Is there evidence that doesn't support torment after-death (Buddhists, candlestick, believe)

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Originally Posted by OpanaPointer

"Is there evidence that doesn't support torment after-death"

OP is asking us to prove a negative, in a fashion.

Properly, this should be "Is there evidence that does support torment after-death" and the answer to that is "none so far". I doubt that will change.

I agree. The OP question is much like asking the question, "When did you stop beating your wife?"

[Cruithne]

Originally Posted by OpanaPointer

Ask the dead people, they're the only ones who might know. Everybody else is just guessing.

Let's face it, even the dead people don't know, since they're dead.

[OpanaPointer]

Originally Posted by Cruithne

Let's face it, even the dead people don't know, since they're dead.

I gave it a "might" because I'm not dead yet myself, so I'm not 1,000,000,000,000% certain.

[Arach Angle]

reasonable people don't think ,,, "no proof against so it may be true."

reasonable people think "with the data we have today, eternal damnation is tupid."
yeah, thats tupid.

[eddie gein]

Originally Posted by readytofly

Where would people get this notion from the beginning? These beliefs developed out of thin air?

Dude, dude, dude.

These beliefs developed after people watched people like myself prosper while on earth, while they struggle.

I mean, look at me. Rich beyond belief. Money to burn. Buy anything I want. Have anything I want. Will try to get anything I want including your wife and your daughters.

Meanwhile, the fellow down the street is trying to make ends meet. Being decent to people to some degree because he knows it's the right thing to do and partly because he can't get away with being like me.

So my life goes along swimmingly. A healthy, wealthy life of leisure with a dose of hedonism that would make Oscar Wilde blush.

The other fellow sees that it's highly unlikely that I get my comeuppance in this life. So he decides that I get it after death.

Then he gets the bright idea that he can sell this idea to other people like him to get them to do what he wants. Hell, he might even be able to get them to give him money if he comes up with an enforcer to his idea.

[mordant]

Originally Posted by Petunia 100

My theory is that it is born out of a desire for life to be fair.

Fair, comprehensible, and not so scary.

But I understood his question was more along the lines of what my late wife found impressive and I did not. She figured it must mean something that "most people" believe in some sort of god and afterlife. But looked at from another facet, even the propensity to succumb to our fears (hyper awareness of existential threats, real and perceived), to infer agency where it doesn't exist (when the bushes rustle, run first and ask questions later) and to give too much credence to anything that supports what we want to be true ... these are all about the fact that we are alone in an indifferent universe, with a finite mortal life, that often seems absurd and makes no sense. So we try to make sense of it, render it explicable and safer. And one way to do that is to invent a meta-reality narrative that in some roundabout way makes sense of experienced reality.

To me the canonical example is the story of the tapestry. Life seems chaotic, like the back of a tapestry. But hidden from you is the beautiful design on the other side that shows how each seemingly random thread has a purpose.

I guess I was never meant for that explanatory framework, because I always figured if the "beautiful tapestry" is hidden and cannot be beheld, its not much use to me. [shrug]

At any rate, a thousand years ago we had few options but to make up stuff like that. Increasingly though we actually understand how reality works and why it is as it is. We're sitting here, talking with each other over great distances using nothing but inconvenienced electrons, and that didn't come about because some theologian somewhere got a word from the Lord about how to do it, either.

[Rafius]

Originally Posted by readytofly

Where would people get this notion from the beginning?

From the fear of dying.

[OpanaPointer]

Originally Posted by Rafius

From the fear of dying.

I think more some from the fear of what they've been told will happen after they die. The subject line says much.

[Miss Hepburn]

Read what people have communicated from the Other Side...see if it rings true to you.

'The Astral City: A Spiritual Journey' ...on Netflix, now... based on famed medium Chico Xavier's communications.
Online free....Anthony Borgia's "Life in the Unseen World"....which the movie,
' What Dreams May Come', Robin Williams, was based on.

Consensus is you make your own hell...and can get out of your own hell, period.
So yes, there is a hell...of your own making.

[OpanaPointer]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Read what people have communicated from the Other Side...see if it rings true to you.

'The Astral City: A Spiritual Journey' ...on Netflix, now... based on famed medium Chico Xavier's communications.
Online free....Anthony Borgia's "Life in the Unseen World"....which the movie,
' What Dreams May Come', Robin Williams, was based on.

Consensus is you make your own hell...and can get out of your own hell, period.
So yes, there is a hell...of your own making.

Unsupported claims are not evidence.