After Life - Does It Exist ?

[Riedquat]

I think it's Richard Feynman you're thinking of:

Ah yes, that's it, thanks. Both very interesting people though.

[Ologhai Jones]

Ah yes, that's it, thanks. Both very interesting people though.

Well, one intellectual giant is so much like another. It's easy to get 'em mixed up.

[Austin Allegro]

It would seem that love is, indeed, the result of a bunch of hormones and so on, an emotion that's evolved because of the benefits it brings in terms of mutual support and parents being around long enough to raise their offspring (and look after them too). However why would it being materialistically explicable lessen the experience in any way? It reminds me of something that Carl Sagan (I think it was him anyway) said, about an artist saying that he wouldn't appreciate the beauty in a flower because he'd just see a collection of parts with specific functions. To him though that added to the appreciation of the flower.

The idea of there being a soul to anything, like a piece of music, or a building, is entirely valid - we have responses to these things after all, and most of my anger and depression revolves around "progress" and "development" ripping it out of all sorts of things, and they're a big part of what IMO makes life worth living. A steam locomotive has a soul, a modern plastic box on rails does not. I can't really adequately explain what I mean by that yet it's hugely important. It's not metaphysical though. Is it even relevant to this discussion? I'm not sure but it makes a much more interesting discussion IMO.

I think it's relevant. I think the 'soul' of the steam engine is pretty much the same as how I would view the human soul. Ie, not some ghostly entity that floats out of the body when one dies, but the essential spirit of something or someone, which cannot be pinned down and defined. We only know that that 'something' is no longer present in the body after death. I know that after my death my spirit will continue to exist in the sense that the energy that animated me has moved on to another form. I think it's unlikely that I will somehow retain consciousness in a disembodied form. It will be like a drop of water returning to the ocean, or as the poem has it, part of 'the thousand winds that blow'. Here's a favourite quote of mine:

Belief in God, and in personal immortality, are not necessarily a part of religion; one can conceive of a religion without God, and it would be pure contemplation of the universe; the desire for personal immortality seems rather to show a lack of religion, since religion assumes a desire to lose oneself in the infinite, rather than to preserve one's own finite self - Friedrich Schleiermacher 1768-1834

I take some comfort in the idea of 'losing myself in the infinite.' Rock of ages, cleft for me, and all that.

[MrPin]

Well, one intellectual giant is so much like another. It's easy to get 'em mixed up.

I don't know about "intellectual giant", but Mr Feynmann's books were very good when I studied physics! He was a very good explainer, and clearly had a fascination for the subject!

[sPinwheel]

Personally Is really hope there is nothing after death. No heaven, no hell, no next life, nothing. Life is OK I'm not depressed or anything. But part of what makes it special is the fact that it ends eventually. And the finality of it is far more appealing.

Of course what I want, and what the reality of thing are, doesn't matter one jot. It is what it is. I guess we will all find out sooner or later what lies beyond.

My favourite quote of Twain is along the lines that fearing death comes from fear of life, those who live it to the full are ready to die at any time.

[Rave]

The 'Life Review' crops up in a high proportion of reported NDEs. I haven't read this particular woman's book but what's she's suggesting is a riff on a common point of view shared by people who believe that NDE's may be more than an hallucinatory experiences generated by a dying brain.

There is peer reviewed, documented research on NDEs which I have reasons to suspect some folk who dismiss the possible significance of NDEs out of hand have not reviewed. I'm not suggesting that there will never be a complete, satisfactory materialistic explanation for NDEs. What I am suggesting that some who discount NDE's potential significance are doing so on philosophical grounds because a non-materialistic significance would not fit their existing paradigm.

fwiw I spent most of my life quite comfortable with the certain extinction of my consciousness at the point of death. In 20th/21st century Britain there's nothing particular radical about that point of view. Britain has been at the forefront of materialist philosophy for centuries. It's not news, or in any way radical, to discover that Materialists are comfortable with no continuation of consciousness after death. I'm more interested to hear how comfortable they are with the prospects of the opposite outcome. I mention that because after my favourite reported NDE the late Freddie Ayer wrote...

Risking total irrelevance replying to a post on the first page on an 8 page thread I CBA to read, so apologies if this has been said before. I've never had a NDE, but as a fast growing teenager I was prone to feeling faint. One time I was down at my Grandad's house and I got up to go to the loo after having relaxed on the sofa for a couple of hours. I felt faint, and then I went into a reverie- my life didn't flash before my eyes, but my brain worked about 100 times faster processing my daydreaming train of thought than it ever has before or since- I literally passed through 3 or 4 sequential subjects of consideration in a couple of seconds. I was quite happily about to move on to the nest one when I was interrupted by my mum shouting "Are you alright?". Still in a dream, I replied that I was, and why wouldn't I be? She replied: "You've just fallen over", and sure enough when I checked with my hands I was flat on my **** on the floor.

