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ToxicSlurpee posted:We're pretty sure that the brain stops working and just rots away but it's quite possible that there is something non-physical that gets pulled into it somehow that helps make it work. The brain, after all, works largely on energy and electricity. It's entirely possible that there is some form of energy we don't know about yet scientifically that "is" a soul that inhabits the body or persists afterwards. How much influence that has on how we act, though, who knows? Of course it's also possible that consciousness is ultimately an illusion and our brain just shuts off and we vanish when we die. Currently the only people that really know for certain are, well, rather dead. If you get to the better and weirder parts of the Ender saga, it posits a thing the characters name an "auia", a nondimensional string that affords matter its self-organizing nature. These strings attach themselves to the most complex thing that the individual string can keep together, from subatomic particles on up to sentient life forms, and for the latter, the auia can be considered to be the deepest self, beyond thought and memory and all that good stuff. This is one example of what a "soul" could be. I mean yeah this is a sci fi book we're talking about, fictional and totally batshit besides, but it serves to illustrate the possibility that we are completely misunderstanding the nature of reality in very fundamental ways.
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Aug 27, 2014 01:32
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Nathilus posted:we are completely misunderstanding the nature of reality in very fundamental ways. That's a lot of human history, though. We currently think it's absurd that the Sun was pulled across the sky by a dude in a chariot but what sorts of things do we believe now that future humans will think is absurd? Can you believe that when somebody got a brain tumor somebody else drilled a hole in their skull and cut their head open? What the gently caress was that poo poo? Of course, that's how science and progress kind of, you know, work. Some day, if humans are around long enough, we'll likely figure out what happens when we die. Granted it's also entirely possible that this is a computer simulation that some other species projects itself into when it gets bored. If that were true it'd be pretty hard to know.
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Aug 27, 2014 01:52
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That's a lot of human history, though. We currently think it's absurd that the Sun was pulled across the sky by a dude in a chariot but what sorts of things do we believe now that future humans will think is absurd? ...Well, there was never a chariot that pulled the sun. It was absurd, and it's so absurd you find yourself questioning if the ancients really did believe it (you'd think looking at the sun sans chariots would be a hint) or it was a creation myth or an analogy of some kind. In the same way most Christians don't literally believe that the earth was made in 7 days, or that Noah literally took two of every species on earth put them on a boat and restarted life. To contrast we have phenomenally good reasons to cut into people's heads: it demonstrably drastically increases their chances of long term survival and alleviation of suffering. How on earth else would we do it? Are you suggesting we invent, I don't know, teleportation technology for use in surgery, and then somehow forget that said technology didn't always exist? Because otherwise for most of human existence the only way to sort a brain tumor was surgery. I'm absolutely sure we will look back at our current medical practices as outdated and inferior, but no one would react with surprise or revulsion to doctors using the only tools they had to demonstratively treat brain tumors. Consider Roman medicine, which we now view as INCREDIBLY advanced. About as advanced medicine as you can possibly get without germ theory; they knew how to set bones, perform cataract and a number of other surgeries, etc. We know now, for example, that had they boiled their implements first they'd have saved a lot of lives, but you'd be an idiot to point out what was demonstrably a massively helpful application of medicine. No one credible would ask a Roman physician ''what the gently caress was that poo poo'' because his response would be ''a method which will probably save this man's life.''
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Aug 27, 2014 02:21
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duckmaster posted:
Lasted until the end of his time. Objectively, his brain no longer exists, it's literally impossible that he's still experiencing anything. Stephen Hawking would agree with me on this I'm pretty sure.
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Aug 27, 2014 02:45
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Nathilus posted:If you get to the better and weirder parts of the Ender saga, it posits a thing the characters name an "auia", a nondimensional string that affords matter its self-organizing nature. These strings attach themselves to the most complex thing that the individual string can keep together, from subatomic particles on up to sentient life forms, and for the latter, the auia can be considered to be the deepest self, beyond thought and memory and all that good stuff. This is one example of what a "soul" could be. I mean yeah this is a sci fi book we're talking about, fictional and totally batshit besides, but it serves to illustrate the possibility that we are completely misunderstanding the nature of reality in very fundamental ways. I've often though it was kind of cool that, if the hypothetical soul (or it's effective equivalent) really exists, then "we" as in our fundamental identities are actually space symbiotes that have latched on to some tribe of grubby apes. They give us interface to the material world and we offer them an intellectual edge over other animals.
