\*\*Let’s say up front that I am not referring to the religious aspects that have to do with identity. You can and should treasure everything about your culture and heritage, and everyone should respect them\*\*
Problem 1: If you believe that the most important consequences for your actions will be in the afterlife (“afterlife” is generic for, promised existence outside of this world), you are betraying the real world and everyone who lives in it. In every other instance, ignoring the consequences of your actions on earth is considered immoral. There should not be exceptions made for places that cannot be shown to exist.
It is also immoral to tell others that the consequences will not come until after life. No one can prove that you get 72 virgins. That means that a person who follows religious law is incapable of making decisions for himself. He is taught to ignore the consequences in front of him and to only follow the instructions put in front of him. All of the talk of divine command does a very good job of hiding the fact that it is people putting other people under their control
Problem 2: Misrepresenting your knowledge about something you have no right to claim authority on is lying. All of the scholarship in the world does not give anyone the ability to claim there is an afterlife. It is not seen. It is not detected. No one has taken pictures. No one has come from there and been interviewed. The best anyone has is having a vague “experience”. That is not expertise, no matter how vivid.
How is that a lie? Imagine claiming you are a surgeon without any experience and then practicing surgery. Imagine claiming you are a surgeon and then teaching others who practicing surgery. Dangerous, right? You can believe it with all your heart. Telling others that it is the truth is dishonest.
The Pascal’s Wager of it suggests that it shouldn’t matter because the stakes seem low. What’s the harm in believing what you want to believe? It shouldn’t be hard to say that religion all around wields massive influence. Just look at the money involved. It is the immorality involved combined with that influence that should make people concerned
Reality doesn’t exert influence. Reality is not corrupt. Reality should be the thing upon which people should base their worldviews
I’ll answer these from my own religious perspective as a pagan.
Problem 1: Exactly! Human beings should conduct themselves with awareness to the world we live in. Who knows if they is an afterlife to begin with after all, or if in death we simply rejoin the Earth? Regardless of that the focus of a person should be on their life, the present, and their interactions with the world around them.
Problem 2: Of course claiming such a viewpoint is true is ignorant. As I already said no one can say so we can guess but in truth we should focus on life. Not every religion has a set concept of afterlife. Pagan and Animistic beliefs don’t, for example, so it’s less a concept or problem of religion and more one of specific religions which just so happen to be the ones you’re most familiar with.
As muslim, couple of points:
1- as an athiest, u cannot make a moral claim about religion or anything for that matter bcz without god, morality would be subjective, (ie any person has the right to pick an choose what actions are moral or immoral) so what u see as immoral is strictly ur opinion that is not based on any moral grounding. It would be just as arbitrary as saying chocolate is my favorite flavor of ice cream.
2- What makes u believe that religious ppl (muslims) are incapable of making decisions for themselves? And that we are taught to ignore consequences of our actions??? U could not be more wrong about that:
– islamic law is based on principles that harmonize families and societies
– Allah says in the quran: there is no compulsion in religion
– prophet (SAW) says ( “There should be neither harming nor reciprocating harm.”) that is if a given action brings harm to others or yourself then it is wrong as a general principle.
– prophet (saw) says (actions are judged by the intentions behind them) that is if a person intends to do harm by doing something that wouldn’t be deemed as bad, they’ll be punished for it.
Plz make sure to actually understand religion academically from credible religious sources (not through mainstream media, other atheists or reddit) speakers b4 making baseless claims that are incorrect.
3- we can actually prove that the afterlife exists honey. From an epistemological perspective, a person could acquire knowledge through 3 main sources:
1- intuition
2- logic
3- 5 senses (science)
From ur comment, it seems that u only believe in method 3, problem is that method 3 does not account for the existence of a mind, and the inner subjective experience u are currently having, both of which u cannot deny. Method 3 also cannot prove logical facts such as: all bachelors are not married. Our proof for the existence of god is through logic and intuition. If u want, could i could go on further to prove god’s existence. After comes the proof for the isalm (quran, hadith, afterlife, etc)
As a religious personI have one thing I would like you to define like precisely in a way that I understand because I have no idea what anyone means when they say it…
What is an afterlife?
All I see is a wild mischaracterization used as a cudgel by someone who actually has no idea what he’s talking about. But perhaps I’m wrong perhaps you actually have a coherent definition of an afterlife and how that fits into Christian philosophy.
These are only morality problems for religions which links morality and the afterlife, which isn’t all of them.
Curious: if someone was clinically dead and resuscitated, you’re saying that what they experienced is vague and means nothing? How can it be both vivid and vague?
