http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_143.html
You said “Absolutely everybody, including atheists, believes in life after death.” Sorry, but you’re wrong. Myself and the other atheists I know do not believe in life after death. We think that when you’re dead, you’re dead. Expired. Finished. Kaput. No longer. Erased. Done. Parrot sketch.
Let me just back that up. Hey, I just did. 
It was a joke:
as in, yes, there’s life after death… Your life after Eleanor Roosevelt’s death.
Whoops :smack: looks embarrassed
Yeah, do be careful, Cecil has a fondness for jokes. And he assumes the TMs will get them, even when they’re a bit obscure or twisted.
Though it’s verging on Great Debates territory, given what Cecil answered here it may be appropriate to bring it up in this thread:
I see a real divergence in Christianity in particular, and to a lesser extent in the other religions I’ve done any serious reading on, between whether the focus of the religious beliefs and practices is to, so to speak, buy AfterLife Insurance, or to focus on “appropriate” behavior (allow me that generalization when you’re referencing both “keeping God’s commandments” and “striving to achieve Enlightenment”) here on Earth.
I’m curious as to whether Cecil or the TMs have any comments on the degree to which these two divergent foci are present in various faith traditions.
I’m an atheist, despite being sent off to a Baptist Sunday School every week when I was a kid. Now what I know about different denominations and their beliefs could fit in a thimble, but I do remember being told that if I asked Jesus to save me, I was guaranteed a ticket into heaven. We were to read this little card, a prayer to Jesus to forgive us and to accept us into heaven. And once he saved our souls, it was a done deal.
It didn’t make any sense to me; it seemed to me that they were telling us that, and yet telling us that if we didn’t honor our mothers and fathers, or if we coveted our neighbor’s wives, or if we killed someone, we would burn in hell for all eternity. The two don’t match up. Maybe it was bad teaching on their part, but the one thing going there every week did was help me find my own path to atheism.
Once more, with feeling…
It was a JOKE.
Person 1: I believe in life after death.
Person 2: Not me. When I’m dead, I’m dead.
Person 1: Yeah, but after you’re dead, I’ll still be alive.
GET IT???
Yes we get it (well, I definitely do, since I’m the one who pointed out it was a joke in the first place)… I think Polycarp was just exploring Cecil’s actual answer a little deeper.
It is true that Christianity (like the ancient Egyptian religion, and the classical Mystery religions, and some parts of Judaism, etc., etc.) has a tendency to degenerate into “ticket to heaven” systems. Some of the Protestant sects that scream loudest about the evils of “justification by works” are utterly blind to the fact that they’ve reduced “Faith” to just another, privileged sort of “work”. And, historically, some religions have been far worse than anything you’re likely to meet today in the Judeo-Christian world; aspects of Gnosticism almost remind me of h8ck3r s98m offering free passwords to porn sites, or the “tootsie frootsie” scene in A Day at the Races.
Nonetheless, the key word here (at least for those religions of which I have some understanding) is “degenerate”. The point, as C. S. Lewis makes in another context, is to be on the right side, not (as such) the side that’s winning.
[major hijack]
Hey, John W. Kennedy, You seem to be a pretty smart guy with some interesting things to say. I’ve always wondered why you don’t post in the other forums. Why is that?
No offence, I hope. I’m just curious.
[/major hijack]
Funny, I was just thinking the same exact thing!
This is flattering, but…
At the moment, I am following at least seventeen mailing lists and 81 newsgroups; I’m a fairly active poster in about half ot them.
Web forums take much more time and trouble to access; except for these two, I only use those that I must.
I can’t remember the discussion word for word, During a conversation about consciousness or something with a relative this idea came up -
“How do you know you are not the only person there is? How do you know that all that you see happening is not happening for you alone?”
In that scenario, there is no life after [my] death. Even in Cecil’s joke.
The technical term is “solipsism”.
However, it requires so much denial of the phenomenal world that it is absurd to assume that the dreamer will or even can die in the first place.
Ah, yes, but what is the name of the SF short story with the premise that the subject of the story, which is told in the first person, is the only sentient being on the planet and that all the other “people” and “animals” he meets are just very well-designed meat robots?
I’m thinking Philip K. Dick or Phillip José Farmer wrote it, but that’s just a faint memory. Or maybe it was a story supposedly written by Kilgore Trout. (DAMN my poor memory!)
Anyone?
He was probably thrown off by the fact that jokes are usually funny.
(Sorry to dis the master and all, but I calls 'em like I sees 'em.)
It is “They” by Robert Heinlein. Dick’s “The World Jones Made” has a similar flavor, but I’m sure you’re thinking of the very famous Heinlein story.
Thanks!
I gotta concur on this one. That “joke” was most unfunny and more confusing, if anything.