If a person’s belief in the afterlife leads a person to be moral, honest, caring, loving, ethical, etc., then we can all benefit from their belief no matter what the motivation.

Regarding feelings and motivation for good behavior I can only talk about my own experience. When I "feel badly" about something I have said or done or not said or done I need to self-examine to see what I may need to do to set things "straight" if I can. Sometimes it is a matter of trying to do better next time. Sometimes when I make corrections or make amends I "feel good" or better. But in these examples I don't use wanting to have good feelings as a reason to do moral, ethical, kind, caring, or honest things. I use feelings to help me self examine, to get a sense of being off course or on course. They help me to guide my actions and make corrections.

We cannot be sure what motivates our own behavior let alone someone else’s. Sometimes the reasons are very deep and hard to reach. That is why a lot of us won’t do the work on ourselves that we need.

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Donald
Exactly. The topic is not science, is not based in science, and has nothing to do with science. This is not news.
Fantasy or fiction is an exact allegory to the subject at hand.
People tell each other stories about Santa Claus too.
A Parable is a story meant to illustrate a philosophical point. It should include recognizable character types so as to illustrate the shortcomings of certain approaches to problems. Proverbs in the Bible are a hoot. They are Jewish literary tradition.
When I say someone 'believes' in the Bible I mean they take ideas from it to mine traditional social wisdom.
You might notice there aren't very many around promoting stoning for adultery : but the theocracy was entrenched so strongly it did use the death penalty.
That - is the essence of the Jesus story. An epic tale warning against allowing promoters of institutionalized belief loose on the public. Included is a clear warning that not all those who call themselves followers of the teachings are in fact anti-authoritarian. Quite the converse has been obvious for millenia !
Word meaning throws people all the time. Believe means to 'walk the walk' against oppression, ready to suffer persecution for that.
So - I actually call myself a Christian : but recognize virtue in others. Why should I let the Satanists take over completely as associating Jesus with wisdom and compassion ? Their lies are hard to miss !
'Redeemer' ? Illustrations of using thoughts to show how to 'spend' ones life.

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I regret that you feel that way, John. Words are always tools, but as with all tools, they may be put good and bad uses.

When I say "ethics is distinct from morality", I have in mind the picture presented here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics. Ethics would be higher than morality, in the sense that it encompasses morality, to ask questions of it.

Now, as to how we arrived at talking about ethics, the thread to trace is the claim that the topics of heaven and hell, or of life after death, add nothing except for purely fictional ideas, justifying some beliefs in the continuation (or extension) of "life" or "life-force" beyond what is, in fact, life, this life.

There is no scientific proof of such a state of affairs, nor could there be. There are the usual mystical claims, ones that can also support the existence of aliens from outer space, unicorns and a million other fantasies. But, the important thing is that there need not be any scientific proof, not any scientific disproof. As a matter of science, there would have to be something there that could be "observed" in relationship to other "observables" -- something variable.

Thus, the only valid question is how you live decently in this life -- the concept of any afterlife serves no substantive purpose -- not even the "feel good" reason that Brenda offered (because other ways to "feel good" (or "connected") exist that do not regard such dead ideas as afterlife.)

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"Ethics is distinct from morality."
When words are tools, the devil is in the details. I see no reason to infer from this citation that common agreement has been reached.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
The thread was originally about a presumably subjective reality after cessation of physical existence as we know it. Comparative religion and tales of death and near death experiences are the usual input for this topic : so I'm done hashing the distinction between established science fact and pseudo scientific debunking of allegorical teaching.

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You're entirely right, John. Philosophy concerns itself with things like ethics. I happen to be in the camp that places ethics as foremost of those concerns. Ethics is distinct from morality, which borders on religion. Ethics has no after-life concerns. Ethics is about the here-and-now, about this life which we are, most obviously and in fact, living. It requires no gods and finds that morality can be perfectly well expressed without resort to any gods, that morality requires no religion, and thus, you might say, that ethics, distrusts (ie, is skeptical of) those who cling to some other conception of the primacy of ideas about man's relationship to his fellow man.

And, lest any moralist fear the primacy of ethics, I would carefully note that ethics simply advances the truth, that anything that ethics would require, morality necessarily has to require anyway, and, even more certainly, sound theology ought to require.

Ethics, in a sense, is a detachment from one's own condition and situation. It asks man, without asking gods and their dogmas to answer, what is the good in your conduct -- where is the harm that you might be concealing?

