Is this just something Atheist are supposed to say out of respect for theists?
I’m not condoning being an “in your face” Atheist. I just find it rather dubious that whenever people DO engage in religious debate; Atheists in general don’t want to say “Once you’re dead, that’s it.”
I see that on this board even. Why is that?
Once you’re born, that’s it.
I see “once you’re dead, that’s it” on this board all the time. Do you not read the religious debates in GD?
Things that cannot be observed directly or indirectly are unknowable. We have no scientific evidence for an afterlife, but IMO that doesn’t mean we “really know” it doesn’t exist. There’s no way to test it.
Assertions about the unknowable are only hypotheses. “There is no afterlife” is a reasonable hypothesis based on the evidence available, but unprovable.
There have been situations where a corpse is disinterred (dug back up) for a variety of medico-legal reasons. I think it is pretty well understood what happens postmortem.
Yeah, I’m not shy about saying that the mind is generated by a working brain, and when that stops working the mind ceases to exist.
But obviously, that’ a minority opinion, at least here in the US. People were raised to believe otherwise, and perhaps more importantly, want to believe otherwise.
(Bolding mine)
Yeah but… isn’t that pretty much like me saying: I’m holding a pencil in my hand. If I let go of this pencil, it will fall to the floor. But I can’t actually say that for sure though. Because hey, I might have a muscle spasm in my leg right at the exact same time I drop the pencil. Unwittingly kicking it causing the pencil to land on a near by table.
Isn’t it just more pratical to say: If I let go of this pencil, it will land on the floor?
When I was 9 years old, I first became aware of my mortality and asked my parents what happens after you die. They explained to me that your body is buried, and decays, and you live on only in the memories of the people who knew you.
That did not make sense to me, and over many years I was able to come to my own understanding of the afterlife.
While I do believe, and my belief is unassailable because it is based on no empirical evidence whatsoever, I have no problem with people expressing their own certainty that an afterlife doesn’t exist. I can even agree that based on all scientific evidence it doesn’t exist. But my belief has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific evidence, and in that sense nobody really knows. So I can see value in both approaches. I still love and respect my parents for being straight with me about their understanding of this issue, even though I disagree. They haven’t tried to change my mind, and I haven’t tried to change theirs.
Sure. I have lots of experience with dropping things and seeing them fall. I can base assumptions on that experience, along with the anecdotal experiences of others, as well as my understanding of gravity.
I have never died. And have never met anyone who did. I have no evidence that there exists anything after death. I have no evidence that there does not.
No evidence means “nobody really knows.”
That’s the modern = post-chaos theory approach: you have a high likelihood for the outcome you expect (falls to the floor), but acknowledge that until it has happened, other outcomes are also possible. Everything that can happen, will happen, as it’s sometimes put.
Practical has nothing to do with it. In everyday life, we assume that the laws of physics work as they did yesterday and will keep on working. (We also assume that we don’t live in the Matrix).
But from a scientist or philosopher’s standpoint, this is inaccurate. Just because gravity worked yesterday is no guarantee at all that it will work tomorrow.
When doing science or philosophy properly, careful distinctions, exceptions and definitions are Very Important. Otherwise you aren’t doing it correctly.
When I was 10 years old, I first became aware of my mortality.
When I was 24 years old, I first became aware of my personality.
Are you saying that there is no evidence that brain activity is necessary for consciousness?
Or other, weirder things could happen. You could drop the pencil and it materialize on the other side of the universe due to quantum tunneling. Yeah, that’s pretty unlikely, but it could happen. It’s all about probabilities.
That’s the most probable outcome, but it’s not the only outcome.
Well, what ‘really’ happens after death? Does the mind die when the body dies? Certainly the physical body decays, and the energy in your body changes state and is re-used in the environment. But what ‘really’ happens to the mind…to the ‘you’ in the equation? No way to really be sure until you take the plunge. You might THINK you know what’s going to happen (presumably nothing, and your mind and what makes up ‘you’ will simply cease to exists for all time), but there is really no way to be sure. Could be many versions of ‘you’ in parallel universes, or could be that something else is in play that could preserve some aspect of the ‘you’-ness. Or, might be nothing, with death being final, and the thing that makes you ‘you’ will cease to exists, except in the memories of others, slowly fading away…well, except for the part of you that makes up your children, and their children, etc etc, assuming you have any.
Saying ‘once you’re dead, that’s it’ is as much of an assumption as a theist type telling you that once you die your soul or whatever will go to heaven, or be reborn, or whatever. They are ALL assumptions, based on belief and world view of one kind or another. Maybe someday we’ll know, definitively, what happens to our mind or soul or whatever when we die, but we don’t know right now.
Personally, I’m hoping for magic technology that will let me live forever (or at least for a few more thousand years), so I don’t have to find out any time soon. 
-XT
If you drop the pencil once, then it might fall by chance. If you drop it 10,000 times, the probability of the spasms occurring at just the right time each time goes to near zero, so gravity is a better explanation than chance.
The hypothesis that when we die we are dead is falsifiable - all we need is a ghost of the type so common in fiction. It is not provable. Each death is another experiment (like Houdini’s) so the chances of survival are looking pretty slim. Since we are nearing a scientific explanation for consciousness, and can prove that the physical brain strongly effects our supposedly spiritual soul, we have a reason for believing that when we are dead we are dead beyond just observation - or the lack of observation.
On one hand I see no evidence of any kind of afterlife and I think that when it ends thats it.
On the other hand I realize that we are just apes playing with toys and to think that we are even close to knowing the answer to the question of Life, The Universe and Everything is the height of hubris.
So I don’t think its a strange thing for even an atheist to say.
I generally will say that all that meets you after death is sweet oblivion. However even I can’t disagree with the sentiment behind “nobody really knows what happens when you die.” It’s absolutely correct to say that. Many of us feel that we have some good scientific foundation for death = oblivion, but correct, there is no way to actually “know.”
I don’t understand this at all. You may not like it, but it makes perfect sense.
“We are buried beneath the weight of information,
which is being confused with knowledge;
quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.
We are monkeys with money and guns.”
― Tom Waits
Isn’t this a question of epistomology—what it means to say we “know” something?
It would have made more sense for the 9 year old to be asked by her parents what happens after they die.
What is wrong with saying “Nobody really knows what happens after death?” That is the actual fact for me. Yeah, I am pretty damn sure I just lose conciousness and never get it back but I certainly can’t make claims about anything in particular.
The issue, for me, with believers isn’t that they have their facts wrong as to what happens after death. It’s that they make fantastic claims about something that is unknowable.