I thought the following comment from Dave (whose blog you should definitely check out) deserved its own discussion thread:
I’m almost finished reading a book called Joker One and part way through the book the author (a former marine lieutenant who served in Iraq) starts to talk about God. He is recounting his time in Iraq and just described the first loss of life that occurred within his own platoon. He decides that it is better to believe in God and his logic goes something like this:
If there is no God then there is no hope for his dead comrade. He is gone forever and has served and died for no ultimate purpose.
If there is a God then there is hope that this man is still alive in Heaven and has sacrificed himself for the greater good serving a higher purpose.
I think the point he makes brings up a good question: Would we be better off having hope in an afterlife from a pragmatic point of view? Would we be happier and less prone to become depressed if we at least clung to some *hope* that there is a better life waiting for us after we die? Would this hope do us any harm in the here and now or is it possible that holding on to this hope could make us a better person?
Let the discussion commence!
Finding Truth 
Imagine someone thinking “This life is all we get. No one is watching. I am going to grab what I can get.”
Have you ever see damage done by this view?
You see, life-after-death, or not, is in itself not a dangerous idea, it is how it is used and mingled with all sorts of other beliefs, circumstances and desires.
That is why the research on religion tends to be problematic. Without accounting for lots of other variables, generalizations fall apart badly.
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And Sab, while you’re “going in details” why the 11th of September wasn’t a retardation of the human condition, please address Shahada (Death for Allah), which mandates Muslims to aspire to die in combat for Islam.
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=565
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“Imagine someone thinking “This life is all we get. No one is watching. I am going to grab what I can get. Have you ever see damage done by this view?”
I’m not sure this is a very good analogy, Sabio. Even though many people have probably had this thought, there are good reasons for not following through. Laws, bullets, video cameras, etc.
And yet this is pretty much how I think. But within the law. I strive for a quality of life and I pursue all that life has to offer while remembering those less fortunate.
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@ KCchief1
It seems your worldview is radically different that Zan’s — for he says, “Our greatest duty is to humanity, not the self…”
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@Sab
It seems your worldview is radically different that Zan’s — for he says, “Our greatest duty is to humanity, not the self…”
I know its difficult for you, but you could at least try not to be a dick, Sab.
Now, I believe you were going to go into “details” as to how the supernal beliefs of the 11th of September hijackers weren’t a retardation of the human condition.
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kcchief1 “I strive for a quality of life and I pursue all that life has to offer while remembering those less fortunate.”
Sabio “It seems your worldview is radically different that Zan’s — for he says, “Our greatest duty is to humanity, not the self…”
Sabio, what about my statement above did you not understand ???
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Sorry, gentlemen. Back to work. It has been a long time since I have visited “Finding Truth!” — I forgot the nature of the threads here. I leave you boys to each other’s good company.
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@Sabio
No, Sept 11th does not support such a claim.
Sorry, gentlemen. Back to work….I forgot the nature of the threads here
By the “nature of these threads” you mean people asking you to back up your poorly-thought-through screeds?
I see…. You ask for evidence, evidence is given, you run away.
Nicely played, Sab… Very impressive.
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Sabio, you keep trying to equate my comments to materialism. Have you ever considered striving for quality of life as striving to live a healthy life ? Or pursuing all that life has to offer as experiences in life ?
@Sabio, ““I can tell easily when people value rhetoric more than reason – be they religious or not”
This may be true but your ability to read what someone is saying in their statements needs a little fine tuning. 🙂
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John, sometimes people write checks with their mouths that their butts can’t cash. 🙂
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I think the belief used to comfort me. But that comfort is now inaccessible. I can’t pretend to believe it.
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Sabio, then, has gone bankrupt more than any other human being 😉
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I do think Sabio’s overall point was pretty good. This, in particular, stood out to me:
Now, his first sentence there is a generality too, but I think it’s one that should be considered. Perhaps the belief in life after death doesn’t have to be automatically negative. I don’t know… I’d have to think about it a bit more than I can manage at this time on a Friday night.
At the same time, like Peter said, I think John’s example of September 11th seems like a pretty good argument. Sure, in itself, it’s not representative of every religion, but most of them have given us plenty of other horrific examples to go off of too.
Anyway, I also think his warning to make sure we’re not becoming a mutual admiration club is not bad advice. 🙂
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The Ancient Egyptians believed in life after death. Upon their deaths however, their hearts were weighed against a feather. Meaning what they did on Earth actually counted. With Christianity, all you have to do is repent with your last dying breath and you will receive a mansion where your streets are paved with gold.
