Death.... It has been the clash between many Religions, and after the advancements of Civilizations, Science and Atheism have joined the fight.
Death, is what keeps millions of people clinging to Religion for a hope of a better life than their current one. Death is one of the great factors that keep Religion breathing.
But still, one can never say that DEATH stops there, you can say People just Die, but you can never be sure whats after that, even for an Atheist or a Theist, you can never prove what happens afterwards (somebody better not pull up a Near Death Experience in this, as it says, it's not a DEATH).
But if you had to choose, excluding the Christian, Islamic and Hindu stupid recreations of Heaven, what other Theories would you think about the Afterlife?
I'd like to also include Buddhism here, it's idea of Reincarnation is very interesting and actually at a very, very, very low point, although un-provable, true.
So in any Idea, Thought or Theory, what would you describe the Afterlife as, for those of you who are Atheists, it might be hard, but for Theists, if you could describe it in the most "Scientific" way you can, without adding Supernatural factors, although the Afterlife is a Supernatural factor itself.
I am an Atheist, the Idea of an Afterlife to me is very unlikely, or even impossible, but even for us heathens, there is wonder about how do we just stop Thinking after we die, how do we stop... Existing.
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@Endri: I've said it on other occasions, personally I think that approach is wrong. I know that I'm immortal and the human being is immortal, but immortal in a way that believers aren't able to understand, because they think science is enemy of faith -no, I haven't gone crazy, give me a moment to explain it-. Let's start from an unappealable reality and let's continue from there.
Well, What's a human being? A human being is a very specialized cell colony.
Until very recently one of the differences between humans and the rest of our relatives, mammals, is that the human being is intelligent, but we know that most mammals are also intelligent, wolves even have culture, like great primates, and Pacific killer whales have a different language than Atlantic killer whales and even different hunting systems that are exchanged when found.
What has made us special? The evolution. The evolutionary fact isn't debatable, not disputed nor the Vatican, only ignorant idiots do it.
So, Why do I say that the human being is immortal? Because science says so.
Well, we are colonies of very specialized cells and our cells are made up of atoms, the same atoms that have the stones, the trees or the earth in which the trees are planted, the same atoms of comets, stars and the universe are made, even in that we aren't special.
We know how the universe was born, because we have the photo of the light of Big Bang in the microwave background radiation; we know that the age of the universe, due to its cooling and expansion since its singular density after the Big Bang, is 13,799 ± 0,021 billion years; we know that the solar system was formed about 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of a molecular cloud; we know that life appeared 4,000 million years ago on Earth because we have founded remains of biological material in rocks of that antiquity in Western Australia.
Knowing all this, let me ask you, Can you imagine what your atoms were two billion years ago? Can you imagine where your atoms will be in two billion years?
Yes, we're immortal... and let me tell you, heaven can go fuck because I have traveled the universe, I have lived among the stars, I have traveled this planet thousands of times throughout my immortality and I'll continue to do so when nobody knows what the hell is a fucking bible and gods are only a remembrance of man's ignorance.
I know I'm immortal... and you too.
One of the greatest traps of religion is to grant the soul, from the animist religions to today, that we suffer the evolved religions, the biggest trap is the belief of the existence of the soul. Moreover, I have atheists friends know that god doesn't exist, that religions are garbage, but the soul... how to believe that we haven't soul, Right? Culturally It's the oldest belief that the human being has, indeep, it's the origin of religion, the existence of the soul.
With regard to the existence of the soul it seems irrefutable that we confuse soul with mind and you express it very well when you say "how do we just stop thinking after we die".
The vast majority of philosophical arguments for the existence of the soul can be reduced to the beginning of the heavenly teapot, no one can prove that there's no heavenly teapot, we can always say that it is too small to be able to see it, but that's no reason to believe it exists, quite the opposite.
You are speaking of the technical side, because yes, we have always Existed and will continue to exist, not as the Form of life, but from the same atoms that build us, we can find them amongst other beings. In short, we are Related to Everything in this Universe, we ARE everything no matter how much we try to Exclude ourselves from other beings. But, while you do clarify somethings to me, let's get real, how would you feel yourself to stop EXISTING, to stop the THINKING process itself?
@Endri: Being very young I had problems to understand the concept of stop thinking, you expressed it before very well, you die and stop thinking, I think the concept is to stop being, you know, think, ergo I exist, if don't think, well, ergo, I don't exist anymore. And that's why we invent the first trap, the soul, because although we aren't, well, our soul can transcend, and that's the second trap, transcendence, because if our soul transcends it'll have to do it somewhere and to do it will have to comply some rules, however stupid may be.
It was a tricky problem for me, stop thinking, I mean, I was very young. The question is, if you know that god doesn't exist, if you know that the soul doesn't exist, How to transcend? Because if something I have clear is that the human being wants to transcend... And then, as stupid as it seems, the answer gave me Star Trek. You know, a lot of people who do things and don't charge money for doing it, or because god told them, they do it because want to advance the humanity, they want to leave a better world when they die. It isn't about transcending to another life, it's about transcending in this world, it's not about doing things that take you to paradise in the afterlife, it's about fighting to get paradise in this life, leaving a better world for our children and grandchildren, it's so that our life in this world transcends our death.
