An Afterlife is NO threat to an Atheist viewpoint :)

Case #1 Counter: Religion does not own…. Perform thought experiment with me. Your on what well call ‘Planet X’ for now. On Planet X there atmosphere is different though. The air is purer and the oxygen concentration is higher. The outer layers of the atmosphere are also so dense they block UV rays from there Sun. There are also no volcanoes to the peoples current ability to detect them and they feel there science has let them dig pretty deep into the earth so they have never herd of ‘magma’ and have no concept of it. they also have no concept of ‘famine’ either since conditions rig the planet to have so much food that not a single child ever goes to be hungry. For the sake of this thought experiment lets also assume they have done the math and even if the population of the planet grew dramatically the Planet would always have enough food. Now you live on this planet in the future after astronomical events changed the atmosphere and Volcanoes came. So you know about famine and volcanoes. In your time you to invent a time machine. You use it intending to escape to the Eden like era when there was always enough food. It was a one shot trip also. You tell the people in the past, about where you came from and speak of famines and volcanoes. There leading scientist just laugh thinking you are trying to pull there legs. You can’t prove it the machine no longer works and they have no concept of the famine or the volcanoes you speak of. In 5 years the events occur that changed the atmosphere. Planet X no longer makes enough food and the people learn famine. And Magma has broke the surface in one of those 20 feet deep holes. Do these recent events not vindicate your supposed time travel claims for the people of Planet X now? I’m not arguing you ‘own’ volcanoes for speaking of them first, just that when you spoke of them before the science existed for people to know about them, does it not at least say to some degree your source for knowledge was enough of what it claimed to be that it was able to make an accurate telling of famine and volcanoes? Case #2 Counter: No one understands….your putting limits… Straw-man would be the best description of the fallacy to your argument. As you are arguing against claiming to no everything which I have not done at any stretch of the imagination. Case #2 put in its simplest form would go “If A Then B”. ‘if, then’ statements are practically the foundation of logic and reasoning, and they are certainly claims at all knowledge on any given matter. But in any given Topic, IF your given one thing, THEN a range of things can probably be expected. IF you are given Atheism as your starting point assumed philosophy, THEN you should be lead to believe our ‘consciousness’ dies with body it was made in. Even granting there are possible unknown details about our consciousnesses we have yet to discover, it is easy to see no surprise added details will change the known facts, and their consequences. Known fact’s like your consciousness is undeniably attached to your body, born with it, grows with it, and rationally should die with it. If you have a problem with those kind of ‘limits’ then you have a problem with logic and reason all together. Case #3 Counter: I’m not claiming there’s an Afterlife… Whether you personally believe there is an afterlife outside of this debate, a alternate dimension our consciousness goes do upon death, is irrelevant. You are the PRO to this resolution and at the least must defend how you would hypothetically defend belief in an Afterlife from your Atheist viewpoint. If an Afterlife became a known fact, and If you could not make its existence comply with that viewpoint, then it would threaten your view with a need to change your view to something that accounts for the afterlife dimension or at least is not abrasive to it. Case #4: Pantheism Your counter to Case #4 was more of your failed responses to Case #2 and #3 of ‘you claim to know everything’ and ‘I cant prove anything’. I have already addressed those arguments above so this round I shall add on to case #4 a more full description of why an alternate dimension for your ‘consciousness’ to go to at your death should at the least alter your Atheist view to a Pantheist view. I understand not all even know what ‘Pantheism’ means. Pantheism has taken lots of forms overtime under lots of names, and it is a very basic kind of belief in God that follows the basic views of a philosophy Atheist often takes called Naturalism, and so thus should a Naturalist Atheist come to believe in a God he would probably believe in Pantheism. The Pantheist view is that Christian and Judean beliefs are very primitive, imagining God in a ‘Anthropomorphic’ kind of image. While there own view is one without those attributes and for the most part has no defining attributes of its own. For them God could be said to be a common indwelling principal in Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. There God is thought of as a great spiritual ‘force’ pervading in all things, a common mind of which we are all parts of, a pool of generalized spirituality. This Pantheist God is little more than a word for the universe itself understood as if the universe had a consciousness, and by ‘the universe’ I mean absolutely everything that there is, dimensions and all. This God does not do miracles or really anything at all. If you were to admit an afterlife, even the dimension for our consciousness you described, you have stepped out of Atheism and into Pantheism. This dimension you have described as a place our conscious is so connected to already that should your body die it continues to exist in this other dimension, that’s basically a God, and the Pantheist God to be exact. Do you get it now? I’m not arguing for an Afterlife threatening to end your Atheist view in favor of Christianity, I’m arguing it’s threatened to end in favor of Pantheism. Case #5 Counter: Pascal should stay in the Casino… Maybe he should, but if he should or shouldn’t doesn’t matter as you locked yourself in the Casino when you opened up to the question of the Afterlife existing. You stayed out of it making Pascal a refuted argument when you denied there is an Afterlife. But by accepting there could be one, you now in the Casino, the doors are locked and you’re not getting to leave without placing a bet. And Pascal really has nothing to do with odds though, its about consequence. You have taken great pains to stress how you ‘don’t know everything’ and open to possibilities. When you are stuck at Pascal’s table not absolutely knowing is going to affect your bet unless your insane of course. The odds do not favor Christianity or Atheism or anything as far as you know being the right card to pick up off the table and flip over. Pascal has let you know though, even if Atheism is right, you gain nothing, and you could loose much for being wrong. Where as his chosen card he loses nothing for being wrong and gets all for being right. Now maybe you would still bet on the Atheist card just on principal that it’s the one you think is right, the lack of gain irrelevant to you in winning on the card. But this would only be if you KNEW it was the right card and that it was impossible that the card could lose. If it’s not impossible though, just improbable, then you would never sanely bet the farm on such a potentially costly card that gives you nothing. By admitting you don’t know everything you ruled out the ‘it’s impossible’ option. Conclusion: All 5 of my cases still stand as you have not effectively refuted any of them. For a recap they are… 1) Various theist beliefs would be vindicated in a small degree by proof of an afterlife. 2) IF Atheism THEN consciousness should be expected to die with our bodies. 3) Your ground for rejecting unproven things disappears when you start accepting other unproven things. Cant have cake and eat it at the same time (unless you Chuck Norris haha) 4) Atheist + Afterlife = Pantheist 5) Admitting an Afterlife locked you in Pascal’s Casino.