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MG wrote:In Einstein's case did he say that he “cannot conceive” of individual survival and that it is “beyond [his] comprehension,” then treat this as support for denying it?

Some of Einstein's peers did believe in an afterlife, didn't they?

He had a few comments, but one was "one life is enough for me," which indicates that he doesn't even find the notion desirable.

I think you're missing the point by moving on to his contemporaries, perhaps they believed in an afterlife? I do not consider Einstein or the Sadducees or the first five books of Moses as the ultimate authority on life after death. My point is only that there are plenty of examples of belief in God by individuals and entire cultures that also lack a belief in an afterlife. It's quite possible to believe in a creator of this universe who did not see the point in either a) bringing certain organism back to life after they die, presumably "forever" b) installing a ghostly core for certain organisms that lives on after they "die".

For me personally, while I don't believe in God, I find the possibility of God far more reasonable than resurrection and heaven for certain of his creations, not to mention the MLM version of it in Mormonism. But my opinion on the fact of the matter is also beyond the point, the point being that a creator in no way implies a creation that lives forever. And while more people than not who believe in God today probably believe in an afterlife, there are plenty of examples of people and cultures who believe in God and not an afterlife. And also, there are plenty who believe in an afterlife but don't believe in God! (at least not a personal God)

MG 2.0 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 12:56 am

You’re right that ‘God’ and ‘afterlife’ are logically separable concepts in the abstract, but once ‘God’ is specified as a good, personal creator of moral agents, the hypothesis of an afterlife becomes a natural and arguably expected consequence of that God’s character and purposes, rather than a disconnected add‑on.

You emphasize "in the abstract." Of course we're arguing about things that are, as you shout out, in the abstract. Please tell me what's more abstract than the concept of an afterlife? Or the idea of a God? We can't make a discussion about life after death into anything but an abstraction. Why are you pretending otherwise?

It only "becomes a natural and arguably expected consequence of that God’s character and purposes" if you take Perpexity AI's word for it. Absent knowing what your prompt was, it's unfair for you to ask me to engage her.

To be fair, even without your girl Perplexity's help, I'm not sure I'd accept your assessment of God's character and purposes. Defining the character of God seems to be one of those abstractions! that people have a difficult time agreeing on. Is God a deity who drowns his kids in the bathtub when he gets angry (see, for example, Noah's ark) or is he the water-to-wine God of wedding parties?

MG 2.0 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 12:56 am

I was just talking to someone today in my neighborhood who is an atheist. Has been for forty years or so. I mentioned that I went through a period of time 'in the same boat' as he. I said that that to me it doesn't logically follow that a 'good God', a perfectly moral God, the creator of agents with moral judgement, would simply annihilate us at death.
It just doesn't make any sense to me.

We already know what makes sense to you. However, you only told half of the story. What did your forty-year-atheist buddy say in reply? What makes sense to him?

MG 2.0 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 12:56 am

If there is a God it seems reasonable to believe that this God has a purpose in mind for His creations which includes moral agency to choose/grow/progress.

Sure. But that you personally find something reasonable has little to do with either reality or what others find reasonable.

MG 2.0 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 12:56 am

I suppose you could believe in an afterlife without believing in a personal/loving God but the most coherent and morally fitting outcome, to me, seems to be a situation in which God is working along with us in concert towards some greater goal. Some kind of eternal goal. Otherwise, it all comes down to annihilation again.

Of course one could believe in an afterlife without believing in a personal God. Many years ago, I studied meditation under a mentor who taught about the transmigration of souls--or reincarnation, which is a kind of afterlife--without subscribing to any kind of belief in a personal God. You could never know a better man than he.

MG 2.0 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 12:56 am

That seems to be at cross purposes with a perfectly moral/superior Creator.

You keep referring to a God who is 'perfectly moral.' Is this the perfectly moral Hebrew God who promoted slavery in the Old Testament? Or is it the morally superior Mormon God who commanded his prophet to screw the babysitter behind his wife's back?

You also keep referring to annihilation. To one who has lived a full and rich life, the idea of death--that step into the unknown--might not feel like annihilation. For a person who has lived long, deep, and well, I would imagine death might feel like a well-earned rest.

There is an argument that something must have gone to a lot of trouble to create precisely the world we have, with the particular people that are in it. Controlling all the initial conditions of the universe would seem to involve knowing everyone intimately. Maybe a lifetime is long enough for God to get sick of us, but in that case why make us at all in the first place? And on the other hand, one of the few purposes that it is possible to imagine for the universe is that it is a backstory for characters who will appear in further episodes: a womb for souls.

I think the argument is worth something; in particular, I'm inclined to believe it. It does not count as evidence. It's an argument.

