BBC Focus Magazine

[Shadowwolf]

That you're able to ask that question on that device over a global network whilst not one other species can.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Exactly Mr Lloyd, we are not imortal. However, what makes us think that we are any more special than any other species that shares this blue dot with us?

Well apart from the observation made by Mr.S............ we can leave that little blue dot.

[Lateralman]

We are wondering off topic a little, so I will not mention the various ways other creatures communicate over long distances such as whales, dolphins...

Mr Lloyd you say when we die we are gone and all is lost; I say you live on through your children. If that is correct then you are not gone for they are visible evidence of an afterlife for you to interact with right now. Children are the rebirth of the souls of two people before death.

Furthermore, I think that fragments of the memories of the parents must pass on to the child. In addition, to them could be fragments of the memories of their ancestors, perhaps deeply embedded traumatic experiences. I am guessing that this is why some of us get flashbacks, déjà vu, sixth sense, instincts, see spirits, ect.

I do not believe when we are born, we are born with a mind that is a completely clean slate; some information deep within our genes has to pass down from generation to generation just as everything else is.

It is all a jumble, he has his mothers’ eyes, and she has her fathers’ temperament.

Look for the afterlife in any maternity ward.

I cannot prove any of this but to me it seems logical, perhaps I have had a vision.

[MikeG]

That you're able to ask that question on that device over a global network whilst not one other species can.

Allow me to point out a headline in Wired

Orangutans at Miami Zoo Use iPads to Communicate

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/05/ ... -the-ipad/

So maybe they can't produce iPads themselves, but I'm willing to bet nobody else on this forum can either

[Shadowwolf]

Ah yes but some humans can and can use them with less than extensive training. Orangutans don't even have the basic knowledge underlying how the device operates let alone build it, and require extensive training.

[M Paul Lloyd]

At the risk of wandering even further off topic I'm left wondering what use a mobile phone/tablet etc would be if it were transported back to say the 19th century ??.............. I mean wihout its supporting technology it wouldn't work at all and regradless of whether you knew how it worked or if you could even make one or not it would just make you look a bit of an idiot.

On the other hand if technology suddenly failed us the person with a bow and arrow suddenly holds all the aces.

[Lateralman]

True Mr Lloyd, no electricity and Robin Hood holds all the aces.

Hey! Where’s the party?

[Lateralman]

I only mention other creatures because although they are wild and have to kill to survive they are not comparable to us.

When their bellies are full, they lay down to rest whereas our appetite is insatiable.

The point I am endeavouring to make is as the song goes, “I believe the children are our future,” all available monies should be spirited away towards protecting and nurturing them.

Logically they are our reincarnation, this cannot be denied.

Children are priority number one and should automatically receive any breakthrough medicines or have any other health issues sorted out first. For free for nothing for zilch for nought.
Searching for the afterlife is something that we can do nothing about even if we had confirmation that there was one.

Personally, I have no idea of what comes next but as Mr Lloyd pointed out in the grand scheme of things, we are all only here for a very short time before we are dust blown away on the solar winds to be reunited or not with past loved ones.

If there is anything to any of this, we might be measured by whatever awaits our ultimate fate by the good we have done.
Reason tells me not all those who waste money looking for the afterlife will have one.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Point taken Lateral our children are our future and should be of the highest priority, but we do need to point them in the right direction and not waste their precious minds on trivial things like an afterlife or all powerful deities and such. ?
Am I wrong?

[Jamie]

It's a load of b*ll*cks.

The only reason anyone ever invented an 'afterlife' is so that they could control you whilst you were alive. 'Don't steal that man's goat, or you'll burn in hell, for all eternity." That and "I know life's hard now, but you'll get your reward in heaven."

Magically, everyone is complaint. Add a few hundred years in and everyone thinks it's true.

NDE's are just your mind working in weird ways when deprived of oxygen, which, to be fair, happens to most people before they die.

Off topic, but this article makes me laugh: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19199411

Perhaps the reason they were fasting in the first place is because they thought the entire earth consisted of a small piece of the Middle East. And not, as is now obvious, is a small blue dot in the middle of nowhere.

But no, let's not admit we got it wrong. No, lets make up some extra rules instead. *sigh*

[Lateralman]

Mr Lloyd my answer to your question is yes from the perspective of caring for children and no from the perspective of guidance, for unfortunately this rose tinted belief is not applicable to the majority.

I dread to think what our world would be like if it were overflowing with ‘none’ academic atheists.

For when you know nothing, believe in nothing, you have nothing to lose, so anything goes, thus allowing evil to proliferate.

[Shadowwolf]

I dread to think what our world would be like if it were overflowing with ‘none’ academic atheists.

For when you know nothing, believe in nothing, you have nothing to lose, so anything goes, thus allowing evil to proliferate.

By posting such profoundly ignorant statements which even the barest slip of knowledge would falsify I can only conclude that you're intent is nothing more than pointless trolling.

