Where do atheists think dead souls are?

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edtaylor51 said:
It’s a trick question, atheists don’t believe in a soul, period. Something that doesn’t exist has no reason or way to go anywhere.
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As I said, I can contemplate someone not believing in gods, but believing in souls and other supernatural entities. I’d say it’s not going to be your typical atheist, and most people who believed in that sort of thing probably wouldn’t describe themselves as atheists at all. I can imagine some practitioners of some Eastern-styled (or faux-Eastern) philosophies and religions (particularly someone of the New Age syncretic beliefs) might view themselves as atheists. As with all beliefs and non-beliefs, there’s always the fuzzy borders between them.
 
There are schools of Buddhism that are atheist. I’d be interested in their take.

@rossum Do Buddhists believe in a soul or something along those lines. This may be entirely incorrect, but when Buddhists speak of annihilation of the self it seems not to be annihilation as a western thinker would think of it, but of losing individuality as part of a larger… reality organism (probably very bad phrasing). I may be way off.
 
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But they don’t call themselves atheist. The OP seemed to imply this person called themself atheist, thus the confusion on my part!

Niceatheist, thanks for clarifying and I agree there are fuzzy borders…great way to state it!
 
Pattylt said:
But they don’t call themselves atheist.
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If this was at me, I know Buddhists who call themselves atheists and don’t see atheism and Buddhism as mutually exclusive.

TC was probably more interested in atheism in classical western thinking, though.
 
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Wesrock said:
If this was at me,
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It was…this forum doesn’t show the replying to tag when it is the next post…sorry.
I didn’t realize that some Buddhists call themselves atheist. I’ve only known one and she did not refer to herself that way though she did deny believing in gods. Guess I shouldn’t have extrapolated! My bad!

I agree we have a bit of a language problem with the word atheist. The technical definition would include Buddhists and any system that had supernatural beliefs but no gods while the common assumption is no supernatural beliefs at all.
 
But many of these “atheists” have asked in ernest on this site if they have a chance at going to heaven; an irony to be sure!
 
Kind of like the old proverb about how “there are no atheists in foxholes”.

I’m sure there are still Some atheists in foxholes; however, if somebody had just the slightest bit of uncertainty about whether God might exist, it will poke its head up when you’re facing death, I’m sure.
 
Atheist - is to not be convinced of the existence of the supernatural.
Atheists don’t visit mediums, play with chi, channel healing powers, speak in tongues, etc.
You’re looking for people who are convinced of the supernatural, just not your version of it. Like spiritualists.
Good example: TV with multiple different stations about the supernatural. Atheists are the ones that have turned off the TV and walked away. What channel is Off?
Closest experience I’ve ever had of death is going under anesthesia, which I recommend to everyone who’s afraid of death to see what the experience could be like. You just drift off to unconsciousness and have no dreams. Then you wake up a few hours later and it feels like you just closed your eyes for 5 seconds. You had no concept of time passing at all and nothing to experience during that time. You don’t even remember the point where you lost consciousness. Great experience to remove the fear of dying. What I fear after experiencing that would be to suffer through pain until death. But I don’t actually fear the experience of death now.
 
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I do know some self identified atheists who believe in reincarnation. They say since matter and energy cannot be destroyed, the conciousness must be recycled.

It’s not common, but I’ve come across it.
 
Wesrock said:
@rossum Do Buddhists believe in a soul or something along those lines.
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No.
“All the elements of reality are soulless.”
When one realises this by wisdom,
then one does not heed ill.
This is the Path of Purity.

– Dhammapada 20:7
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There are non-material parts to a human being, but none of those parts is permanent or unchanging. To paraphrase Heraclitus, “You can never step in the same river twice because it is not the same river and you are not the same you.”

Buddhism emphasises change over stasis, so any fixed, permanent entity such as a soul is rejected.
 
Pattylt said:
The technical definition would include Buddhists and any system that had supernatural beliefs but no gods while the common assumption is no supernatural beliefs at all.
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Buddhists have an option with gods. There are tens of thousands of gods in Mahayana scriptures. Theravada scriptures tend not to have so many, a dozen or so. So gods exist in Buddhism.

