What if the fear of death drove man to create the concept of an afterlife.

Is this a good thing? Does the promise of eternal bliss make the drudgery of living bearable?

I think that the ultimate irony of humanity is that, in their attempt to make life better, they doomed us all to eternal warfare and strife.

If all humanity was accepting of the fact that we lived and then died then wouldn't we do everything we could to see to it that life was better?

Some people feel that, without an afterlife, humanity would descend into a nihilistic anarchy where the strong preyed upon the weak and chaos ruled the day.

I feel just the opposite. I believe that if all humanity understood that their entire existence was limited to that brief spell of consciousness here on earth that we would all have a better appreciation and reverence for the beauty that surrounds us in our every waking moment.

Instead of churches that held billions in assets, we would have billions of people adoring natural beauty.
Instead of armies that required their fodder to swear to god, we would have legions of individuals dedicated to making sure that no war was ever waged.
Instead of religions that served to classify people as "us" and "them" we would all be one - a community of Gaia-dwellers in tune with the world and with each other.

Death would be a time of reflection and remembrance by the survivors.

Life would be a time of appreciating the here and now instead of a temporary purgatory where your conscious did battle with your sub-conscious and your intellect did battle with your indoctrination.

Spirituality would be focused on finding connections between all living organisms instead of drawing lines between differing belief systems.

And the overpowering dread that led man to invent religion would be replaced with an awareness of the importance of now. The soft but intense need to experience life, to share feelings with others, to be and to appreciate your simple, short life.

Well, you could hope, but history would suggest otherwise.

That's the truth.

You don't want people like me to believe there is no after life. If there is no judgement then I have no remorse for anything I do.

Anything is possable but I believe that there is an after life, If not then what is the meaning of life?

What if? That's exactly what happened.



It sucks at first when you first realise it, but I eventually came to terms with it and came out better for it.

Once you accept death, once you accept that there's no shiny paradise with loved ones waiting for you on the other side, once you realise that all your friends and family and eventually you do nothing more than rot when you're dead the sooner you can get on and enjoy life.

And when you know that this is it, no more chances, no more lives, once you're dead, that's it, the end, the more you do enjoy life.

not so much belief in an afterlife has doomed man but the man's exploitation of our curiosity has us on a doomed path.

Why would I enjoy life if I knew that what was gonna await for me when I die? I think I would enjoy my life more if i knew I would exist after I die and see all my past family and friends. I mean seriously what is there to hope for except all you know is eventually your gonna die?

Personally, I believe that if religion did not exist we would be living in a total different world right now where whatever bad things people did, there would be no regret and probably chaos. Ever seen the movie"Equilibrium"? I would kind of see something like that happening

Id say for the commonfolk this is pretty much it. Most people dont enjoy constantly "contemplating their navals" and a belief in an afterlife allows people to feel like there is no end to think about.
Few people believe in an afterlife because they think they have proof of it, rather they believe in it because they need to.

I see belief in the afterlife much like training wheels. Usefull for the people who need it, but will only slow down those who actually do enjoy philosophy and would rather enjoy life with their own mind.

Personally Im pretty agnostic to the idea of an afterlife. Ive seen plenty of evidence of ghosts, but the question is whether or not ghosts are intelligent remains of humans ?

I don't think the idea of an afterlife was mankind's doom, repo (if you can call it a 'doom'). It's when people starting realising the belief in afterlife could be used to control others that things started to go downhill.

There is no meaning to life if there is eternal life after death. Whats 70 odd years against eternity?

It did.

I wouldn't say humanity has been doomed by the idea of an afterlife, but I will admit it makes wars seem so much more acceptable to so many people who believe all their dead loved ones aren't really gone forever...

A lot of us would, but then... There are a lot of believers who openly admit that, without their beliefs in an ultimate judgment after death, they would behave like Sociopaths.

I find it thoroughly sad that so many people have yet to outgrow the crutch of an afterlife belief. Agnostic as I am to the idea, I really don't think it has any relevance to our lives whatsoever.

Nice post, Repo.

So what you're saying is that your personal moral compass is so far off center that if you didn't have a book to tell you how to live your life, then you would do immoral things?

If that's true, then please, continue to believe in judgement after you die.

That is the silly. So you have to beileve in a afterlife to have remorse.