When you act without harming others or yourself, and when your act has some benefit to you, and to some other, then it seems likely to have been ethically inspired.

Ethics, then, opposes "individualism," on the ground that our actions inevitably concern some other than ourselves -- hence, individualism would be mistaken.

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Donald
As to the necessity of belief ... I have not promulgated it. I will, however, note that it is a common condition.
Faith is, by definition, a choice of pet delusions. I will not credit the sagacity of man as capable of unerringly choosing properly among such possibilities any more than you do. So many contenders flailing their own 'revelation' of 'Truth' is merely an exercise in the ludicrous.
Philososophy is the study of ethics...not religion.

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Donald, thank you so much for your comments. You present a lot of fodder for consideration. I don't have a problem with a lot of what you say. Not that THAT matters but I truely like your way of debate (if we may call it that) AND I see what your original position or argument is and I agree with that. But you know how we humans are. LOL

We have to talk about everything that one word or subject triggers off. That is why it is so often we do not "hear" one another. We have our sights set and no matter where the target is, we aim all over the place.

I have throughly enjoyed ALL of the exchanges here. Thank you all of you. Great stuff! :)

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Brenda says: "I think there is within each of us the potential to operate from love or fear... Beliefs have a lot to do with motivation whether we like that idea or not."

I am not arguing about the psychopathology of people, as to how, in fact, they might be motivated, in fact, by satisfying various ego-complex needs. That quasi-Freudian swamp can be drained by someone else's arguments. Such statements say people go good because... I am not concerned with such causal claims.

I am arguing about the "necessity" of belief in afterlife, as an element in ethical/moral theory. I claim there is no need for such a concept, that a viable ethical theory does not need to include it. I hope I am reflecting some of what I believe to be the thinking of Levinas on this thesis. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levinas, for a weak profile of his views.

What is a viable ethical theory? Search the web to see possibilities.

In particular, take the model of how we are living with the infinitely unknowable Other -- you or me, perhaps, maybe, even some God. It is enough, I claim, to show that treating that infinitely Other satisfies the soundness found in the mirroring proposition: "Love your neighbor as yourself, and Love God more so." Ethical theory does not require a primary special Being called God, in its ontics. God would not be distinguishable from you or me, on the criteria of how we should treat him. It is enough to know how we should live with one another.

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John says "you cannot prove or disprove an immaterial/unobservable/undefined by argument or disputation - as no theory about defining it is considered valid."

But, John, you merely restate what my argument is, here! I indeed am not trying to define the immaterial/unobservable/undefinable, precisely because (so I claim) one has no need for a theory of it.

Why would one need a theory of the afterlife, when any formulation is only one of an infinite number of possible theses? That would make the ex-ante probability of any such theory being correct infinitely small (arbitrarily close to zero) -- or even, undefinable itself. Following Pascal's argument, multiplying the undefinable by its potential value would lead to nothing definable, either.

Moreover, the affirmative part of my argument builds on relevancy, on the need for such beliefs. (See my next reply to Brenda's fear/love needs for more on this.) In sum, I argue that belief in an afterlife is immaterial to the question of good/bad/evil.

Finally, John, you say "My ability to think for myself is not his to have - nor yours." Yes, ability is demonstrable. It is also modifiable. The virtue of discussion is that it provides us with opportunities to modify what we believe, to learn from others, as well as to teach them, sometimes.

Fighting the ever threatening Dark Ages is what every intelligent person does. I do it. You may too.

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Quote Brenda: "A person doesn't have to believe anything but you know what? Deciding not to believe is also a choice is it not?"

There are several things wrong with your statement.

1. All people always believe in some propositions; no person is ever without beliefs of some kind. What they believe may vary, from person to person, scene to scene. While a person may refuse to believe some proposition (in the sense that he doesn't have to believe it), that refusal to believe is becomes ever more foolish the more that the person chooses to disregard the processes of reason and evidence.

2. Thus, suppose belief occurs before any question arises. That is, it then happens without cognition or choice, as simply as if it were a first impression. Under such a schema, one always has some set of beliefs. The act of living then provides us with the opportunity to test, revise, refine, replace, and even enlarge or reduce that set of beliefs. It does not provide us with the capability to believe nothing.

3. Among the beliefs one can acquire are those related to skepticism. The primary function of skepticism is to manage the risk and the uncertainty present in life, as affected by one's current states of belief, to regulate the action of belief modification, described in point 2.

4. Thus, deciding to believe some proposition is better styled as deciding what to do with some present belief, after experience -- to learn or not from it.

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