Does an "afterlife" have to be related to religion or a belief in God?

I can see people not believing in religion or God so they claim there's no heaven...but to say you don't believe in any sort of afterlife because you don't believe in God is ridiculous.

No one knows where we came from, or why we're here, so to claim you know what happens after we leave without answering those other questions is ridiculous. None of those questions are exclusive to religion but should be asked by everyone whether they believe in God or not.

and the idea of an afterlife IS a religious idea, not based on something factual.

No one knows where we came from, or why we're here, so to claim you know what happens after we leave without answering those other questions is ridiculous.

I know EXACTLY where I came from, and I gave myself my own purpose for being here, so your first two points are false. And I don't think I have EVER seen a non-believer here in this board make the claim that they DO know what happens after we leave die, so that too, is a false statement.

It could just be that self-conscious entities tend to think they will persist after their bodies die. Or it might be that we will persist and somehow know this. I don't see any way to tell. But then I'm an agnostic as to gods as well.

I certainly hope that we persist; but wishing don't make it so.

Could it be that science might someday find a factual basis for our continued existence? I don't know.

Peter Hamilton's 'The Night's Dawn Trilogy' is an interesting science fiction exploration of an afterlife (one that violently intersects the universe of the living) that does not correspond to current (or future in the novels) religious views. So far, it has been interesting and not ideological; but I haven't yet to read the last book of the series (the "trilogy" consists of six books, two books per each part of the trilogy).

Adherents of that belief might claim instead that it's a philosophy, but at the end of the day it's still an unsubstantiated belief in a supernatural phenomenon.

Believers will often likewise claim that they "know" it's true and that they don't need to "prove" it to anyone. That's fine, but unless they can demonstrate it to someone else, then it's just a supernatural belief.

than mechanisms for social control. Heaven and hell are just carrot and stick for religious organizations.

The question of persistence of consciousness after death is, I think, an entirely different question. I think it is highly unlikely, and won't believe it till I see it - but I think it might be a nice surprise. Except for anecdotal accounts of some peoples' near death experiences, 'ghost' stories, and a few hard to explain reincarnation stories, there is no evidence of it.

Curiously, while every culture has developed distinctly different ideas of god and the afterlife, ghost stories are remarkably similar world wide.

every hospital in the world would be overflowing with spectres. :)

I firmly believe that NDEs are simply the brain trying to calm itself in the face of non-existence. I also slightly wonder if the brain in an NDE kind of reaches a dream state where time slows down, so that someone who is only "dead" for a few minutes can experience what is subjectively to them whole trips to the other side, etc.

I still don't believe in the afterlife, though.

is that they don't have to be based on anything per se.

Still, it's awfully hard to come up with an afterlife that's not based on some sort of religious or supernatural belief. There's no scientific reasons that even comes close to suggesting we are anything more than a brain and a support system, and that when that brain dies (usually because the support system fails) we cease to exist.

An afterlife requires either a fundamental altering of the laws that run our universe, or a supernatural intervenor to come in and suspend or except those laws.
I think there's a reason the two concepts are so inextricably linked.

For one thing, life seems to run counter to the 2nd Law - life continually increases in complexity, whereas non-life reduces. If we really live in the hypothesized multi-verse, perhaps life, and thus intelligence and consciousness, is a manifestation of cross-dimensional interface, and afterlife is nothing more than a different dimension - IOW, rather than supernatural, simply a physics we don't understand.

The key to a 'belief' in science is to never assume we know all there is to know about anything.

This is a common misconception. The talk.origins FAQ has a great, concise explanation.

and energy will cease being fed into open systems like our planet, or other planets or anywhere where life exists.

At that point, life will no longer be all that complex because it will be dead. As pointed out below entropy doesn't decrease always in open systems, if it did, stars would never form, or planets, or biosystems...if you can find lifeforms without an external energy source feeding them, then you might be correct.

or supernatural belief

Check Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's situation out. (You know, the 5 stages of grief lady). She was pretty skeptical about the supernatural, didn't really think about it much... until working with some dying children and it went from there. It wasn't the descriptions of near death experiences that made her know there was something real (since logical thought would be something to do with the dying brain). It was things like when kids were revived after an accident they'd talk about who they had been with before they just came back and it would be only those who were dead, those who had died in accident with them but never those who had lived through it. (Or mentioning a grandparent being there with them and no one else there knows grandma had died back home. That kind of thing)

There have been other doctors who have been caught by surprise in a similar way
However logical one is when you see the "impossible" often enough then it is no longer logical not to change your view...
and so on. I could say a lot more but I'm not out to convince anyone and it makes my general point

"requires either a fundamental altering of the laws that run our universe, or a supernatural intervenor to come in and suspend or except those laws."
No, it just requires the realization is that there is so much we don't know about the laws that run our universe!

Even if there is life after death it is no better to believe then to not believe, there isn't a penalty or bonus for that.

And we'd best realize that in any case even if we don't believe in life after death because we know a mere iota of what there is top know in the universe, logic tells us that

:hi:

exist without a god, after all, we exist without a god. And I think that if there is a god he created the universe and died. Not sitting there looking over our shoulders and tsk tsking at every thing we do.

Can you elaborate?

an afterlife, then the answer is yes.

Conceptually, there is no reason why the two ideas necessarily go together. Animistic ancestor worship suggests that deceased relative continue to exist among us as quasi-deities.

This is conceptually, mind you. I'm not suggesting it actually happens or is even possible.

No one knows where we came from, or why we're here, so to claim you know what happens after we leave without answering those other questions is ridiculous.

I came from my parents. They came from their parents. And so on, back to the first molecule on earth that could self-replicate.

We are here to propagate DNA. That is the purpose of life on Earth.

There is no evidence to suggest that some form of life goes on after the physical body expires. Those who claim to know something more than what the evidence suggests are the ones who need to prove it. This silly postmodernist "no one knows for sure so everything could be possible" drivel does nothing to advance human knowledge and discover truth.

and for that matter, not all religious people believe in an afterlife (it's not an essential feature of Judaism, for example).

I don't think that belief in an afterlife depends on knowing 'why we're here'. It's more a matter of what defines life, and what functions are essential for it. As far as I can see, human life depends on consciousness or at least on the capacity for sensation, and that depends on the brain; so I don't see how life could continue after (brain) death. We live on in other people's memories, and in the long-term effects of our actions.

if you don't get a reward(afterlife) at the end?

To have a structure for, or rules for, your life. Because you feel strongly linked to a community of believers. Or simply because you believe that the religion is true.

(Complete atheist, with a number of religious Jewish relatives.)

I'm a case in point. I'm a strong atheist, in the third of a four-generation family of strong atheists. However, over the last 10 years (with hints of it going back another 40) I have developed a very strong belief that some aspect of the non-existent entity I choose to call "me" exists outside the time and space that define the boundaries of this ordinary shared reality.

I have no way of knowing if this belief is "true" in any sense. It is merely my belief. However, determining its objective truth is entirely beside the point. The belief has enormous value to me in terms of how I live my life. It doesn't matter to me if anyone else shares this belief, or if there is any evidence to support it. It's an entirely personal and subjective position. It's one of the ways I have chosen to pursue the question of meaning within my own life.

:wtf:

when people do that? :)