Haha, best Philosoraptor I’ve seen yet.

As an atheist I recognize and accept that when I die I simply return to that state of being before I was born and whwen I came into life prior to birth. For all the eternity of time prior to my birth I was NOT alive and had no living soul, so therefore when my physical human life ends here on earth , I simply go back to the state of being prior to my being born in the first place. If GOD is a spirit as religionists proclaim , then what use can a spirit have in a material world and of what use can a flesh human being have in a spirit world ? Christians proclaim GOD is a man and often use the personal pronoun HE or HIM when referring to this GOD. How can you tell GOD is a male or man or boy gender ? Does this GOD have an invisible penis, or an inmvisible mustache, or an invisible beard, or an invisible Adams Apple or invisible testicles ? Just wondering ?Where is the evidence that shows someone dying and returning and having brought back a video recording as proof that they have died, traveled into a spirit diminsion and then back again ? How can a person even discuss the subject of GOD when they can’t even define or describe what GOD is ? GOD is nothing but superstition, fairey tales and mythology believed by people who cannot explain natural phenomena. People who believe in some supernatural deity long for some eternal salvation because of their disatisfaction and inadequacy here on earth in our flesh and blood life on earth. Furthermore –I have NO desire to be closer to any GOD. I don’t want to be close to a being that supposedly created the Spanish Flu , The Black Plague , hurricane Katrina , the vast multitude of earthquakes, forrest fires, tsunamis, snow storms anmd blizzards, mud slides, famine & drought, cancer , birth defects in innocent babies, tornadoes, hurricanes, meteor strikes, sun spots creating havoc, deadly storms, and GOD INDUCED ABORTIONS known as miscarriages or stillborn births which occur in the millions each year worldwide. What kind of loving , caring , protective, merciful and beneficent being would engage in such horrific behavior ? These Holy Horrors are therefore ACTS OF GOD !!!! They are NOT— Acts Of Atheism , Acts Of Secularism , Acts Of The Devil , Acts Of Freethought , etc etc etc but rather Acts of a supposed supernatural tyrant and psychopathic monster and fiend. I want NO part of such a being and have NO desire to be CLOSE to such a being. As far as I am concerned this GOD can kiss my A** !!!!! I would rather die and suffer in an eternity of toprment with dignity and self respect before I bow down and praise such a hideous monster. Even if there were a soul inside my body , we know from science that energy that is not harnessed or containmed is energy that is wild and out of control. Electrical energy from a home oven travels from a chord from the outlet to the appliance and is harnessed in the wires and electrical connectors—-it isn’t wild and unharnessed. Even radio signals travel through the air on bandwidth airwaves in a controlled ripple effect that is transmitted from a transmitter that sends it out on a specified bandwith that was controlled from the physical transmitter and received by a physical receiver. Life is energy and life is a collection of interacvtions of a multitude and complex array of various energies interacting together in natural form and has absoluitely nothing to do with any supernatural being. science teaches us that matter cannot be created nor destroyed but has always existed as a perpetual form of energy that has always been evolving in form, chemical composition, mass structure, mass density formation and these interactions cause reflexive and reponsive actions from other interacting energies which over the eons of time eventually developed into a form of mechanical life functions from formations of energy into the life forms as we know it today. There was NO beginning and there will never be any end. Matter has therefore always existed and always will but is constantly changing or evolving. It is the theist tyha sees DESIGN in everything. If a deity created all that is in existence , then who or what created the deity ? If a theits proclaim that this deity always existed , then this refutes the religious claim that EVERYTHING has a beginning. How can a spirit form or shape matter ? Where did the deity get the matter from if matter never existed in the first place ? This would mean that it is the Christian ( not the atheists ) that makes the claim that we came from nothing or by accident . The Christian is therefore claiming that before some kind of theological creation by a supernatural deity , there was nothing but an empty void of space and a vastness of nothingness and then all of a suden this GOD appears out of nowhere and uses a magical wand and PRESTO !!!!— all of a sudden out of NOTHING appears the universe, the galaxies, etc etc etc — What a bunch of BS and absurd nonsense . Then 6 days later after creating the planets, galaxies, etc ., he became exhausted and had to rest on the 7th day. Haaa ! What a joke. How can a spirit get tired ? This makes absolutely no scientific sense , and then again religionists don’t make sense anyway. If we die and our invisible souls go up to sky into outer space ( heaven ) or we become like angels wearing white robes or wearing halos around our heads , what are you going to attach the white robes to if we are formless spirits ? How can a halo be around a formless and invisible head ? If we are going to be thriving in an invisible world then how can we be going before the “pearly gates” ? Thje color peartl is a definate color hue, so therefore if its pearly in color then how can anyone say we are existing in an invisible heaven ? You cannot see a color pearl or any other color in an invisible world. If we die and go underground into a hell with a red man with horns , a long tail with an arrow tip tail and a pitchfork living in underground fiery caverns , then how does the DEVIL keep from burning up ? Does he wear an asbestos lined suit ? That fire must not be very hot if one can burn in it forever and never burn up. How can this deity proclaim to be a merciful being if we are subjected to burn forever ( with NO chance of parole ) or shorter sentence ? How can a formless, invisible spirit burn in a fire ? It isn’t made of matter so how can any fire have any effect on a non-material spirit body ? Who knows if we may later appear in another life form zillions of light years from now into a different diminsion. The only thing that that we know is that we DON’T know and probably never will !!!!! If there is a judgement day , then I want to be the first person in line so that i can pass my judgement on this evil being called GOD. I will therefore make a citizen’s arrest on GOD and serve GOD with an arresty warranty for crimes against humanity for all the HOLY HORRORS and horrificn ACTS OF GOD done by him. Such a being deserves no mercy. Christians ask me how can I attack their GOD and yet I ask them how can they dare defend such a being ? How can anyone praise such an evil tyrant and murderous maniac ? It’s mind-boggling how gullible , stupid and foolish humans really are . WAKE UP PEOPLE ! GOD is make believe and religion is superstition and a sham !!!!!! There is NO heaven or hell !!!!!!

