Life on other planets?We can find out! Life after death? We can never find out! Shouldn't we be honest and ad-

Question

mit to our obvious limitations? We will be able to travel to other planets and return to say whether we found life there. We will never be able to travel to a place of life after death and return to tell of it. Shouldn't we admit that we can never know the latter, and stop building religions based on things that were invented in our imaginations?
(That includes things that we imagine when we are dying, and may remember if they manage to revive us.)

Answer 1

Addressing only the first issue: As it now stands, the likelihood of finding sentient life in our solar system is close to nil. Last I heard, the closest planet to earth (outside the solar system) so far identified would require >20 years for a round-trip voyage - at lightspeed. There are probably hundreds of billions of planets in the universe, and one would think intelligent life may exist on one or more. Unless they have lightspeed travel, though, we're not going to be visiting, or likely even communicating, in my lifetime or probably even yours.

Answer 2

Ok, So it is an unknowable, or at least unverifiable issue. So what? You think people should stop thinking about what happens after death simply because they can never come up with an answer that will satisfy the burden of proof? People imagine unknowable questions all the time. And if they convince themselves that they know the answer and it makes them happy, what harm does it do? And what if somebody really happens to know something you don't? There is no way to make you believe if you don't want to. But there is no reason to make someone else doubt what they believe or what they know. The problem comes when people start forcing their religions on other people. I have no problem with people pursuing religion. I thing it is a very useful thing. But there is no excuse for forcing your beliefs, or lack therof, on others. It is religious tyranny, or anti-religious tyranny as the case may be. Don't be an Atheio-Fascist!

Answer 3

How do you know we can't visit the lands of death and return to our bodies here? Or that we're not re-incarnated, living for a time then visiting the lands of death only to return to another body and live again?

I think it's arrogant to assume we definitely will have all the answers but it's stupid to assume we can't and thus give up. Or label it "imagination" when, in truth, we don't know what it was. We are humans, it's in our nature to seek the answers.