Afterlife

[anitram]

No, it's not quite the same. If I can change someone's opinion on an important political issue, I can change their vote, which has a legitimate impact on my life. Their religion?

If (and this is an almost impossible "if") you could downgrade a fundamentalist to simply a pious person, that would have a much greater impact than changing somebody's opinion on a political issue.

 

[LemonMelon]

If (and this is an almost impossible "if") you could downgrade a fundamentalist to simply a pious person, that would have a much greater impact than changing somebody's opinion on a political issue.

Assuming that all religious people are fundamentalists, of course. I'm certainly not even close to that.

 

[anitram]

I didn't say anywhere that they were. Only that I think it is much more valuable to "downgrade" a fundamentalist than change the opinion of a person on one isolated political issue.

Most people are not religious fundamentalists. I do consider all those who are to be dangerous in their own ways. And together they are a recipe for disaster IMO.

 

[lemonfly]

I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility of an afterlife. Purely from a scientific standpoint, we don't truly know what consciousness is. There isn't even consensus amongst scientists that consciousness is something that is purely the result of chemical/electrical activity in the brain. If consciousness turns out to be in the realms of quantum physics, all bets are off. Death could only be....the beginning