Don't worry, the time that people realize that they are mortal will come soon.
It's a little hard to see your wife or kid turn into a smelly corpse, and that being the end of it,
but the brave new world WILL accept it eventually

If there's nothing to believe in then everything that happens in MY life is just for MY enjoyment.

that's right, humanity will finally enjoy themselves after thousands of years of opression

The things you've passed on to the next generation tie you in to something bigger than yourself and in this way part of you continues after your death. I don't know whether I believe in an afterlife, but being connected to the people around you definitely allows at least part of you to continue after death.

Why not simply believe in nature and beauty?
Why not just appreciate your self-awareness and use it to experience this life to its fullest?
I have been to combat and seen hideous things. I have seen man at its lowest. But there is much, much more to this world.

To be honest, you sound like a sociopath. That might sound cool to your rebellious friends, but it isn't. If believing in an afterlife keeps you from acting out then I hope you continue to believe.

First: I agree with this.

Second: Why the heck are people saying that if there was no afterlife, we'd have no remorse? Remorse is caused by empathy, a NATURAL (key word here) emotion, which did not come from religion. We would feel remorse, and regret.

Third: Technically, there is an afterlife; everything we do in our life is remembered by something or someone.

What they have in their memories is now nothing more than dirt and methane (biological waste), and this dirt isn't aware of its own postmortem glory whatever it may be.
I don't think that can be considered afterlife. In death, a Nobel prize winner is equalized with a random road kill, nature doesn't really care either way.

It depends what you mean by "natural." Empathy is not, at first glance, a genetically or evolutionary programmed survival trait. In nature, both our genes and evolution, create biologic and social processes designed for only one end result; ie the continuation of our individual genes. Evolutionary geneticists are now beginning to find some "selfless' genes and evolutionary behaviour, which at first glance does not seem to meet that criteria, but it appears that much of this is learned behaviour, which society has adapted for survival.

Thus we may sacrifice, or compromise, a particular advantage to ourselves, which promotes a general advantage to the group, which we recognise is necessary for our behaviour. The most common example given of this form of genetic programming is in bees, where an individual will sacrifice itself for the survival of the hive (survival of the species/group supplanting survival of the individual genes in this example)

Given both our self aware consciousnesses/intelligence, and the evolutionary fact that human children, and child -bearing women, require long periods of group support for survival, humans have evolved further down this path than other animals, but this behaviour remains mostly learned and must be relearned by each individual and each generation. Thus empathy does not exist in a baby, it is a trait of which we are capable, but the mechanisms and processes to achieve it must be learned.

So actually, religion forms a very important social tool for the teaching of many socially necessary skills. While some families, and individuals, successfully pass down skills like empathy, in general societies require movements like religion ,both to codify the essential desirable human characteristics, and to ensure their continuation through a succession of generations. The breakdown in organised religion without a replacement by any compensatory mechanism is one of the main reasons for so many young people losing traits like empathy in todays society.

No. While humanity is a collective, it is also made up of individuals. Therefore the effect of this statement varies from person to person.

Contemplate for a moment the majority of our world that lives in poverty beyond the wealth of the Western World. Do you honestly believe that these people are unaware of the brief spell of consciousness they have? In parts of Africa the life expectancy is no more than 40 years. They bury loved ones often whereas most people I've known can count relatively few deaths they've had to deal with. They are surrounded by death in a way that many people in the West are not. And of the people I've seen there, they are the most strong and resiliant people I've ever known. How many of them are wondering about an afterlife while their lands are being torn apart by bombs, droughts and warfare? No, they are more focused on survival which is something most people I meet do not have the faintest idea about. To blame the world's ills on a belief in an afterlife is applying the simplistic to the multifaceted creation that is humanity.

While I agree that the church holds billions of assets, that pales in comparison to the amount placed in the pockets of very powerful people who control our industries and resources. Without water, lumber, oil, gas, electricity, soil, land...there is no survival for humanity, much less philosophy or religion. Power is divisive, plain and simple. It makes no difference if the ones in power represent a religion or a government, it corrupts over time and breeds much suffering. Wars on this planet are said to have been over gods, but they are in fact, power struggles over material possessions, usually land.
Furthermore, the people from Asia who lived under atheistic regimes where there was no religion can tell you first hand that the lack of it didn't make their leaders or their neighbors better people. Nor did it create a desire to cease the negative behaviors that we abhor.

Is death any less reflective if we say prayers or don't? Is it any easier to bear? No, it isn't.

We can replace spirituality with "nationalism" or "culture" or any number of things. Removing religion will not stop people from disliking one another because one has tattoos and the other doesn't. The connections to all living things exist within each prism of thought we come up with. However, so does the negative. I can find a connection with someone from Somalia. And if I don't, then I'll think their country should be dismantled and replaced with a version more like my own. The things you speak of are fundamental to the human condition, not religion.

