Quote from: Cin on July 05, 2016, 01:58:25 PM
Humanity seems to be going forward and evolving, but if there is no afterlife, that means your contributions don't really matter to anyone?
Do you feel strange that there is no superior being judging good and evil. Or even something like karma? If that's the case, then definition of good and bad becomes unclear?
With the understanding that several of us are tag-teaming you:
If an afterlife is required to validate this life, does that mean an after-afterlife is required to validate the afterlife? And which afterlife should we be preparing for? One with Odin and Valhalla before Ragnarok? Or do we need the coins to pay Charon? If we can't even reliably figure out which afterlife to prepare for, how can an unknowable afterlife be considered the yardstick for a life well lived? And what's wrong with a life well lived for its own sake? You're actually displaying one of the truly horrifying things afflicting people with religion here as it has made it harder for you to find value in your own existence for your own sake, which I find terrifying and frankly unforgivable (them, not you, so nothing personal
![Wink ;)](https://www.susans.org/Smileys/susans/wink.gif)
).
And I assure you that I find the idea of a superior being sitting in judgment to be rather odd, rather than the reverse. I have heard the case for any number of divine beings, and none of those cases are particularly compelling in terms of existence. As a general statement on moral standards, I find the polytheistic pantheons to at least have some deities who are more appealing than most of the monotheistic constructions, although obviously not universally. Without getting into specifics which are outside our scope here, or framing it as an authoritative statement on all monotheistic groups, I can say that I find the monotheistic deities I am familiar with to be lacking the moral credibility to judge me even if they existed. Several of them lack the moral authority to judge Stalin.
I'd also like to point out as far as morality being unclear without a divine reference, consider how unclear it can be made by a divine reference. The "eye for an eye"/"turn the other cheek" contradiction in one major religion springs to mind. I'm sure other disagreements just within any given single religious book can be produced as needed.
As another thought, Youtube is full of dogs nursing lion cubs or whatnot. Many social animals tend to be benevolent and cooperative as a default.
Ultimately, it's also worth asking if you're making decisions based on what you want and feel comfortable with, or on the reality we are faced with. At several points it sounds like the former, but I don't want to read too much into that.