It's okay for me.
This is making me wish that I lived in a Universe like Star Wars where somethings made Sense although it doesn't.
I have thought on this sort of stuff a lot. I agree with most of what you said.
I too do not believe in a soul, that is a religion construct. A fancy hopeful idea because the likely well supported reality is of course no, we do not have a soul.
There is one key piece I feel you are missing out on. Memory. Not the metaphysical "memories" but the physical ability of our brains to use it's trillions upon trillions of bio-electrical connections to recall past events and ideas.
I am sure many of us have heard some variation of the term "we are our memories."
I watched a series of videos about our ability to recall, in a college psychology class. It featured an older gentleman that lost his ability to store short term memory due to a very rare disease. His longer term memories were still there, but with age were rapidly deteriorating as well.
What does this look like? Well you can watch the videos (I will go find them and provide a link if anyone request it.)
But that person, let's call him John, was not really John anymore, to himself, and to everyone that knew him. Events would happen to him, his wife would walk in and he would recognize her and say hi. She would reply back. And then sometimes he would move on to the next thought, or, notice his wife again and say hi again. Over and over and over. As Time went on he would struggle with the wife he remembered from before his illness started and the wife as she ages. Towards the end he would not even recognize his wife. How does he pass his time? He would fill notebook after notebook writing the same thought over and over again. All day, until physical body needs would distract him from it. He had little time to reflect on his old memories, mostly purely by chance of accident. Sometimes he would get very violent in his deep state of confusion, not out of any sort of maliciousness but out of fear and disorientation.
He is utterly unaware of where he is, that he is afflicted with the disease that wipes out his short term memory. The best way to describe him is a program stuck in a loop inside the body of a person that used to be a person just like the rest of us.
Thinking is important to us as being us. But I argue memory is even more important.
Future tech sci fi movies can introduce a lot of powerful thought concepts to us in a way that makes it easier to understand.
The Arnold Schwarzenegger, near future sci fi tech movie, "The 6th Day" made me aware of a concept that probably has been discussed heavily in philosophy, in this mostly bad movie.
In the movie, they developed the technology, to completely recreate your body based on a save, (like a saved game,) and they also can save your memory, to upload it to the new body.
We can all agree our identical twin is not us, just because our bodies are identical. Our experiences, stored in our memories is what makes the two twins different.
At the end of the movie, it is revealed the Arnold Schwarzenegger we been following all along is actually a copy. (Sorry if you have not seen this movie yet, but it has been out for 17 years now.)
The ability to upload your memories into an exact copy of your body, (or hey why not a younger, better body of your self?) equal immortality? How about the fact that this copy of you can come and kill you. You still get to suffer and die and become no more, but the memory of you lives on in copy of your body. To everyone else you are still alive if they were not aware of the swap. Are you immortal? Do your memories live on?
The answer here to me is obvious, the conclusions and further thought you make from this answer is to me anyways, incredibly difficult to contemplate and opens doors of thought most people want to keep very firmly shut.
I can share this if someone wants me to, but be warned at least for me, it was, and still is very hard for me to stomach. Your own results may vary :)
(Did anyone even make it this far in this long ramble?)
@LogicForTW: hahahahaaha I, I arrived until the end of this long ramble, later, but I'm here.
What you comment on John, let's call it that, is the description of senile dementia, where people have their long-term memory intact, old memories, while short-term memory disappears in minutes, there're patients who are lucky of having short-term memory of hours. Although you don't know this example is one of those that are wielded, along with other more physical, when advocates by transhumanism, research the conversion of electrical models of the brain to get those people back to memory, or At least autonomously accessible short-term memory, and, of course, the bionic and genetic ability to repair the body if it's damaged, is what scares the gyrfalts of all religions, human self-evolution., human self-evolution.
And it's a problem, because if you look at the proceedings of the ethical committees on genetics or medicine in some hospitals we will read the word god in most of them, if we look at the laws that limit the study of genetic advances, Stem cells for example, we find exactly the same thing.
Not so long ago I had to swallow an article written by a son of a bitch, evangelist pastor, who said that the exoskeletons that were being tested in paraplegic soldiers were an insult to god, because the human being has no right to remedy his will.
It's evident that when the animists speaked and speak about soul they refer to the mind, I know @Endri expresses it very well when he speaks of ceasing to think. The question posed by transhumanism is, if the human being manages to make self-evolution a fact and approach physical immortality, Where will religions be?
It's a very well brought subject, @LogicForTW, Thank you
I think we cease to exist as us when we die. I am open to considering an afterlife... just as soon as someone provides me with proof or at least good evidence that there is an afterlife.
Death has always been a competitive marketing strategy between the various faiths. Imagination already worshiping the thought of immortality, the religions know it and pander to it. Pretty low.
Do not forget they also had to convince people to go to war and fight for their cause. A lot easier to convince someone to go to war (which in the past, was almost always a death sentence,) when you can convince they got heaven waiting for them. (And to convince their family.)
Turn them into zealots and you get an effective fighting force that can suppress its own will to live to be a potent fighting force.