Would life after death truly be desirable?
Offline Hello all.
For once, I am doing something very unusual by my standards: I am commenting on something in which I don't have an education. That something is psychology. Anyone who wishes to correct things, therefore, feel free. Of course, I am also commenting on something in which I have firmer footing, philosophy.
The idea that life after death is innately desirable seems almost axiomatic to many of us. We hold that even if we don't accept the concept, we like to think that it is true, and those who do hold to it cannot imagine the lives of those who do not. Tillich in particular emphasized the concept of "existentialist angst". This was the deep fear on part of humans of the idea that one day, they, their consciousness, would no longer exist. This, Tillich said, was not neurotic, it was deeply rooted in the human condition.
To state up front in a very blunt manner: I do not believe in Life after death. Once the organic and biological processes responsible for maintaining the central elements of my personhood, such as my memories, my functional abilities, my consciousness, etc. are destroyed by organic death, so too, it logically follows, am I. So powerful is this notion that it still holds even if one accepts a dualist understanding (which I reject anyway), because, even if we admitted that the material brain was not the whole story, ultimately, it is impossible to hold that our personhood could possibly continue in any meaningful way without memories, without sensory equipment, without perception of a physical world, without the ability to form thoughts (because it depends on memory), etc. Ultimately, therefore, the concept of life after death is destined to collapse.
However, that is not what I am talking about. The primary purpose of this thread is to question the implicitly held idea that life after death is an innately desirable achievement? Would it really be? Consider it: The eternal continuity of your consciousness? Surely, that would be the absolute and ultimate embodiment of nihilism? An utterly purposeless continuity, not merely an extended continuity but an eternal one. It would be a torture equivalent to Camus' description of Sisyphus. The idea that we would persist forever is ultimately daunting, and taken to the inevitable conclusion, dreadful. We like to fantasize about it, that we won't really die, but in truth, if our wish were fulfilled, we would despise it. We are not merely discussing an extension of lifespan. Eternity is eternity, after all. Some might argue that the concept isn't really meaningful anyway, but then, we are discussing an idea which takes the idea of "meaningless" to a new level. There are many things which we fantasize about that we don't really want to come to fruition. It is not the actual fulfillment of these objectives that we desire, it is fantasizing in itself that is being enjoyed. Obviously, from this perspective, life after death is sort of the ultimate sort of this type of fantasizing, because you can continue until you die, and there is little that can deviate an individual from the continuity of the fantasy. I am simply pointing out that the idea that belief in Life after death is desirable and those who do not hold to it should be pitied, is specious, yet unquestioned. This is probably because most people don't stop and consider what a daunting prospect the eternal continuity of their consciousness is. Are we realizing what an absurdity we are discussing. The human lifespan is approximately 80-100 years in modern nations with good healthcare. Could you even begin to conceive the idea that it could exist for 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years? What about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years?
Probably not. When viewed in this manner, it hardly seems desirable anymore. And of course, the number I just mentioned, which, by the way, is 1x10^123, is, by definition, an infinitesmal fraction of the eternal stretch of existence being discussed. To put it mildly, you would get bored. To put in more precise language, the eternal continuing of your consciousness would be unimaginable and ultimately lead to despair and hopelessness, as it would be an ultimately pointless continuity. Indeed, the very idea of a "point" to the whole process would lead to internal contradiction. A point of something is defined by its ending. We speak of having accomplished actions, and we speak of objectives being fulfilled in the sense that they will be fulfilled, hence there will, if the objective is fulfilled, eventually be a termination of the process leading to the objective. The notions of "a point" or a "meaning" are ultimately at loggerheads with the idea of "never ending", and anyone who thinks that atheists are despairing nihilists because they hold in the eventual and final cessation of consciousness, should take note of the that.
You wouldn't want it. Nobody would. We like to think we would, only because we don't really like the idea that we have lifespans in the double-digits in terms of years. That's not very long. It just demonstrates that humans are impossible to please.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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I've used this line of reasoning in Yahoo Chat many times. After so long, you would learn all that can be learned, loved all you can love, had all the thrills you can experience, had chats on all discussable subjects, etc. so the pool of stimulants that made life worth living would have dwindled to nothingness, leaving you with nothing but eternal bleakness and despair in a purposeless existence. The idea's quite depressing, to say the least.