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Very good point.
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“With Christianity, all you have to do is repent with your last dying breath and you will receive a mansion where your streets are paved with gold.”
My question would be , “Does this promote excelling the human condition here and now or retarding it?”
I don’t have “the answer” but I do have an opinion. 🙂
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I feel the interchange with sabio has been useful to clarify that few things are either wholly good or wholly bad. I think we can see that belief in an afterlife has both good and bad aspects to it. Sabio has helpfully pointed out some of the positive aspects, so thank you.
I suppose the real issue, though is whether it is reality or not. That no one will know for sure until after the event. Harry Houdini had said he would come back as a ghost if he could, well he didn’t so that does eliminate one possibility, but certainly not all of them.
Many people have reported on Near Death Experiences, but the point of it that they are near death not actual death, so I suspect they should best be treated as more akin to a dream. As an aside I read a number of Christian books on experiences of heaven and hell. What I noticed was they were all different, so not all of them could have been correct, of course the question is whether any of them is correct? Once again we won’t know until after the event.
So we are essentially left with unverifiable claims. I had been looking at an interesting web site, of Yuriy Stasyuk, Here. He makes the excellent point that there are some statements in the Bible that we don’t have the capacity to verify, however there are some that we can verify, and those seem to cast doubt on the Bible’s reliability. Consequently we should be doubtful of the claims in the Bible that we can’t verify such as what happens after death.
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I really like that statement from Stasyuk, Peter. That’s exactly the way I feel about it, and I have a hard time understanding the viewpoint of those who can see the problems for what they are, but still accept the claims that can’t be verified.
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Afterlife belief can be useful to those with a more narrow, human-focused view of existence. If you look at the bigger picture, those who die do live on molecularly and through how they have affected others through their life. We are all moving parts in systems that are much larger than us and our species.
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Hi Nate, supposedly scientific studies of religion (e.g. by Andy Newberg and Justin Barrett) suggest that belief in an afterlife arises very naturally in young children even if they don’t have a religious upbringing. I don’t say it happens to all, or that it isn’t affected by upbringing or that there aren’t criticisms of the idea, but there is evidence for it. So it may not be a case of needing reasons to believe in an afterlife, but of needing reasons not to believe in it.
Is this evidence of an afterlife? Someone who has that belief from childhood, unaffected by subsequent experience, and possibly reinforced by other experiences apparently of God, may think it sufficient reason, even while outsiders may not.
Studies generally show that religious believers, if their belief is intrinsic and generally if they participate in religious behaviour and activities, are healthier mentally and physically than those who don’t, and they cope better with many types of difficulties and tragedies. When I was in the Australian Army (45 years ago now) we were told that God-believers made better soldiers because of that (I’m not sure as a near-pacifist that I am very happy with that!).
So it may not be surprising that someone like a US soldier, who probably had a reasonable acquaintance with religion in his upbringing, might turn to that belief, or turn back to it, when dealing with grief.
I think we do have a choice about what we believe, at the very least because of our choices about assumptions, what we read, who we take notice of, what we want to be true, etc. I don’t think I could believe for such pragmatic reasons, but I guess if I was in a fairly agnostic state of mind, something like this might tip the balance. Who can say?
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“Studies generally show that religious believers, if their belief is intrinsic and generally if they participate in religious behaviour and activities, are healthier mentally and physically than those who don’t, and they cope better with many types of difficulties and tragedies.”
There are studies that talk about one’s social networks which include but are not limited to religious . Belonging to the Elks Club, American Legion, Sertoma, other civic clubs can provide many of the same positive attributes. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150158/ )
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We’ve been through this before Ken. Some of the benefits, yes, but nevertheless, my statement remains true.
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I have no argument with your statement unkleE . I was simply pointing out that religion isn’t the only social network which provides these positive benefits.
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@Unklee
“supposedly scientific studies of religion (e.g. by Andy Newberg and Justin Barrett) suggest that belief in an afterlife arises very naturally in young children even if they don’t have a religious upbringing.”
No. What has been conclusively found is that children naturally resonate to finding agency in nature. Conflating agency to an afterlife, as Barrett has attempted to do, has met only strong resistance from other experts in the field.
On Barrett, Bloom writes: “Some, such as Barrett, take children’s readiness to reason about life after death as evidence that they are ‘born believers’ in an afterlife. This conclusion is probably too strong, however. There is no evidence that belief in the afterlife arises spontaneously in the absence of cultural support.”
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