail at this time. So if you have questions about this, ask your local Rabbi. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

The Jewish religion believes that man was created to receive God's goodness.

Since God is perfect, the only goodness that would be appropriate for Man to receive is perfect goodness.

In order for Man to receive God's goodness, he would have to be similar in nature to God.

Since God is also irresistable (if you know him directly, not physically), it would be impossible for Man to do anything other than what God wanted. which would mean that he was forced into it, which would mean that the goodness God would bestow on Man wouldn't be perfect.

Therefore, God divided Man's existence into 2 parts. A physical life where Man is shielded from God so that he can make his own decisions. The more of these decisions he makes that bring him closer to God, the greater his potential will be for storing God's goodness in part 2, the afterlife.

I do not happen to agree with this, but I have had 'formal' religious training and can tell you that this is exactly how they think. (At least the ones that are thinking at all.)

I know that I presented this quickly and fairly sloppily, but the point to OP is, that at least for Jews, if you believe in God, you automatically believe in an afterlife.

Without God, there wouldn't be one.

[FortunaMaximus]

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baysian is simple. There's a good baysian argument for god existing and if such a god exists then there's a good baysian argument for an afterlife. No-one can doubt bayes therefore there's good argument for an afterlife.

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I assume you're hinting at Pascal's wager here?

[chezlaw]

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baysian is simple. There's a good baysian argument for god existing and if such a god exists then there's a good baysian argument for an afterlife. No-one can doubt bayes therefore there's good argument for an afterlife.

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I assume you're hinting at Pascal's wager here?

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Definitely not. This argument says nothing about how we should behave in this life in case there is an afterlife.

However it is proof that we should take Pascals wager very seriously.

chez

[Piers]

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Arguments supporting existence of an afterlife?

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are there any legitimate reasons to believe in afterlife?


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You do realize that these are two completely different questions.

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with no afterlife, it's easy to come to the conclusion that life on earth is meaningless and not worth living because inevitably you'll die anyway


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This is an excellent reason to believe in an afterlife, but provides no supporting evidence for the existence of an afterlife.

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I know that there have been some arguments made to support the existence of God, the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguemnts and maybe some others, but are there any independent arguments for the existence of an afterlife, or heaven and hell? It seems like it would be much more difficult to argue, as the three arguments I mentioned can't apply to an afterlife.


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I would have thought that if an afterlife existed, then it would be much easier to demonstrate its existence than it would be to show the existence of a typical God.

The concept of an afterlife is relatively well defined and we have the materials necessary to generate an afterlife readily at hand, hence it should, in principle at least, be approachable via experimental scientific analysis. It is not possible to say the same thing about your typical god figure.

[Lozang]

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Hi, Welcome to the SMP forum [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Thanks for sharing that insight into Buddhist philosophy.
The thing is though that Science explains consciousness simply as natural processes within the brain. So the cause of consciousness is in fact unconscious matter - so they say.

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You really hit the nail on the head. As it turns out that the vast majority of the Buddhist philosophy stems from the argument that mind and matter have separate causes. So scholars spend a great deal of time on this particular point. I should limit this to Tibetan Buddhism though, as I am unsure of other traditions emphasis on a structured scholastic understanding of philosophy.

I've spent a lot of time on this particular point and I still have difficulty understanding it. There are various arguments as to the belief that matter can not cause mind. They seem to surround points about our self awareness or experience of things, that we can suffer or have happiness. That is beyond just pain or pleasure which are physical qualities. Beyond reaction to stimuli such as plant life or micro organisms.

If there is a self awareness of process within the mind then then no matter how complex matter could be arranged it would need something to monitor that part and so one and so forth and to have to parts monitoring each other would require something to monitor those two parts interacting.

Having talked to scientists about this particular ability to be self aware and if the brain can achieve that. It seems that there is a problem as there is no part of the brain that controls all others. If scientists can prove that different parts of the brain monitoring each other can somehow monitor their overall interaction then a fundamental tenant of Buddhism will be proven wrong. From my understanding of the brain this has been unable to be shown and is a hole in the understanding of the brains processes.

As the Dalai Lama has said and I'm paraphrasing

"If science can prove something that conflicts with Buddhism belief then we will have to change our beliefs because science is the legitimate way to prove things."

Though I consider myself to lean strongly to Buddhist philosophy I cannot throw in my hat just yet as I do agree with their belief that you should only hold to something once a logical proof presents itself but I'm unable to properly grasp the brain mind separation problem.

Thanks for the welcome.