More on the afterlife

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It is kind of scary to think that all ends when you die. However the thought of an afterlife is not much better. So many religions to choose from each one condemning the others to hell. Not a very nice choise to make in my opinion when you're entire eternal punishment or reward is depending on it! So really I think I'll sleep better if I'll just believe that it all ends with death.

 

I did Dante's Inferno test once and ended up far down at lvl 7 with the heretics or something, so if there is an afterlife, I hope that it isn't Christian.

Seriously, I don't think or hope there is an afterlife.
It would indeed be a scary thing.

 

I don't mind hearing people voice these beliefs, though I do find it a bit sad. I definitely mind it when they voice them in the same absolute, non-chalant, assumed-to-be-right ways as they would that gravity exists or that the sky is blue. Feel free to say that you know what you know, but if you don't actually know something, please say it is a belief.

 

I think pretty much the same thing. I'm an agnostic, and thus I have no idea about whether or not God exists, assuming that he does exist, I don't know what he thinks or does, and I certainly don't know what happens when you die.

Ultimately, regardless of what happens after you die, I have no control over it anyway, so it's not worth spending time thinking about it.

 

Since there's no separation of mind and body and since the body decays after death - how should the mind possibly go on after death?

"There's no afterlife" is the default position because it is consistent with everything we know about life and death, about how our bodies function, about how our brain is working. It would be a misrepresentation to imply that "no afterlife" is just another option together with the Christian or Hindu or similar afterlife.

 

What you state is a belief, what I and the rest of the people who 'know' that any afterlife myth stems from the fear people have of dying is fact. People dont want to die, people are afraid of the unknown. Anything unknowable scares people, and people dont know what happens after you die, so 'if' anything happens after you die it is always going to be unknowable. Therefore people are afraid of death, and therefore they create myths to explain death and to numb the pain that comes with death. It is much easier for a simple person to believe that there is some sort of 'hope' for them when they die than it is for them to come to the realisation that when they die they just simply cease to exist.

That being said, my 'belief' is that the part of us that makes us conscious (and all other animals too) is the 'breath' or 'spirit' of God dwelling in us, and when you die that part of you that is non-physical (ie the mind) gets recycled and put into another material shell. So its sort of like reincarnation, only that 'you' arent going from body to body, but rather your non-material conscious essence is being transfered from used up material bodies to freshly made material bodies.

My belief could be totally wrong, and I accept that. However, I am able to be aware that if anything, it stems from a fear of dying and the idea of reincarnation helps ease the pain of losing a loved one, and also makes people consciously go about doing good things. Like, you do good things and you dont 'come back' as a rat or a flea, but could possibly end up being One with God. Simmilar thing there with the belief of a heaven or a hell. They are motivators to make people be good.

You cant say that your beliefs are facts unless they are facts, and if they are facts then they cease to be beliefs.

So the mind has a physical dimension then? Can you pick up a lump of 'mind' and weigh it? Can you throw some 'mind' at someone? What colour is the 'mind'?

The mind is an abstract object, it is definitely not material, and as to whether or not it would cease to exist without the body there is open to debate. It isnt the same as numbers, because 2+2 will always equal 4 regardless of if there were humans there to count it or not. So just as the number 2 is distinctly seperate from the word 'two' and the symbol '2', so too is the mind distinct from the body. The mind does not equal the brain. But just because other abstract things such as time, numbers, space etc, continue to exist regardless of whether humans are around to measure and record them, it does not mean necessarily that the mind has to cease to exist with death.

Perhaps 'ghosts' or whatever you wish to call them are simply disembodied 'minds'...consciousness that continues to exist without the body. The brain doesnt need the mind to function, on a basic level, so why would the mind necessarily need the brain to function on a basic level?

[ March 14, 2007, 10:06: Message edited by: Nataraja ]

 

Apparently, according to many religious beliefs, you do have some control. Although I don't know if the only reason you do a 'good' (by that particular religion's perspective) deed is to get into 'heaven' (or valhalla, or be reincarnated as an elephant... whatever is considered the 'positive' afterlife) then doesn't that make the act in itself a selfish, and therefore, evil one? By doing a good deed one could damn themselves to an eternity of suffering... heh.

Methinks I'll start a new thread.

 

Exactly. Mind has no colour, no weight. Mind has no independent physical dimension, accordingly it vanishes as soon as the physical entity (brain) it is connected to ceases to function.

I should have avoided the term "mind" altogether because it is ill-defined. Nevertheless, regardless of our subjective understanding of the term, I don't really see how the concept "mind" could be independent of our idea of it. Mind is a human invention, and as such it cannot possibly exist without humans. I find it fairly safe to say that the mind of George Washington ceased to exist with the death of the person George Washington. So, no, I don't feel that this point is debatable. The same is true with numbers, humanism, religion or any other concept that humans found convenient think of. Perhaps you want to engage in a discussion of universals, of Plato's world of ideas. But I've always felt that this is a semantical rather than a philosophical problem.

