On 12/22/2014 4:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 21 Dec 2014, at 20:06, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/20/2014 11:05 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Most legal systems punish murder more than any other crime, and those that have the
death penalty reserve it for the worst offenders. Most criminals know that if they
threaten a person with death they are more likely to comply than with other threats.
Most religions, in the absence of any evidence, promise an afterlife. I think this
all supports the fact that it is a common human trait to fear oblivion, even if as
John says it's just a matter of taste.
Stathis Papaioannou
It might be a common human trait to fear oblivion, but it is even more irrational than
belief in an afterlife.
Bruce
"I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and
billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience
from it."'(Mark Twain)
Would do accept to be tortured, here and now, with the promise of 1) 1000,000 $, 2)
total amnesia of the torture?
But then I would have forgotten you owed me a $1,000,000.
If no, the Mark Twain argument is less convincing.
Note that Mark twain provides here an argument for after-life. If I could come from
nowhere, why would that not be possible again? is it not the case all the time? Who are
we, really?
Indeed. As far as I know Twain may have thought another life was possible. He only
satirized the Abrahamic idea of an after-life in heaven or hell. But why would it be HIS
after-life if he didn't remember his prior life?
Brent
"Now then in Earth these people cannot stand much church - an
hour and a quarter is the limit and they draw the line at once a
week. That is to say, Sunday. One day in seven; and even then
they do not look forward to it with longing. And so - consider
what their heaven provides for them: "church" that lasts forever,
and Sabbath that has not end! They quickly weary of this brief
hebdomadal Sabbath here, yet they long for that eternal one;
they dream of it, they talk about it, they think they think they
are going to enjoy it - with all their simple hearts they think
they think they are going to be happy in it!
It is because they do not think at all; they only think they
think.
--- Mark Twain, Letters from Earth
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