Atheists... can you explain something to me?

Question

I don't belong to any religion, but i do believe in God. I just want to know why you feel that after this life that you'll cease to exist and I was wondering what your theories are on how we came to be in the first place/ please don 't take offense, I'm just curious

Answer 1

Sure, no problem.

After I die, my body will of course continue to exist, though it will decay until unrecognizable as my body. My consciousness will cease because it is made up of the patterns of neural firings in my brain, and those will cease at or around death. Some people believe that consciousness continues, but as far as I can see they have no explanation whatsoever for how it could, and instead simply substitute the word "soul" for an attempt to support their position.

How did we come to be in the first place? The most likely answer is a process of abiogenesis, by which the first living things arose from nonliving precursors, followed by a process of evolution. The evolution half of that is well established. The abiogenesis part is not nearly as well established, though of course we've only just begun to work on the issue. There don't seem to be any reasonable alternative explanations, so that has to be our best answer for the time being.

Answer 2

I won't cease to exist, I'll cease to be alive and concious. I won't vanish like master yoda.

Conciousness is the function of a healthy living brain in the same way that a heartbeat is the function of a living heart. if the conditions required to sustain a living heart cease the heartbeat doesn't go somewhere or decay. t's not a physical object it just ceases.

The same is true of the conciousness, without the right conditions in the brain conciousness ceases. You experience a lack of conciousness on a regular basis, unless you have some kind of sleep disorder, in the portion of sleep where you don't dream. I expect being dead will be like that.

To paraprhase Mark Twain, I was dead for billions of years before I was born and wansn't the least bit put out by it.

This forum doesn't really allow enough room to explain non supernatural origins. I work from scientific explantions of the origins of life the universe and everything in it.

The chemical precursors of earthly life are still largely a matter of educated guess work. It's difficult to measure novel improbable reactions in a small cloistered setting like a single labratory experiment. I expect advances in modeling will provide some real insight eventually. Proably far in advance of us stumbling across a planet with nacent life chemistry in the universe.

I think current (astonomical) cosmology is just speculation from limited knowlage given our limited perspective and brief communal awareness. I think it's is likely to be heavily revised as we get out there and look around. Assuming we're able to.

Natural evolution is on solid ground though, not surprising given how many of the threads are readily within reach. It's taking longer for widespread acceptance than it should. Antropocentric arrogance is a stubborn foe.

Answer 3

I am an atheist because I don't believe there is a Being who created all of this. But that does not mean I don't believe in an afterlife.

My body will live on without interruption, in the great circle of life, as though it had never died. Death and decay is part of the life cycle, just as much as exhaling is part of breathing. When the body knows it has done everything it can to survive, but survival in its current form is impossible, every cell in the body welcomes death and cooperatively participates in the biological process of decay, so that rebirth will be possible.

My soul will continue on, to the spirit world, and probably, if it chooses, will live another life on Earth.

However, the "I" you are asking about is hard to pin down. The "I" who I always speak of, will perish. The body will be reborn, and the spirit will experience itself as another individual on Earth, but the "I" will perish.

But it's not the kind of perishing that we should think of as anything painful or oblivious. It's not a black void. It simply does not exist, not even to know that it doesn't exist.

No worries. Every moment, all parts of you are dying and other parts are being reborn. "You" are never you from one moment to the next. In fact, every time you have a thought, it is a different "you" who has the thought. It is only the personal pronoun that remains the same. The total composite of all your being and experiences, this person you call "you" is really the grand illusion. The soul can go on, and the body lives forever, but you are transient.

Answer 4

heres my thoughts.

We feel that this life, is more important to us than the possiblity of a next life. Each religeon generaly offers 1 of 3 options.
Heaven, hell, or reincarnation. Most aethiests if pressed would choose reincarnation. Heavean and hell remove the indiviuality of the soul. And because those next lives cannot be proven to exisit or disproven for that matter. we choose just to enjoy this life try to live a good life by convictions and not worry about pleaseing the kid with a magnifiying glass on the anthill.

How we came to be. well some crazy coincidences happen. I dig the experiments that are produceing amino acids from sludge. I think we are orignally ment to be by just chance. Somewhere life had to evolve. we got lucky.

origin of the universe.... who knows. but "Poof let there be everything " just doesn't ring true with us in our souls. so we question such "teaching".

Answer 5

I think there's nothing after death because;

- the brain has been shown to be the source of our thoughts and self
- the brain does not survive death

If we are dualistic in nature, then why do our thoughts and sense of self depend on a brain while we're alive? It makes no sense. Also, how does the dualistic aspect of us interact with our brains to cause our body to carry our our will? How do our senses funnel back to this metaphysical self? You can't just say "oh we have a soul" and then fail to explain the inconsistencies of that concept with what we actually observe.

How did we come about? The best hypothesis is evolutionary theory, but our origins are metaphysically irrelevant unless we survive death, which we don't.

Answer 6

But buddy you can ask same questions about God existence. Where did he come from. who created God?. whenever you become more aware of life such questions rise in your mind. But God is not an answer to them as you can put the same questions about his existence also. But if you really like to believe then you can believe anything. Why take it to God just believe that you world has always been there( just as God). These all are your beliefs but these have nothing to do with the truth. I don't say that god dint created the world. i also don't say that God dint created but if you just be honest to yourself you will realize that actually you just don't know and nobody knows. So lets be honest rater than pretending that we know.

Answer 7

I am a biologist, and I have seen no evidence that anything happens to the body when a person dies.

As a neuroscientist, I know that mind, personality, conscience, consciousness etc are functions of the brain and that when I die all of the features that make me individually me will die as well.

Again, how we came to be is through evolution acting on organisms. Evolution as a phenomenon follows directly from the biochemical behaviour of complex biological macromolecules such as DNA and RNA.

Answer 8

How we came to be. Things kept evolving, and we were lucky that our old prehistoric ancestors weren't eaten by a prehistoric form of a jaguar to the point of extinction. Those ancestors evolved slowly into upright walking creatures, and so on and so forth until how we are today.

Why I feel we will cease to exist: i dont know honestly, it's just a hunch.

Answer 9

I think the burden of proof is on the people who believe that there IS life after death, not people who think that there isn't.

You can't prove a negative, so it's up to others to prove positively that there is an afterlife.

Answer 10

I realize that life after death is a human-made fantasy to comfort us so that we don't fear death. It's just logical--we cease to exist after death. Our bodies decompose into the soil. What happens to our soul--if it exists--is anybody's guess.