This is a very interesting discussion. Please pardon my typos , and incorrect spellings as I was in a coffee shop and in a hurry and didn’t do a spelling check. Sorry for the lengthy rant but I really enjoy this discussion as it is one of my favorites. Someone once asked Col. Robert G. Ingersoll where did we come from since he didn’t believe in a god and Ingersoll replied— ” I don’t know ” . No human being existed trillions of light years ago to explain how life was formed or how our galaxies and other astronomical bodies were formed , so therefore ALL explanations of such whether religious or secular are all THEORIES. We have the Christian Creation Theory , The Big Bang Theory and the Darwinian Theory but they are ALL theories. Even though there may be degrees of some evidence to suggest one way or the other , the bottom line is NONE of these have been proven of where we came from or where we go if anyplace after death. We all can argue until the cows come home but NO ONE knows where life began or where we will go or what happens after we die. It’s unknowable. The religious explanation is all based on a –” what if ?” or a supposition or conjecture. NO ONE can prove, validate, substantiate or verify the claims of what happens after death. The Christian theists make remarks like — ” If there is an afterlife then you atheists had better be right “. I say to the theists that using that form of an illogical argument , I could very well say that of all the thousands of known religions that have existed , Christians had better be right that THEIR religion is the right one. Christians should therefore believe in ALL of the other religions that exist just to cover all bases just in case their religion is wrong and the other person’s religion is the right and true one. Even then you are NOT certain. When people are indoctrinated with theological beliefs, they are accepted not because they make sense but rather because this is the societal accepted “norm” and this includes the creation theory as well as the ” heaven and hell ” and eternal life after you die theory. Even atheists say that death ends all but even then we do not truly know because no one has died and returned that has been proven to indicate that even that is a FACT. Some people believe in reincarnation. Is that possible ? I don’t know. How would we know anyway ? I sure hope that people do not get into a heated argument on this and I will admit that I was indeed abrasive in my first commentary but I hate it when people act as if they are so CERTAIN what happens after death when NO ONE knows for sure. We can exchange theories forever but it proves nothing. What we should be concerned with is the fact that we are here and to make the best of our lives here on earth and to make other people’s lives better. When we look at the eternity of endless time we realize that life as we know it is but a fleeting moment through space and time. Many scientists believe in the TIME-SPACE CONTINUUM ( even this is a theory only ). Some scientists believe that when we die our life as we know it ends when our body which harnesses our life energy dies as well. Our “soul” as religionists believe is what scientists perceive to be our brain function and energy activity in our brain cells. Some scientists believe that clinical death is not true death because even if a person’s heart stops beating or they stop breathing they can be resuscitated using simple CPR to restart the breathing or heart functions ( and this is what throws a wrench into the claims of those who claim to have had near-death experiences ). It is in biological death when the brain cells die and no form of resuscitation is possible because your life ( your brain function ) is gone. Each individual is believed to have their own designated “brain frequency ” which gives us all our different unique and separate mind . As science progresses we can understand this more so but still we will never know how life exists and where did our mental capacity begin during the events of human evolution. I use to get into so many debates and arguments so to speak with my college professors in my psychology class on this ( it was friendly debate ) and it still ended up as what we choose to accept but neither of us could actually PROVE our respective theories. There are theories being taught in our public schools and our universities as though they are facts and yet there are scientific facts being dismissed as propaganda. I see it on both sides. One thing is for sure and that is science does not support the Genesis Bible theory of where we came from and we can also say that NO ONE has died and returned and PROVEN what happens after our physical body dies and decays .

