Faith in permanent death

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It is to some people. But this isn't what I was getting at. I was thinking along the lines that if people are to have alternatives to religion, to Christianity or Hinduism or whatever, then those alternatives should also offer these people as much as they can. A person who has just lost their faith in Christianity and hears atheists preaching permanent death may be impressed. This person might say, "Gee, seems like most atheists think that theres no afterlife. That must mean there isn't one!" So they put their faith in this idea, and maybe for the rest of their time as atheists they will intentionally ignore concepts like eternal return as plausible, because they have been deluded to blindly accept the various ideas of mainstream atheism, including the emo idea of permanent death.

If a person no longer believes in the God that they once viewed as the source of eternal life, why should they believe in eternal life?

I mean, even your arguments in the thread haven't really focused on reasons to actually believe it; you've focused on reasons why the possibility shouldn't be dismissed completely. Even if you're successful, you'll have only succeeded in raising the plausibility of an afterlife from "completely impossible" to about the same level as the Tooth Fairy (something else that seems contrived and that I don't personally accept as true, although it's impossible to rigorously disprove her existence).

 

[PolyHedral]

Apparently you arent aware of points 3 or 4. I suggest you do a little reading, its well worth it in this case.

The entity in question in that case is a "consciousness" distinct from the brain's operation. Brains die. We don't have any reason to think they don't take "us" with them.

 

[839311]

But there are problems with the idea of "God swooping up your consciousness". To begin with, what is "your consciousness"? What is "you"?

This is precisely the problem. We don't know.

If the physiological changes of, say, mental degradation caused by disease in old age don't count and don't affect your "soul", then why would the physiological changes of, say, growth and experience from birth to adulthood?

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I don't know.

And also, it suggests that there are real living and breathing people who don't have "souls". Consider this:

- Steve is a unique person with identifying characteristics.
- Steve suffers a brain injury. Those identifying characteristics become so altered that it's no longer reasonable to call him the same person as he was before.
- "Old Steve" has effectively died, but "New Steve" is most definitely alive. What has happened?

I don't think identifying characterists are the same thing as consciousness. Even people who are complete mental vegetables look alive to me. Maybe their consciousness has died as well, I dont know. Maybe people who are alive and walking about have lost their consciousness when they had a brain injury that damaged enough of the consciousness to effectively kill the 'soul' but not the brain? Im just speculating here. But its because we don't know that we can speculate.

- at the moment before the injury, God swooped down, scooped up Old Steve's "soul" so that it would not be affected by the injury. But then where did New Steve come from? Does New Steve have a soul?

If were going to assume the Swoop God exists, then if he can scoop up people's souls I wouldn't be surprised if he has figured out how to replace them with other souls, or form new souls out of inanimate energy and matter. Aye, but ye do not believe.

God chose not to "swoop", Steve was injured, killing Old Steve and replacing him with New Steve. What happened to Old Steve? Does he not get an afterlife?

Maybe God marked every bit of matter and energy his conciousness was made of and plans to resurrect him later in order to torture him forever for his sins? lol. I couldn't help myself. Lets go with a sane version of God instead. He marks every bit of matter and energy and plans to resurrect him into a paradise afterlife. As for the time in between, maybe its a lot like sleep, minus dreams.

That doesn't actually have anything to do with the question of the afterlife. If we're all just brains in vats, well, brains do die.

Our brains do, but maybe not genetically engineered cyborg super brains of the future. If an advanced civilization has the technology to create such a simulation, I would expect them to have figured out how to make people immortal.

If all the death in this world is only a simulation, then it's not really death. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to call the simulation beyond it an "afterlife".

Whatever we call it, this life isn't all there would be. We'd die, but we wouldn't permanently cease to exist. Personally, I think the afterlife is still a valid word in this case, but it doesnt really matter.

Yes, because you didn't bother to actually give a position on the issue for me to address. A link is not an argument.

It was a long message as it was, give me a break! So, what do you think about eternal return?

Why?

The only scenario under which the chance that our death here will be the permanent, eternal cessation of our conciousness, is as follows. There is no god. There is no advanced civilization running this simulation. There is no cosmic consciousness. Here, however, is where I feel like I have to stretch myself. Our matter and energy that makes up our consciousness will never again form in another being. The laws of physics are such that this energy will be scattered into some eternally dusty corner of reality, never being part of another big bang or other event in which the conditions of life will be created and under which a possibility would exist for our consciousness to be booted up again. I think its highly unlikely that this will occur. So, as I understand it, even if there is no god, no simulation, or some kind of cosmic consciousness or something, it is still highly likely that we will wake up in some reality in the future. Whether it happens in the next big bang, or in a hundred big bangs, or in a decillion big bangs or other such events. Even if it happens after a decillion to the power of a decillion years, as long as there is a possibility that it will happen, then it will happen.
- previous post

They're definitely not all true, since they're mutually exclusive.

