If atheism requires no faith, only a disbelief in God, what about the belief that there is no life after death?

You can believe or dis-believe anything you want.
What you can't escape are the rammifications of those decisions.
Many are eternal in nature.

My guess would be that atheists don't think there are ramifications for not believing in an afterlife. Maybe that is the attraction.

You either have faith there is some sort of life after death or you have faith there isn't. I don't know of a named designation for having the belief either way. Both positions require faith because there is no proof for us. It's hard for me to imagine that once the clock strikes midnight for me, all my thoughts, memories and experiences will simply stop and vanish. I can't reason that.

There's a lot of things we can't fathom. Edge of the universe for example. Beginning of time. The infinity of the smallest particle. The beginning of life.

While having faith is required for both views, it makes one's life easier to live if they have faith there is something after death. Otherwise, what is the point of life at all besides occupying a short duration in an infinite amount of time?

This has been thought about and theorized for centuries and will continue on for as long as man exists. I have never read a term representing either view I don't believe.

I cannot fathom a one and done scenario under any circumstances because even if the vehicle for "my" consciousness goes offline, consciousness itself didn't go anywhere. So "I" will be conscious in another form at the ver least because consciousness cannot be destroyed with the vehicle anymore than shooting my TV kills whatever was being broadcast through it.

atheists can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

stop putting so much pressure on their spiraling religious faith.

When you're dead. You're gone. There's nothing there, which is fine to me. Better make the best out of life instead of hoping you will be a happy corpse. Even if there were a God, with all the religions around you better hope you are praying to the right one, instead of praying to the wrong one and pissing the right one off more everytime you do it.

There is no certainty except for what can be imperically proven, there has been no proof of heaven or any god, so don't delude yourself into a false sense of being right.

Being dead is just that. The absence of vital signs, no life except for the worms, insects, bacteria, molds and plants that will feed on you.

It's ironic that you speak of empirical proof and a false sense of being right, but there is not a shred of empirical proof whatsoever that you only have this life. It's just as much a faith statement as any a devout religious person could come up with, which is my point.

Faith is defined as "belief in things unseen." If you do not believe in those unseen things, you have no faith. Those who claim that a lack of belief on a god or afterlife is also faith do not understand the definition of the word.

Like my favorite poster says, "Atheism is a religion like 'Off' is a television channel."

I am not speaking of a lack of belief. I am speaking of a belief that this life is all you get. That is a faith statement because it has no supporting evidence.

Yup, but I have proof I have this life I have right now, not of a next one or the one before. Atheism is all about realism and pragmatism to me. I can prove I am alive right now with a pretty high certainty, but can you hand me proof that there will be an afterlife for you?

Don't look at atheists as being part of a group, or religion, atheism is not organised and atheists do not have the same dogma to follow. All they have in common is the lack of faith. Faith is accepting something to be true despite having no evidence to back it up. Religions require faith, because of a.lack of evidence to support many, if not most, of the claims made in their religious books. There is nothing wrong with being religious or having faith by the way, it just shouldn't impact any kind of decisionmaking that affects the collective. Those decisions should be based on face and not assumptions. If you think that after you die you leave your.body and float up into the heavens that's alright with me, as long as you don't get to decide what will happen to me when I kick the bucket. It's moot anyway.

I don't really like these kind of discusions, it is hard to have a discusion when what you believe to be true at the very basic level conflicts and not to be offensive. I want to make it clear I don't intend to be, you will know whem I do. My english is pretty decent but there is still a bit of a language barier which doesnt really help me convey my deepest thoughts like I would in dutch.

I don't see anything offensive in anything you say, so no worries there. I agree with you that religions require faith. My point is that a belief that there is only one life also requires faith because just as with most religious beliefs, there is no evidence to support it. So in that way, an atheist who believes in only this life is working from the same basis of faith as is the religious person.

I cannot prove there is an afterlife, but the evidence for such would be that consciousness is still present when the particular vehicle expressing it goes offline. So if there is still consciousness, it would seem highly likely that it will be experienced, just in a different vehicle.

The evidence that proves multiple lives is very circumstantial and based on "stories" which people embellish all the time to either make money or prey on people's gullibility.

On the other hand there's abundant evidence to support evolution of our species and all others on this planet going back over several hundred million years.

atheists are the opposite of religious people but the same at the same time. Why? They both believe without proof aka faith.

But for all that, there is no evidence to support the idea that this is the only life you gut. Not even stories, myths, or anything of the kind. So when you think about it, embracing the idea of there being no afterlife requires even greater faith than being religious. Quite ironic when you think about it.

Precisely.

