Profiling the atheist

I don't think skeptics are envy, they just think that if there is an afterlife ít's must be scare because the Eternal thing will be long and boring. But They have accidentally assumed here that the brain and it fun of emotion still work in the afterlife.
But I am also quite skeptical that a afterlife can exist if everything is predetermined

Why would everything be predetermined?

Also, there could be an afterlife even if everything is predetermined?

Why would everything be predetermined?

Also, there could be an afterlife even if everything is predetermined?

I wonder whether it can be considered afterlife if it's a step in our cognitive development, whether real death exists?

I wonder how much of what drives some skeptics is simple envy?

My guess would be almost zero.

Sometimes people see others taking comfort in something like an afterlife and because they cannot feel the same they want to spread their misery.

I think you’re right about “cannot feel the same”. I notice some people are comforted by what is obviously a fiction brought about by wishful thinking (the “Rainbow Bridge” poem comes to mind). However, this would be regarded as a flaw, so I doubt that “envy” is the name of the emotion this draws.

Linda

I notice some people are comforted by what is obviously a fiction brought about by wishful thinking 

Can you name any of these people and give some idea of how you know their motives and how you know for certain that their beliefs are fiction?

A more recent study says the following:

Uncertainty Correlated with Dogmatic Beliefs, Both Religious and Atheist

Have you read this study? I’m not sure that it says what you think it says (if you think it contradicts what I said...spoiler alert...it doesn’t).

Linda

Can you name any of these people and give some idea of how you know their motives and how you know for certain that their beliefs are fiction?

I gave the example of the Rainbow Bridge poem.

https://www.rainbowsbridge.com/Rainbow_B...pclose.htm

On what basis could this be regarded as non-fiction?

Linda

I gave the example of the Rainbow Bridge poem.

https://www.rainbowsbridge.com/Rainbow_B...pclose.htm

On what basis could this be regarded as non-fiction?

Linda

I wasn't referring to the poem but to the "some people" that you mentioned.  A poem is not reality.

My guess would be almost zero.


I think you’re right about “cannot feel the same”. I notice some people are comforted by what is obviously a fiction brought about by wishful thinking (the “Rainbow Bridge” poem comes to mind). However, this would be regarded as a flaw, so I doubt that “envy” is the name of the emotion this draws.

Linda

Perhaps it is zero but people don't always have (or give) an accurate reading of their own dispositions. We do have some limited knowledge of some feeling a great unease regarding the possibility Psi or anything else supernatural would be real. I recall a friend admitting to me that even reading about Mathematical Platonism caused a great anger to well up inside of him, for example.

Not sure how one could reliably test for motivations people won't admit, I guess there are body cues one might read. Or brain scans.

I'd expect an individuals behavior would be driven by much, much more varied and complex things.

I agree - I really doubt spite/jealously is the primary motivator, though it is a head scratcher on how telling people there's no free will and no objective morality is going to improve the world. 

But it would be interesting to try and tease apart underlying motivations.

Many claims of second guessing proponents has been made, some of it even referencing psychology research. Yet the research into whether, say, grief over a dead loved one turning into spite against those who don't think death == oblivion doesn't seem to have been done.