An afterlife or no? You choose (for athiests and agnostics)

An answer from kindness: if you know that someone you love may survive you, you might want them to remember you favorably, so as not to let their memory of you make them miserable.There's also the answer from vanity.

Obviously, you didn't try that on a calculator.

Tough question.I guess, I'll take what I can get I would like to see the end of the world tho... see how humanity and everything works out. Then maybe oblivion.

Was just watching a video of an AMG Mercedes vs a Yamaha R1 on the Nuremburgring racing circuit. The merc led the whole way and kept nigh on the same distance in front of the R1 - just about out of range for an overtaking manoevre. It reminds me of mankinds pursuit of 'something'. The something suggests that it is close enough to obtain but when we think we've obtained it, it turns out to be just a little further off than we thought. And we keep on going after it. Thus I reckon nothing will change much between now and then.This message has been edited by iano, 10-Feb-2006 03:01 PM

Yes, eternity may not be linear.
It may be circular, like the movie Groundhog Day.

ianoiano You are saying here that in your model the past,present and future are all in the present tense? Pardon me, iano, but that is meaningless dribble. Unless you can clarify how time passes when it is all present tense and is thus unmoving,then I think you are spouting nonsense of a grave sort here. All sound and fury signifying nothing. Time is the measure of the movement of events in space. If there is no time things do not move, my friend, and now you are caught in a world where nothing occurs since this requires linear time. It would be duller by far than the notion I envisioned, since you would essentially be frozen without the passage of time. Indeed you woould not even have thoughts since these too require time for their engagement. Eternity cares no more for atheists than it does for people of religious bent since these have no more to do with time than hair color does.This message has been edited by sidelined, Fri, 2006-02-10 08:29 AMThis message has been edited by sidelined, Fri, 2006-02-10 08:31 AM

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But I realize now that these people were not in science; they didn’t understand it. They didn’t understand technology; they didn’t understand their time. R.P. Feynman

I don't believe in an after-life, but I would like it if there was one. It would also be nice to have the option of terminating my existence in this after-life if it ever became unbearable. At the very least, I'd like to live for a few thousand years. The 80 or so years we get now isn't enough. Oh well, wanting something doesn;t make it so.BTW, being an atheist doesn't automatically rule out belief in an after-life.

The assumption in the OP appeals to the somewhat whimsical notion that an afterlife is possible (we can't know there isn't for sure until we die so its probably not all that whimsical at all). If an afterlife exists and it apparently provides no objective evidence of itself then to insert boundaries on what is possible in such an afterlife is somewhat futile - as you do here. That you cannot imagine movement/life without time is simply the reckoning of someone locked in in their model (time enables movement) saying (without knowing) that that is so. But to assign natural limitations onto something patently supernatural (if it exists) is unreasonable.An afterlife is potentially capable of being anything at all for want of any inkling as to what it is about - if it existsThis message has been edited by iano, 10-Feb-2006 04:13 PM

Agreed. Like Buddhism etc

Mainstream Buddhism is not atheistic, and there are flavors of Buddhism that are expressly theistic.

Read "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene for an explanation of why relativity tells us that time doesn't flow; the past, present and future may well all be there. Remember space and time are not separate but are views of spacetime. Just as all of space is "there" so is, apparently, all of time.

Not my mates version. He mustn't be mainstream then. Does that make him a non-fundementalist buddhist?

For all I know, iano, it makes him a pagan Buddhist.Buddhism, like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, has managed to subdivide into many doctrinal schools. In the case of Buddhism, however, unlike Christianity and Christ, two men can say they are Buddha, and one of them doesn't have to be wrong. Here's a bit from Full Wikipedia entry on Buddha

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Oops, I meant 111,111,111x111,111,111=12345678987654321I got it in a stupid email, I just remembered it wrong.
I should know better before posting stuff like that in here. It seems that only happens here, lol.

Double postThis message has been edited by iano, 11-Feb-2006 12:53 AM