From "God/No-God" to "Death/No-Death"

[mirandansa]

Professor Corey Anton suggests that the theism vs atheism debate could be more meaningfully constructive if people shifted their focus from the question of whether there is or isn't a god to the question of whether there is or isn't an afterlife:



This is also related to my concern over a perspectival issue among theists and atheists on YouTube, for which I made another thread on "Religion & Irreligion":

http://forums.leagueofreason.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5220

 

[lrkun]

It is interesting, but we can never know the answer to that, unless we die. And unlike the story book hero, Jesus. I doubt we'll rise on the third day.

Of course, this is a good debate. Less offensive atleast.

 

[Inferno]

It is interesting, but we can never know the answer to that, unless we die. And unlike the story book hero, Jesus. I doubt we'll rise on the third day.

Of course, this is a good debate. Less offensive atleast.

How is "God/No-God" offensive?

 

[Aught3]

One thing religion is good at is promoting discussions about death. I think it's quite healthy actually. Rather than seeing this as a replacement for god discussions, I'd rather see it as an addition. LoR TV show?

 

[mirandansa]

It is interesting, but we can never know the answer to that, unless we die.

Isn't that the same with God/No-God? Even Richard Dawkins refrains from claiming there is no "god" with 100% certainty:

(from 1:40)



Well, we can at least completely falsify the two major buddies, the Biblical and Qur'anic gods, with respect to their explicitly purported properties such as "Yahweh/Christ will answer any prayer" (Matthew 7:7). But the fundamental problem with the question of a god's existence is that the word "god" can mean virtually anything, and there is always bound to be some ambiguity as to what atheism (a-theo[god]-ism) is to deal with.

In his 1985 Glasgow Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology, Carl Sagan elaborated on his views of divinity in the natural world. Also in another description, he emphasised: "But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God." Sagan allowed for the possibility of a valid "spiritual" conception of God. So did Einstein and many other non-theistic intellectuals. We can positively talk about a divine quality of the cosmos, of our cosmological existence, without invoking any irrational anti-scientific assumption. For this reason, I'm of the opinion that there should be a room for a constructive conception of non-personified non-creator God.

On the other hand, Sagan almost certainly didn't believe in an afterlife, in the belief that a person can survive their biological death and retain their personality etc. via some supernatural means. The notion of "Death" can more easily be disambiguated than that of "God". And, as professor Anton pointed out, discussions about death can yield more practical and meaningful intellectual outputs concerning our life.

 

[australopithecus]

Discussing an afterlife vs no afterlfe runs into the same problem as god/no god. Neither god nor an afterlife exist beyond subjective personal experiences and neither would be objectively testable so debating it would be as futile as debating gods in so much that no conclusion can ever be reached. An afterlife is not dependant on a theistic belief and I've never had an atheist believer in one tell me I must do X, Y or Z to gain it or if I don't I'll get a bad afterlife. Theists, however, do claim that and not because of a belief in an afterlife but because of a belief in a god, that's why debating the concept of gods, is in my opinion,is more constructive.

 

[mirandansa]

Discussing an afterlife vs no afterlfe runs into the same problem as god/no god. Neither god nor an afterlife exist beyond subjective personal experiences and neither would be objectively testable so debating it would be as futile as debating gods in so much that no conclusion can ever be reached.

The point is not to obtain a definite answer to the question but to have a more meaningful discussion in terms of our real life. When we question "God/No-God", we tend to talk more about how an invisible supreme being could exist rather than what we are; if we more questioned "Death/No-Death", we could have started talking more about what we are with respect to our limited or unlimited life.

An afterlife is not dependant on a theistic belief

Right, and what could be more important for humans to attempt to debunk/falsify is, I opine, not so much the notion of god/theo/divinity in general as the notion of afterlife. It seems to me more productive to realise our own existential limitation than the absence of divinity. In fact, I don't think there is nothing which can be called divine or God from a non-irrational viewpont, as many non-Judeo-Christian intellectuals like Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein would agree. What's more, if we maintained an a-afterlife view, that would be tantamount to holding an atheistic position for the most part of the current dialogue between atheists and theists, who are predominantly Christians and Muslims and for whom the notion of afterlife is a concomitant of their purported gods' existences. In other words, if their argument for afterlife (or the existence of their eternal soul) gets debunked, they would also lose their case for their gods and religions. And it's easier to falsify pro-afterlife claims like "When I died, I momentarily visited heaven, before I came back to this world" than pro-god claims like "When I died, I momentarily visited heaven and saw Jesus and God, before I came back to this world", which assumes more supernatural unfalsifiable entities.