Our Problem

Quote: "The point of this website is that death is certain but nobody knows that there isn't an afterlife."

So "nobody knows that there isn't an afterlife" constitutes a useful speculation? Nobody knows there isn't a Bigfoot, either, but guess what? I have much better uses for my time than imagining where I might run into Bigfoot.

This is a classic example where the scientific outlook differs from the unscientific one. A scientist assumes that an idea unaccompanied by evidence is false (the idea behind the term "null hypothesis"). A nonscientist (or a child) assumes that an idea unaccompanied by evidence is true.

A scientist can be persuaded only by evidence to give credence to an idea. By contrast, a nonscientist can never be persuaded to abandon a belief through the absence of evidence, because proving a negative is an impossible evidentiary burden -- the possibility that Bigfoot is hiding under a rock on some faraway planet cannot be discounted.

But hey -- nobody knows that there isn't an afterlife. This is religions get started.