I think you are making these two positions to sound equivalent, but I really don't think that is the case.
People like to talk about religion as though it's all indoctrination, but the argument really doesn't hold up. Religions that focus on proselytism seem to spread faster, which is unremarkable, but religion definitely seems to form spontaneously.
A lot of things form spontaneously, art, technology, language have all developed spontaneously and independently many times in the past 100,000 years.
Religion isn't special in this regard.
> If you didn't start with that belief, what observation could you make to come to the conclusion that there is an afterlife?
Clearly, lots of observations lead people to the conclusion that there is an afterlife, independent of starting with that belief.
I always appreciate the parable of the flame in Buddhism. If you use a lighter to produce a flame, where did that flame come from? where does it go? If you use it again, is that flame the same or is different?
You realize that the flame is really just a distinction we make of matter that has always been there and it doesn't go anywhere, just changes. I don't mean this to say that "you" are just changing when you die, but to question what "you" really are.
I think consciousness is an interesting area we still struggle to understand. It's weird that no physical thing can be "about" something but that thoughts can be. I can think of george washington riding a unicycle, but does that mean there is a neuron in my brain that physically is that mental picture?
Lastly, there is a contingency problem with matter. If all physical things are contingent upon a cause, then the physical universe must be caused by something that is immaterial. If you think about math, does it really exist? If I ask if "four" exists, there certainly is a english word, "four" and a grouping of lines (4) there can be four of something but these are all just representative of four'ness. So does four really exist and if not why is math so effective at explaining our universe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...
If the universe is contingent upon an immaterial cause, I don't think it's out of reach to imagine that cause as an Aristotelian god.
All that to say, I think there's reason to be skeptical about any certainty in knowing what happens when we die. Hopefully it's something interesting or I won't be around to find out!
We have all died countless times already, 'I' am not the person that was at age 13. There might now be some memories or conception of that person, I could estimate what they would do or think in a given situation (similar to a wife or close friend). But that 13 year old doesn't exist anymore and neither do most of the atoms reside in the current body. I like the flame reference. We die every moment, consciousness is inherently transitory.
It’s not answering questions of the physical or observable world. It’s attempting to answer the “Why” (meaning/purpose) questions rather than the “How” (method/cause).
Of course many atheists will point to some specific religious belief as being unlikely without evidence, but that is a strawman argument that comes down to the semantic question of defining "god" narrowly enough to make it seem absurd and unlikely. The larger question is whether the observable universe is the end-all-be-all of existence, and that is a philosophical question which outspans the reaches of the scientific method. One can assume Materialism and reject Dualism—many do because they find it silly to consider unanswerable questions and prefer to assume a deterministic universe which could theoretically be fully understood from our meat sack bodies given enough time and resources—but unfortunately this belief is based on faith; it can not be proven anymore than the Halting problem can be solved.
Which is why you'll meet almost nobody that's a 'strict' atheist by that definition, and I'm afraid that I think this is a straw man, much more than the accusation you level in the following sentence -
> Of course many atheists will point to some specific religious belief as being unlikely without evidence, but that is a strawman
Not when they are actually closely held beliefs. What do you think it the proportion of religious people that have closely examined their beliefs in a philosophical manner and found an unanswerable question and recognised Dualism in their outlook?
Because in my experience of religious people, their beliefs have been every bit as literal as the ones the atheists lambast and which you write off as a straw man. It's the philosophically minded apologists that are the rarity.
Anything that it would make sense to call "god" - and certainly anything that would have a particular interest in what some jumped-up apes on an utterly insignificant little blue green planet orbiting a small unregarded yellow sun out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy thought about anything - is absurd and unlikely. There may well be unknown entities, but they would almost certainly be no more godlike than any other object or force of nature we've encountered.
Here's the crux: What would make sense to call "god"? What would make sense to call "a higher power"? Personally, if there is any consciousness that exists on a different level than our immediately observable universe perhaps with a radically different relationship to space-time, I believe two things are true: 1) it's nature is likely to be so far beyond our understanding that we don't have the precepts to even begin to reason about it and 2) it definitely makes sense to consider such an entity in those terms regardless of whether it has a particular interest in earth-life or not.
Again, this is the semantic game that we play. It's easy to set up these strawmen based on our inherent anthropocentrism combined with past mythologies created to explain things which science subsequently provided better explanations for. However it is a huge leap to look at that progress and jump to the conclusion that our perspective is the one true lens on reality and that there is nothing beyond the reach of our instruments, logic and models.
Im not saying it's real, it just blew my mind when I learned it was widespread enough to include alongside the death rattle and lack of eating. I imagined all the ancient peoples watching their elders commune with the dead moments before they died. I imagine it'd be pretty convincing to witness yourself.
But so far, down to particle physics, nothing seems compatible with the idea of an out of body soul that is able to process this information.
I mean, we can annotate every observation and every thought ever with "for all we know it could be just an illusion" and live as if we were constantly being tricked by a deceitful daemon Descartes-style but why should we do it, what is there to gain?
I could agree that monism / strict materialism is as baseless as any other view but I think its terseness deserves a bit more respect than being called "comical", if only for the sake of its elegance.
It's trivial to provide a longer description / a more complicated model of reality that will have as much explanatory power as a simpler one. It's much more challenging to find a shorter / simpler one that will work just as well.
Yes, I am aware that my assumption that challenging things are somehow more commendable than non-challenging things is completely baseless too :)