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Do Atheists believe in Heaven?

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Are there any vacancies for the concierge? I am good with people and.. ahem... arranging stuff discreetly.
 
lostone said:
Maybe heaven would be a planet without organized religion
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Misinformation is about as big a problem as organized religion right now though. You'd still have manosphere douchebags for example. People would also need to stop worshiping money, power and fame too.
 
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Ramaraksha said:
I ask this question because well, the general view is that Buddhism is an Atheist religion but Buddhists believe in Heaven & Hell.
So I wonder, are there Atheists who do not believe in God but hope there is an afterlife where the living is easy & comfortable?
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Buddhist belief in Gods, rebirth, heaven, hell, is allegorical.
I do not believe in existence of God or soul and in after-life, heaven or hell. I am a strong atheist.
 
I'm trying to imagine how an atheist would conceptualize an afterlife -- one that was created by no one....one that is counterposed to everything we observe about brain function...one that would seem to have no connection to the morality of one's earthly life.
No, that's not our brand. To be an atheist means that one accepts that life is a one-way ticket, and that mortality is the underlying reality in life. If it doesn't mean that, then one is just clinging to some residual fantasies from early church experiences.
 
A long stretch, I guess that if the world/ universe is a simulation generated by a super civilization, life is not what we assume it to be, where events can be replayed or participated in by those who run the simulation.
 
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Learner said:
What I mean here is: you don't believe in the heaven or hell notion... yet the idea has some strong affect on you, as if to say that believers in 'heaven and hell' are affecting you in some serious personal way in the 'real world'. So what would that be I ask?..
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The mass of sheeple around me act like there is a real 'Next Life'. And this current life is only a rehersal. And they expect me to conform to their fantisized conditions to enter that 'next life'.
YES that affects me. Control of people was the reason the 'afterlife' myth was invented. As I said before, Heaven/HellTM is an active, ongoing protection racket.
 
Yeah, that's just a condition of living in America. I wince when I hear it, because, in my private thoughts, I'm assessing the speaker, who probably otherwise presents as...an adult. Here they are, in fairy tale land, where you're gonna meet your parents again and Aunt Polly with her spice cake and maybe even your favorite dog Heidi. And Heidi will kiss you again in heaven, and you'll introduce Heidi to Jesus Christ.
A friend of mine who is hugely cynical about most things was discussing a mutual friend from our work days who had just died. She concluded, "Well, at least now she knows what's on the other side."
I was so tempted to say, "How's she gonna know anything when she's brain dead?" But some battles just aren't worth the repercussions, the territorial trespass, or the necessary ordinance.
Sidebar: does Jesus even like dogs?
 
Its comes down to traits of people. List the traits of a Christian fundamentalist. Predict how that type of person would express atheism.
Is there a personality type defined by experts that represent those personality types without a belief associated with it?

The mistake that many of us make is defining a person based on a belief. Its actually backwards, look at personality types then predict how those personality types express beliefs. Look at WOKE and trumpers. Both absolutely crazy in many aspects. Both irrational many aspects. Both trip over some moral standards more than actually thinking through them.

The same for atheist and theist. Matching observation to a belief, a belief in some thing more makes makes more sense than the reverse. A Fundy-think-type atheist will absolutely explode at such a notion. From a distance, sound exactly like a fundy theist. Easy way to tell? Have a conversation with them. If ya get away unharmed, consider yourself lucky. A non religious example, say the words trump has a good idea "here", watch a fundy think type anti-trumper explode. And of course the reverse is true.

Its quite amazing when looking in from the outsidem
 
SIB said:
The mistake that many of us make is defining a person based on a belief. Its actually backwards, look at personality types then predict how those personality types express beliefs.
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Whatever.
You are overthinking it.
I take my clues about people however and wherever they come.
 
Buddhists have the sane problem as Christians, there are no contemporaneous accounts if who Buddha was.

Theoldest known writngs attributed to Buddha did not appear until centuriesafter he is thought to have died. Like Christianity Buddhism has 2000 years of interpretation and commentary,. Like Chistianity different vaiatrions and schools of thought.

en.wikipedia.org

Gandhāran Buddhist texts - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The Gandhāran Buddhist texts are the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered, dating from about the 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE and found in the northwestern outskirts of Pakistan.[1][2][3] They represent the literature of Gandharan Buddhism and are written in the Gāndhārī language which has been grouped by many scholars in the Dardic language family.[4][5][6] The texts constitute the largest collection of Gāndhārī manuscripts known to date and are now housed at the Islamabad Museum in Pakistan.[7][8]

They were sold to European and Japanese institutions and individuals, and are currently being recovered and studied by several universities. The Gandhāran texts are in a considerably deteriorated form (their survival alone is extraordinary), but educated guesses about reconstruction have been possible in several cases using both modern preservation techniques and more traditional textual scholarship, comparing previously known Pāli and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit versions of texts. Other Gandhāran Buddhist texts—"several and perhaps many"—have been found over the last two centuries but lost or destroyed.[9]

The texts are attributed to the Dharmaguptaka sect by Richard Salomon, the leading scholar in the field,[10] and the British Library scrolls "represent a random but reasonably representative fraction of what was probably a much larger set of texts preserved in the library of a monastery of the Dharmaguptaka sect in Nagarāhāra."[11]
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From what I read of Tibetan Buddhism to them the superntral is a real as it is to Christians.

