"“After you die, and we conduct an autopsy, will we be able to find a “Jamie” anywhere in there?”
“Jamie” is a series of chemical/electrical/whatnot-reactions that happened in “Jamie´s Body”.
You won´t find his “soul” because his “soul” was never there . Jamie won´t even know that he´s dead. Just like he didn´t know that he´s not born yet for all these years that preceeded his birth.
In other words: We only have one life. Life is precious. There´s no need to be afraid of death.
I think there is something like a soul, but I’m afraid it has a “best before date”. It will vanish once your body is gone. I might be wrong, but I don’t see any reason to believe anything else.
Just as Paul, I also very much appreciate life. It is a wonderful thing, not a gift, not the result of the work of a divine mastermind but it is here for all of us to enjoy. It is short enough as it is. Let’s make the best out of it.
EDIT:
P.S. (…) …There´s no need to be afraid of death. (…)
There probably is no need to be afraid but I can’t say that I have yet completely come to terms with the fact that I’ll perish like an apple once my time has come. At least I hope I’ll be the source of something new - life is what I believe in, the incredible force of nature. I have no idea where nature as we know it came from (I don’t understand the big bang theory either), but I think it is exceptional in every respect.
“If we look closely, we will know for sure that there is something incredibly intelligent that has weaved the tissues of the body, brain, ears, eyes, hands, nose, and tongue to be able to think, to be able to hear, to be able to see, touch, smell, and taste.”
Nicely written, but I would rephrase this in two different, complementary ways:
“If we DON”T look closely, it seems obvious that there is something incredibly intelligent…”
“If we look closely, we will know for sure that there is nothing incredibly intelligent…”
There is a huge body of evolutionary evidence that supports this view; the Intelligent Designer must have had a bad day if he truly did design us.
Allerdings.
Doch.
You would be forgiven for saying He was having a bad day when He designed me. He didn’t do such a bad job with Heidi Klum 
All things considered, the world is an incredibly beautiful place.
lovelanguages:
“I strongly disagree with the “whatever” part. Wanting to kill people is not an “opinion” to me.”
“With all due respect, I don’t think it is that difficult to understand that killing another person is not ok.”
Sorry, I did not feel like repeating myself. The limitation to free speech, in my opinion, is that you cannot threaten someone else. I could say “x” is stupid, “x” is bad", “x” shouldn’t be allowed to do “something”. I cannot say I am going to hurt “x” I am going to kill “x”. I am going to harass “x”. That has gone from expressing a view, to impeding on their lifestyle.
“P.S. I do think, however, that for the most part we agree on freedom of speech. I’m not trying to gag somebody every time he tries to say something I don’t agree with :-)”
Yup
Doch. (…)
Now, a serious question - you know I don’t make fun of religious people, I’m just curious and sometimes maybe even a bit inquisitive (but never inquisitorial ;-)).
Let’s assume God exists and he is the mastermind behind all this. How and why exactly would that make you feel better, more comfortable, happier etc.?
Would it put the terrible things people do to each other in a different perspective? Would it add an extra shine or glamour to the mysterious beauty of life per se and nature in particular?
Or is it more along the lines of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians?
(…) “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?” (…)
My theory is that most people just can’t face the fact that we are not as grand as we think we are and that we’ll perish the same way as so many other forms of life on this planet.
Whenever I started to seriously question the Bible and the things other religious people said (remember, I used to be a member of several churches for many years), my original trust (which probably was mostly based on wishful thinking and an innate longing for peace and harmony that is shared amongst most people, I guess) burst like a bubble.
When you try to get to the bottom of things, many religious people will start closing their doors (and ears for that matter) as if they feared you’d be the cause for another deluge washing away the very foundation of their belief.
If you are lucky enough to get an answer, it will almost always be the infamous “God works in mysterious ways” or, quoting a seemingly more authoritative source (New Testament; Romans 11:33 ): “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”
Wow. A lot of posts while I was away. Here are some comments on what I read, mostly from the previous page.
@ kimojima
“From my point-of-view, this Friedemann or this Jamie inside the body is just as fictitious as the Man in the Moon.
Hence, my suggestion to quell the laughter over the religious. At least the religious are consistent and well-rounded. They believe in God as an all-powerful character and they also believe that what they are, at the root, is a character within a story who has a past and a future.