Maybe. I think a God could exist that is watching over an advanced civ, both of whom may be doomed to annihilation at some future event in time where the very laws of physics are warped because another layer of reality that we had no knowledge of and no way of detecting suddenly ***** all over our layer and instantly destroys all life. Then, once this mystery layer cools off, the laws of physics of our reality return to normal and life again becomes possible to exist. In time, the rubble of your consciousness forms in a new being and you are alive again.

Consciousness is not "energy", so none of that mumbo-jumbo about conservation of energy really applies to it.

Not energy? So what is it then, magic?

However, if it did, then this would be a demonstration that consciousness is entirely physical, which is the position that suggests that there is no afterlife.

Well everything that is real is physical isn't it? Or are you drawing a distinction between energy and matter? If so, this still would have no bearing on the possibility that we are in a simulation, or that Swoop God could restore your consciousness by assembling the relevant parts of your brain, or that eternal return or similar scenarios aren't true.

Ill grant that it would incinerate the cosmic consciousness idea. One of the least likely, in my opinion, and no coincidence that it made it at the end of the list in the OP. Not that the list was arranged in order of probability. If I had that in mind, the options would be arranged in this order: 3,4,2,1,5.

 

[839311]

The entity in question in that case is a "consciousness" distinct from the brain's operation. Brains die. We don't have any reason to think they don't take "us" with them.

No, its not. Did you even read it? It has nothing to do with what consciousness truly is, whether it has more to do with the brain or more to do with energy. It simply assumes that whatever it is, it will be reformed again in the future into the same consciousness as before.

 

[839311]

I mean, even your arguments in the thread haven't really focused on reasons to actually believe it; you've focused on reasons why the possibility shouldn't be dismissed completely. Even if you're successful, you'll have only succeeded in raising the plausibility of an afterlife from "completely impossible" to about the same level as the Tooth Fairy (something else that seems contrived and that I don't personally accept as true, although it's impossible to rigorously disprove her existence).

Here is where subjective opinion on the probabilities comes in. You think it is as unlikely as the tooth fairy... which more or less means that you have discounted all the possibilities as untrue anyways. Whereas I think that option 1 is unlikely, option 2 is a lot more likely than option 1 (I cant assign a probability here because there are too many unknowns), one of either option 3 or 4 is almost certainly true if options 1 and 2 are not, option 5 is highly unlikely. The overall probability, taking all those into account, is very, very high.

And, you dont believe in her existence? What is wrong with you? :areyoucra

 

[Willamena]

The entity in question in that case is a "consciousness" distinct from the brain's operation. Brains die. We don't have any reason to think they don't take "us" with them.

We only have one reason to think they "take 'us' with them," and that's an investment of belief in a model of reality that we devised using ... (insert drum roll here) conscious faculties.

 

[Tristesse]

I think the main issue here is, what is there of me that continues after I'm dead? Because everything we attribute as self is controlled throught the brain, which we know dies. So, it's perfectly logical to think that when you die, thats it, game over. But hey, if I find out differently, then cool! But there is no reason to think that when I die, my conciousness continues.

 

[Nooj]

As it's your reason, it's good enough.

(Pretty much has to be.)

I think so too. And if it is a weak argument, I don't care.

 

[839311]

I think the main issue here is, what is there of me that continues after I'm dead? Because everything we attribute as self is controlled throught the brain, which we know dies. So, it's perfectly logical to think that when you die, thats it, game over.

This doesn't address any of the points in the OP at all. Im getting tired of tearing this strawman apart over and over again. You should just read the OP.

 

[839311]

And if it is a weak argument, I don't care.

You don't care if its a weak argument? What kind of spirit of debate is this? :slap:

 

[Tristesse]

This doesn't address any of the points in the OP at all. Im getting tired of tearing this strawman apart over and over again. You should just read the OP.

It addresses the OP in the fact that it does not take faith at all to believe that when you die, you're dead. I read your OP and it was just assertion after assertion.

 

[Nooj]

You don't care if its a weak argument? What kind of spirit of debate is this? :slap:

Because I'm not debating. You asked why people believed what they did. I'm not out here trying to convince people to believe what I believe. I'm just explaining why I believe what I believe.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

This is precisely the problem. We don't know.

It seems to me that you're putting the cart before the horse, then. Doesn't it make sense to define what "you" is before you start hypothesizing about where "you" might go when "you" dies?

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I don't know.

But your "swooping God" hypothesis assumes that God can distinguish between them.

I don't think identifying characterists are the same thing as consciousness. Even people who are complete mental vegetables look alive to me. Maybe their consciousness has died as well, I dont know. Maybe people who are alive and walking about have lost their consciousness when they had a brain injury that damaged enough of the consciousness to effectively kill the 'soul' but not the brain? Im just speculating here. But its because we don't know that we can speculate.