I've never had that exact experience again but I did have some fun recently huffing nitrous oxide out of balloons. I'd have gone at it harder, but we were all pissed and I didn't have faith that anyone would have been capable of first aiding me had I huffed a double balloon, so I just did the temporary brain fade and then looked out for everyone else.

As for eternal life- I can't think of anything worse- your life in heaven would have to be incredibly stimulating for you not to get bored of it after 20 years, let alone a thousand or a million! Let alone what happens to people who are widowed and then get remarried. Which spouse do they get re-united with in heaven? Are half the people up there in a dreadful love triangle?

[OnionTerror]

Risking total irrelevance replying to a post on the first page on an 8 page thread I CBA to read, so apologies if this has been said before. I've never had a NDE, but as a fast growing teenager I was prone to feeling faint. One time I was down at my Grandad's house and I got up to go to the loo after having relaxed on the sofa for a couple of hours. I felt faint, and then I went into a reverie- my life didn't flash before my eyes, but my brain worked about 100 times faster processing my daydreaming train of thought than it ever has before or since- I literally passed through 3 or 4 sequential subjects of consideration in a couple of seconds. I was quite happily about to move on to the nest one when I was interrupted by my mum shouting "Are you alright?". Still in a dream, I replied that I was, and why wouldn't I be? She replied: "You've just fallen over", and sure enough when I checked with my hands I was flat on my **** on the floor.

I've never had that exact experience again but I did have some fun recently huffing nitrous oxide out of balloons. I'd have gone at it harder, but we were all pissed and I didn't have faith that anyone would have been capable of first aiding me had I huffed a double balloon, so I just did the temporary brain fade and then looked out for everyone else.

As for eternal life- I can't think of anything worse- your life in heaven would have to be incredibly stimulating for you not to get bored of it after 20 years, let alone a thousand or a million! Let alone what happens to people who are widowed and then get remarried. Which spouse do they get re-united with in heaven? Are half the people up there in a dreadful love triangle?

Apparently there are "7 astral planes" that the soul moves through...you have to reincarnate several dozen times before you become enlightened...whatever that is. I wonder what the gap is between reincarnations? A medium could be gassing away to someone that has already been reincarnated!

I wonder how hell is represented, on the other astral planes? I reckon its Swindon..

[Ologhai Jones]

Christopher Hitchens:

It will happen to all of us. At some point, you get tapped on the shoulder and told not just that the party is over, but--slightly worse--that the party's going on but you have to leave, and it's going on without you. That's the reflection that I think most upsets people about their demise.

All right, then, because it might make us feel better, let's pretend the opposite. Instead you'll get tapped on the shoulder and told, 'Great news! This party's going on forever, and you can't leave. You've got to stay. The boss says so, and he also insists that you have a good time.'

The father proposed by monotheism is the father that doesn't die. Who reassures his children: ‘Don't worry, I'll never leave you. You'll never see the end of me. You'll never get the chance to feel sorry, I'm always there. I'm the absolute ultimate in dictatorships and in my courts there is no appeal.' Do you really think this would cheer up any one of sentience or humanity or capable of feeling of irony. I submit, it is out of the question.

I thought some on here might enjoy it, if they've not come across it before.

Edited to add that this quote isn't something written by Hitchens, but something from a live debate--just as a reminder of what a great off-the-cuff speaker Hitch was capable of being.

[Northerner]

Did the good Doctor not put his finger on it then?

(Great vid.)

[JustYield]

Let alone what happens to people who are widowed and then get remarried. Which spouse do they get re-united with in heaven? Are half the people up there in a dreadful love triangle?

I've posted this idea here before, recently - did you come up with this thought yourself? Genuine question, I am aware other people have similar thoughts!

[Ologhai Jones]

I've posted this idea here before, recently - did you come up with this thought yourself? Genuine question, I am aware other people have similar thoughts!

In the words of the Crash Test Dummies:

After seven days

He was quite tired so God said:

"Let there be a day

Just for picnics, with wine and bread"

He gathered up some people he had made

Created blankets and laid back in the shade

The people sipped their wine

And what with God there, they asked him questions

Like: do you have to eat

Or get your hair cut in heaven?

And if your eye got poked out in this life

Would it be waiting up in heaven with your wife?