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Aug 27, 2014 02:48
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"wishful thinking". You're welcome op.
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Aug 27, 2014 15:36
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Evolution, all told, is actually based on a certain amount of randomness. Mutations are ultimately genetic damage or response to changes. Life is so good at persisting because it adapts but the changes in the genetic code are ultimately caused by outside, unpredictable influences. Nothing is truly random, sure, but it also isn't predictable. While this is more or less true, evolutionary changes actually can be at least partially predicted based upon the environment organisms are exposed to. If an organism needs to fit through a circular hole, so to speak, the various mutations it experiences over time are going to favor a shape that fits through said hole. So it's a sort of directed randomness. The mechanism is random, but what "works" and what doesn't isn't random. It's for this reason that I actually expect alien life to look relatively similar to what we see here on Earth. The "building blocks" are the same anywhere you go in the universe, so I would expect the same sort of molecules to form and environments to exist on other planets similar to Earth*. Even if the process of evolution is driven by random mutations, the direction organisms take over millions of years is determined by the environments present. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 19:42
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Applewhite posted:I've often though it was kind of cool that, if the hypothetical soul (or it's effective equivalent) really exists, then "we" as in our fundamental identities are actually space symbiotes that have latched on to some tribe of grubby apes. They give us interface to the material world and we offer them an intellectual edge over other animals. Scientology is stupid. You are not a thetan.
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Aug 28, 2014 21:42
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Aggressive pricing posted:Scientology is stupid. You are not a thetan. Wait. In scientology aren't you supposed to be getting RID of the thetans? Or uh, all but one I guess?
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Aug 28, 2014 21:47
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Nathilus posted:Wait. In scientology aren't you supposed to be getting RID of the thetans? Or uh, all but one I guess? The goal is to become an Operating Thetan, a Thetan with complete control over your own mind and body, without interference from the brainwashed Thetans that cause superstition, negativity and suffering. Once you have paid all your money to become an Operating Thetan, you can sign a billion-year contract swearing to service Scientology in your current body and all future bodies your Thetan might inhabit. That's where things like OT III as names come from, your operational control over your body as a Thetan can only survive the revelation of Evil Galactic Overlord Xenu if your Thetan has
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Aug 29, 2014 02:16
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Aggressive pricing posted:Scientology is stupid. You are not a thetan. Agreed. But I mean, pretty much any concept of body/soul duality essentially puts human consciousness into the form of an either interplanetary or extra dimensional symbiote. Even if souls come from Heaven, Heaven as it's been described is still basically an alt universe/higher dimension.
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Aug 29, 2014 12:44
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Applewhite posted:Agreed. But I mean, pretty much any concept of body/soul duality essentially puts human consciousness into the form of an either interplanetary or extra dimensional symbiote. Even if souls come from Heaven, Heaven as it's been described is still basically an alt universe/higher dimension. What makes you say that? You're projecting an assumption into the unknown, for a long time people thought Heaven was literally in the sky, behind the stars. It's been a few years since I read the Upanishads, but I think Brahmin is more the fundamental life of the universe, not some other, the metaphore I remember best describes it as the sun, and to find the sun's light within oneself is part of meditation and understanding. In death, we very literally return to that from which we came, and that which makes us is used to fuel new life. While some people may like the idea of space ghosts, they aren't implicit in any religion, except Scientology and Mormonism, which may be a subtle clue as to how batshit insane those 'religions' are.
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Aug 29, 2014 13:20
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Reveilled posted:The goal is to become an Operating Thetan, a Thetan with complete control over your own mind and body, without interference from the brainwashed Thetans that cause superstition, negativity and suffering. Once you have paid all your money to become an Operating Thetan, you can sign a billion-year contract swearing to service Scientology in your current body and all future bodies your Thetan might inhabit. Whenever I hear some of the mythology behind Scientology it boggles my mind that this cropped up and became a thing overnight and didn't get laughed at until it fell apart. I mean other religions don't really pass that taste test either but early age indoctrination and thousands of years of history helps there. But at some point in the last 60 years someone walked up to an adult and said "Are you ready to take over your space parasite?" and that adult responded "gently caress yeah I am have some money."
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Aug 29, 2014 13:53
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My hope is that over an eternity of strange eons this universe or another will eventually form again and, given enough infinities of collapsing and reforming, history will eventually follow the path that it did here and the circumstances will occur for something with our particular brain chemistry/consciousnesses to pop up again! Or at least it is nice to think about!
