Between you and Hitchens you are both unnerving me with your 50 syllable words. Fornicate is a way to say fuck, and Ottoman is a way to say stool.

Half of me is jealous of your word choice, but the other half of me says "how the hell does this sell to the average beer drinking sports fan"?

If the end goal is to get people off god belief, then the library and WWE smackdown NFL  NHL rivalry have to be taken into account. It is not either or.

 I have to say that Macbeth Act 5 Scene 5, says everything both you and I say. Bill said it long before both of us.

"Flurry of activity signifying nothing"  BUT I AGREE with you that that does not demean the "awe" of nature.

Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor as evolution has given me a survival instinct whose influence upon my psyche is almost irresistible , yet in reality my eventual death will be the best thing that's ever happened to me.  Whatta a kick in the head, eh ?

"That which" comes after.....?

Better get your "nothingness" terminology sorted out.

Reminds me of a former media magnate Kerry Packer and atheist, who had a near death experience.

He emphatically "reported" (like a good journalist,)...

"There's nothing." 

There IS nothing. He experienced what NOTHING feels like.

Mr Packer's second N.D.E. got a little bit too close to  the "nothingness" and like an black hole's event horizon, he got a bit too near.

I wonder if "nothingness" is what he wanted? What if the afterlife is like a placebo effect? What if the only thing you need do to survive that "singularity" called death is for your "soul" to have a strong enough immune system - faith.

What if atheism weakens your souls immune system so much that it doesnt ever wake up again after that sleep.

What if my arm was made of chocolate? Would I eat it and suffer or would I just resist the temptation?  

So many pointless dilemmas... What if I had 5 balls? What if the price of gas dropped by a dollar?

I like this game

We have no reason whatsoever to even imagine that the consciousness, an emergent phenomena of the physical brain can in any way survive the death of the brain.
'Faith', wishful thinking won't make it so. Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is nothing there.

LC >;-}>

What does "nothingness" feel like? What was my "nothingness" 4 billion years ago? What will my "nothingness" be 20 billion years from now? Same thing.

You will never know what it is like to be an ant or a volcano either, making up invisible friends wont change that.

Not being able to know what "nothingness" would be like accusing the empty glass of being aware of it not having water in it.

The rock in my yard is real, but it cannot think, so because it cannot think, by default since it cannot know what it is like to be a human, it is a human by default?

When your brain dies you die, the manifestation you call you, DIES. That is it, your neurons stop moving, your brain stops functioning. Try taking the engine out of your car and drive it. That is the absurd speculation of life after death theists make. When your brain dies it will go two ways. Slow "The tunnel of light" which is merely the filing cabinet dumping out memories mixing with your visual cortex. OR it will be sudden, like turning off a light switch. No magic no god needed ether way.

After I die, my body will break down and the atoms in it will react to the decay according to biological death. There will be no more "me" to think or do thinking. I will be an object at that point, no different than a dead leaf that falls of a tree.

Humans are part of nature, part of evolution, we are not special nor did any cognition make us. Humans make up gods, and that is the reality you don't want to face.

I feared nothing in 1811, I felt no pain, I felt nothing at all, i wasn't alive back then. I simply didn't exist.
Why should I expect more from 2211 than I did from 1811???

LC >;-}>

Because if you don't buy into a fictional utopia/punishment system of emotional blackmail god wont have any fans.

Speculation.

Do you have any proof that anyone with "faith" has evidence to the contrary ?

Besides, in spite of all that NDE bunk that is oft reported, no one has come back from the dead. No one.

I worked until very recently as an Autopsy Assistant. I've helped perform well over 600 post mortum procedures.
To put it bluntly, I helped eviscarate the corpses, my particular specialty was removing the brains and the pituitary glands, drawing vitrius (eye) fluid, and occasionally taking wedges of spinal column for bone marrow samples.
I know death. up close and personal. They don't come back. They don't live on. They simply die.

LC >;-}>

To IRC

That is why it is called NEAR DEATH. And that is what the believer does not want to face. The "floating" part is also bs. I had that happen to me and all it was was my dream state mixing with my conscious state.

There is a difference medically speaking between "clinical death" which is merely a window describing lack of finding vital signs. I see my mom get blood drawn and the nurse cannot find a vein, that does not mean my mom doesn't have veins. If one cannot find a pulse that only means you cant find a pulse.

Permanent death is beyond clinical death which is beyond the window of diagnosis. It is when the body suffers irreversible damage to the cellular level in which not only the organs are damaged but the cells themselves no longer function. Once the window of death is beyond cell death there is no coming back from that.

You can only come close to death, you cannot survive it. You CAN have cold temps slow down vitals or get them so shallow that they cannot be felt in some cases. You can have a miss diagnosis by a doctor in which it "seems" incredible that they survived.

If it were possible to survive permanent death one could blow their own head off and survive that too. Permanent death is metaphorically taking a shotgun to all the cells in the body. Once you are dead, you are dead, that's it, lights out.

If believers truly understood biology and medical death they wouldn't make such absurd claims.

if what i have to wake up to is any sort of god who is in any way controlling this shitty ball of death, rot, and pain on which we live--and does NOTHING to fix the fucking mess he's allowed to happen--then i'd rather stay asleep, thanks.

even the biggest, most self-centered douche i ever knew cleaned his fishtank regularly.  and none of them ever died either.  nor did he have to kill his son to do it.  god, on the other hand, let this place go to pot.  and if it was some part of a "divine plan," then he's an asshole and fuck his plan.

so in other words, there are many of us here who quite frankly don't care if you're right.  if god exists, he's useless at best, a sadist at worst, and totally undeserving of respect no matter how you look at it.

the story so far....

-Everyone is an expert on what happens after you die.