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
This topic had been done quite abit as of lately, but I'll say it again-I have no desire for life after death. When you think about, I can imagine nothing worse. Let's say that after death we have some sort of soul that then exists in a sort of permanent conciousness with all the other souls to have ever died. After a few million years you could know everyone who ever existed better than you could know anyone.You could learn the sum of human knowledge.Then what?
There is a book called The Dig, by George Lucas or part of Lucasarts,I don't remember. A alien race,in their quest for immortality, transport themselves to another dimension where they exist in a non-corpeal state.After a few millinea they realise they would give anything to be able to die.I think it would be like that.
I once heard a analogy of eternity. Imagine a huge mountain.Bigger than Everest.Bigger than the world if you want. Every million years, a bird comes and takes one peck at it. The time it will take that bird to wear the mountain away is still less than a blink to eternity.
I'd rather just not exist.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
Indeed, no matter how you stretch out experience, eternity is longer and has no conclusion. I cannot fathom why anyone who actually thought about the implications would continue to fantasize about eternal life after death. I don't think anyone exactly looks forward to death and while I secretly dream of an extended life (not that I fear death, I just have lots that I'd like to do before I cease) an eternity or anything aproaching an incomprehensible number of years (which really is not a very big number as far as human comprehension goes) would simply be too much.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
The desire for life after death is merely the ego/id/sense-of-self/whatever giving itself false importance and desperately trying to preserve itself. The simple fact is that the ego is not built to fathom its own non-existence. The idea of living forever, to me, would be horrible. Like others have said, eventually you would do EVERYTHING and your life would have no purpose left to it.
"You know the sleeping feel no more pain/And the living all are scarred" - Megadeth, "A Tout Le Monde"
Live....forever ? No thanks
!!!
...The energy death of the universe is what - a couple of trillion of years away? I wouldn't mind living that long at all. I don't imagine I'd 'get bored'; there's always something to do. I imagine my fellow transhumans would be happy to continue creating new stories and games until the end of time, even assuming we did somehow manage to learn everything there was to learn (...just means there would be more things to create stories / games with).
If we're talking about something else entirely, where I would continue on even after the universe we're now in has died... well, I guess that really depends on how imaginative we're being about the prospective afterlife. Is it a whole new universe entirely, with new things to learn / explore? Do I have a limited time there too, only to move on to some other after-afterlife (...and so on from there, ad infinitum?)? Do I enter a state in which I cannot be bored (because the process of 'boredom' is no longerwithin my faculties?)? Etc, etc, etc...
You're not being very creative, DG.
No, I wouldn't want to live forever in this universe as a human being (though living until the universe's energy death I would welcome). If we're going to open-up the absurdity can of worms of propose there's an afterlife, however, I think you're viewing the contents from a rather limited scope if you can only conclude, 'Geez. Wouldn't that just get boring?'
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
By energy death, I presume you mean heat death, the point at which the distribution of energy becomes maximally equilibriated, such that no more useful work can be extracted from the system. The last black holes will die due to leaking of Hawking radiation but we don't really know how long this process could last. In theory, useful work could continue to be extracted for 10^100 years.
Obviously it was a little more complicated than "we would get bored". That line was tongue in cheek. I wasn't suggesting that an extended lifespan might be undesirable. We are not talking here about "extended" lifespans in any meaningful manner. We are talking about eternal lifespans. Forever. And ever. This isn't merely absurd, it is utterly nihilistic, the most utterly purposeless exercise imaginable. It is therefore ironic for us (who don't believe that our consciousness will continue after organic death) to be accused of despairing nihilism and purposelessness.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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Would I still have to pay taxes
??
This demonstrates a major objection to religions. "Eternal afterlife" dogma diminishes this lifes value. It makes it much easier to kill another, as it preaches God will take care of the "dead" fairly, and all will face that god eventually anyway. Indeed, "Religion is poison".
I enjoy and await more of our friend DG's personal "philosophy".....
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Life after death is only appealing if I can still get laid and have a drink. I'm not interested in any out-of-body bullshit.
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
Why Believe?