So... it's possible that we don't need a soul to live, walk, talk, interact with people, etc.? Why assume that anyone has a soul at all, then?

If were going to assume the Swoop God exists, then if he can scoop up people's souls I wouldn't be surprised if he has figured out how to replace them with other souls, or form new souls out of inanimate energy and matter. Aye, but ye do not believe.

Okay - so both Old Steve and New Steve have separate souls, and when Old Steve's soul is scooped up, God replaces it with New Steve at the exact moment of the injury?

This is starting to sound very Rube Goldberg-esque.

Maybe God marked every bit of matter and energy his conciousness was made of and plans to resurrect him later in order to torture him forever for his sins? lol. I couldn't help myself. Lets go with a sane version of God instead. He marks every bit of matter and energy and plans to resurrect him into a paradise afterlife. As for the time in between, maybe its a lot like sleep, minus dreams.

I don't know what you're trying to say here.

Our brains do, but maybe not genetically engineered cyborg super brains of the future. If an advanced civilization has the technology to create such a simulation, I would expect them to have figured out how to make people immortal.

Why would you expect something like this?

"Cyborg super brains of the future" would still corrode, or at the very least, not be able to function beyond the heat-death of the universe. Living a long time is still not immortality.

Whatever we call it, this life isn't all there would be. We'd die, but we wouldn't permanently cease to exist. Personally, I think the afterlife is still a valid word in this case, but it doesnt really matter.

Do you say that you "die" (and mean it as actual death) when you lose a video game?

It was a long message as it was, give me a break! So, what do you think about eternal return?

Even if it were true, I don't think it's relevant. Say the universe goes through cycles and everything plays out again exactly like it did this time. Is the "you" in that future universe really "you", or is it more like your clone? There's nothing connecting "current you" to "future universe you", so I think it's more appropriate to say that "future you" is more like a copy or a clone.

The only scenario under which the chance that our death here will be the permanent, eternal cessation of our conciousness, is as follows. There is no god. There is no advanced civilization running this simulation. There is no cosmic consciousness.

Well, no. There are other possibilities:

- God exists, but he just doesn't bother to imbue you with a soul that lives beyond your death
- God exists, but he decides to get rid of Heaven after a while
- We're all the simulation of an advanced civilization, but even though they're really good at simulating reality, they haven't figured out how to conquer death.
- There is a cosmic conciousness, but we're not part of it.

Here, however, is where I feel like I have to stretch myself. Our matter and energy that makes up our consciousness will never again form in another being. The laws of physics are such that this energy will be scattered into some eternally dusty corner of reality, never being part of another big bang or other event in which the conditions of life will be created and under which a possibility would exist for our consciousness to be booted up again. I think its highly unlikely that this will occur.

Wait - didn't you argue for the exact opposite of this when you argued for "eternal return"?

Maybe. I think a God could exist that is watching over an advanced civ, both of whom may be doomed to annihilation at some future event in time where the very laws of physics are warped because another layer of reality that we had no knowledge of and no way of detecting suddenly ***** all over our layer and instantly destroys all life. Then, once this mystery layer cools off, the laws of physics of our reality return to normal and life again becomes possible to exist. In time, the rubble of your consciousness forms in a new being and you are alive again.

What makes it "you"?

Not energy? So what is it then, magic?

Consciousness is our term for a pattern. This pattern relies on energy and matter, but it's not only energy and matter.

The best analogy I've been able to come up with is symmetry: say you lay out a handful of objects in a symmetrical pattern; you have symmetry. Scoop the objects into a bag and you'll have lost the symmetry, even though you may have every atom of matter that you had to begin with.

Or think of a book: if you burn it carefully, you might not lose any of the matter or energy in the book, but once the words on the page lose their pattern, the copy of Hamlet (or whatever) ceases to be Hamlet. Your collection of soot, carbon dioxide and water vapour is not a copy of Hamlet, even though it once made up a copy of Hamlet.

Well everything that is real is physical isn't it? Or are you drawing a distinction between energy and matter?

No, I'm drawing a distinction between things that we know, measure and understand, like matter/energy and hypothetical things that work by laws and rules that we don't know... like "souls" and "afterlives", for instance.

If so, this still would have no bearing on the possibility that we are in a simulation, or that Swoop God could restore your consciousness by assembling the relevant parts of your brain, or that eternal return or similar scenarios aren't true.

You presented hypothesis 5 as an alternative to 1 or 2. If you want to argue for 1 or 2, go for it, but you're muddying things if you try to move the goalposts so that 5 is really "5 plus 1".

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Here is where subjective opinion on the probabilities comes in. You think it is as unlikely as the tooth fairy... which more or less means that you have discounted all the possibilities as untrue anyways.

