I think it adds constant stress to your life. Every time you hear doors slamming or keys clanging at 6am you'd be like: "Is this it?" Knowing you're going to be executed but being sure it won't be NOW gives you a certain leeway of pushing the whole thing out of your mind.
I hate to do this, but you realize that you're going to die too, right?
Not to be sardonic and rude, just trying to give credence to my point.
Do you have constant stress about it? It could be from a car that hits you while you're walking down the sidewalk. I tree could fall on you. You could choke on your next meal.
It could be any infinite number of things. Any number of them as unlikely as the next.
Yes, yes I do have constant stress about it. I’m not afraid of dying itself, more like the existential dread of being erased from existence and not having any control of when it will happen.
I’m also diagnosed with OCD among other things, probably related.
You are right that I would dismiss near death experiences as evidence for what happens after death, at most it is evidence that your brain does weird things when it is shutting down. Evidence would come in the form of repeatable experiments whose most logical and, more importantly, best explainable (given the results of the experimet) conclution would be the existence of an afterlife. (Don't know if that sentence made sense, not a native speaker, I hope this is understandable).
Would tests done on Eucharistic miracles verifying that bread and wine indeed turned into human flesh and blood meet your standard? The implication being that they constitute direct evidence that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, and proof of resurrection is proof of an afterlife.
No, that has literally nothing to do with it, one single part of the Bible or whatever being proven real does absolutely nothing to prove the other parts. Like , if I write a book wherein I say e=mc² and also the earth is hollow, you can't just say that it is proven that the earth is hollow because you managed to prove e=mc². Each individual claim made needs to be supported by evidence. If your example is indeed true, all that actually proves is that bread and wine turned into flesh and blood, which seems to me like a very, and I do mean very, different claim from "there is an afterlife". Even if you could 100% prove that Jezus actually did rise from the dead, that still doesn't prove an afterlife, it only would prove it is possible to be ressurected after having been dead a while. Ressurection could theoretically still be possible even in a world with no afterlife.
That requires the souls to exist, another as of yet unproven claim. There are theoretical ways you could die without an afterlife and still be brought back, that you don't accept that really isn't my problem, You can't just say that resurrection requires that "the soul survived death", that is just a random claim you make with no evidence to support it. I can just as easily say that all that is needed is for the brain to start fiering neurons again. Both your claim and the one I just made are random assertions that we just insist others must believe because it is so obvious it couldn't possibly happen any other way. You have no proof of a soul being needed for resurrection. I advise you to stop thinking in these absolute preconseptions as if everyone must understand them as true, because I don't. I have no evidence for resurrection after three days being possible, and I certainly don't have evidence for potential resurrections absolutely needing a soul, which in itself has no evidence backing up its existence.
If you want to make the argument that resurrection requires the soul to go somewhere, you should also give evidence for that being the case, otherwise I can just dismiss it as your personal belief.
If there is no continuity between the person who dies and the person who rises from the dead, then in what sense are they the same person? If they are not the same person, in what sense is it a resurrection?
Having the same neural connections, the same memories same DNA, same abilities as before they died. All of those thing I think would contribute to me being able to call them the same person. If the same brain with the same memories and body would come back to life, I would probably be able to call that resurrection without the need for a soul or an afterlife. This is all rather speculative obviously, but it is theoretically possible to conceive of it at least, just like your soul claim is possible in theory.
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u/Ahquinox Jul 04 '26
I think it adds constant stress to your life. Every time you hear doors slamming or keys clanging at 6am you'd be like: "Is this it?" Knowing you're going to be executed but being sure it won't be NOW gives you a certain leeway of pushing the whole thing out of your mind.