DG, may I suggest that you post this as a book page? I think it's a wonderfully made point, and I'd love to have it within easy reach in the future. The only reason I remembered you writing it was that you quoted it recently.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
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I'm reminded of the theoretical physicist Frank Tipler, who hypothesized that the end of the Universe need not be contemplated, given that a transhuman (or comparable alien) civilization might be able to commit their memories to a simulation of reality so vast and powerful that an unending life might be experienced by simply running the simulation at a greater speed than might be affected by heat death or falling into a black hole--it'd all end someday but nobody would notice. John Hartung's critique went a little like this:
Every man is going to get to have sex with every beautiful woman who ever lived. In this virtual reality, we need not worry about jealousy or sexually transmitted diseases, but there will be performance anxiety. How are you going to feel when Marilyn Monroe (or her 192nd century equivalent) rolls off the wet spot and says "Sugar, that was really something. I've only had 700,000,000,000 men better than you."
Our brains struggle with quantum physics because they evolved in a world of grass and trees and antelopes and leopards. And fucking. An unending existence is even more difficult to contemplate than the most difficult conceptions of particle physics given that all of our questing for knowledge has no value with the absolute assurance of survival.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
Speaking of fucking, I get twitchy if I go a few weeks without it. Since god hates fucking so much, I can only imagine that either:
1) We'd have to fuck one person for all eternity... talk about bored out of your fucking gourd...
or
2) You don't get to fuck anybody... talk about blue balls...
and since god doesn't like masturbation either...
Sheesh.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Eternal afterlife ? I don't think I'd ever, under any circumstances, want that. And I certainly have no desire to be heaping praise upon any deity in any potential afterlife...so again, no thanks, I'll just have a side order of the non-existence to go.
But, if an afterlife contained completely new and exquisite challenges and occasionally tickled whatever senses I might have, then yes...I could accept and enjoy a few thousand years, I'm sure.
Under such a scenario, I've often wondered if things like sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll (and did I mention alcohol;-} would actually pale in comparison to whatever other things/experiences might be. Would any imagined afterlife only consist of the typical human adventures we currently experience (not that they are all unenjoyable), or could there be new things... events and occurrences that at this time we aren't even capable of dreaming about? Dunno... and I suppose we will never know. Still, the whole theme of an afterlife is a very interesting thought experiment, if nothing else.
We are the after life of the big bang ... and then more of that ...
"If" there were an eternal existence, on what grounds could we say it has the limits of possibilities that our current universe has? There could be a infinite number of things to experience in an eternal universe/existence, as we have no way of accounting for limits outside of the universe as we understand it. People could get bored, but that doesn't mean they have done it all as all might not even be a coherent concept in an eternal existence. Limits define our universe, our existence, if there is an eternal existence then I don't see why we would be applying those limits to it.
Sounds made up...
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No, I am not angry at your imaginary friends or enemies.
DG: Your argument is quite antropomorphic. You imagine the hypothetic life after death as being restrained somehow, either by a lack of stimuli, (thus boredom) or by a lack of brain, and thus memory, personality, intellect, and so on.
I don't understand your point, at first, you reject any relevant personality surviving after death, and then you theoretize how the full, original personality would be bored by the eternal afterlife. Indeed, the primitive models of afterlife, like Christianic, Islamic, Celtic, Egyptian, and so on, are purely antropomorphic and has the flaws you pointed out. But practically nobody around believes in them anyway, so what's the point? To whom are you speaking?
The theory of afterlife is very complex and vast, and there are things, which counters your objections. I feel as a most person competent person around for this topic. But to make you at least minimally informed for such a discussion, you would have to sacrifice some of your time and learn something about this topic. As an introduction, I recommend the series Far Journeys written by Robert A. Monroe. It's written by intelligent, rational, and already dead man, so he's the best candidate.
In the framework of what I know, the idea of life after death is complicated, but it depends really a lot on who's dying. There are two basic possibilities for a skeptic, either the consciousness ceases to exist, or not. If yes, then everything is settled after death. But a rational person should die consciously and observe own process of dying, just of sheer morbid curiosity. Make sure you won't get a narcosis when you'll be dying, you don't want to miss the most interesting moment of your life, right?
So, if the person observes, that the consciousnes didn't disappear after death, then he/she is obliged to evaluate the situation rationally.