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Aug 31, 2014 03:21
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Hot Dog Day #82 posted:My hope is that over an eternity of strange eons this universe or another will eventually form again and, given enough infinities of collapsing and reforming, history will eventually follow the path that it did here and the circumstances will occur for something with our particular brain chemistry/consciousnesses to pop up again! As far as you know, that's already happened hundreds of times.
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Aug 31, 2014 05:07
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Applewhite posted:As far as you know, that's already happened hundreds of times. Or infinite times. If time is infinite everything that is possible will happen at some point and repeat. There would be no beginning or end to start counting from or count down toward. Things would just be whenever they were.
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Sep 2, 2014 05:42
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It's all been reincarnation up to this point, but this is the last time. After this we just die, unfortunately (fortunately?) for anyone alive when I click post.
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Sep 2, 2014 06:33
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i used to believe in reincarnation but now i'm beginning to reconsider it. i think things are even weirder than that somehow.. so many beliefs are just ways for us to tell ourselves we have a clue about what's going on. we tell ourselves we need a map to reality. but what if it's the landscape that keeps changing, and eludes all possible maps..
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Sep 2, 2014 07:34
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bitterandtwisted posted:I wonder how you work up from being a bug. What constitutes living a good life as a stick insect? What if you end up as some gross wasp that lays its eggs in a living host, is that "bad"? Seems unfair to me if so, they don't ask to reproduce that way. It's more that your very existence as a bug 'works off' your bad karma. Imagine being human to be the 'neutral', building up bad karma and you have to work it off as either lower lifeforms or some time in hell but build up good karma and you can come back as a fat rich merchant or do some chilling in heaven. Of course it gets a lot more complex and varied with thousands of different incarnations (  ) of Buddhism and Hinduism.
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Sep 2, 2014 09:35
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I generally have a pretty atheistic approach to the afterlife. I have a tenuous belief in Reincarnation because, out of all the afterlife scenarios, it's the only one even remotely testable (have ten thousand people memorize a unique serial number on their deathbed, with instructions to produce the number in a certain way when they arrive in their next body. If even one person born after the death of the owner of that serial number comes forward, you just proved the reincarnation of identity after death). I believe that, if there is reincarnation, it is a natural phenomenon that exists without guidance. Humans are probably only reincarnated into other humans, and the distribution of souls is random. Being a natural phenomenon, it's not perfect, and could be responsible at least in part for certain types of body dysmorphia. I don't yet have a solid theory that accounts for an increase in human population. It's possible that souls also reproduce somehow, and that new souls are constantly being generated. It's also possible that there is an absolute limit to the number of souls in the universe, and that, after a certain point, an increasing number of humans will be born as sociopaths.
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Sep 2, 2014 17:21
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Applewhite posted:I generally have a pretty atheistic approach to the afterlife. I have a tenuous belief in Reincarnation because, out of all the afterlife scenarios, it's the only one even remotely testable (have ten thousand people memorize a unique serial number on their deathbed, with instructions to produce the number in a certain way when they arrive in their next body. If even one person born after the death of the owner of that serial number comes forward, you just proved the reincarnation of identity after death). It's not necessarily a given that all phenomena are testable. Rationality is a human construct and suffers the same limitations that we do. The same goes for the scientific method. In this case, it could go wrong for us from both sides of the equation. We could easily get false positives (false memories are very real and verified things) or there could be some process by which all knowledge and memory is lost in transition. I'm not saying your theory isn't interesting, but I'd be careful of holding verifiability up as the golden standard against which reality should be judged. Our methodologies are still primitive as are our instruments. Even if we are right about privileged channels between particles, for instance; there is no current way for us to "break into" them and see for certain. An approach that is purely rational and which discounts that which cannot be tested has its uses. If you're designing a machine, or trying to figure out a system which you can see nearly all of the inputs and outputs of, there's no other way to go. But when you're trying to conceive of that which is as of yet outside our collective ability to test, you have to make leaps that seem ridiculous from that vantage. Of course, such leaps aren't always right either, and it really sucks because without being able to test them, you can't know for sure if you are right. That said, humans have an ability for satori that has served us well in the past. Or, call it "eureka", to strip it of the religious connotations. Our brains have ways of collating data that are subrational but work. If you can't test, intuit. And if you happen to have that moment of "holy poo poo I got it" you shouldn't discount it regardless of its verifiability. It's a comfortable and reliable framework, but a recent one. There are other methods of thought that can be just as real and true if less reliable in their results.