The question reads— ” When you die do you become closer to god ………Because you no longer exist ? “. To answer this question as it is being asked suggests that a person is a believer that there is a god. The question itself begs other questions….such as : How can a person upon dying get closer to an invisible, immaterial and formless spirit ? What do you mean by “become closer to”. The term “closer” by definition means being “nearer” or in a short proximity to . The question itself becomes a misnomer. For example— If Christians proclaim that god exists everywhere then that means that god is already all around us and even inside us and is therefore automatically closer by being all places at all times. Why then do Christians look skyward when praying if this deity is everywhere ? Wouldn’t we be automatically close ? Some Christians have proclaimed that some scientists have used some type of scientific instrument to measure the soul leaving the body and proclaimed that after death our bodies weigh a very miniscule of an ounce of weight that is suppose to suggest that some soul escaped our bodies. What these religionists don’t understand is that upon our physical body dying , our body begins to decay and lose water content (internal moisture and water throughout the physical body ) which disipates or evaporates which causes that miniscule amount of weight loss and our cells decay and shrink in tyheir mass. Even the air we breathe has weight and can be measured so this experimental claim by religionists is flawed. Our brain activity ceases after death wich is electrical ( remember the experiments in biology class with an electrical current applied to a dead frog’s leg and watching the leg move and twitch ) ? An electrical charge comes from our brain while we are alive because the electrical energy is harnessed in our brain and then escapes or dissipates and can be measured as an electrical wave activity but this does not prove as religionists claim that we have a soul transitioning into an afterlife. I love to challenge Christians on this discussion ( especially on human biology ). Furthermore , how can we expect a god to offer us a better life in an after life or hereafter when this supposed deity has such a crappy and screwed up world here on earth ? If this is the best that GOD can do, then I am not impressed. If a person goes to heaven and decides after a thousand years that they are bored to death ( no pun intended ) with heaven , do they have an option to opt out and choose to die as a non-existing entity ? Just wondering. This question is NEVER asked when the discussion of an afterlife is discussed. If a person is sentenced to eternal damnation in hell by GOD, does that person come up for parole every 100 thousand years ? Or is it just tough s*** !!! So much for being a merciful deity. Where exactly is heaven ? Christians point skyward as to suggest up in the clouds or in outer spaace. If thats so , then a person standing in the USA pointing upward to the sky would be pointing in the opposite direction of a person in China who is pointing upward into the sky or outer space. Again, just wondering. I never get an explanation on that one. What about people who have never been exposed to any religion such as the people living in the deepest regions of Africa or South America. How are they going to be judged for accepting or NOT accepting GOD or his religion when they have had absolutely NO exposure or introduction of such a being or religion ? How can such a person be held accountable or judged in an afterlife or hearafter for that which they have NO knowledge of ? What about babies born stillborn in the mother’s womb ? what happens to them ? Why would a loving and just GOD cause these innocent babies tom die anyway during childbirth ? Why wouild such a loving and supposed merciful GOD even allow conception to have taken place in the first place if HE was going to kill the infant in the mother’s womb ? How will such a baby be judged during a Day Of Judgement ? How would a baby know if he/she is closer to GOD or will the baby be given an exemption status and a free pass ? How is this fair and equitable for all other people who have lengthy and healthy lives ? Why do people believe in an afterlife if there is no proof or evidence of one but only a claim based on indoctrinated ideology ? Oh , gee, I forget , that is what religion is all about to begin with . Ooops, my bad !!!! It’s called BRAINWASHING !! Questioned ANSWERED !!!!

