Where do atheists think dead souls are?

[Damian]

Well from an actual atheist that was actually in the military, I’d tell that chaplain to … insert choice insult. When my father died and I was in the military, I requested a family therapist immediately when they put the chaplain in the room with me.

Here’s a story about an actual atheist as well that was killed in combat by friendly fire and the government officials and military had the nerve to use his funeral to promote their religion. Imagine if a jewish or muslim went you your funeral and used their ceremonies. Kinda bad taste here since, even at a funeral, the religious still made it about them, not for the person in the casket.

 

[Sleepy2]

What happens after death… dreamless sleep… because there is no soul…

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace.” - Oscar Wilde

 

[Damian]

Anyone afraid of death, I recommend try anesthesia. You literally have no concept of time passing because you don’t even dream. You don’t even remember when you drift off. All it feels like is closing your eyes for 5 seconds and then you wake up hours or days later with no concept of time passing. That’s what I believe death will be like. I went through this and now I just fear a painful suffering process to death, but not death itself.

 

[FiveLinden]

I think in the US where there are so many Christians and so many of them are in-your-face about it being ‘an atheist’ is something people give a lot of thought to. I live in a community where there are hardly any people with active religious practice, and even some of those who practices ‘believe’ in only the vaguest way. I could imagine some of these ‘atheists’ visiting a medium. But I would be surprised if any of them thought of it as much more than entertainment or distraction.

Remember we unbelievers believe in only one fewer god than you Catholics. You manage to disbelieve in other gods in their thousands, never giving Odin or Vishnu or Tangaroa a moment’s notice. Equally the ‘where to we go when we die’ issue is no more significant to us than the ‘where were before we were born’’ argument. Because we don’t think about it much we might talk to a ‘past life’ therapist but we would be unlikely to come away with much in the way of ‘belief’.

 

[Nelka]

So is there a term for someone between atheist and agnostic?

 

[Greenfields]

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.

How sad how hollow and empty and flat ,void …
Thanks for the insight though …it’s difficult for me to for me to understand that you don’t /haven’t felt any spirituality though,did you as a child?
I went under anesthesia and I felt robbed of time

 

[Tis_Bearself]

What happens after death… dreamless sleep… because there is no soul…

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace.” - Oscar Wilde

You do know that Oscar had a deathbed conversion and was received fully into the Church just hours before he expired?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

It’s just different degrees of agnosticism.

 

[HarryStotle]

If you want to attain nirvana, then the gods cannot help you much; that is something you have to do for yourself.

Wouldn’t nirvana be synonymous with being dead, if death is the negation of all emotion/thought/ etc.,?

So why wouldn’t just ending your life just be the attainment of nirvana?

I’ve never understood this about Buddhism. It appears to just be playing a game called “attain nirvana” while at the same time holding on to an existence that is touted to be fraught with pain. What precisely is there about life to hold onto if nirvana is the relinquishment of everything about one’s life including your very self?

 

[phil19034]

Some atheists I know believe like that but I wonder whether some atheists have this medium problem when someone dies?

This sounds like some kind of agnostic, not an atheist

 

[Damian]

haven’t felt any spirituality

I feel the exact same thing that every one else feels. I just don’t believe its “spirituality” that is the cause of those feelings. I don’t believe there is a supernatural realm with ghosts and demons and angels and deities and demigods, etc. So I don’t use that as a way to describe our experienced reality. Reality is amazing enough for me to not need to belittle it by claiming that beauty and the transcendence can only come from somewhere other than our reality. I don’t need magic to be in awe.
How you be robbed of time if you believe in the concept of ever lasting life?

 

[Damian]

There is no middle ground on what you believe. You either believe or you don’t. You can have varying degrees of belief though. You can not simultaneously hold an idea as a belief and not a belief.
Atheist is someone who is making a belief claim, or what they are convinced of without first hand knowledge.
Agnostics are making a knowledge claim about reality. Someone who has first hand knowledge of the subject in question.
IE: Room with a closed door.
Person A walks in to the room and then sees a chair. They are gnostic that there is a chair in the room. Then they leave the room and shut the door. Person B walks up to them and asks Person A what is in the room. Person A tells Person B that there is a chair in there. Person B is agnostic about the claim of a chair in the room, but believes there is one based on the conversation with Person A.
So to the question of, “Is there a chair in the room?”
Person A is a Gnostic Theist
Person B is an Agnostic Theist
Person C that doesn’t know and is not convinced by Person A is an Agnostic Atheist.
That’s basically it.
Atheists are responding to a single question about a single topic: Do you believe that the supernatural exists? If you say no, then you’re an Atheist. That has nothing to do at all with your political views, world views, sexuality, taste in music, or anything else about you. Its a single position on a single question.