On the other hand, for the atheist, a halfway view of questioning the existence of a Supreme Being named “God” is just that – a halfway view.“
Why do you think that these atheists who you imagine believe in a ghost in the machine, which I don’t think many atheists actually do, are being inconsistent? It is not inconsistent to not believe in a god and to believe in a soul. The two concepts are in no way linked.
@ Robert
“1) The holocaust was real, while the existence of a hell is a mere hypothesis. “
This completely misses the point. The question was about if there is a hell and if there was a hell, it would not be a mere hypothesis.
“2) Even if hell existed, you could avoid going there by “repenting” and starting to believe in God. If the nazis had chosen you as a target you had no such choice, you were doomed, they would kill you without you being given any option whatsoever.”
To be honest, when you write stuff like this, I find it hard to believe that you can think in any rational way about the holocaust. You think that millions of people suffering a large amount is worse than thousands or even millions of times more people suffering infinitely more because the first group of people didn’t have a choice whereas the second group of people could have avoided it if only they had known something that they couldn’t have possibly known?
By this reasoning, if somebody punched you in the face for no reason, it would be worse than somebody imprisoning you and then torturing you and a thousand other people horribly for decades after you all blew your one clear chance to escape simply because you all could have avoided the torture chamber, but the guy punching you in the face was unavoidable.
“Besides, in most religions hell is not a place where you are actually tortured, it is a place where you are supposed to be away from God. That is your punishment. They are not roasting you down there (we don’t even know where it is actually).”
A lot of religious people really do think that people are being roasted down there and this is the hypothetical situation I was talking about. I should have been more clear about that.
“If they cut out the scene you mentioned (dropping somebody off a cliff and saying a badass line), I very much doubt that they did it because they wanted to censor the movie.”
I wasn’t serious when I questioned freedom of speech in Austria because they cut bits of violence out of an epic Arnie movie. I guess that might not have been clear. I think the movie was being censored since they also cut a bit where Arnie shots a guy in the head after saying a badass line, and a bit where he breaks a guy’s neck just before saying a badass line. I don’t find this kind of censorship really has any relevance when it comes to freedom of speech.
It’s a fair question, but a full answer would probably require me to write a whole book.
ad Colin: (…) …This completely misses the point. (…)
I don’t think it does. But we can discuss this on skype 
(…) …To be honest, when you write stuff like this, I find it hard to believe that you can think in any rational way about the holocaust. … (…)
I honestly do not understand the point you are trying to make in your response. We might have to try and clear that up in another chat on skype as well.
(…) …By this reasoning, if somebody punched you in the face for no reason, it would be worse than somebody imprisoning you and then torturing you (…)
In German I’d say: Dieser Vergleich hinkt nicht nur, sondern hat einen Pferdefuß und zwar einen riesigen.
It basically just means that I can’t even begin to see how you could compare these two things, a punch in the face for no reason with imprisonment and torture…
Your comments are based on way too many assumptions I don’t share and which are extremely hypothetical. Your point only appears - partly - plausible to me if you were to assume that going to hell is the worst that can ever happen to any human being. Well, if you proceed from that assumption, then of course nothing can even come close to the “horror of denying God’s existence”.
Other than that, I completely disagree with you. Rationally and irrationally
(…) I don’t find this kind of censorship really has any relevance when it comes to freedom of speech. (…)
Didn’t you yourself mention “freedom of speech” when you made that comment? I may be wrong and I am too lazy to check now
Personally, I don’t care for scenes where people shoot somebody else in the head or break somebody’s neck. I have no idea where the fascination for such “plots” comes from. I wouldn’t waste my time on such films, but if others like it, well, let them watch it. Fine by me.
Die Sündhafte Natur des Menschen?
(…) …Die Sündhafter Natur des Menschen? (…)
Hm, maybe. But, believe me, based on what the Bible says I sometimes am as bad a sinner as you can get and I still don’t like these movies. I just don’t like to watch people hurt other people, neither in movies nor in real life. I don’t find it entertaining at all.
Ich hebe mir meine Sünden lieber für andere Bereiche im Leben auf
Ich doch auch.
(But he who is guilty in one point is guilty in all - laut der Bibel.)
"(…) …This completely misses the point. (…)
I don’t think it does."