Well, I don't see any reason to believe in her, even though arguments could be made that I shouldn't completely exclude the possibility.

But you think that belief in an afterlife is different... okay. What's a reason to believe that one exists? And I don't mean just a reason not to completely reject the idea, but a positive reason based on actual logic or evidence that suggests not only that it's not completely impossible but that it's a more reasonable belief than the alternatives.

Whereas I think that option 1 is unlikely, option 2 is a lot more likely than option 1 (I cant assign a probability here because there are too many unknowns), one of either option 3 or 4 is almost certainly true if options 1 and 2 are not, option 5 is highly unlikely. The overall probability, taking all those into account, is very, very high.

You just said that there are many unknowns. How do you assess the probability of the different options you gave in order to figure out which ones were more and less probable? And how do you come to conclusion that it's highly probable that at least one is true?

 

[PolyHedral]

We only have one reason to think they "take 'us' with them," and that's an investment of belief in a model of reality that we devised using ... (insert drum roll here) conscious faculties.

Would you like me to devise it using unconscious faculties instead?

 

[idav]

The most logical and reasonable attitude is definetely not to assume there is none. With so many possibilities under which our physical death would not be permanent, the assumption that it is permanent seems like an irrational leap of faith. How do you know your not in a simulation whose rules you have chosen yourself? Maybe when making this program you wanted it to be more or less like this, and threw in some random elements like where you'd be born, whether you'd be really rich or average in wealth, just to make it more interesting. Maybe you actually have all eternity to live and dont want to get bored so you do this once in a while to spice things up. Who knows. But assuming that there isn't any kind of afterlife is flat out irrational.

Saying there is something after life is a no brainer. We know that energy is never destroyed. What you mean by permanent is that there is no life after life as in our life and our energy, who we are, never go back into another lifeform. Assuming we stay together is a leap of faith and a bit irrational. I would lean more towards you point 5 if we manage to keep ourselves together after physical death. The alternative to point 5 is that our energy simply gets scattered and recycled and even though our energy may find life it wouldn't be you anymore. The other points are simply science fiction made to seem plausible but logic would tell us to choose the most plausible and not consider everything under the sun just cause anything is possible.

 

[839311]

It addresses the OP in the fact that it does not take faith at all to believe that when you die, you're dead. I read your OP and it was just assertion after assertion.

Possibility after possibility. Permanent death is another possibility. Seeing as we have insufficient information about the nature of the cosmos and the nature of consciousness to be able to discount the possibilities of an afterlife, accepting the possibility of permanent death as true is an irrational faith based decision. Why not just admit that there is even a small chance that eternal return is true? Why not say that, 'I highly doubt this is a simulation. But, maybe.' When you go from considering something that is highly unlikely straight into impossible, in a situation where you have a limited amount of information and a whole range of unknown variables, then that is irrational, and qualifies as a faith based truth claim, which is exactly what religious people are so often guilty of. So, do me a favor and don't preach this idea to others, because this bleak, emo idea unnecessarily saps people's hopes that this life isnt all there is.

 

[Tristesse]

Possibility after possibility. Permanent death is another possibility. Seeing as we have insufficient information about the nature of the cosmos and the nature of consciousness to be able to discount the possibilities of an afterlife, accepting the possibility of permanent death as true is an irrational faith based decision. Why not just admit that there is even a small chance that eternal return is true? Why not say that, 'I highly doubt this is a simulation. But, maybe.' When you go from considering something that is highly unlikely straight into impossible, in a situation where you have a limited amount of information and a whole range of unknown variables, then that is irrational, and qualifies as a faith based truth claim, which is exactly what religious people are so often guilty of. So, do me a favor and don't preach this idea to others, because this bleak, emo idea unnecessarily saps people's hopes that this life isnt all there is.

I didn't say that I discounted the possibility of life after death. What I'm saying is that the evidence for life after death has not been presented.

It seems to me that what you're suggesting is nothing more than wishful thinking. I'll admit that there is a possibility that there could be life after death, but in the same respect that there is a possiblity that ferries exist. I don't care whats "possible" I care whats true.

So what if it's bleak? Just because something seems bleak to you, doesn't make it not true. Life is bleak sometimes, get over it. And since we know that this is the only life we have, make the best of it.

Unless you have evidence to back up your claims, please stop making them.

 

[PolyHedral]

Seeing as we have insufficient information about the nature of the cosmos and the nature of consciousness to be able to discount the possibilities of an afterlife...

I can perfectly describe the macroscopic world, (except, of course, devices designed to go deeper.) but my description implies that an afterlife doesn't exist. We have libraries worth of information, and while you're right that we can't rule out anything, we can say with a large confidence that an afterlife probably doesn't exist.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Saying there is something after life is a no brainer.

Yes; we call it "death".