-Some people's idea of God leads them to hope there is nothing.

Did anyone see the 60 Minutes interview with Christopher Hitchens where he said in response to an afterlife question, that he liked surprises?

What'd I miss? Is that the bad guy? What money are they talking about?

I love those questions during movies... I hate people that have the audacity to ask stupid questions during movies, my usual answer is: Did I get here before you?  Wtf? Oh ya, and Lion IRC is wrong about EVERYTHING hehe, /jk

My point is, it doesn't matter a bit if a god exists if there is no afterlife... it just renders him a big bully in the sky.
Since there is no reason whatsoever to assume that physics and biology are wildly wrong about the death process, and since we can observe the disolution of the consciousness, personality and memories via physical processes, The evidence as it is, weighs against the life after death scenereo...

LC >;-}>

Christopher Hitchens  (my own personal hero) is known for his dry humor and sarcasm.  His work extends beyond the importance of Atheism ( Check out, Why Orwell Matters, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and Thomas Paines Biography, just to name a few). Also recommended is Hitch-22, if your interested in grasping the scope and knowledge of the man. In several of his lectures, he is known for making humorous remarks.

I find it odd that you make the claim that everyone is an expert on what happens after you die, when you seem to be the only one making the claim that something happens after you die. You have speculated that our souls will become so apathetic, they will not make it to the afterlife. What sort of evidence do you have for this ? Not even the archaic texts of the bible would support that notion. Nothing in the medical field would support the notion that something like a "soul" even exists.

Some people's idea of god leads them to hope there is nothing, you have stated.True enough,but which version ? Which version of paradise are we talking about here ? The islamic version ? The baptist version ? The Westboro baptists version ? Valhalla ? The fields of Ra ? What about reincarnation ? Which version of reincarnation as there are several ? What about purgatory and limbo ? If we did go on, how could you guarantee your notion is correct ?

You seem to have lended us your idea of the afterlife with some ease, as though it were fact, where are you getting these ideas from ? For in such matters as the afterlife, surely you will concede there is no factual proof.

Physics and biology havent done anything to explain the causal factors for our coming into existence out of nothing.

Abiogenesis is a mystery. The Big Bang is a mystery. Space/time/matter/energy is a mystery. Multiverse is a mystery.

If holographic, virtual physicists and biologists were standing around observing the "nothingness" (as you like to call it) before the 4 dimensional universe came into reality, and someone told them..."hey guess what, in 13.7B years theres going to be a fully functioning universe right here where you're standing.." they would scoff at such an unfounded "metaphysical" claim.

Singularities are, by any reasonable definition, supernatural events.

Big bang is a singularity. Abiogenesis is a singularity. Death is just another singularity. An "event horizon".

Even as an atheist, there's still no more compelling reason to think that there IS an afterlife than to think there is NOT...just as there would be no reason to assume that universes do or dont spontaneously come into existence out of "nothingness"

I'm astonished that in the age of "dark energy" and "wormholes", "cosmic bruising", 26 dimensions/parallel universes, quantum weirdness (and quartz crystals) that ANYONE is still quaintly asserting empirical facts about the nature of energy some ppl refer to as "soul" 

That still does not prove the existence of a god. Mystery yes, god of the bible no. To lay claim to the notion that certain things can not be explained and then to make the leap to the idea that because some events are inexplicable should prove the existence of god is a logical fallacy and a god of the gaps argument.

You can not prove that Zeus did not create the universe, you can not prove that Thor did not create the universe. Don't you see ?

Consider this. What if I told you, we have no real explanation for the evidence of the universe, therefore it must be true that Zeus created it, would you give my claim any credence ? If so why ? If not, then why not ?

The difference between a "soul" and "dark energy" is that one concept was arrived at by methodical empirical observation, which were then compared against currently accepted theories resulting in something that doesn't fit, a name is then created for this "something" until we have more data to better explain it; the other concept is in the same category as unicorns, fairies and pixies.  

I'll let you decide which is which. 

What you are doing is claiming that because these concepts have the property of "unknown" they are somehow in the same category.  It's your textbook association fallacy that neo-theism and neo-spiritual bullshit uses as fuel.

The fact that I cannot be 100% certain of the existence of afterlife doesn't give either possibility (of an afterlife existing, and of an afterlife not existing) a 50/50 chance.  Agnosticism is often misunderstood in this way, it is the reason why I call myself an agnostic ATHEIST, to push across the idea that simply because I'm an agnostic doesn't mean I give a "prime mover" (or whatever other ambiguous god concept one may hold) an equal footing against a rational, logical and intellectually honest conclusion. 

A good demonstration of the fallacy of Pascal's Wager, Ktulu.

Break out the party favours, this is the single most ridiculous thing any theist has ever said. And that's saying something.

Nah Vastet, it's just the ol' favorite "Argument from Incredulity" rearing it's ugly head.
You know, it takes the form "? thus god"...

LC >;-}>

The other day, I was out of cigarettes and needed one. I happened to look in one of the saddlebags on my Harley and LO AND BEHOLD, there was half of a pack of cigarettes in there.

Now, WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT HAPPENING ?

Therefore, that PROVES that god exists.  

And not just any god, no. It had to be the god of the bible. He's trying to kill Atheists like me off, so he must have planted the cigarettes there. No other logical explanation can apply. It is just too strange to be a coincidence.

I'll correct myself only so much as to add: in my experience.

The difference between dark matter and "souls" is that dark matter was found through scientific method. "Souls" are just the naked assertions humans make up because the finality of death bothers them psychologically.

Your bible is not a science textbook and explains NOTHING about the nature of reality. It is merely an ancient comic book written by credulous people who merely wanted a super hero to save them.