People have their beliefs, experiences, arguments, etc. But there's no way to really know, with absolute certainty, what happens after we die. We can BELIEVE something about it, or talk about how something SEEMS to be the case, but you can't be sure.
Whaddaya think?
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>Nobody can really know what happens after you die
You can.
Science, motherfucker.
Only if consciousness survives death somehow. If consciousness ends when you die, then you won't even know you're dead.
You can find out right now buddy
Sure, based on our current scientific knowledge, which is that human life arose randomly after billions of years of natural selection, and that past human societies have had a wide diversity of often conflicting religious beliefs, one can safely come to the conclusion that man is but temporarily conscious organic matter and that what follows death is nothingness.
>temporarily conscious organic matter
How can organic matter generate a conscious experience? It's just a bunch of molecules. I'm not talking about "x part of the brain is associated with y function."
The fact is that consciousness feels like something, and yet the human body appears to be made entirely of physical objects, which do not seem to feel anything at all unless they're arranged particular ways. This isn't an easy problem to solve, and the questions cannot be dismissed so easily. Nobody knows how the chemicals in the body interact to actually give rise to phenomenal consciousness.
>The fact is that consciousness feels like something, and yet the human body appears to be made entirely of physical objects, which do not seem to feel anything at all unless they're arranged particular ways. This isn't an easy problem to solve,
Indeed it is not, but given our knowledge of evolution and neuroscience the default hypothesis should be that the emergence of consciousness is nothing more than a chance arrangement of atoms. And it should certainly NOT be based on some fairy tales written millennia ago.
same shit as before you was born brainlet
you just die dude, there's nothing there, just a dead body
Even this explanation isn't very satisfactory to me. Why would atoms arranged in a certain way create consciousness? Since when was that something they could do? Why would they do that? Why would there need to be an aspect of our brains that feel our feelings and sense the world around us? It is not as if we need to be conscious to have certain thought processes and respond to stimuli, computers do it well enough. It's just strange. The fact that consciousness exists at all is strange.
>given our knowledge of evolution and neuroscience the default hypothesis should be that the emergence of consciousness is nothing more than a chance arrangement of atoms
That arrangement is changing constantly, and yet we remain conscious despite that. The atoms that are in us right now are to a large extent different atoms than the ones that were there in the distant past, and yet we remain conscious.
It's also worth mentioning that what constitutes or should constitute "science", conceptually, is not a fixed concept. It has evolved and continues to evolve, and there are many disagreements in the field of philosophy of science.
I don't remember anything from before I was born. That logically does not imply unconsciousness after I die.
This would be a good time to bring up a conception of physical reality called the block universe, also known as eternalism, which holds that the so-called "past", "present", and "past" all exist, and all are ontologically "real", even if we are experiencing one experience or another. If the block universe interpretation is true, the "passage of time" we experience is in a sense ultimately illusory.
space.com
>"We can portray our reality as either a three-dimensional place where stuff happens over time," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Max Tegmark, "or as a four-dimensional place where nothing happens ['block universe'] -- and if it really is the second picture, then change really is an illusion, because there's nothing that's changing; it's all just there -- past, present, future
This is all more complex than the "when you die that's it" viewpoint, which may or may not be true but is ultimately based on superficial appearance rather than demonstrable scientific fact. I sure don't understand it all, but I can tell it is a lot more nuanced than people often think.
Is this about to launch into full /x/?
I'm not sure what kind of answers you're looking for, but science can only explain so much and the rest is completely conjecture.
>Why would atoms arranged in a certain way create consciousness?
Why wouldn't they?
>Since when was that something they could do? Why would they do that?
The neural connections found in the brain approximate logic gates
> Why would there need to be an aspect of our brains that feel our feelings and sense the world around us?
It was an evolutionary advantage to our primate ancestors.
>That arrangement is changing constantly, and yet we remain conscious despite that.
The arrangement changes slowly. It's true that over a long period of time all the atoms in your body will be replaced, but that is a very long process. And anyway, it's not the exact atoms which count, its their arrangement in specific structures.
>It's also worth mentioning that what constitutes or should constitute "science", conceptually, is not a fixed concept. It has evolved and continues to evolve, and there are many disagreements in the field of philosophy of science.
