there is no afterlife

To begin I shall rebut my opponent's arguments and then present my own. My opponent began by criticising the way I phrased my arguments, my opponent must not have read the very first paragraph where I explained why I would be arguing this way. The same goes for my opponents next point. The point of DNA similarities is extremely important as I will prove throughout the debate, because as I will argue the afterlife is a man made idea which in almost all religions only talks about humans being granted access to the afterlife, I feel like I am repeating myself but again I must ask where does one draw the line from distinguishing human from animal and if the animals don't go to an afterlife what happens to them? To my opponents first reference which I read in no way shape or form does it say that there is empirical proof of an afterlife, it was merely one scientists believe there is based on the multiverse theory, also the multiverse theory has not yet been completly been proven either so the argument collapses on itself as he first needs to completely prove the multiverse theory is true before he can even begin his own theory, so the scientist still has all his work in front of him. Also would this not have been a groundbreaking find if it were 'true' however from studying my opponents reference it is merely just the opinion of one scientists, in other words no one is buying what this man is selling. Secondly my opponent talks about near-death experiences also known as NDE's which by definition is already wrong as an NDE is not a dead person by any means. Also what's more likely the all the laws in the universe changed to suit the patient or someone under a full medical drug induced coma had a dream? I think the latter is obvious. It should also be known here that what my opponents is asking you the voters to consider is if you damage one part of the brain (prefrontal cortex ) somthing about the mind and subjectivity is lost (you may be able to remember the names of dogs but not tools, or recognise names but not faces) and you damage another part and yet more is lost (1), but when you damage the whole brain at death we can rise off the brain with all our faculties intact recognizing doctors and speaking english, again this cannot believed by a thinking person. And this argument is an absolute hammer blow to the notion of an afterlife. Now to my arguments Earlier I referred to the afterlife being man made, 'man' being the key word here, I'm sure we have all heard of islam and the 72 virgins promised for male materys of Islam. Buddhism= a man if he leads a bad life and will be reincarnated as a woman, also a women can not reach spiritual enlightenment (2). As the afterlife is obviously man made for man than my DNA argument comes into play again, do only male chimpanzee's gain access to an afterlife? This idea is laughable. Now to the christian afterlife and the eternal concept of heaven and hell, it may come as a surprise that the concept of hell does not make an appearance until the new testament (3) either it is eternal or it is not. Again it should be obvious that the concept of hell was thought up of again by some human at a later date. My final argument for the moment is limbo, a now proven fact that this was a concept of an afterlife invented by man, the Roman Catholic Church in the 13th and 15th centuries made several authoritative declarations on the subject of limbo, stating that the souls of those who die in original sin only (i.e., unbaptized infants) descend into hell but are given lighter punishments than those souls guilty of actual sin. The damnation of infants and also the comparative lightness of their punishment thus became articles of faith (4). Now the Vatican has abolished Limbo thus babies who die before being baptised will no longer be trapped in limbo following a decision by the Pope to abolish the concept from Roman Catholic teaching (5) this argument obviously shatters any concept of an afterlife as it shows how the heads of religion simply invented an idea of their own whim which was firmly believed by millions of their followers and later simply said it was not true. It should be clear ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters that the concept of an afterlife is not only untrue it is a fictitious evil teaching that humanity would do itself a huge service if it broke away from believing. reference: 1. http://www.human-memory.net... 2. http://www.buddhistvihara.com... 3. http://www.tektonics.org... 4. http://www.britannica.com... 5.http://www.telegraph.co.uk...