 

[larina]

Maybe they think the spirits and energy linger around

 

[rossum]

Wouldn’t nirvana be synonymous with being dead, if death is the negation of all emotion/thought/ etc.,?

Usually not. If you die you are normally born again and have to repeat the whole process over and over and over again. Only if you attain enlightenment during a life is the death at the end of that life final.

[The Buddha said:] “What do you think, monks: Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating and wandering this long, long time – crying and weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing – or the water in the four great oceans?”

“As we understand the Dhamma taught to us by the Blessed One, this is the greater: the tears we have shed while transmigrating and wandering this long, long time – crying and weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing – not the water in the four great oceans.”

"Excellent, monks. Excellent. It is excellent that you thus understand the Dhamma taught by me.

“This is the greater: the tears you have shed while transmigrating and wandering this long, long time – crying and weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing – not the water in the four great oceans.”

– Assu sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 15.3

So why wouldn’t just ending your life just be the attainment of nirvana?

The Buddha attained enlightenment at age 35. He died age 80. For 45 years he was living in the ordinary world and at the same time in nirvana. Nirvana is not one of the post-death heavens; nirvana is here and now. You just have to look at it correctly.

I’ve never understood this about Buddhism. It appears to just be playing a game called “attain nirvana” while at the same time holding on to an existence that is touted to be fraught with pain. What precisely is there about life to hold onto if nirvana is the relinquishment of everything about one’s life including your very self?

You do not relinquish your self. You realise that what you thought was your self actually wasn’t ever any such thing. It had as much substance as the ‘water’ in a mirage. Much of the suffering we experience is caused by the mismatch between what we think the world is like and what the world really is. We often project our mistaken ideas onto the external world, and are disappointed when the world does not live up to our projections. By eliminating that mismatch we can greatly reduce our suffering.

 

[Isearch]

Much of the suffering we experience is caused by the mismatch between what we think the world is like and what the world really is. We often project our mistaken ideas onto the external world, and are disappointed when the world does not live up to our projections.

This sounds like teachings of the Greco-Roman Stoics.

 

[Sleepy2]

yes - but that doesn’t make his poetry any less beautiful.

 

[Sleepy2]

Person A is a Gnostic Theist
Person B is an Agnostic Theist
Person C that doesn’t know and is not convinced by Person A is an Agnostic Atheist.
That’s basically it.

Person D is a Gnostic Atheist - the person who goes into the room and discovers there is no chair (Person A just made it up). As science progresses we discover fewer and fewer chairs, to the point that Person A now claims the chairs are invisible and exist outside of the room.

 

[rossum]

This sounds like teachings of the Greco-Roman Stoics.

The Emperor Ashoka (268 – c. 232 BCE) sent Buddhist missionaries to Alexandria, and the Greeks traded with India after Alexander conquered Bactria (modern Afghanistan). There were certainly Buddhist influences in the Greek world.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Wouldn’t nirvana be synonymous with being dead, if death is the negation of all emotion/thought/ etc.,?

Usually not. If you die you are normally born again and have to repeat the whole process over and over and over again. Only if you attain enlightenment during a life is the death at the end of that life final.

So, the point of “enlightenment” is merely to die so as not to have to repeat a non-enlightened life over and over again?

Nothing gained? Just a reconciliation to the basic fact that there is nothing, in the end, to be gained? That is enlightenment?

How do we know that “much” suffering is only caused by the mismatch between what we think and the way the world is?

Maybe much of our suffering is caused by the way the world actually is?

Also, why the need to reduce suffering? Why not just view suffering as nothing and treat is as entirely inconsequential? Or even create more of it since to be pained by any suffering at all is merely holding on to a false self. Why not embrace suffering and conquer it by causing your false self to suffer more until it is no longer bothered by even the worst suffering?

Why will to reduce suffering since being bothered at all by any suffering would indicate holding onto a “false self” which isn’t the attainment of nirvana, in the first place?

 

[HarryStotle]

Damian:

Person A is a Gnostic Theist
Person B is an Agnostic Theist
Person C that doesn’t know and is not convinced by Person A is an Agnostic Atheist.
That’s basically it.

Person D is a Gnostic Atheist - the person who goes into the room and discovers there is no chair (Person A just made it up). As science progresses we discover fewer and fewer chairs, to the point that Person A now claims the chairs are invisible and exist outside of the room.

And we ought to be very worried when Person D begins to tell us about how science “has progressed” to the point that not only are there NO chairs, but there are also NO persons – not Person A, not Person B, not Person C, and not Person D – to sit in those non-existent chairs.

Surely, without persons to explain or imagine those chairs, the proof that there are no chairs has become absolute and certain. If ~P, then ~c.

Person E, who is a Realist: Where am I going to sit?