The opinion about the non-existent consciousness after death is perfectly OK, as long as you're mentally flexible and capable to accept anything else, if such a practical need ever arises. Well, almost anything. If it doesn't seem right, then don't accept it. If you'd ever end up in Hell, (or Tartaros) don't accept it, but tear down the walls, throw away boiling cauldrons, and leave this ridiculous illusion.
Now this is the right question! I'd say, be prepared on both possibilities, and be prepared to reject the first one, because it is essentially illusory. As a ghost, what would you want to drink? What effects could drugs possibly have on you? What girls you'd... I mean, none of that would be real, without a physical brain, (and other organs) the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll is an illusory simulation, a pointless waste of time. You'd have better to go to search for something greater than that. You know, religions speaks of divine love, holiness, wisdom, superconsciousness, and such a stuff, you'd have better to search for that. Or just for a damn Europa moon if you want, to see if there's really a life in it's oceans.
You know, with those esoteric teachings about the universe, afterlife, and so on, there's one special trait. There are clearly marked limits, like "this, and everything beyond that line is inexpressible in terms of human mind" or "The one of whom naught may be said, is unspeakable not because it's secret, but because it's far beyond human comprehension", "The consciousness of Planetary logos, compared to a human, is like a consciousness of 5th degree initiate, compared to a consciousness of an ant."
Obviously, such a texts makes clear, that there's unimaginable space for self-improvement of every living being, and forms of conscious existence, to which our consciousness is uncomparable. Shortly said, there's really a lot of neat stuff to do, but it's diffcult to explain it, until a candidate evolves into it.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Luminon, you know there's a difference between clinical death and brain death, right?
There have been precisely zero people in all of recorded history who have survived brain death. Nobody has ever performed this experiment and survived brain death.
Why, luminon, do you suppose that as long as there is brain activity, a person can sometimes be revived, but when brain activity stops, there is no hope? Doesn't that make it rather obvious that the brain is responsible for consciousness?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
This is neuroscience and philosophy of mind, two areas where I am quite qualified. As I see it, the problem is that that a person's identity is intrinsically tied to organic structures, and is necessarily destroyed along with their body, and that any attempt to retain a person's identity without such structures necessarily commits a stolen concept fallacy. Thus, anything that begins by discussing the "afterlife", necessarily commits a special pleading fallacy, because whatever we are attempting to begin with won't actually be your identity, because you are dead. THe basis of your identity as a person is, after all, your experience of the world, and the basis of that is memory and sensory equipment, and the basis of those things are purely biological in nature, and therefore, highly destructible. After all, conscious experience necessarily depends on experience. It is meaningless to talk about consciousness without experience, as there would be nothing to be conscious of, and it is meaningless to talk about experience without sensory equipment, so...well, you see where I'm going with this.
I believe we have had this conversation before:
MRL Mice?
At any rate, it seems that you have to introduce another special pleading fallacy. We humans have limited experience and capacity (obviously), but if there were some sort of afterlife, then this would not be the case and the argument wouldn't hold (this is the special pleading bit).
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Yes! Well, maybe...
IF there was really re-incarnation and during the process of evolution you forget previous lives, just as we forget dreams and childhood, I don't see how you could pre-judge what your life experience might be like a million years from now any more than a theoretical you from 100,000 years ago could possibly have imagined this period we call the 21st century.
IF, and I know it is a big IF, consciousness survives and evolves then we could be, as advanced as we think we are, at a primordial soup level currently, compared to a million years from now.
I'm not arguing FOR this but if all of the above were true then, yes, I think it would be innately desirable. I mean, if I was presented with the choice of the above or opting out for certain extinction I would choose the former.
It is interesting to think about, anyway.
(off topic but I would really like to know why we want to survive? why do we procreate?)
The stuff we are is eternal, from where we came and then go, as is we are the NOW, as is reality, as we are god, as existence, looking at it self , just exactly as we are ... as I AM GOD AS YOU.
YOU ARE GOD , as all is GOD AS I AM WHAT I AM, just as YOU.
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Who talks about surviving? When it comes, even a death is an interesting event to observe, as long as there will be the one observer. How long, that's the question.
That's a theory. As for the most simple and most profound personal evidence I have, I'm one of many people who can use their etheric body. I know, it's technically still physical, and should die with a cellular death, but it's existence supports the theory I mentioned, every day and every moment I want. For me it's obvious that this is how it is, the problem is, how to make it show on some dumb machine.