And it's certainly not an ironclad argument, either. It's a plausibility pitch. As far as we can tell, there could indeed be some form of God, but no afterlife, or some form of afterlife, but no God. The argument requires one to suppose not just any kind of God, but a certain sub-class of seemingly possible Gods, who like creatures like us enough to want to keep us around, and who have the means to do that because generating realities is God's job. The argument is only as plausible as one finds that subclass of people-loving Gods to be.

I don't think the argument is just a tautology, though. It doesn't just start by asking us to assume specifically that God wants to give everyone afterlives. It's not trivial. It has a certain amount of weight as informal reasoning.

Physics Guy wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 8:31 am

There is an argument that something must have gone to a lot of trouble to create precisely the world we have, with the particular people that are in it. Controlling all the initial conditions of the universe would seem to involve knowing everyone intimately. Maybe a lifetime is long enough for God to get sick of us, but in that case why make us at all in the first place? And on the other hand, one of the few purposes that it is possible to imagine for the universe is that it is a backstory for characters who will appear in further episodes: a womb for souls.

I think the argument is worth something; in particular, I'm inclined to believe it. It does not count as evidence. It's an argument.

And it's certainly not an ironclad argument, either. It's a plausibility pitch. As far as we can tell, there could indeed be some form of God, but no afterlife, or some form of afterlife, but no God. The argument requires one to suppose not just any kind of God, but a certain sub-class of seemingly possible Gods, who like creatures like us enough to want to keep us around, and who have the means to do that because generating realities is God's job. The argument is only as plausible as one finds that subclass of people-loving Gods to be.

I don't think the argument is just a tautology, though. It doesn't just start by asking us to assume specifically that God wants to give everyone afterlives. It's not trivial. It has a certain amount of weight as informal reasoning.

Is it reasonable to assume that there are things about the Universe, and things existing within the Universe, that we don't yet know about? Yes, of course it is reasonable to make that assumption. The term "God" means different things to different people, all of which are the creations of humans theorising about those unknown things. The notion of an after life is appealing if one is close to and/or afraid of the idea that one ceased to exist prior to birth, and will once again cease to exist after death. I can see where there might be comfort in a belief that this life isn't all there is. But there isn't any rational, reasonable, objective evidence to support that notion. All we have is a vacuum full of unknowns that people fill with theories, dreams, wishes, and hopes. That's fine.

Physics Guy wrote:There is an argument that something must have gone to a lot of trouble to create precisely the world we have, with the particular people that are in it. Controlling all the initial conditions of the universe would seem to involve knowing everyone intimately. Maybe a lifetime is long enough for God to get sick of us, but in that case why make us at all in the first place? And on the other hand, one of the few purposes that it is possible to imagine for the universe is that it is a backstory for characters who will appear in further episodes: a womb for souls.

Then what is the purpose of the Amazon rain forest?

Physics Guy wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 8:31 am

There is an argument that something must have gone to a lot of trouble to create precisely the world we have, with the particular people that are in it. Controlling all the initial conditions of the universe would seem to involve knowing everyone intimately. Maybe a lifetime is long enough for God to get sick of us, but in that case why make us at all in the first place? And on the other hand, one of the few purposes that it is possible to imagine for the universe is that it is a backstory for characters who will appear in further episodes: a womb for souls.

I think the argument is worth something; in particular, I'm inclined to believe it. It does not count as evidence. It's an argument.

And it's certainly not an ironclad argument, either. It's a plausibility pitch. As far as we can tell, there could indeed be some form of God, but no afterlife, or some form of afterlife, but no God. The argument requires one to suppose not just any kind of God, but a certain sub-class of seemingly possible Gods, who like creatures like us enough to want to keep us around, and who have the means to do that because generating realities is God's job. The argument is only as plausible as one finds that subclass of people-loving Gods to be.

I don't think the argument is just a tautology, though. It doesn't just start by asking us to assume specifically that God wants to give everyone afterlives. It's not trivial. It has a certain amount of weight as informal reasoning.

There's also, of course, an argument that no god or god-like entity was needed. Or if one exists and was involved in creating our universe, our place in the universe may be as an undergrad lab experiment, or the equivalent of Fleming's green mold carelessly contaminating a culture intended for something else.

In the "universe" of possibilities, MG's specific multi-conditional setup is just one of many, with no particular value to recommend it over all of the others. Even Mormon teachings, that god's ways are not our ways, make his appeal to " a good, personal creator of moral agents", "a 'good God', a perfectly moral God" pure speculation. We already know from the scriptures that, in terms of human moral judgement, MG's god is a sadistic monster, who could equally well be keeping us "alive" after "death" to torture us. We simply have no way of knowing.

