What do atheists think of death?

A technical point. Atheists are just people who don't believe in any Gods. That doesn't mean not believing in any supernatural phenomena. Buddhists, Animists and ancestor worshippers might be good examples of groups who may have no Gods, but may believe in things supernatural, including the existence of an eternal soul. I don't see how you could get a replica planet in a replica solar system without the universe being effectively infinite. A few trillion galaxies wouldn't do it.It's possible that in a multidimensional multi-verse, everything might have a replica or replicas elsewhere. But my replicas, if they exist, aren't me, so that doesn't mean "life after death".But my type of atheist doesn't count such things as existence in eternity or even Gods as impossibilities. It's just that belief in things for which there's no evidence is active, and non-belief in speculative suggestions for which there's no evidence is the sensible norm.Theists prove this by not believing in more than 99.9% of the Gods ever invented, and they usually don't believe in other things that, on the basis of evidence (meaning complete lack of it), are just as possible as Gods, like fairies.If we all walked around believing in things merely because they're not technically impossible, our brains couldn't contain the infinite number of concepts that fit that description, so the sensible policy seems to me to be confining belief to things for which there's positive evidence, and always remembering that belief is an active thing.Babies are atheists, and they don't believe in an afterlife, either.

(a) Because a replica, by definition, is never whatever it is it is replicating.(b) Because I'm consciously aware of myself, but only aware of their possible existence. I automatically refer to them with third person pronouns, and that would not be the case if they were me, would it? If they were me, I would be as sure of their existence as I am of mine, and I'm not. Two "identical" molecules of water, one in the Pacific and one in the Atlantic, are not the same molecule. Who needs a test to know that?

Observing lots people with various kinds of brain damage is one way of knowing. Another is by changing the chemistry of the body temporarily, and you can easily try this on yourself.Try drinking ten double whiskies over the course of an hour, for example, then later, see how good your memory of the last fifteen minutes of that period is, and ask your friends whether your personality changed during the hour.

O.K. If we agree on that for the sake of argument, you must agree that the two locations in space-time have to be identical in order to produce two bluegenes, and have to remain identical. When I look up at the stars, what I see must have some chemical effect on my brain, so the two blues would have to be looking out at identical visible universes. So, that's what I mean when I say that the universe would have to be effectively infinite.The effect is a bit like the effect of reincarnation, which never particularly appealed to me, because, if we do get reincarnated, nobody seems to remember their past lives, if you discount a few apparent nutters who were always Napoleon or Cleopatra!In the same way, the other bluegenes or fgarbs do not know of our existence, or we of theirs, so the whole business would have no effect on existence whether it happens or not.What's the difference between living your life once, and living an exactly identical life millions of times over?So, it could be, and like you I have no opinion on it either way, other than that having an infinite number of identical lives and deaths is no better or worse than just having one, and it is not really the same as the ideas of eternal on-going existence, which certainly account for some of the appeal of religions.The idea of an infinite number of slightly diverging lives as parallel universes split from one another might be more interesting, although it wouldn't seem to bequeath immortality, as we would cease to exist at some point in the space-time of every universe, presumably.

Neither do Animists or Jains. I think that some forms of animism even grant souls to inanimate objects, so that a rock could have an eternal existence.Sounds a bit of a waste, as it would be indifferent to the privilege, but it does show a charming lack of elitism amongst some human cultures that live close to nature.Edited by bluegenes, : called onifre "onfire"!!!

I see your point, that teleportation does involve two chemically identical bodies, like the idea in the O.P., but I think that the effect is completely different. The O.P. idea is more like having ultra-identical twins that are never aware of each others existence. And to be chemically identical presumably means identical environments and identical lives.With teleportation, you get the continuation of one person's existence, with a slight blip in time, like falling unconscious for a few seconds when you're expecting to do so. It's more like the process by which virtually all the cells of our bodies, and virtually all the atoms, are replaced over a period of several years, but speeded up.So, if we regarded that natural process as a sort of continual part-dying and part-resurrecting (which we don't) then teleportation would be complete death and resurrection, but I agree with you that there's no point in seeing it that way, and Spock, supposedly ultra-logical, never seemed to go into mourning, if my memory serves me correctly.

If you mean that you'd be technically dead or non-existent for the period of transportation, yes. But it wouldn't feel like it on revival. I was never a big star trek fan, but I remember some physicist calculating that it would take more energy than there is in the sun to transport one person (or something like that).Perhaps you're the person to help us out on the idea of the universe being sufficiently large to repeat the exact circumstances of this planet more than once, and make exact replica cavedivers diving in exact replica caves.

The O.P. question was for atheists, not materialists. And free thinkers aren't like religious people. They don't claim to know ultimate truths.

No. I am a member, and have read around a little, but have yet to post. But what I really meant above is that there's no such thing as a "true" school of atheism, because atheists are only defined by their lack of belief in Gods, not by anything that they do actually believe in. So, we're not defined by anything that we collectively all think that we know about the universe or anything.We don't even know if there are no Gods, because that's impossible to know, and if IIDB is full of people who think that they do know this, then they're obviously wrong headed from this infidel's point of view.To put it another way, expecting there to be a true school of atheism is a bit like expecting all the people who don't believe in fairies to vote for the same political party, or share the same philosophy of life.I know this is rather off topic, but it does relate a bit to the O.P., which discusses atheists, but in a way that's slightly misleading, because some do believe in an eternal soul. Just not in any Gods.

As you've defined the person being lost as a "loved one", don't you think that's a rather naive question? Self-defense? What about the death penalty? Is there such a thing as justifiable warfare? Could you be asking another naive and not very well thought out question?Sorry to answer your questions with questions, but don't you think that you need to be a bit clearer about what you mean?And welcome to EvC, and culture wars without death.

What is wrong with killing someone who is trying to kill you in self-defense? Can't you see that "is it wrong to kill another human?" is a question to which the only reasonable answer is "it depends on the circumstances."You also seem to be addressing this question to atheists, as if theists don't believe in killing other human beings, even though history and our present times show this to be absolutely wrong. Theists are remarkably good at making up reasons for killing others, and Gods are usually pretty violent and murderous beings, the God of the bible certainly being no exception.Atheists are probably less likely than theists to fly airplanes full of people into skyscrapers full of people because they would be less likely to be able to delude themselves that there's a reason for doing so.None of your questions have anything to do with the subject of this thread, which is about the attitude of atheists to life after death. This means that all of us who've replied to you have been off topic.If you want to discuss the morals of killing and how people of various philosophies decide who they can or cannot kill, then perhaps you ought to start a thread on the subject.

Read the original post. The topic is about what atheists think of their own deaths, and possibilities of existence after death. It isn't about the ethics of killing other people.The ethics of killing might make for an interesting topic, so why not propose a thread about it in the "proposed new topics" section of the site, if that's what you're interested in discussing.