It does completely miss the point. I say that if it was the case that there is a hell, by which I meant one where people are tortured for an infinite amount of time, this would be worse than the holocaust, and one of your arguments for why this is not the case is that ‘the holocaust was real, while the existence of a hell is a mere hypothesis’, missing the point that my argument was based on the hypothetical assumption that if there was a hell, it would be worse. If you had a cold and I said ‘well if you had cancer, it would be worse’, would you respond with ‘no it wouldn’t because that is a hypothetical, whereas I really do have a cold’?
“It basically just means that I can’t even begin to see how you could compare these two things, a punch in the face for no reason with imprisonment and torture…”
I sort of expected a response like this, to which I will go on a brief tangent about the English language. A huge number of discussions are ruined by the confusion of two meanings for the verb ‘to compare’. The verb has a standard meaning which we all know quite well. When we compare two things, we say things like
On the other hand, the word often means something like ‘to say things are similar’. So I might compare two houses by saying something like
The confusion of these two meanings is very common.
In my previous post, I mentioned three hypothetical events - somebody punching you in the face for no reason, somebody imprisoning you and a thousand other people and torturing you for decades, and the existence of a hell - and one real event - the holocaust - and made many comparisons. All of these comparisons were of the first nature and not of the second. I never said any of them were similar to any of the others.
“Didn’t you yourself mention “freedom of speech” when you made that comment?”
Yes, but as I said in my previous comment, not in a serious way. I thought that would be clear when I wrote the original comment. I was at the time blinded with anger at them cutting out some of the best bits from one of the best Arnie movies and could not see straight.
“(But he who is guilty in one point is guilty in all - laut der Bibel.)”
I guess it´s good for Christianity that we all are sinners, because if you´re sinner you need to repent. And here do you repent? In church!^^
Sin is an imaginary disease and faith is the imaginary cure that is often exchanged for real money and real power. It´s impossible to recover, of course…
Nicht unbedingt. In welcher Kirche hat der sterbende Diebe am Kreuz Buße getan?
Dann woher kommen die Symptomen - Krankheit, Verbrechen und Tod?
ad Jay: (…) But he who is guilty in one point is guilty in all - laut der Bibel (…)
Don’t you have a hitlist of sins? Aren’t there seven or so mortal (deadly) sins?
I’ve been told over and over again that “my sin” is a pretty nasty one
If the Church were still to sell letters of indulgence, I’d have to pay a fortune, so I’d better get back to working and earning that money…just in case
ad Cole: (…) …If you had a cold and I said ‘well if you had cancer, it would be worse’, would you respond with ‘no it wouldn’t because that is a hypothetical, whereas I really do have a cold’? (…)
No, I wouldn’t, because you would not have to make cancer a hypothetical disease, it - unfortunately - is a very real one.
But, ok, so even if I were to, hypothetically, assume that hell exists, my answer would be the same.
Hell would not be worse than what happened in a concentration camp. I don’t think God, even if he sends you to hell (many believers would say he is not sending you there because it is not a specific place but rather a state of mind you will be locked in for not believing in him, eternally being separated from him, like a child is separated from his parents), he won’t be as cruel as the ones who slaughtered people in the camps.
You are free to think that, based on your hypothesis of an existing hell, “eternal life” in hell would be worse. But even if I believed in hell, this does not automatically mean that I believe it to be the worst thing that could happen to me. And I don’t think you’ll find many believers agreeing in all details about what hell is supposed to be about.
Let me summarize and conclude this discussion with the following statement: To me the holocaust was hell on earth and there is no other hell (after life) I can think of or believe in. There are many places where people, unfortunately, have to go through similar or the same horrors…they all experience hell, a very real hell created by men and which is not the product of some fantasies.
As for your explanation regarding proper word usage in English, I appreciate your input. Languages are tricky, foreign ones in particular.
"Nicht unbedingt. " (translation: not necessarily)
Most people repented in churches for most of christian history and these churches received money and support from the sinners who went there. It´s a clever business idea, actually.
“Woher kommen dann die Symptome - Krankheit, Verbrechen und Tod?” (if that´s the case, where do the symptoms of sin (disease, crime and death) come from?)
Bacteria, viruses, poverty, hate, a bullet in your head…
ad Colin:
It does - No, it doesn’t - YES, it does - NOOO, it doesn’t …= don’t we sound like little kids sometimes ;-). Still enjoyed the discussion, though.