Piet Hein, who was an acquaintance of Charlie Chaplin, Niels Bohr, Einstein, and Norbert Wiener, wrote: The universe may be as great as they say,
But it wouldn't be missed if it didn't exist.

Nor would it be missed if we didn't exist, either as earthly creatures, or in some hypothetical pre- or post-existent state.

Physics Guy wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 8:31 am

There is an argument that something must have gone to a lot of trouble to create precisely the world we have, with the particular people that are in it. Controlling all the initial conditions of the universe would seem to involve knowing everyone intimately. Maybe a lifetime is long enough for God to get sick of us, but in that case why make us at all in the first place? And on the other hand, one of the few purposes that it is possible to imagine for the universe is that it is a backstory for characters who will appear in further episodes: a womb for souls.

I think the argument is worth something; in particular, I'm inclined to believe it. It does not count as evidence. It's an argument.

And it's certainly not an ironclad argument, either. It's a plausibility pitch. As far as we can tell, there could indeed be some form of God, but no afterlife, or some form of afterlife, but no God. The argument requires one to suppose not just any kind of God, but a certain sub-class of seemingly possible Gods, who like creatures like us enough to want to keep us around, and who have the means to do that because generating realities is God's job. The argument is only as plausible as one finds that subclass of people-loving Gods to be.

I don't think the argument is just a tautology, though. It doesn't just start by asking us to assume specifically that God wants to give everyone afterlives. It's not trivial. It has a certain amount of weight as informal reasoning.

I don’t think the argument is a tautology, but it looks deeply flawed to me. I would analogize it to claiming that God must have really cared about the numbers drawn in the last Mega Bucks lottery in order to produce the exact numbers that were drawn. I mean, he would have had to manipulate all those ping pong balls bouncing around to make sure that those exact numbers were drawn.

malkie wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 3:04 pm

In the "universe" of possibilities, MG's specific multi-conditional setup is just one of many, with no particular value to recommend it over all of the others. Even Mormon teachings, that god's ways are not our ways, make his appeal to " a good, personal creator of moral agents", "a 'good God', a perfectly moral God" pure speculation.

We see things differently. And as I've repeatedly said, no one is trying to convince you of anything. Obviously, you've been there, done that.

I'm not comfortable with agnosticism/atheism. It just doesn't make sense to me. Call it a gut feeling. Also, being as that I believe in God, I don't see any other way than to look at God as being good and perfectly moral.

And yeah, I know the arguments that would try and persuade one to look at God as a 'monster'. If you want to go that direction, that's fine. I think you're mistaken. Grossly so.

Be that as as it may.

Regards,
MG

MG 2.0 wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 03, 2025 9:02 pm

malkie wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 3:04 pm

In the "universe" of possibilities, MG's specific multi-conditional setup is just one of many, with no particular value to recommend it over all of the others. Even Mormon teachings, that god's ways are not our ways, make his appeal to " a good, personal creator of moral agents", "a 'good God', a perfectly moral God" pure speculation.

We see things differently. And as I've repeatedly said, no one is trying to convince you of anything. Obviously, you've been there, done that.

I'm not comfortable with agnosticism/atheism. It just doesn't make sense to me. Call it a gut feeling. Also, being as that I believe in God, I don't see any other way than to look at God as being good and perfectly moral.

And yeah, I know the arguments that would try and persuade one to look at God as a 'monster'. If you want to go that direction, that's fine. I think you're mistaken. Grossly so.

Be that as as it may.

Regards,
MG

MG, I see people here saying that there are many ways that different folks and cultures define God (if indeed there is a God).You seem to disagree with those interpretations. You insist that your definition is the only one that counts.

I agree that some here do appear to believe that your representation of God makes him less than deserving of worship. It may be that it’s the way that you see God that’s the problem.

Thoughts?

Physics Guy wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 02, 2025 8:31 am

There is an argument that something must have gone to a lot of trouble to create precisely the world we have, with the particular people that are in it. Controlling all the initial conditions of the universe would seem to involve knowing everyone intimately. Maybe a lifetime is long enough for God to get sick of us, but in that case why make us at all in the first place? And on the other hand, one of the few purposes that it is possible to imagine for the universe is that it is a backstory for characters who will appear in further episodes: a womb for souls.

I draw, sculpt, and paint dozens of pieces every year. Out of all of these, I end up keeping and passing on perhaps one in ten of these. Even then, I know that in 40 or 50 years, these few, treasured pieces will probably end up in a landfill somewhere. Why would I make all of these pieces if I know they’re ultimately going to destroyed? I think some of it is the terrible joy involved in the process of making meaning.

Even presupposing a god and a creation, perhaps we were never meant to be anything but ephemeral.