Again, this overlooks the fact that people are individuals within the collective of humanity. There is no catch-all solution that will appease everyone. That is the brilliance of our kind. We are so multi-faceted, so intriguing, so different, yet the same. In my world, there is enough room for everyone to believe as they wish. To believe in an afterlife or not. To love or to hate. To take away any of these things creates an unbalance; then there would be a counterrevolution to correct it. Such is the way of life.

Maybe if religion were never invented those bombs wouldn't be falling all around them. Maybe if religion hadn't been invented they wouldn't be in poverty and their wouldn't be such a disparity between nations...

You honestly believe that religion has more weight than the thirst for power and ambition? Or that if a massive drought hits a region and there's no water that everybody is going to be holding hands because they are atheistic? Are you for real?

That's not entirely true. Empathy is more and more being seen as a necessary genetic trait in social mammals and integral to their survival. There's more extensive testing going as we speak but it has been observed in rats in captivity who suffer when cagemates are shocked. The specific nuerological activity has been pinpointed to a certain degree in both humans and monkeys in that when they observe someone doing something the same network fires as when the individual would be doing the same action. It's quite interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simulatio...eory_of_Empathy
In human children this starts around age two. In autistic children this is severely reduced and studies now are being done on it's connection to the "flattening of affect" or lack of empathy sociopaths display. Is environment part of it? Absolutely, it almost always is. But specific brain defects area always a good reminder that some stuff we think is intrinsically learned is highly biological.

I don't think a nation could force a people to go to war if they didn't frame the war in terms of good and evil and that has always been a religious concept. At the core of almost every war is an ideological difference pertaining to each nation's interpretation of religion. If nations couldn't force armies to fight then there would be no need of armies and the money could go to better things. If the money wasn't wasted on bombs, then there would be money to share with drought-stricken fellow humans.

Change your avatar to a scarecrow because your straw-man arguments couldn't be more blatent.

That's scary. I don't really believe in an afterife but I have great remorse regardless.

I know if I killed or screwed up someones life that they never would have another chance again and this just breaks my heart.

Life is so precious and this special person will never,ever exist again. That's so sad.

I picture and remember everyone as a little baby when they were all fragile,soft and innocent.
And that they could have been born to me and how much I would have loved them and vice-versa.
This creates GREAT EMPATHY.
I don't know how people can enjoy sites like rotten and look at murdered bodies and stuff. I can't tolerate that because I see the person when he was a baby/child or as someones loved ,dear parent in my mind.

Scientists now think that socipaths like him that have no normal, built-in human conscience are defective from the start - something messed up in their brain like autism-related disorder and it wasn't because of upbringing. Therefore {humans} like that never were cuddly little bunnies - they always had {something odd} for hearts and we can just be thankful that they found religion because, apparently, some tale about some god or another is enough to stop these {gentlemen} from murder.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

I can think of a lot of armed conflicts that had nothing to do with religion.
Both World Wars, many of the Cold War conflicts, Seven Years War, 100 Years War, War of Spanish Succession, War of Austrian Succession, Napoleonic Wars, Mongol invasions everywhere, Norman conquest of England, Peloponnesian War, Persian attempts to conquer Greece, Macedonian conquest of Persia and Egypt, all of Rome's conquests, so on, and so forth.
Men will fight for many more reasons than just religion. Money, resources, survival, freedom, adventure, loyalty to a man, intimidation, some secular ideology, and revenge have all been used to get men to kill each other.

So since I believe in the afterlife I do not appreciate natural beauty? Nah come on now....

Or vice-versa too-they can't be good without religion or fear of punishment. To me these are not ACTUALLy good people.It's creepy

But why can't you just enjoy the HERE & NOW ? Make the best of it.

I say MAYBE there is an afterlife but just in case there isn't I will make every facet of my life as pleasant as possible (and the people I share it with) and accept some of the negative aspects that I TRULY CANNOT change.

Make the best of what you have but don't be complacent.

The most disturbing is the thought of never seeing your loved ones again-agreed-but even the pain of this will pass with my death.

you can dig them up to see them again, but it wouldn't be pretty

I say, it's better you don't see them after you put them into the ground

I said:

Do you honestly declare to the world that you truly can't see how completely disconnected your "logical" connection is?

I never said that a person had to choose between religion or appreciation of nature.


If I say "All dogs have four limbs", you shouldn't reply with "I'm not a dog! Just because I have four limbs doesn't make me a dog!".