Okay, but you're kind of moving the goalposts.
That's how it appears, but it cannot be proven. Look more into the hard problem of consciousness and the nature of time. There is so much we don't know. The assumption that when you die you remain unconscious forever in all senses is easy for many to believe, and it seems plausible on the surface, but it is far from demonstrable.
imo we are eternal:
The Hindus are right when it comes to reincarnation. However we aren't passing spirits from one form to another, but molecules. Scientific theories tell us that there is no conscious 'afterlife' per-se. However, the elements that we are made of were formed billions of years ago in the hearts of massive supernova explosions, and those elements were passed from the air, water, earth, dinosaurs, mammals, insects, etc... to us. Those elements within us will be passed to other things after we die. Billions of years from now, the sun will explode and the process will possibly start over again. So you could look at it this way, we were, are and ever will be.
>Why wouldn't they?
Why wouldn't they do anything, for that matter? Why don't atoms arrange in such a way to create an afterlife for a consciousness? Anything could happen when you put it like that.
>The neural connections found in the brain approximate logic gates
Logic has little to do with consciousness. Computers can function like that, but they don't have consciousness.
>It was an evolutionary advantage to our ancestors
Consciousness has nothing to do with that, yet again. Even a non-conscious being could theoretically have the thought, "Why am I conscious?". Obviously it wouldn't actually experience this thought, but the important part is that the effect of the thought is there. I could have no consciousness for all you know, or you could. Consciousness in of itself is not necessary. Consciousness merely means experiencing your programming, not influencing it.
>The arrangement changes slowly.
Well, no. The atoms in the human body are moving around 24/7/365. Countless ones are getting lost every fraction of a second.
>And anyway, it's not the exact atoms which count, its their arrangement in specific structures.
That arrangement is changing constantly, never stopping for even a second. The atoms in your brain, or any physical object aren't arranged in the same way as they were even before you started reading this sentence.
>Okay, but you're kind of moving the goalposts.
I don't see how. The very idea of what "science" should even be, is under constant discussion, and this always something worth keeping in mind. I'm going to give one example which I feel is relevant to the discussion, regarding determinism.
Many scientists today believe that science itself is meaningless unless one assumes the existence of metaphysical libertarian (not compatibilistic) free will. This is the position of the German physicist Anton Zeilinger, who stated
> [W]e always implicitly assume the freedom of the experimentalist... This fundamental assumption is essential to doing science. If this were not true, then, I suggest, it would make no sense at all to ask nature questions in an experiment, since then nature could determine what our questions are, and that could guide our questions such that we arrive at a false picture of nature.[6]
en.wikipedia.org
Keep in mind, this is a fundamental philosophical view on the nature and value of science itself, and it is a common view among many physicists. Several of the major interpretations of quantum mechanics rest on this view, including Bell's theorem. And yet it seems absolutely fatal to the common view of materialism and the idea that human consciousness is the product of physical (natural) phenomena.
if the block universe interpretation of physics is true, though
There was something Peter Hitchens said that has always resonated with me, about it is impossible to know what comes after, whether God exists or not, and how basically it boils down to whether you want to live in an ordered universe with objective morality, where there are consequences for you actions, and divine reward and punishment, or whether you want to live in an atheistic universe of disorder, where there is no objective meaning to your existence, no consequences for your action, no afterlife, and you can pretty much do what ever you want without fear of divine justice.
cont'd--
Einstein, and many other physicists, however, did not believe in free will, unlike Bell and Zeilinger. Einstein would have accepted the idea that nature itself can determine the actions of the scientist. This is a fundamentally different view of what science itself even is, at a very basic level. And yet it's a disagreement among some of the most prominent physicists of literally all time.
All of this is worth keeping in mind. The present day popular views of science don't take into account the fact that the nature of science itself isn't settled and is rife with disagreements and paradoxes. Even Bell and Zeilinger's idea that the experimenter has free will (in a libertarian, metaphysical sense, not in the compatibilist sense espoused by Daniel Dennett for example) seems inconsistent with the idea that the physical matter in the experimenter is operating according to the same laws as other matter he's experimenting on.