However, in Buddhism the gods are not very important and can easily be ignored. If you want to win the lottery then by all means pray to a god. If you want to attain nirvana, then the gods cannot help you much; that is something you have to do for yourself.
 
Atheists believe there is no God meaning people have no souls. Atheists don’t believe in life after death meaning atheists don’t believe in Heaven and Hell.
 
I guess it depends on how atheism is defined.

Modern Catholic Dictionary:

ATHEISM. Denial of a personal God who is totally distinct from the world he created. Modern atheism has become so varied and widespread that the Second Vatican council identified no less than eight forms of disbelief under the single term atheismus : “Some people expressly deny the existence of God. Others maintain that man cannot make any assertion whatsoever about Him. Still others admit only such methods of investigation as would make it seem quite meaningless to ask questions about God. Many, trespassing beyond the boundaries of the positive sciences, either contend that everything can be explained by the reasoning process used in such sciences, or, on the contrary, hold that there is no such thing as absolute truth. With others it is their exaggerated idea of man that causes their faith to languish; they are more prone, it would seem, to affirm man than to deny God. Yet others have such a faulty notion of God that when they disown this product of the imagination their denial has no reference to the God of the Gospels. There are also those who never enquire about God; religion never seems to trouble or interest them at all, nor do they try to see why they should bother about it” ( Church in the Modern World , I, 19). In the light of this array of infidelity, it was only logical for the Council to declare that atheism is one of the greatest problems facing mankind in the world today. (Etym. Greek atheos , denying the gods, without a god.)
 
Or the old quote by military chaplains:
“God and soldier we adore
in times of danger, not before.
The danger gone; the trouble righted;
God forgotten, the soldier slighted!!!”
 
People don’t contact mediums and soothsayers for rational reasons. They are desperate, grieving people looking for closure and and so will believe anything.
 
Thank you!
That was information I wasn’t aware of. Unfortunately, I’ve never delved into Buddhist beliefs other than questioning a friend I worked with. She was pretty open about her beliefs but being a busy work environment we never had long discussions about Buddhism.
 
Presuming of course they believe in souls and that the souls can die…
 
Funny how Fairiests have a definition of an A-Fairiest without actually asking the A-Fariests if their definition is what the A-Fairests actually affirm about the question of belief or non-belief in the existence of Fairies.

As an atheist, let me give you my perspective on this label your organization is pushing for you to believe without actually asking someone like me:
There is no “-ism” to being an atheist because there is no dogma, leaders, texts, unifying world views, political views, etc. It is a single position to a single question. You can literally be any world view and be any religion and be an atheist as well because the label atheist is only to be applied to someone who is not convinced yet that the supernatural realm exists. Example: Comic book nerds geek out over their favorite comic book series just as much as religious nerds geek out over their favorite scripture. Do they really need to believe that spiderman actually exists to enjoy the Marvel comic series? No, no they don’t.
The first word of this definition gives away the biasness of this point of view. “Denial”. It presupposes that atheists believe there is actually a deity and are just denying its existence. No, we actually don’t believe its there just like we don’t believe spiderman is there.
Methodological Naturalist Atheists, like me, are not declaring that we know this for certain though and we do admit the logical arguments are apparently sound for why someone would believe that the supernatural is there. However, until reality actually demonstrates that the supernatural is there, then it’s not to be used as a reason to explain anything. Just like how I can replace the word “supernatural” with “magic” and all the religious arguments still work. Still doesn’t mean I can use the idea of magic as an explanation for anything in reality. Once we can actually demonstrate that magic is part of reality, that is when we are allowed to use it as an explanation for something. Not a moment sooner. The logical arguments for magic / supernatural are a good reason to look for it, but its not there yet until we actually find it in reality in some way. There is currently zero actual evidence of the supernatural / magic in reality, it is all just logical argument. And that is defining something into existence.
 
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