I’m just gonna snip out the most relevant part – there’s a slight mistake or misunderstanding that you’re doing (and that’s commonly made)

George :No human being existed trillions of light years ago to explain how life was formed or how our galaxies and other astronomical bodies were formed , so therefore ALL explanations of such whether religious or secular are all THEORIES. We have the Christian Creation Theory , The Big Bang Theory and the Darwinian Theory but they are ALL theories. Even though there may be degrees of some evidence to suggest one way or the other , the bottom line is NONE of these have been proven of where we came from or where we go if anyplace after death.

A theory, more often than not, is used interchangeably with a hypothesis, and while they’re both somewhat similar, are actually far from the same thing, especially when related to science, math, etc..

A hypothesis is (from the dictionary) a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts.

This is what most people mistake to be the meaning of the word theory.

A theory, in the scientific sense, is the same as a hypothesis, with the added detail that all of the propositions and explanations are in some way empirically verifiable, or that the parts that are not currently verifiable/reproducible at least match and line up in a manner consistent with the empirical data.

So while we may not have been around to keep records and observe Darwin’s theories, we can look at fossils, analyze samples, calculate changes, etc..

The Big Bang theory has what some believe to be measurable waves/ripples, and one of the main goals of the LHC is to try and find more evidence of how and what the Big Bang are. There are measurable radiations and effects, though I can’t currently remember what they’re called or what to look up (though I imagine the Higgs Boson particle is a good place to start reading).

By comparison, the “theory” of creation is not an actual theory, it’s a hypothesis – “A book said so and if you ask any questions you’re going to hell” is not a form of empirical evidence. In fact, all of their “empirical evidence” states things that can be refuted 100% with empirical proof, such as the earth being 6000 years old, and that dinosaurs were on Noah’s ark and co-existed with humans.

To call creationism a theory is like having a theory that all cats speak english and talk in rhymes because there’s a book called The Cat In The Hat that features one prominently.

Reply to Screwhead—— I am well aware of what the definition of THEORY is, and considering that science has been my specialty and I am equally aware of how scientists arrive at a hypothesis. The number “trillions” was just sarcastically a number referring to a great distant past and was not to be taken as a literal timeline date which we haven’t been able to measure anyway. You obviously read into my statement something that wasn’t there or meant. That was YOUR perception and NOT mine in its presentation form. This latter statement is that which I have received from my discussion with scientists and furthermore NOT all scientists agree on the same thing. I have checked the definitions of theory and the definitions of hypothesis and even SOME scientists have considered that individuals who have drawn a hypothesis can still ( in some circumstances ) be categorized as theoretical. While scientific evidence to various degrees lend credence to forming a hypothesis and therefore is assigned the title -THEORY- it indicates still the fact that it has not been proven even though there are some indicators or markers that may lead one to believe or form a hypothesis that this is a strong possibility but is still NOT conclusive. I understand your point but I believe that you are misconstruing mine. Yes, religious dogma is based upon indoctrinated propaganda and is NOT scientific and I am certainly in agreement there , but the bottom line such as ” Darwins Theory” is still a theory nevertheless. I support evolution as everything evolves and I do not embrace theological “creationism ” indoctrination which as even you have stated is NOT based upon empirical evidence. Even fossils themselves only tell us about the animals that were preserved from that specific era of time , but as the point that I was making is that even they ( fossils) DO NOT explain where matter comes from or what came prior to the fossil or the origin of where everything ( matter, life , energy , DNA , etc. ) came from. My point was simply to say we DO NOT know where it all began if there was any beginning and we have NO WAY of knowing what happens after we die. This was in no way meant to get into a debate on hypothesis vs theory. The points that you have made are exactly that which I agree with myself and I hope that you will understand mine. Getting back on the specific topic question is what happens after we die ? I don’t know and neither do you . I have NO idea or any way of knowing what happens beyond the grave or rather AFTER DEATH. Both you and I can theorize from now on but NO ONE can prove or present any facts that is unquestionably verifiable to say for certain that they know factually what happens after we are deceased .