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Sep 2, 2014 20:08
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Well argued. As it is right now, we can only intuit that there is a part of us that exists beyond the physical, and its ability to survive the death of the body is pure speculation. I still hold out hope that the soul and the afterlife are measurable phenomena that will become accessible to science, given a sufficient level of knowledge.
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Sep 3, 2014 03:21
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Applewhite posted:Well argued. As it is right now, we can only intuit that there is a part of us that exists beyond the physical, and its ability to survive the death of the body is pure speculation. Why? What would that do for you.
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Sep 3, 2014 03:43
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Tautologicus posted:Why? What would that do for you. Talking to the dead would be awesome. Also, Ghostbusters.
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Sep 3, 2014 04:00
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Guru Yaekob posted:My girlfriend recently asked me what I think happens when we die. I told her I believe that when you die you simply die and are non existent like before you were born, however your "spirit" or whatever you want to call it will manifest itself in another new born and you wont ever know it but you never really "die". I don't know how to really explain it any better but basically you die you are reborn but never know of your past life. I'm agnostic and never had a religious upbringing. I would like to hear about other peoples theories of what happens. Agh I didn't read the whole post and thought you were talking about Lucretius's symmetry argument against fear of death. But yeah that's the same deal as dying if "you" don't remember your old self. I'd recommend Locke on selfhood maybe to think more about this. Applewhite posted:Well argued. As it is right now, we can only intuit that there is a part of us that exists beyond the physical, and its ability to survive the death of the body is pure speculation. You'd probably really like the movie I Origin.
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Sep 3, 2014 06:50
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Tautologicus posted:Why? What would that do for you. If we could prove souls exist then we could kill them once and for all.
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Sep 3, 2014 07:21
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Tautologicus posted:Why? What would that do for you. What would anything do for anyone? Why not just ask every scientist that question?
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Sep 3, 2014 12:21
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I dunno, I just don't seem to care what scientists do. It doesn't affect my life if they think they learned something about the afterlife. I think only personal knowledge helps when it comes to existential questions, verificationism is for those who want to be led to water and then told to drink it.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:28
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Tautologicus posted:I dunno, I just don't seem to care what scientists do. It doesn't affect my life if they think they learned something about the afterlife. I think only personal knowledge helps when it comes to existential questions, verificationism is for those who want to be led to water and then told to drink it. I think that's a somewhat unimaginative approach. There are more implications for the scientific verification of an Afterlife than mere existential comfort. For instance: Heaven, as it is popularly percieved, would have to exist in a continuum with radically different laws of thermodynamics in order to truly be permanent and eternal. Imagine if those properties could be harnessed. You could preserve food indefinitely simply by sending it to Heaven. Reincarnation seems to involve superluminal information transfer. FTL travel, antigravity, information storage, optics. All these fields and more would be transformed forever by the definitive proof of any one of a number of afterlife scenarios.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:37
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So you want to mine heaven too. Or you want other people to do it for you. Or is this a roundabout way of saying you find it improbable or something.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:14
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Tautologicus posted:So you want to mine heaven too. Or you want other people to do it for you. Or is this a roundabout way of saying you find it improbable or something. The former, if "mining heaven" is interpreted broadly to mean "find practical applications for a significant body of heretofore untapped knowledge."