MIlarepa a Tibetan saint was said to levitate through the air as fast as an arrow.
 
SIB said:
Its comes down to traits of people. List the traits of a Christian fundamentalist. Predict how that type of person would express atheism.
Is there a personality type defined by experts that represent those personality types without a belief associated with it?

The mistake that many of us make is defining a person based on a belief. Its actually backwards, look at personality types then predict how those personality types express beliefs. Look at WOKE and trumpers. Both absolutely crazy in many aspects. Both irrational many aspects. Both trip over some moral standards more than actually thinking through them.

The same for atheist and theist. Matching observation to a belief, a belief in some thing more makes makes more sense than the reverse. A Fundy-think-type atheist will absolutely explode at such a notion. From a distance, sound exactly like a fundy theist. Easy way to tell? Have a conversation with them. If ya get away unharmed, consider yourself lucky. A non religious example, say the words trump has a good idea "here", watch a fundy think type anti-trumper explode. And of course the reverse is true.

Its quite amazing when looking in from the outsidem
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WOKE (or woke as it is usually called) is not a person, it is simply a set of beliefs that make up only a part of many people's character, and can be simply expressed as empathy.
Theism and Trumpism can not be considered as logical positions, as both have massive evidence against them. On the other hand, atheism and anti-Trumpism are rational positions supported by much evidence.
These positions have little to do with character traits.
RE: the bolded part - if you believe this, then you can not be an atheist. There are few so-called fundy atheists, but huge numbers of fundy theists, so this shows that these two concepts have different aspects to each other, and can not be easily correlated to each other.
If Trump ever has a good idea, you can bet that many other people have already had that good idea, and he has just discovered it, and grabbed on to it for an arbitrary reason. Like when he discovered that us and US have same letters, or discovered the word groceries.
 
@SIB;
Please stop trying to coin a new term "fundy atheist". You are trying to create a false equivalence of believers and non-believers.
The term you want is "dogmatic"
"fundy" is derogatory. And triditionaly aimed at believers. A profested 'Humanist' shouldn't be using that against would be alies.
 
steve_bank said:
Buddhists have the sane problem as Christians, there are no contemporaneous accounts if who Buddha was.

Theoldest known writngs attributed to Buddha did not appear until centuriesafter he is thought to have died. Like Christianity Buddhism has 2000 years of interpretation and commentary,. Like Chistianity different vaiatrions and schools of thought.
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Sure. But luckily for Buddhism, it stands on the tenets of its teachings. So there is a viable way to insert the noble truths and eightfold path into one's philosophy without becoming obsessed with Buddha. Christianity absolutely lacks any textual importance and philosophy. Jesus's teachings are nice, but not particularly in depth or unique.
 
SIB said:
Its comes down to traits of people. List the traits of a Christian fundamentalist. Predict how that type of person would express atheism.
Is there a personality type defined by experts that represent those personality types without a belief associated with it?

The mistake that many of us make is defining a person based on a belief. Its actually backwards, look at personality types then predict how those personality types express beliefs. Look at WOKE and trumpers. Both absolutely crazy in many aspects. Both irrational many aspects. Both trip over some moral standards more than actually thinking through them.

The same for atheist and theist. Matching observation to a belief, a belief in some thing more makes makes more sense than the reverse. A Fundy-think-type atheist will absolutely explode at such a notion. From a distance, sound exactly like a fundy theist. Easy way to tell? Have a conversation with them. If ya get away unharmed, consider yourself lucky. A non religious example, say the words trump has a good idea "here", watch a fundy think type anti-trumper explode. And of course the reverse is true.

Its quite amazing when looking in from the outsidem
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There are no such thing as a fundy theist (obviously even less a thing is fundy atheist). "Theism" says nothing about a person's religious beliefs that they would be over dogmatic about. Fundamentalists belong to a more defined group. Fundy Christians for instance. There is literally nothing to be "fundy" about with atheism.
 
Even most fundamentalist "Christians" are actually fundamentalist Protestants, and mostly they're fundamentalist Baptists.

Fundamentalism necessarily requires a sect small enough to be homogenous, because if it's not, it will split over the disagreements, no matter how apparently trivial those disagreements might seem to outsiders.
 
bilby said:
Even most fundamentalist "Christians" are actually fundamentalist Protestants, and mostly they're fundamentalist Baptists.
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I basically get what you're saying here, and mostly agree.
But I think that "fundamentalist" is mainly a euphemism for "extremist", in this context. Believe me, there are Catholic extremists, Teaparty extremists, you name it. Ideological attachments to human authority have a way of generating "fundamentalist" followers. People who would rather fight for the authority of their choice than employ critical thinking skills.
Tom
 
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