An Afterlife is NO threat to an Atheist viewpoint :)

All right then no rules, (except of course we are to focus this debate on this resolution in specific, and not to deviate from it obviously) No need for clarity on any definitions although it is possible the definition of an “afterlife’ might come up later but we will burn that bridge when we get to it. I hope you feel special deviant.genie because for this debate I have decided to argue not with a persona of assuming I am speaking to a crowd of our reading voting audience, I’m going to just speak to you personally making a sincere attempt at persuading just you. For this resolution “An Afterlife is NO threat to an Atheist viewpoint” I do not need to or desire to convince you to drop your Atheist view. By all means know that I am fine with you remaining an atheist by the time we are done with this debate if you just listen to what I say on the afterlife, and be a little more rational about your own viewpoint that you want to keep I will be arguing as though for the time being I think like you and own your non-theist perspective. So if some theist came to me making a case for God with the afterlife I could see myself still being an atheist but not because an afterlife is no threat to my view but because I would not “throw the baby out with the bathwater”. The Atheist viewpoint you want to keep being the baby, and the fact that an Afterlife should be bothering to it being the bathwater. To be able to say “an afterlife would be a threat to an Atheist viewpoint” one would only have to show how hypothetically if it were confirmed with proof that an Afterlife existed, then you Atheist viewpoint should rationally be threatened, maybe even enough to come shattering to an end. Case #1: If for any reason you found yourself suddenly knowing without a doubt an afterlife of some kind existed, you would immediately find there is immediately a HUGE elephant in the room because of this, and that elephant is the fact that theist religions for thousands of years have already been onto the fact that there is an afterlife. By mere virtue of that fact should make you seriously consider if they were right about that, they were probably right a about other things like there is a God or Gods. It would be a fairly reasonable to think It was not just coincidence the many religions were right about an after life, but that a there was something legit in at least some degree there source for knowing this fact. Case #2: Like I said, an atheist view is necessarily one of the philosophy Naturalism, which is a belief that rules out the possibility of a Supernatural God everything is a part of Nature, the universe, and the universes great chain of cause and effects. From the atheist naturalist perspective, there are no Gods that are behind the creation of what we call our souls. Our souls are the natural product of evolution. The thing we call our soul has been measured as a system of frequencies and electrical activity within our brain. That is all there is too it. When we die our brain no longer supports sustaining any electrical activity within itself and so all the energy within it ceases to be. Like a flame on a candle that’s put out, the flame does not become the smoke it just no longer exist. There’s no room to think its possible your soul continues to exist because you do not expect it to. The battery’s are dead and so the of course we believe the voltage is no more. Case #3: Now, to directly address your ‘alternate dimension’ argument. To say that its possible for an alternate dimensions for our souls to go to is a lot like giving up on all your reasons for being an atheist. You might as well have said “its possible god exist” and “the bible is his word”. From the atheist viewpoint that’s a ungrounded claim made on faith, and your alternate dimension claim would be just as groundless. So to suddenly give ground in your eyes for this alternate dimension to stand on, you have to simultaneously give that ground back equally for belief in God, Pixies, and Werewolves. And to continue to attack the God theory as being too groundless to consider means you have to take away the same room for considering your alternate dimension theory. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Case #4: Even if though I drop Case # 3, and let your acknowledgement of another dimension for souls to go to come to the table for an atheist viewpoint, we basically have to lose our atheist view point to do so. At the very least this alternate dimension that sucks our souls into it and sustains them when we die is a supernatural force because it is from outside nature and its interfering and affecting our own nature. At best you could continue to believe this supernatural force is just a part of nature or rather is all of nature itself but then you end up with a belief called Pantheism, which is a kind of theism. Case #5: Its worth bringing up Pascal’s Wager just once in this debate, if only for a brief note. To many Athiest treat it like it’s the dumbest of arguments but that’s only because the critique it for the wrong end goal its point is for. They critique it as if Pascal is trying to prove god. But its not an argument that try’s to prove anything. Pascal’s point is just one about dealing with 2 unknowns if there being equally considered. If one is unsure in having faith in a God and being a Christian, but there also unsure in denying his existence, and if they believe they will never be able to know for SURE what the case is either way, then might as well pick Christianity. Because being wrong is consequenceless and being right is rewarding. Taking the atheist side though, being wrong is an eternity of suffering, and being right is consequenceless. Among the chief reasons for the dismissal of Pascal’s argument is in denying there is a afterlife we go to upon death to worry about. But for purposes of this debate’s resolution we are determining if accepting an afterlife’s existence is a threat to an atheist viewpoint. So denying there is an afterlife is no longer an option and Pascal’s Wager suddenly gets new life. If you were to now find out without a doubt there is an afterlife but nothing about it, Pascal’s wager should give you a shake to the core of your atheism. You know there’s an afterlife but not what awaits you there. Maybe it’s a Pantheist kind of afterlife, and all our souls just go back to a universal consciousness that is ‘God’, or maybe that other dimension that’s awaiting your soul is hell and sorrow and gnashing of teeth await you there. You now have reason to spend every waking moment for the remainder of your life finding out details from any theologian, religious leader, philosophy, mystic, ect….that has ever claimed any knowledge about what awaits us in the next reality and try and determine which of these experts was most likely right. The theist views of the world have long known about a an afterlife before the scientific studies were in there infancy and leading scientist like Charles Darwin still ignorantly thought our cells were made of mud platelets, so there views should be given credit if you are ever given reason to know there is an afterlife. Conclusion: So you see, an Afterlife and Naturalism simply do not go together. Perhaps anything I could tell you or argue to you about the afterlife would not threaten your ability to still believe there is no God, but only because you have to flat out deny that there is an Afterlife and contend that one exist. If you are to be a Naturalist, you necessarily should based on that foundation of thought believe that the soul, if you call anything a soul that is inside you like your brainwaves or something, is not eternal. Your viewpoint if it is to be consistent needs to believe your soul comes to an end upon death.