God shuffled his feet and glanced around at them;

The people cleared their throats and stared right back at him

[Riedquat]

After a trillion trillion years or so I'd imagine that eternal life would start to get a bit tiring. The idea of death is pretty grim, eternal life sounds like one of the few things that's worse.

[Ologhai Jones]

After a trillion trillion years or so I'd imagine that eternal life would start to get a bit tiring. The idea of death is pretty grim, eternal life sounds like one of the few things that's worse.

Assuming immortal doesn't mean indestructible, presumably one would always be in a position to take one's own life (perhaps with help)?

If there were no other issues (population, for example), wouldn't it be ideal to live precisely as long as you wanted to then were able to be put to sleep painlessly at your own request?

[Nuggets Mahoney]

I've posted this idea here before, recently - did you come up with this thought yourself? Genuine question, I am aware other people have similar thoughts!

I asked a priest that question when I was about 11. I thought I'd really got him with that one.

Most traditional marriage vows make it pretty clear that it's a lifetime only arrangement.

That bothered me less than discovering that dead pets wouldn't be waiting for you either.

As for the tedium and horror of immortality, that kind of presupposes that time would pass, or even exist, in the same way that we perceive it in the here and now.

[sPinwheel]

wouldn't it be ideal to live precisely as long as you wanted to then were able to be put to sleep painlessly at your own request?

Yes. Until you find suicide is a sin and you burn in Hell....forever.

[Austin Allegro]

As for the tedium and horror of immortality, that kind of presupposes that time would pass, or even exist, in the same way that we perceive it in the here and now.

Yes, literalists like Hitchens etc always seem to assume that the Christian view of the afterlife is just an eternal version of life down here, only with clouds and harps.

It's understandable that people brought up in a post-enlightenment, rationalist culture should think this way, coming from a different tradition from the early Jewish biblical writers and the early Christians (who were originally Jews or from the Greek tradition).

Delve a little more deeply and the Biblical message is, I believe, not literal but metaphorical - heaven etc being a metaphor for the establishment of divine justice on earth. The Jewish textual tradition is very much into metaphor and overstated imagery (our lord himself of course spoke in parables as we know) All the clouds, harps, angels with wings etc are symbols trying to represent the unrepresentable.

If - and it's a big if - there is some kind of afterlife then I certainly can't see how it can be like the Hitchens view. St Paul writes that what we see of it now is 'through a glass darkly', or as we might say in modern English, 'strange reflections in a mirror'. Of course this is all dogma - there's no proof of any of it - but I think it's important to try to get past the narrow literalist view that people like Hitchens present if we want to understand what religions are trying to say.

[Nuggets Mahoney]

If - and it's a big if - there is some kind of afterlife then I certainly can't see how it can be like the Hitchens view. St Paul writes that what we see of it now is 'through a glass darkly', or as we might say in modern English, 'strange reflections in a mirror'. Of course this is all dogma - there's no proof of any of it - but I think it's important to try to get past the narrow literalist view that people like Hitchens present if we want to understand what religions are trying to say.

There's no proof in the way that we've come to understand it but a believer would point to the kind of OOBEs we've discussed (maybe), the existence and apparent mystery of consciousness and what they see as evidence of design and purposefulness in the universe.

A.J. Ayer and logical positivism has been mentioned a couple of times on this thread. If you haven't partaken already this pitch by Keith Ward, a former student of Ayer's, may be of some interest. Ward starts on Ayer about 7 minutes in...

Ward scores points for vaguely reminding me of Kenneth Williams, loses points, towards the end of this lecture for example, when he moves from talking about philosophical principles to lowering the intellectual bar impo when discussing the significance of Jesus. I find it jarring when intelligent people do things like that. We're all capable of falling into that trap.

The short version is - it's all very well and good imposing logical positive standards and declaring that religion fails to meet them but much of what passes for contemporary theoretical science doesn't meet them either.

[Austin Allegro]

There's no proof in the way that we've come to understand it but a believer would point to the kind of OOBEs we've discussed (maybe), the existence and apparent mystery of consciousness and what they see as evidence of design and purposefulness in the universe.

A.J. Ayer and logical positivism has been mentioned a couple of times on this thread. If you haven't partaken already this pitch by Keith Ward, a former student of Ayer's, may be of some interest. Ward starts on Ayer about 7 minutes in...

Ward scores points for vaguely reminding me of Kenneth Williams, loses points, towards the end of this lecture for example, when he moves from talking about philosophical principles to lowering the intellectual bar impo when discussing the significance of Jesus. I find it jarring when intelligent people do things like that. We're all capable of falling into that trap.