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Sep 3, 2014 19:32
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Applewhite posted:The former, if "mining heaven" is interpreted broadly to mean "find practical applications for a significant body of heretofore untapped knowledge." If the practical application of heaven to you is to make your life here more physically comfortable, then I think you're missing the whole idea of what heaven is supposed to be. It is entirely beyond this world. It has nothing to do with this world even. Nothing in this world would matter in heaven, nothing at all. Heaven is past knowledge, even.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:49
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Tautologicus posted:If the practical application of heaven to you is to make your life here more physically comfortable, then I think you're missing the whole idea of what heaven is supposed to be. It is entirely beyond this world. It has nothing to do with this world even. Nothing in this world would matter in heaven, nothing at all. Heaven is past knowledge, even. Firstly, the axiom that Heaven is entirely beyond this world is provably false. It obviously interacts with our world on some level because in even the MOST aloof interpretation of heaven there is still information flow between the two continuums in the form of souls. That means what happens on Earth do affect Heaven, which means that, given the proper knowledge base, events on earth can be manipulated to produce deliberate effects in Heaven. Secondly, if Heaven is real, then missing the point of it or not won't affect its ultimate role in my life after death. In the meantime, applying the knowledge gleaned from studying whatever continuum Heaven allegedly occupies can bring great material benefits. Improving one's situation in the material world is pretty much the only thing to do at what is, at best, a pit stop on the road of eternity.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:04
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I can't tell if you goobers are trolling me or what. When you die that's it. Your brain goes black, you feel nothing, and anything identifiably you is permanently lost along with and in proportion to the physical deterioration of your brain tissue. I'm a paramedic and have people back from not having a heartbeat or any activity, from being clinically dead, multiple times. Most of the time they were without care too long and never "wake up," whatever caused their heart to stop causes it again a week or so later and this happens over and over until they become irreparable. Once in a while we get there before brain damage has set in (brain cells start dying only a few minutes after you stop circulating blood) and the person never wakes up telling us about an out of body experience or seeing a light or feeling a nearness to relatives -- those are all stories told much later on by the hopeful to people they're trying to make feel better. They wake up confused. They don't know what happened or how they got there. They don't know why their chest hurts. They often ask for their relatives. You have only one life. The people you know will be permanently gone when they go and anything that is them will be irretrievable. Death is final.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:08
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Sheep-Goats posted:tissue. I'm a paramedic and have people back from not having a heartbeat or any activity, from being clinically dead, multiple times. Anecdotal evidence hardly constitutes definitive proof one way or the other. I'm skeptical about any afterlife claim, but I'm not about to to dismiss the idea of some kind of survival of the identity after death out of hand. Purely materialistic models of consciousness never quite seem to satisfy. Once, a friend related to me the story of his "clinically dead" experience, where he claimed to have felt trapped in an infinite blackness, severed from all sensation or even the memory of sensation, or even the memory of who he was, yet his definitive consciousness persisted.
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Sep 3, 2014 20:22
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Applewhite posted:Firstly, the axiom that Heaven is entirely beyond this world is provably false. It obviously interacts with our world on some level because in even the MOST aloof interpretation of heaven there is still information flow between the two continuums in the form of souls. That means what happens on Earth do affect Heaven, which means that, given the proper knowledge base, events on earth can be manipulated to produce deliberate effects in Heaven. Alright i disagree but i suppose i can understand the worth of this point of view. I just don't think it's possible or desirable to interact with the "next world" in any way. Can just bring about further confusion. And maybe there is no next world anyway. What exactly is going to survive death? Nothing. And yet the show goes on, even in the most solipsist understanding of reality. A dream experienced by no one is still different than utter nihilistic non existence.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:01
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Applewhite posted:I'm not about to to dismiss the idea of some kind of survival of the identity after death out of hand. But you are willing to accept it, with even less evidence than annecdotal. Assuming all the people who have actually claimed to have been in the afterlife or recieved messages from it are either crazy or scam artists, as has invariably been the case.
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Sep 3, 2014 21:40
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Aggressive pricing posted:But you are willing to accept it, with even less evidence than annecdotal. Assuming all the people who have actually claimed to have been in the afterlife or recieved messages from it are either crazy or scam artists, as has invariably been the case. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence in favor of reincarnation. Researchers gathering stories from children around the world who, by all accounts, know things they couldn't possibly know, even when one accounts for subconscious information absorption and leading questions from the interviewers. The only reason why I'm not totally convinced by those accounts is the allegations of poor scientific methods by the researchers and a lack of peer-review.
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Sep 4, 2014 01:27
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I guess there is a lot of anecdotal evidence, there's also tons of annecdotal evidence of the Lock Ness monster, ghosts, and alien abduction. Not all annecdotal evidence is equal, I'd much rather trust the opinions of people with nothing to gain from lying than the ones who are being put on tv for saying what the news/documentary people want to hear.
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Sep 4, 2014 01:47
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Aggressive pricing posted:I guess there is a lot of anecdotal evidence, there's also tons of annecdotal evidence of the Lock Ness monster, ghosts, and alien abduction. Not all annecdotal evidence is equal, I'd much rather trust the opinions of people with nothing to gain from lying than the ones who are being put on tv for saying what the news/documentary people want to hear. Fair enough. I think that Ian Stevenson demonstrated a little more scientific rigor than the average UFO abductee looking for his fifteen minutes of fame, but, as I said, the criticism of his work is enough for me to withhold judgement until further evidence in one direction or another is presented.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:03
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