>past human societies have had a wide diversity of often conflicting religious beliefs, one can safely come to the conclusion that man is but temporarily conscious organic matter and that what follows death is nothingness.
That conclusion does not follow. You could equally look for similarities and become some new age perennials.
You could also apply your reasoning to mundane things, e.g. societies have had conflicting views on medicine, Western, Chinese, Ayurvedic, therefore medicine isn't real.
You might like this book m80:
That's the conclusion I came to about this issue.
I just can't seem to find any contradiction to it unless you were to consider the existence of a soul within us which is a pretty hard, if not impossible, to prove point.
It's unfortunate because I never asked for this.
There are a lot of assumptions in that view. The idea that "objective morality" is dependent on the existence of "God" (I use the quotes because what people mean when they use those terms can and does vary) is something that's been seriously questioned in the field of moral philosophy for thousands of years. Look into the Euthyphro dilemma.
There's also the fact that belief honestly does not seem to be a question of desire, at least in many cases. I may find the idea that I am very rich to be very appealing, and want that to be true, yet find myself unable to believe it based on the evidence. Belief is not simply "believing what you want" or what would, if true, lead to better consequences. And that's not even touching knowledge, as opposed to mere belief.
Left a sentence at the end half-written here.
I was going to say, if the block universe interpretation of physics is true, then there is absolutely no room for libertarianism whatsoever. Every experiment a scientist does was essentially predestined.
I will definitely check it out man, thanks.
>There are a lot of assumptions in that view. The idea that "objective morality" is dependent on the existence of "God" (I use the quotes because what people mean when they use those terms can and does vary) is something that's been seriously questioned in the field of moral philosophy for thousands of years. Look into the Euthyphro dilemma.
God in the Abrahamic sense is the one thing that is firm enough a foundation to base a form of objective morality upon, look at the trouble Harris had trying to base it upon nueroscience, or Neitzsche's articulation of the full ramifications of atheism.
Eurythro hasn't really posed a problem for Christian theologians, the medievals tended to accepted Voluntaryism, the Reformers Sovereignity.
Jews also nicely just point to the Book of Job on this matter, "where wast thou..."
>There's also the fact that belief honestly does not seem to be a question of desire, at least in many cases. I may find the idea that I am very rich to be very appealing, and want that to be true, yet find myself unable to believe it based on the evidence. Belief is not simply "believing what you want" or what would, if true, lead to better consequences. And that's not even touching knowledge, as opposed to mere belief.
Rich is a state of actual being, that you have clear and indisputable evidence for. Howeverr, for God and shit it's not a simple as checking your bank balance, no one really knows what's on the other side until they croak. It's like you will (to borrow from Kierkegaard) whether you wife truly loves you, or is just putting on a show, you still make a leap of faith and will act upon that leap.
Take my experience for example:
My brother passed away a day after Memorial Day. He unexpectedly died in his sleep. It was too late to revive him because his body was already cold and his heart beats felt faint when we found him. When it was time for his Memorial Ceremony, I remember going up there and presenting a eulogy that I wrote to him. Right when I was about to close off my speech, the urn behind me that was sitting on a table abruptly fell from its place and created this loud boom that shocked everyone in the whole room. I don't think this was a mere conicidence because the urn could have fell at any moment, during the preacher that was up there for 45 minutes before me, or when my brother's friend's dad gave his own eulogy right after me, yet it fell right when I was up there, as someone who is related to him by blood. I strongly believe that was my brother in his spiritual form and that was one way he wanted to communicate to us to show us that he was there with us, that he was there listening. And maybe he was appreciative of us too, for remembering him in honor. I think when you die your physical self is obviously cease to exist from earth but a part of you that is still there with you, your spirit, will still float around, wherever that may be. Hopefully resting in peace.
No, the Euthyphro dilemma has been posed to Abrahamic conceptions of God many times. The arguments still apply as far as I've seen.
There's also the fact that "God in the Abrahamic sense" isn't a discrete entity. The Jewish conception of God is vastly different than the Christian conception of God, and the Jewish interpretation of God's laws are vastly different than Christian interpretations.
