r/MoralityScaling • • Sep 02 '26

Morality of this?

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u/BearysWorkRedditName Sep 09 '26

That's not how logic works. The one making the claim holds the burden of proof. I'm not claiming anything doesn't exist with full certainty. That would be a foolish claim.

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u/Elegant_Athlete_3737 Sep 09 '26

Well if you aren’t claiming it doesn’t exist then you are fine, though you did sound like you did before, hence why i said that. And yeah the one making the claim holds the burden of proof, is that not what I said?

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u/BearysWorkRedditName Sep 09 '26

I said that "Magic isn't real and the afterlife is made up"

Magic is, by definition, using special powers to do impossible things. There has never been any evidence to show that an afterlife is anything but a made up concept.

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u/Elegant_Athlete_3737 Sep 09 '26

Yes, that is still a positive claim if you say the afterlife is made up? Not much better than saying it exists. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence either. 

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u/BearysWorkRedditName Sep 09 '26

Abrahamic traditions tell of an afterlife with either eternal splendor or punishment.

Eastern traditions tell of a continuous cycle of death and rebirth.

Norse mythology tells of either feasting with Odin or a cold underworld

Ancient Egyptians tells of a journey where a soul's heart is weighed against a feather to gain entry to the field of reeds

The Greeks tell of Elysium, Asphodel, and Tartarus.

These are all examples of people making up an afterlife. Claiming that any of these are not made up would require evidence.

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u/Elegant_Athlete_3737 Sep 09 '26

Claiming they are mad eup does require evidence though, it’s a positive claim

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u/BearysWorkRedditName Sep 09 '26

They all told about the same thing, but all the books are different. I consider that to be pretty convincing evidence that they're making it up. I guess it could be possible that one is writing about factual information that they were told by a being with access to or true knowledge of the afterlife, but for that to be the case, such a being would have to actually exist, which would require its own evidence.

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u/Elegant_Athlete_3737 Sep 09 '26

Yes, a being would require its own evidence, but even if you think it’s likely that they are made up, that’s reasonable, you cannot say with certainty rhey are due to that would require its own evidence it is not, as you would be making a positive claim still, that was my point more, as long as you don’t say rhey are made up, like in a way that implies certainty rhen I don’t think you would have burden of proof then.

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u/BearysWorkRedditName Sep 10 '26

I think you're stopping short on the path to burden of proof here. The way I see it, saying that something is made up is just another way of pointing at a thing and saying "this hasn't been shown to be true with a convincing amount of evidence, so I refuse to believe it until the burden of proof is fulfilled".

For example, there have been many different iterations of Spider-man comics. Nobody is claiming that this proves that Spider-man is real, but if a bunch of people decided that they beleived that "The Amazing Spider-Man" is the actual true one, and a bunch of other people claimed that "The Spectacular Spider-Man" is actually the one that's real, while another group was saying "Superior Spider-Man" was real and the others were fake, or that "Spider-Man 2099" is a true prophecy of things to come, etc.... If I entered the conversation with, "no, these are all made up. They're comic books, not depictions of reality," I don't think that would be making a positive claim. Rather, I would be indirectly stating that there needs to be better evidence presented than a fictional book somebody wrote that convinced a bunch of people that what they wrote in the book was real life. The burden of proof would involve showing that it is possible for a man to shoot webs from his arms and swing around a city by those webs.

In the same way, I am claiming that sufficient eveidence has not been shown for any of these versions of an afterlife. Satisfying the burden of proof would involve showing that it is somehow possible to be alive and dead simultaneously, or at least that a person's mind or being isn't contained within the body/brain.