Bay 12 Games Forum

I kinda' hope I do, honestly. Don't expect anything to happen but oblivion, but I've been hopeful there's an afterlife for a long time -- and as they go Hell would be more in line with my desires for it than other christian afterlife descriptions. Considerably more likely to find the means to shank that jackass YWHW that way -- heaven would just strip out the part of my soul/mind that holds that little core of infinitely burning conceptual hatred for creator divinities, by all accounts I've heard. Probably knife most of the saints and a bucket list of the angels in the process as well. Don't want happiness, want revenge for the suffering of my people -- and if an omnipotent creator deity exists, or even divine governing forces in general, they are firmly to blame for all the shit humanity has gone through and deserve an eternity of a knife between the proverbial ribs. Little bit of eternal torture would be a small price to pay for proper renumeration.

... but nah, no fear of death. It holds either hope (of proper revenge) or peace (nothing at all). Fear of dying, sure, 'cause that tends to hurt mightily and I guess it would bother other people, but what comes after ain't no thing.

Though with the afterlife thing, what does the biblical text actually say on the subject? Last I half-heartedly checked it's pretty vague on all of it.

... considering christian doctrine and response to the concept and questions surrounding the soul and afterlife has been referenced very, very sparingly, and the discussion spent nearly as much time talking about justification (with, again, little to no reference to the christian perspective on the subject) as it did on the soul and related concepts, no, it's pretty explicitly been a derail. Into a fairly closely related subject, but this last bit has been very much more metaphysics than theology or doctrine.

Surely the only sensible frame of reference for statements about reality is our own one, though.  Otherwise you're just splitting hairs, because "X could possibly exist" is a null statement when anything, even things that are demonstrably impossible in our reality, could exist to itself.

I'd pretty much agree with you, sure (well, instead of "sensible" I'd use "relevant" but eh, details), but there's plenty of folks that wouldn't. From my perspective, they can be fun to talk to, but get mostly ignored until they produce something equivalent to a steam engine.

... and yeah cryx, it's a bit of a derail into related metaphysics and a bit of rhetoric/logic.

Yeah, pretty much. The non-triton slave guardians, sure, but not the gibodai. Well, unless you GoR'd the gibodai and stuck fish amulets on them, I guess. Sorta' looks like they don't even have misc slots, though. Gem inefficient doesn't even begin to cover that, though.

Apparently as hard as it is to understand that saying it isn't immaterial doesn't make it so, either.

Not a single living person has an actual clue in regard  to the answer to any of those questions, Desc.

Yeah, you piss them out. Heard it's very painful.

Ho yez. Worse than a sinus headache (note: These are also known by the colloquial name of "suicide headaches") by my own estimation, and several steps above multiple different types of surgery, as well as wisdom teeth removal. Roughly equivalent to giving birth in terms of pain level, according to my mother. It's not just "very painful", it's one of the absolutely most painful things a human can experience. Incredibly unpleasant -- the time I had one was the only time I have actually been reduced to vomiting and excreting from all other orifices due to sheer pain.

... hopefully MC's either won't be as bad, or he'll have verra' good pain meds.

leaves one conclusion.

This statement is false. The other conclusions are "partially or wholly immaterial soul" Your denial of the possibility of the immaterial is as much a "nuh-uh" as someone else's assertion of that possibility. You cannot justifiably deny the existence of the non-physical (in the sense of "Outside reality") any more than you can justifiably assert it. No observable interaction == no justification either way.

If you wanted to say, "leaves one conclusion justifiable by an appeal to empiricism", you would be probably be making a true statement, though.

Seriously, the correct response for an empiricist or a scientist to the concept of an immaterial object isn't, "This is not true", but, "This cannot be said to be true or untrue, and is thus irrelevant to me." This includes immaterial souls, intelligent designers, and a myriad of related concepts. The person seeking scientific justification cannot say they do not exist, they can only say that investigation into their existence is not scientific and that their existence or nonexistence is of no concern.

Sweet non-existent zeus, this is basic reasoning, not some kind of fancy argument. You cannot determine the truth value of something you cannot test, and you cannot test something you cannot observe. If a thing is immaterial, it cannot be observed, cannot be tested, and its truth state is "N/A". Its state of proof is "unprovable". That's about as far as a person can go with it.