It says here in my Bible that “God is going to smile on you today.” Isn’t that nice.

I have no proof to suggest that human consciousness continues on after death, neither do I have proof to suggest that it does not continue after death.

We simply don’t know. This is why the only thing that matters is between the moment you are born and the moment you are dead. End of debate.

@George TL;DR!

Looks like Billy D -the Bible Thumper is at large. Hey Billy D , you say your God is merciful—Really ? Let’s forget human attrocities but rather talk about the attrocities commited by your GOD himself. Over the past 6 thousand years alone more than 970 million people have died at the hands of religions around the world ( and these are only the monotheistic religions ) and entire civilizations have been wiped out as a result. This has been documented in historical archives , but the Bible-bangers keep up their delusional rubbish about ” GOD IS GOOD ” . Really ? If GOD controls all the forces of nature as you Christians proclaim then every ACT OF GOD ( Holy Horrors ) disaster can be blamed on GOD. Therefore your GOD is responsible for earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes , mud slids, volcanic eruptions, snow blizzards, tsunamis (tidal waves), droughts, famine , every type of biological disease known to human kind such as the Black Plague and the Spanish Flu ( these two plagues alone killed over 100 million people including men, women , children and even babies ). What did innocent children and babies do to deserve such horrible deaths ? What sin can a baby commit to deserve suffering and death ? If there is a GOD then your GOD is the most horrendous villian , fiend, monster , psychotic tyrant, and murderous scumbag that ever existed. It NEVER ceases to amaze me how supposedly intelligent people in this modern era can still believe such fairey tale, superstitious, mythological bullcrap thats imaginable. Oh , I get it Jesus walked on water — Really ? Wow ! What was he wearing on his feet , a pair of Nike pontoons, or a pair of Adidas inflatable tire inner tubes, or perhaps a pair of Reebok air-mattresses strapped around his ankles using Velcro straps . Yeah, that’s gotta be it ! Listen Billy D , if you actually believe that a man that supposedly lived and died 2,000 yeaars ago is going to come back alive and walk the earth in zombie form like a mummy and save us, or a virgin woman got pregnant by a ghost without the sperm of a human male , or that a stick turned into a serpent (snake) , or a burning bush actually talked to a man, or that a man actually lived inside the belly of a whale ( which is an impossibility that anyone with one brain cell of common sense can figure out ), or that some guy built a boat (ark) several times the size of the USS Nimitz class aircraft carrier with his bare hands and then swam around the world and walked the entire earh on foot collecting a female/male pair of animals ( he wrestled tigers, lions , anacondas, gorillas, rhinos, and many thousands of other animal species to save them from some freakin’ flood, a few morsels of bread fed an entire village, a man died and then rose up into the sky magically , a man waved a magic wand and the entire Red Sea parted with giant tidal waves, etc, etc , then you sir are either on some serious hallucinogenic drugs or a serious candidate for a psychiatrist couch. I didn’t want to go on another rant , but I just can’t help it after reading this garbage by Billy D. Spare me. Listen Billy D , prove to me that you can prove what happens after you die. Reciting passages from some stinking book written by brainwashed people of the most superstitious time in known human history DOES NOT prove anything. Where was your Jesus during tyhe Holocaust of the Jews, during centuries of slavery of blacks in America, during Hurricane Katrina, during all the wars that eve existed, during the 9/11 attacks , etc ? Don’t get me started. Show me a video recording of heaven or hell and DON’T tell me about what your BIBLE says. You can’t prove crap. Comedian George Carlin was totally right when he said that religion is the biggest BS that ever existed. Hey Billy D , you really need to wake up to reality and get a life . You PRAY for me and I will THINK for you !!!!!!