No they are not the same in that way, when an atheist gets disproven he will admit to being disproven and will search for another explanation. It's kind of hard to disprove facts though,
As an example you can't disprove the existence of gravity, even though we can't see it, everytime you lift up an object and let it go it will fall to the ground, but maybe you can disprove Newton's formula that describes how gravity and mass interact. If you do that and can mathematically prove it, everyone will accept it and incorporate it. It has nothing to do with faith, it has to do with what we can know with certainty with the instruments and knowledge right now and admitting there is stuff we don't fully understand or stuff we haven't even discovered yet and that we still need to explore it. There is no dogmatic thinking because everything is open to questioning as long as you can back your claims with evidence.

Religion has faith, which is saying: I don't know what causes this, it must be God. And then tyranise the people that do question or oppose. There is dogma. Like in communism and fascism, dogma.

It is the complete opposite, don't try to spin this.

Evolution is also a faith based system. It's essentially a religion.

I wish I could share your belief that atheists will admit to being disproven and then search for another explanation, but in my long experience, I see precious little of that happening. Similarly, with science, the same stubborn clinging to challenged theories goes on all the time. One example is the notion of comets being dirty snowballs. This notion has been severely damaged with the probes that showed that it isn't the case at all, but the idea still is put forth even though it is riddled with holes.

Another instance, and one closer to the topic, is darwinian evolution. It has been challenged by many scientists and shown to have real problems, but it is still put forth as being true. Religion is dogmatic as you say, but there are many dogmatic atheists as well. Like I said at the start, there is simply zero evidence for this being the only life we have, therefore, it is a faith claim just like any in religion. But it is put forth as the truth by many atheists even though it is nothing but a faith claim, and that is as dogmatic as any religious belief.

I would agree with you if you amend that to darwinian evolution, the idea that different species evolved via random mutations naturally selected.

This claim would have made sense if we lived in 1859 when Darwin published his book On the origin of species, but as you are probably aware since then fossil evidence has been found that backs the theory up. You can visit those fossils if you'd like.

It's ridicilous that I have to even say this, have you not been educated?
Try to disprove the fossils and provide proof of creation, offer the world the evidence so it can be tested and experimemted on, and then you can say that evolution is based on faith and God made us. Until then you should be glad that your beliefs are even being taken into consideration by people that do think and experiment for themselves whom are interested in the truth and the betterment of earth and our species.

Oh and don't go to hospitals anymore, all that stuff scientists found out that stemmed from Darwins work might be harmful to you..

thats an agnostic.

This has been proven in laboratoria and results been repeated, can be observed within a few generations even, by studying virusses and bacteria.

Atheism requires just as much faith as theism

The fossil record is deeply problematic as far as intermediate species goes. This has been a recognized thorn in the side of the theory for a long time. Don't assume that a challenge to evolution is an argument for creationism. I can't speak for the person you are responding to, but I don't believe in darwinian evolution and I don't believe in creationism. There has to be another option because however it happened, random mutations naturally selected is not sufficient to explain it.

No, an agnostic says there is no proof for God but won't reject the notion of the possible existence of a God or several Gods.

An atheist says, there is no proof to the claim God exists, therefore there is no God.

Again a big difference, may I suggest you don't interfere in a discussion if you can't even get the basic terminology right? I have a sense that you are just saying stuff for the sake of acting like you have some understanding on the subject, don't do that, fact checking is very easy with the click of a button nowadays and you just come across as stupid.

You are speaking of evolution within a species, not evolution from one species to another. Whatever changes occur, the bacteria are still bacteria, the fruit flies are still fruit flies, etc.

Consciousness = Energy


Energy cannot be created nor destroyed (laws of thermodynamics). Energy is forever.

Think about it.

You take the selection literal, the selection is based on changes in enviroment. If you have an advantage by having a predisposition to have extra body fat because of a novel mutation or because it runs in the family and a famine comes, you and other fatties have a higher chance of surviving and reproducing. The skinny people will die in greater number and there is will be a higher prevalence of the 'fat gene' which will cause more humans to be fat in the next generations. The next famine less people will die, but skinny people will still be more vulnerable and have higher mortality and so forth.

Also nowadays with forensic and genetic evidence it is proven that all life on earth share DNA and that humans and other mammals share a large portion of their DNA which backs up theory of common ancestry and therefore the branching out into subspecies and new species.

But we can always agree to disagree ;)

I am not sure consciousness is energy, but prior to energy, the ground of being. But the idea is similar in that consciousness cannot be destroyed just as energy cannot be destroyed ala the conservancy principal or whatever its called.

Consciousness being the ground of being, all it can do is change vehicles, so even though your vehicle dies, you, being consciousness, still remain. Hence, there is an afterlife.