That's interesting. I am not a scientist, but was using information from the Australian Broadcasting Commisions science report this week. My post did express some ambivalence about how much is genetic (nature) and how much behavioural (nurture), so I will agree that it may not be entirely true.

However, the evidence suggests it is not entirely false either; to suggest that while there may be genetic pre dispositions to empathy (whose purpose has not yet been determined in evolutionary terms), the actual development of this predisposition into a human characteristic requires a socialisation process, which may be fulfilled by religion, as well as other philosophical constructs.

In other words, both the rats, and the humans, learn the social advantages of empathy. Once they begin to act in this way the action causes a neurological response, which reinforces these particular pathways until there is a measurable brain pattern indicating it ,and the individuals are acting as if it was a natural/ingrained response.

If the socialisation took a diffeent form, say educating one into selfishness, then both a different measureable brain pattern and a different social behaviour would be evident.
This differential brain development has been illustrated in the brains of young people in many areas since the advancement of scanning made it possible to look at the brain in this detail. Music, languages, and maths are just three areas which fundamentally alter the neurological construction and partterns of adolescent bains.

So you are asserting that you need religion in order to have a moral compass of right and wrong? Because that is what your statement implies: that without religion the masses would not understand such notions. Understanding good and evil are fundamental to the human race. My husband is an atheist. I am not. Neither of us would agree with your statement.

So civil wars within a country occur solely because of religious differences? National policy, financial and ecological disasters have no bearing on this? I'll have to disagree.

You are ignoring that these fights are not immediate. They happen because of a build up of tension among nations that results in armed conflict. Prior to that, there are usually talks and mediation to come to a resolution another way. Whether there are armies or not, there have been warriors since time immortal. Furthermore, if one country has resources that another wants (such as oil, land, water reserves and so on) this has absolutely nothing to do with religion. If your village has no water and the next one does, it would make sense stratigically to send your best men to overtake that village if they will not share it peacefully.

Comments like these aside, you started a thread and asked for discourse about the subject. I am asking questions to get a better understanding of your POV, which I disagree with. Because to me, your OP sounds like the group you are talking about. You draw lines in the sand between those who believe in an afterlife and who do not, thinking that this is the core of the problems of the world. The world itself is very multifaceted. And as much as I dislike organized religion and some of the edicts that have come out of religion itself, I can not state that religion its the bane of humankind. Humans are the bane of humankind. The rest is all justification to distract from this.

This is a concept which, independent of the ongoing debate above, has always intrigued me.

It is purely a personal belief worked out over my life time, but there is a lot of scientific evidence for it, that indeed: "religion" in its broadest terms, and "a moral compass" are so intertwined, as to be indistiguishable.

After all, what is religion but a belief system, usually predicated on some historical concepts, precepts, and illustratory parables, mixed with life experiences; which defines how one may best live?

A moral compass, or a comprehension of what is evil and what is good, is also a belief system, usually predicated on historical concepts, precepts, and illustratory parables, mixed with life experiences; which defines how one has chosen to live.

Both attempt to codify rules for conduct which will benefit both individuals and society. One difference is that a religious belief rests on some form of deity, while a moral compass accepts mankind as the ultimate deity or arbiter of what is acceptable behaviour. Both however rest on belief structures.

As humanity has come to a better understanding of the world around it, and of human nature itself, it is not suprising that we have moved more towards faith in ourselves, than faith in a religious deity. However, it remains important to remember that at heart, belief in ourselves is no more reliable than belief in a deity; when it comes down to both personal motivation for action, or for establishing rules of good governance.

There is a danger with a human moral compass that it becomes too flexible because of changes in human values and thus loses true north, while religious compasses may remain too rigid when they do not take into account new evidence, and thus to extend the analogy, they point to magnetic north, and we need to make allowances to achieve "true" north.

There is nothing in human biology or genetics which imbues us with an innate knowledge of right and wrong. Both the very concepts themselves, and our definitions of them (whether we define the ethics as universal, cultural or individual), are a product of our intellectual capacity and our self aware consciousness.

The human physical potential/ability to consider such issues may be seen as either an evolutionary response, or a gift from the creator, depending on your own belief system.

I tend to agree with you on this...I can't explain as to WHY I agree, I guess it's hard to put into words..but I think you are right

afterlife is one of things that will never be answered. who knows what happens after the death?!?!!?!?!?!?
IM LOOKING FORWARD TO IT LOL

Certainly, you can be food for insects and grass, which is an afterlife of a sort I guess. Giving back to nature what you took from it.