DG: You consider only the physical body, and closed system of material existence. But as I perceive every day, this is not the case, and I've seen people who are much better at it than me. Also, how do you explain new, complex information, arising in the brain? People can get a lot of new ideas when they sleep, defecate, or meditate, when they're not actively thinking. Do you understand this process, can you track outer stimuli into brain and see the process how it recombines itself into a meaningful, new information? If yes, if there is a specific method to create an information, it would be no problem to build an artificial intelligence identic to a talented visionary genius.
Your theory, that any hypothetic "spiritual" existence would be fundamentally different from physical, is just a guess. If there is such an existence, and is any similar to what we can ever suppose, then the physical universe is just an illusion, a simulation ran by by the "spiritual" world. And some people are able to violate this illusion, right, mr. Anderson?
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Incidentally, D.G., I question all your premises of basis, I doubt a human identity survives beyond any given instant, let alone death, I believe the likely scenario is that one's identity is "recreated" (for want of a better word) at each unique coordinate.
As for afterlife, this is basically why I believe it's not only desirable, but also inevitable, if I am right all of us are certain to live on just as we live now, as any imaginable number of possibilities with any imaginable number of experiences.
I agree with this.
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Our identity is not based on a single iota of information, it is a multitude of iotas. Although a single iota of our identity might disappear in an instant, 100's (arbitrary) of iota will persevere; all of which, individually, will overlap any single instant and in another instant, a new iota contributing to our identity might be created.
Our aggregate identity survives beyond an instant.
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.
Eloise: I think the problem is that we are talking about two different things. I am referring, as usual, to the traditional concept that our physical bodies contain some sort of ethereal existence which survives biological destruction and retains our personhood for continuity after biological death. The reasons I outlined are sufficient to dispel that notion entirely.
Perhaps identity wasn't a very good word for purely philosophical reasons. Maybe "personhood" works better.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Hey thanks aiia, that's the greek letter I needed for my crossword, thanks for bringing it to mind.
So... going on...
Yeah, I knew "recreated" was going to be an issue; the causal structure I am referring to isn't on a temporal background which defies just about all linguistic conventions we might use to discuss it. However we could say the "view" in space and time from any space time coordinate just is, so to speak, the essential iota that changes here in the experience that we are associating with Identity is the time space coordinate.
In this theory of mind consciousness isn't very special, the origin of "consciousness" is a pattern or set of embedded arguments, these arguments extend across matter in space, of course, so that human consciousness has the unique quality of being underpinned by biological structures, but moreover these "establishing" arguments would also extend across time -- this is the important part to consider -- the causal process of any given instant of your identity is already actualised at that instant, from the evolution of the senses (which is a given) right down to the mentally correlated sensory experience (which is way more interesting). If we are to take this as a monism in a temporal flow then a reactive consciousness is not possible, the argument of sensory experience is already made in the instant, the conscious pattern is intrinsic to the physical state of the system.
Now before a physicist starts beating me with a GR stick to say that since lightspeed is the limit of information transfer our sensory experience is of the past, I'll preempt with the retort -- consciousness is a hard problem under that model, but go ahead construct viable alternative a bridge between consciousness and empirical reality to the one I've proposed, I'm listening.
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Yeah sorry DG I couldn't help myself it's just such an interesting subject, but it was an aside to what you clearly were talking about, I know. On topic, I've asked the question of whether afterlife is desirable myself, on many occasions, my formulation was just a little more on the lyrical side namely: what would you do with forever? I felt it was an essential question cutting straight to the heart of the notion of spirituality -- anyone even contemplating eternal life should probably have a long rational sit down and think as to what would be the point and purpose of it, if any.
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Yeah Eloise, I would certainly work to change the status quo of human alien mentality of anti thermodynamics understanding, as is separatist religion ... The eternal dance seems always changing , where no changing is actually possible ... as all existence is condemned to be what it is, ONE. Always ONE.
Hey all of you, say these words, "I AM GOD" .... all is god, and so fuck those that deny you ... Fuck worship, there is No Master ....
We are god , condemned as we are .... shucks, no sky daddy .... reality. Da Da
I AM FOREVER
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