> Problem 2: Misrepresenting your knowledge about something you have no right to claim authority on is lying. All of the scholarship in the world does not give anyone the ability to claim there is an afterlife. It is not seen. It is not detected. No one has taken pictures. No one has come from there and been interviewed. The best anyone has is having a vague “experience”. That is not expertise, no matter how vivid.
In Islam, belief in the unseen (things like angels, djinns, paradise, hellfire etc) is part of the religion. It’s a matter of faith.
If we were shown direct proof of any of those things, everyone would become believers and it defeats the purpose of faith.
> Problem 1: If you believe that the most important consequences for your actions will be in the afterlife, you are betraying the real world and everyone who lives in it.
It’s the opposite. Because we know there are consequences in the afterlife we tend to be more careful with how we spend our life in this world. To a believer, the life of this world is precious time he can use to perform worship and good deeds.
There’s a third moral problem that deserves mentioning: The idea of “Salvation through faith alone” which seems popular among many of the Christian derivatives.
This entitles a person to be the worst sinner, criminal, abuser, bully, liar, tyrant, adulterer, murderer, rapist… and then confess, sincerely and repentantly before dying, and still be entitled to the ‘best afterlife possible’.
While those who exemplify all the virtues of kindness, temperance, hope, charity, fairness, love, etc… all -except- “Faith” are told they’ll burn in hell for all eternity because they aren’t loyal to the one entity that makes the rules and begging to for their soul.
It’s a terrible morality that enables bad people to do bad things to good people… and still feel righteous about it, and convince others they’re righteous to escape worldly consequences for their actions.
the surgeon analogy doesnt sit right with me. Why would you believe you’re a surgeon if you hadnt studied to be one? It implies people who believe in a form of afterlife dont have any “sound” reason to do so.
but i guess maybe their reasons dont sound “sound” to you. that depends on your expectations
But Jesus told people to go do good works in this life. That was the mains thing he said. He also radically changes the concept of forgiveness. As a Christian, I agree that it is immoral to go around shaming people for harmless things based on some purely theological or scriptural concept.
I pose to you a reverse of Pascal’s wager though, call it whatever you want. Many people do good in this world because of their belief in God, and abstain from harming others because that is what God told them to do. Many concepts of things like universal human rights are based almost exclusively on this school of religious thought. So:
– If God exists and you campaign against the church, you’re advocating for deconstructing the objective basis for good in the world.
– If God doesn’t exist and you campaign against the church, you’re advocating for deconstructing the subjective basis for good in the world and eliminating a large portion of the concept of morality itself. Many evils have been done in the name of things like economic growth, scientific research, and militaristic conquest that were opposed almost exclusively by Christians.
– If God exists and you allow the church to exist and grow, you are helping the world reach the time when Jesus will reign again and there will cease to be suffering.
– If God doesn’t exist and you allow the church to exist and grow, some evil will be done in it’s name like with all things, but the basis for morality which is used to condemn the actions of those people will also continue to exist and will likely prevail over time based on the course of history.
Given these things, it is clearly a better choice in terms of objective earthly values that you and the people of the future are better off with a larger church than without a church at all. To turn people away from God is to hurt yourself and others.
> **Problem 1:** If you believe that the most important consequences for your actions will be in the afterlife, you are betraying the real world and everyone who lives in it. In every other instance, ignoring the consequences of your actions on earth is considered immoral. There should not be exceptions made for places that cannot be shown to exist.
Not if the afterlife is a redeemed & renewed continuation of this life. J. Richard Middleton likes to challenge people “to find even one passage in the New Testament that clearly said Christians would live in heaven forever or that heaven was the final home of the righteous”. He said he “even offered a monetary reward if anyone could find such a text”. To this day, he has all of his money. ([A New Heaven and a New Earth](http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/a-new-heaven-and-a-new-earth/287300), 14)
Compare & contrast those people who optimize for this life only, vs. those who optimize for future generations as well. What happens when one country has more of the latter than another country? How many people in the Middle Ages made sacrifices which made the Renaissance and Enlightenment possible in the first place? Focusing only on one’s own lifespan is a great way to be part of catastrophic global climate change.
> It is also immoral to tell others that the consequences will not come until after life. No one can prove that you get 72 virgins. That means that a person who follows religious law is incapable of making decisions for himself. He is taught to ignore the consequences in front of him and to only follow the instructions put in front of him. All of the talk of divine command does a very good job of hiding the fact that it is people putting other people under their control
Unless the afterlife has continuity with this one, even if there is also discontinuity (e.g. because sin is finally eradicated). [1 Cor 3](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1cor3&version=ESV) suggests a lot of continuity. All that apocalyptic language you read in the OT and NT is about a drastic change of _social_ order, not _natural_ order. You know, like from a highly authoritarian way of running society to an egalitarian way.