Christianity and Judaism, despite sharing common ancestry, are incredibly different religions at many fundamental levels. This comes as a huge surprise to many American Christians. A lot of them think that Judaism and Christianity are really similar, but they're honestly not. The Jewish God and the Christian God are vastly different, conceptually.
>Howeverr, for God and shit it's not a simple as checking your bank balance, no one really knows what's on the other side until they croak.
Pretty much along the lines of my initial point in the OP eh?
> It's like you will (to borrow from Kierkegaard) whether you wife truly loves you, or is just putting on a show, you still make a leap of faith and will act upon that leap.
Or, another option is to simply go with what seems most likely based on the evidence, while allowing the possibility that you could be mistaken. This is a skeptical view; some may see it as unromantic, but I don't think it's indefensible. It seems to me very logical.
>the Euthyphro dilemma has been posed to Abrahamic conceptions of God many times
And like I said they have answered it, voluntaryism, sovereignity, Various shades of divine command. It's not the knockdown argument you think it is, every Christian theologian worth his salt has dealt with it, from Ockham to Calvin.
>There's also the fact that "God in the Abrahamic sense" isn't a discrete entity.
At a fundemenatal level it is, Muslims, Jews,Christians all claim to worship the God of Abraham, and concieve Him to be eternal, ominpotent, omniscient et cetera. Something quite different from the imperfect gods of the Romans with all their moral failings, the precarious immortality of Mesoamerican Gods, or the severly limited omnipotence of Ahura Mazda.
>Christianity and Judaism, despite sharing common ancestry, are incredibly different religions at many fundamental levels.
well duh, the moral law has replaced the ceremonial laws for Christians, Rabbinic Judaism replaced the Judaism of the Second Temple The Jews and Christians of today are entirely different to the Jews of the past.
>Pretty much along the lines of my initial point in the OP eh?
I thought you were arguing for bona fide physicalism.
>Or, another option is to simply go with what seems most likely based on the evidence, while allowing the possibility that you could be mistaken. This is a skeptical view; some may see it as unromantic, but I don't think it's indefensible. It seems to me very logical.
But the evidence is strongly limited here, and can be read in numerous ways, and at the end of the day it is still a leap. I for one find Duns Scotus' Treatise on God as First Principle as a deeply convincing argumument, however I can't get beyond it from a form of Deism to accepting all the smells and bells of Catholicism.
The evidence is imperfect, and the way you go will depend on how you want to believe, which in turn is tied up to how you want to live your life.
>And like I said they have answered it, voluntaryism, sovereignity, Various shades of divine command. It's not the knockdown argument you think it is, every Christian theologian worth his salt has dealt with it, from Ockham to Calvin.
I'd be interested in seeing some of these answers.
>At a fundemenatal level it is, Muslims, Jews,Christians all claim to worship the God of Abraham, and concieve Him to be eternal, ominpotent, omniscient et cetera. Something quite different from the imperfect gods of the Romans with all their moral failings, the precarious immortality of Mesoamerican Gods, or the severly limited omnipotence of Ahura Mazda.
No Abrahamic conception of God seems particularly "perfect" if you consider the fact that all three of these religions describe this world as imperfect. How can a perfect god create an imperfect creation? It logically does not make sense.
>well duh, the moral law has replaced the ceremonial laws for Christians, Rabbinic Judaism replaced the Judaism of the Second Temple The Jews and Christians of today are entirely different to the Jews of the past.
So taking that into account, you can have various people of different religions, who all believe in an "Abrahamic God", and their belief allows them to all believe in "Objective Moralities" that are vastly contradictory to other "objective moralities" based on "Abrahamic God". This appears to render the aspect of objectivity rather moot.
>I thought you were arguing for bona fide physicalism.
Not at all.
>The evidence is imperfect, and the way you go will depend on how you want to believe, which in turn is tied up to how you want to live your life.
I don't agree. A person can really want to believe in a given thing, and yet simply find himself unable to believe in it based on the evidence he has at his disposal, even in the absence of absolute proof either way.
I wholeheartedly agree.
It seems to me that the mainstream science's "nothingness" after death is just an excuse for criminals to commit crime.