You should know better.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Mr Lloyd my answer to your question is yes from the perspective of caring for children and no from the perspective of guidance, for unfortunately this rose tinted belief is not applicable to the majority.

I dread to think what our world would be like if it were overflowing with ‘none’ academic atheists.

For when you know nothing, believe in nothing, you have nothing to lose, so anything goes, thus allowing evil to proliferate.

Are you suggesting I am evil?

[Lateralman]

Evil! Of course not but you have to accept that we cannot all be academics.

Collectively most good religions give us a yardstick as to how we should behave to one another and conduct ourselves. As scientists do not have the answers to the big questions, until they do, the watchword has to be tolerance.

Suggestions of there being bubble universes, that there being no deities, alongside us being unsure of what is real and the likes are in the main only suggestions without substantiation.

With no sign of life beyond our world so far, conditions are too perfect for us here and yet we do not know why.

Personally, I think that the results of any research into the afterlife can lead us towards a situation where for obvious reasons by knowing or not we lose out either way. Curiosity killed the cat as it where.

It is a truth that there is good and evil in this world, as ‘one peoples’ we have to have faith in something, preferably good, otherwise we are lost.

[Shadowwolf]

I dread to think what our world would be like if it were overflowing with ‘none’ academic atheists.

Collectively most good religions give us a yardstick as to how we should behave to one another [...] the watchword has to be tolerance.

Oh, like the 11yr old girl currently under arrest for blasphemy whilst other offended people threaten all the local Christians. Or Scotland's awarding of equal marriage rights to all people that is opposed and called a, grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right." That "yardstick" of behaviour? That kind of "tolerance"?

With no sign of life beyond our world so far, conditions are too perfect for us here and yet we do not know why.

Absolute and utter nonsense. You know why conditions are perfect enough for us? Of course you don't, you'd have to think to manage that and clearly you don't have much time for thinking. We're here, if the conditions weren't sufficiently clement then we wouldn't be here. It's not as if we're orbiting somewhere beyond Jupiter surrounded by frozen worlds and no good reason for us not being a block of ice.

And as we're speaking about your lack of thinking, none of your tangents into the terrible woes of more unbelievers and that mawkish drivel about having to have faith in something has the slightest relation to the OP.

[MikeG]

With no sign of life beyond our world so far, conditions are too perfect for us here and yet we do not know why.

The universe is so vast, with so many billions of planets and so many variatiables (solar masses, distances from the sun, rocky, non rocky worlds, gravitational fields, moons, and what not), that we just lucked out. Sentient life is a numbers game, and our number came up on the roulette wheel. Given the vast number of planets believed to orbit other suns, it's inevitable that other planets, inhabited by likewise sentient beings exist.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Evil! Of course not but you have to accept that we cannot all be academics.

I see, so what you are suggesting is that it is ok to be an atheist if you are clever but ordinary folk need morals thrust upon them?

Have you had a look at what is going on in Syria just lately Lateral?

Ordinary, and supposedly god fearing people killing and maiming each other on a vast scale, and yes they may well justify it all by claiming they are in a battle to free themselves from an evil tyranny, but have they not reduced themselves to the same dreadful god-less level by their very actions?

It seems to me that many of these religions have precious little to do with the peace and love and moral attitudes they purport to uphold...

[Lateralman]

Hang on a minute chaps, I am only endeavouring to answer the original question, “Wasted or Not?”
I did not bring up the topic of deities, though realistically you can hardly refer to there being an afterlife without doing so.

All I am saying is if ‘suggestions’ such as this come from men of science, men of letters, men who we respect who may be teachers, men who may or may not have faith, the top down effect is that they can gradually erode peoples values and beliefs. They can erode society and if that should happen pop goes our bubble universe, books burned and chaos reigns.

Yet the irony of it all is...NONE OF IT IS PROVEN.

Being human, we need a crutch, have to have values, belief in something. Who is going to guide us, teach us right from wrong, good from bad, scientists?

Which leads me to ask this question, is any ‘scientific’ study of this field questionable? Alternatively, is it preferable to admit in some instances there are some things we are better off not knowing...for now.

[M Paul Lloyd]

All I am saying is if ‘suggestions’ such as this come from men of science, men of letters, men who we respect who may be teachers, men who may or may not have faith, the top down effect is that they can gradually erode peoples values and beliefs. They can erode society and if that should happen pop goes our bubble universe, books burned and chaos reigns.

Utterly mind-numbing cobblers.
It does not "erode peoples values and beliefs" or indeed those of "society" ...... Living a lie is not living at all and its time that people stopped believing in such silly woo as an afterlife and got on with just living.

And, if anything is eroding society and its moral attitudes its the ever expanding diversity of barmy belief in god and an afterlife. It divides whole social communities, creates conflict, anger, political and ethnic bias which inevitably leads to war and death and suffering.

[Shadowwolf]

I'm drawing a line here, stick to OP or deletion will be forthcoming.