Leaving Ur is highly nontrivial; once you’ve learned how to navigate your particular culture, made all sorts of alliances, figured out how the governing powers operate, and so forth, _leaving_ that is terrifically difficult. There is reason to think that Ur, part of Mesopotamia, was so highly ethnocentric that nobody even thought of comparing their own culture to another. ([The Position of the Intellectual in Mesopotamian Society](https://archive.org/details/Oppen1975Intell/page/n1/mode/2up), 38) Anything outside of Ur is probably comparable to an afterlife, in the senses you’re talking about, here.
If the process of leaving Ur toward a Promised Land (or leaving present injustice toward the Kingdom of God) takes multiple generations, why should the first generation even try? They’re not going to enjoy the benefits. The end goal appears to them quite like an “afterlife”.
> **Problem 2:** Misrepresenting your knowledge about something you have no right to claim authority on is lying. All of the scholarship in the world does not give anyone the ability to claim there is an afterlife. It is not seen. It is not detected. No one has taken pictures. No one has come from there and been interviewed. The best anyone has is having a vague “experience”. That is not expertise, no matter how vivid.
Until the Second Temple, the ancient Hebrews had no robust conception of an afterlife. Everybody went to Sheol, and nobody could praise God from Sheol. The only “afterlife” for them was whether or not their descendants would remain in the Promised Land. [Deut 30:11–20](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deut30.11-20&version=ESV) only makes sense with multiple generations in view. Anyone who has read the histories of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms in the Tanakh knows that they lasted for many generations before being conquered and carried off into exile. Unlike today, where we often think that anything earlier than the previous quarter is irrelevant, those who wrote and read the Tanakh thought in terms of many generations.
Your actions now can reverberate through the generations. This can be an uncomfortable thought to many. Imagine you continue to exist after you physically die, and are forced to see what became of all your [in]actions. Would you act differently now, if you knew that was going to happen? That is ostensibly a very similar thought process to those who believe they’re going to die and cease to exist, but are still working to promote the welfare of future generations.
Considering the fact that Jesus was very much a Jew, if your thoughts of “afterlife” are radically different from the above, you’ve almost certainly broken away from his tradition. I think many Christians have, as well. Your criticisms target not _all_ kinds of afterlife, but forms which I think even God dislikes.
> Reality is not corrupt.
And yet, the problems of suffering and evil prove that God does not exist?
>Problem 1: If you believe that the most important consequences for your actions will be in the afterlife, you are betraying the real world and everyone who lives in it.
In Christianity, we’re taught to care for those around us and to live righteously. What betrayal is happening, what duty aren’t we fulfilling?
>Problem 2: Misrepresenting your knowledge about something you have no right to claim authority on is lying.
Lying is saying something you know is false, not saying something whose justification doesn’t fit someone else’s criteria.
>Reality doesn’t exert influence. Reality is not corrupt. Reality should be the thing upon which people should base their worldviews
Reality is more than what can be proven by your criteria for knowledge.
You say these are moral problems but from the sound of it you’re just saying that we shouldn’t believe in the afterlife because you personally don’t believe there is evidence for it.
>He is taught to ignore the consequences in front of him
Isn’t that also how people are taught about the concept of [delayed gratification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_gratification)?
>Problem 1: If you believe that the most important consequences for your actions will be in the afterlife, you are betraying the real world and everyone who lives in it
If you believe in an afterlife, then this isn’t the ‘real’ world. This world can only be described as the ‘real’ world if one doesn’t believe in an afterlife.
>Problem 2: Misrepresenting your knowledge about something you have no right to claim authority on is lying.
Again, this only applies to those who deny revelation as a source of knowledge.
These arguments only seem logical if you don’t belive in God.
>roblem 1: If you believe that the most important consequences for your actions will be in the afterlife
I dont believe this. In fact when there are consequences they are usually in this life, there’s no judgements awaiting you unless you judge yourself.
>Problem 2: Misrepresenting your knowledge about something you have no right to claim authority on is lying.
I simply believe in an afterlife, I don’t claim to know it exists. It would be equally fallacious to claim with certainty there is no afterlife.
>You can and should treasure everything about your culture and heritage
Why?
>everyone should respect them
Why?
I know these aren’t the main item for discussion, I just don’t understand why you felt the need to lead with this.