This is essentially true, but, also, essentially meaningless, at least in the discussion at hand. Love does not equal the brain. Pain does not equal brain. Eyesight does not equal brain. But are these independent of it?

The first part is true, but how do you deduce the second part of it?

It seems to me that your "breath of god" is somewhat different from what a neurophysiologist would call mind.

 

You're logic is correct, and I don't question that. It is the final claim that, because we fear the unknown of death, all beliefs in the afterlife must have come from that fear of death. More specifically:

You don't know where these beliefs first came from. They pre-date history by a long, long ways. There is no evidence they are wrong or weren't inspired by an outside source (anything outside common human fear). Therefore, your statement above is a belief, not a fact.

 

So, the Nordic/Scandanavian version of the afterlife was divinely inspired, and if it was inspired by a divine presence then Thor and Loki etc. are real?

 

If you deconstruct all beliefs then you see where their origins lay. Long before writing was invented, people learnt how to draw, paint and sculpt. We can look at the artifacts and pretty much piece together the way they viewed aspects of their life.

 

@Ab:

I don't believe it for a second, but can you SCIENTIFICALLY PROVE it isn't true? That's what it comes down to. Unless you have scientific evidence to back your claims up, they're beliefs for the purpose of this discussion, not facts.

@Nataraja:

And there you get as big a can of worms as the validity of the Bible, the truth of evolution, or just about any other topic we've debated here. There are SOOOO many problems with that, not the least of which is a vast lack of actual evidence. So we've got some cavemen who had flowers on them when they were burried. Is that evidence of fear of death or a belief in the afterlife? Is it evidence that God didn't come down and tell them about it? The answer to both is a resounding NO! It leaves us back where we began.

 

Considering that a lot of those cave-men that had flowers on them when they were buried werent human, then no, God didnt come down and tell them.

The Bible as about as valid as any other religious document. Im sure people come up with many reasons why the origins of man cant be the way its stated in the Vedas, because according to the Vedas man has existed on the earth for millions of years, and science says that we have only existed for the last 100-250 thousand years.

 

Nataraja, again you are venturing into areas where science hasn't given us concrete answers, such as what is human? Anatomically modern Homo Sapien Sapien is not the only thing a religious text may mean by people, nor do the presence of flowers necessarily indicate any type of religious belief to begin with.

Anyway, this is all off-topic and I'm sorry for starting it. Anyone else want to present some interesting opinions on the afterlife?

 

The God of the Abrahamic faiths made a man and a woman, just one man, just one woman. Neanderthal mitochondrial dna shows that it is significantly different from human mitochondrial dna. They had different mothers than we do. So did the God of the Abrahamic faiths really make two different women? If so then the Bible is lying.

What this has to do with the afterlife is that its not only humans who had myths explaining what happens when you die. Our closest relatives who werent human also had beliefs about death. This is shown in the way they carefully bury their dead after a certain stage in their over-all development. Not only did pre-human hominid species show some sort of 'life after death' belief, but they also cared for their elderly long past their useful stage. This too is observed in fossil records. So since its not just limited to people, but extends to 'pre-people', it is clearly all just myths explaining things that we dont understand, and that our ancestors didnt understand either. The world was a scary place for homo erectus, and it was homo erectus who first started burying their dead in ritualistic ways. The fear of death and the unknown in general is the basis of all religious beliefs, including that of the afterlife. The belief in God itself is based on the afterlife, because for an afterlife to exist there must be a God/Gods/Godesses to maintain said afterlife.

 

Here's a thought:

Since I cannot know myself in the now, but can only have an understanding of myself as something from the past, or can only project what I will be in the future, then once I stop changing, I will stop knowing that I exist.

...

By the way, does anyone know what it means to, "be a rock and not a stone..."? Stupid Led Zeppelin with their stuff that is stupid...


[Errr. Misheard lyrics anyone? It's "to be a rock and not to roll" - dmc]

[ March 20, 2007, 04:04: Message edited by: dmc ]

 

Nataraja, you're still making a lot of assumptions, and bad ones at that. If 'people' may mean more than anatomically modern Homo Sapien Sapien, then the 'first woman' may have been a common ancestor to Homo Sapien Sapien and the Neanderthal Man. Alternatively, the Genesis story may leave out a LOT of details that would mean something to us, but not mean anything to the Jews it was first given to. After all, it never mentions the creation of bacteria, either, but nor does it say such a thing doesn't exist. Remember, Genesis is not a text book on the process of creation. It was never meant to be. Its failure to mention something that does exist or did happen does not mean it is wrong.

 

No the Neanderthal split from our line many generations before we had fully evolved from homo erectus. They were our evolutionary 'cousins'.

If Genesis isnt a text book on creation then why does it mention creation at all, and why do people assume that it is literal?

 

@dmc

Yup, you're right. Clearly, I'm a tool.

You know that song, "...she's a brick .... HOUSE"? For the longest time I thought it was, "she's a freak ... YOWW".