Says you. There’s no reason to assume the magic creature has a one size fits all answer. Your idea means he couldn’t even say “good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell” he’s only able to say “heaven or hell. Depends”
Hey, the very existence of a magical being with the power to transform existence at its whim is at least a few points in favor of an afterlife. That’s a lot more information than I went into the conversation with, and for free!
I voted no, but not because I’ll find out after death, but because I already know - and after I die, I won’t be there to know.
I would be curious about the provenance of this magical being, though. And also why I should believe a single word it says (up to and including about its status as a magical being).
Then you live your life of being good, and when you die and go to hell, they explain that your idea of what good is isn’t the same as what God’s is.
Right, if I’m dealing with Satan or a Leprechaun. But if the magic creature wants all my stuff, I think a detailed answer is required.
That’s my take on it as well. The existence of such a magical creature means that about 90% of my current understanding of the Universe is flawed. As such, I might as well scrap it all and start over, giving greater attention to the stuff I used to think was BS, religion included. I’d have to take a serious look at all the major religions, to see if one seems to have a better claim to accuracy than all the others, and see what I can sort out on my own.
And even if I can’t find one that seems objectively superior to all the others, the existence of Magic means that Pascal’s Wager is a much better bet than I previously supposed, so I should at least place a bet on one of the big ones, just in case.
Yeah. And his next words are - nothingness. Thanks for the money, chump.
Then there is also the possibility that death is not something you’re going to enjoy, no matter what.
You can probably do some sort of Pascal Wager type deal here.
Now, the existence of a magical being is the interesting part.
No for me, I already know what’s waiting.
And even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t give up my dog and cat. The clothes off of my back I could lose, not my pets.
Is this “magical” being a pig?
Yeah, this.
I assume it’s nothing.
It might be something. That would be very interesting.
But I have literally no serious basis for speculation, so, I just don’t bother to do so.
And no, I don’t consider it as “serious” the fact that various world religions talk about some kind of afterlife judgment based on conflicting criteria, leaving me in fear of Picking The Wrong Religion, And Everything I Do Is Just Making Things Worse For My Final Tally, Including Not Picking A Religion In The First Place.
If I have faith in anything, it’s that that would be a terribly unreasonable way for the world to work, and if there is indeed a Reason For Existence, it’s fundamentally Reasonable.
I try to live a life where I’m not ashamed of my actions or inactions, and are proud of some of them, which will lead me to hold my head up high as I go through my whatever-odd years on this planet, and if there is something accruing to a ledger, trust that it’s OK.
Ha! This magical creature with all the answers that I somehow trust immediately is the real deal to the point of Handing Over All My Stuff is sure going to be surprised when it turns out I’d already Handed Over All My Stuff to a Nigerian Prince who’s going to make me super rich in another month.
So by showing up exactly in between when I have just given away All My Stuff and before I become Super Rich, I’ll have it all - the Ultimate Answer, and the megabucks.
I’m so smart!!!
No, your statement is a circular tautology - it presupposes the afterlife that would be necessary to prove there is an afterlife.
The argument that the model of an afterlife including “etermal existence as you” is only possible for a believer, and appealing to Pascal’s Wager, makes a lot more sense.
I give the Magical Being the potato salad and tell him/her/it to eat it while I make up my mind. While M.B. eats the potato salad, I legally transfer ownership of all my worldly possessions (except my glasses) to my wife.
Then I agree to M.B’s conditions.
I already know what happens after you die, for sufficiently nuanced definitions of “know”. Same way I know that the Nigerian Prince who emailed me yesterday wasn’t a real Nigerian Prince. That is, I accept that I am a fallible human being in a vast mysterious universe. But that guy wasn’t a real Nigerian Prince, and after you die there’s nothing.
Or to put it another way, the punchline of the joke is, "Isn’t your husband a little old to still believe in Genies? "
If there is no afterlife, then after I die I no longer exist and therefore cannot know anything. Therefore an afterlife cannot be known if it doesn’t exist. The only way it could be known is if it exists, so that after I die, I know that it exists. So my atheist friend who did not think there is an afterlife could never know it and never prove it. If there wasn’t an afterlife, neither he nor I could know anything after death, so we would never know that he was right.
Regards,
Shodan
Over 7 billion people in the world and not a single one of them knows for certain what happens after death. But all 7 billion will eventually find out.
Life’s greatest mystery that no one seems to have the patience to get the answer to.
Shodan, if you were to find yourself in Hell while your friend finds himself in Limbo, I don’t think you would feel any satisfaction in the fact that you were right and he was wrong. On that score, I think your friend would be entitled to more laughs than you.
I would only give away all my possessions for information I could profit from.
I can see how knowing what happens when we die could provide comfort. But what if the truth is not comforting? Like, what if I find out that reincarnation is real? There is a high likelihood that I will wake up in the body of someone whose life will be full of unfamiliar struggles and challenges and pain. I don’t want to spend the rest of this life worrying about the hardships I will face in the next life.
I believe I received that answer, yes it cost everything, but I received so much more, and realized that me giving everything was really me holding on to nothing.
What’s a ‘circular tautology’ as opposed to a tautology? 
The answer to the statement is ‘yes’, not ‘no’. There’s no flaw in the logic or anything ‘presupposed’ that’s not obvious.
If there’s no afterlife nobody will ever know that by their own experience, they’ll only know there is one if they exist in it.
IOW Descartes ‘I think therefore I am’ is more on this specific point than Pascal’s Wager. The latter is about what you should do (about God in general) while alive assuming that you can’t know the answer while alive. This debate is whether you can ever know. And you can only ever know there’s an afterlife or not if there is and you exist in it. The alternative is that you never know, alive or dead.