The short version is - it's all very well and good imposing logical positive standards and declaring that religion fails to meet them but much of what passes for contemporary theoretical science doesn't meet them either.

I read somewhere that LP has now largely been discounted as a philosophical standpoint, but the refutation was so complex I couldn't understand it.

[JustYield]

I read somewhere that LP has now largely been discounted as a philosophical standpoint, but the refutation was so complex I couldn't understand it.

Karl Popper would say don't be too quick to discount the metaphysical or the apparently unscientific. Scientific theories and hypotheses might not yet be able to deal with the phenomena.

But with TMT's medium, for example, how many tests would you run before you can definitively (i.e. scientifically) say he/she is a fraud? How would you falsify the hypothesis that there is no afterlife?

[Riedquat]

Any discussion of the soul or what comes "after" life is tainted with this modern problem. We can't imagine or talk about things without taking them incredibly literally.

So we look at historic cultures and the great thinkers of the past and discard anything they have to say because we assume they, like us, were speaking literally. And in that sense, what they have to say is clearly absurd.

Modern society can watch hundreds of hours of 'Lost', the Sopranos and even coronation street and see meaningful metaphor everywhere, but we don't seem to be able to apply the same technique to the big questions.

Bonkers.

No, not bonkers. We've finally got to a point where we're capable of digging around at the real nature of the universe. Often the past "thinkers" were being fairly literal. These "big questions" often turn out to be non-questions, or have fundamentally rational reasons for things like emotional responses (or enter the realm of psychology), even if we don't know the full details. There's no "modern problem taint", we're able to better know what it even makes sense to discuss.

Where there is a problem, which seems to affect the vast majority of people (as far as I can tell, since they don't seem to get particularly bothered about it, contemptible fools) is in dismssing as unimportant anything that can't be straightforwardly quantised. It's going back to the soul of things that was mentioned earlier. Object to ripping something old out and replacing it with the latest version with the most "functionality" and you get accused of just being sentimental - as if that isn't a very good reason for not changing. The modern world is barren and souless and the idiots accept that because the soul can't be measured so think it doesn't matter. It does (at least to people above the animal level). However there's nothing really metaphysical going on and no reason to think that aesthetic appreciation isn't explicable.

Karl Popper would say don't be too quick to discount the metaphysical or the apparently unscientific. Scientific theories and hypotheses might not yet be able to deal with the phenomena.

Might not yet is a world of difference from any suggestion that there's some things that are fundamentally unanswerable by scientific methods, even if we're nowhere near able to do so with out current state of knowledge. There's no reason to think that there are any such things, and that brings us back to the ability to tell drivel from reality.

[Nuggets Mahoney]

Delve a little more deeply and the Biblical message is, I believe, not literal but metaphorical - heaven etc being a metaphor for the establishment of divine justice on earth. The Jewish textual tradition is very much into metaphor and overstated imagery (our lord himself of course spoke in parables as we know) All the clouds, harps, angels with wings etc are symbols trying to represent the unrepresentable.

Some traditions have gone down the route of utilising geometry as a supplement or an alternative to drawing pictures of concepts that couldn't be pictured.

Rewind a few thousand years from today and it's arguable that what passed for science and religion were once indivisible.

I'm not suggesting it's a certain outcome but it's not an impossibility that they could meet up again at some point down the line.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that makes some of whackier stuff that some scientists unself-consciously kick around not religious/ non-material is that they leave out any suggestion that it's in any way the product of a higher level of consciousness.

[Riedquat]

I don't think there's a contradiction because I don't think that there is any "meaning". If you had sufficient knowledge you could dig down through how the brain works and figure out why we feel the way we do about various things. At present that's way beyond us. It may remain so forever but that doesn't make it something fundamentally unsanswerable scientifically. So the scientific, rational approach remains fundamentally sound. The idea that there is any separate meaning is where I think the apparent contradiction arises.

[Austin Allegro]

No, not bonkers. We've finally got to a point where we're capable of digging around at the real nature of the universe. Often the past "thinkers" were being fairly literal. These "big questions" often turn out to be non-questions, or have fundamentally rational reasons for things like emotional responses (or enter the realm of psychology), even if we don't know the full details. There's no "modern problem taint", we're able to better know what it even makes sense to discuss.

Where there is a problem, which seems to affect the vast majority of people (as far as I can tell, since they don't seem to get particularly bothered about it, contemptible fools) is in dismssing as unimportant anything that can't be straightforwardly quantised. It's going back to the soul of things that was mentioned earlier. Object to ripping something old out and replacing it with the latest version with the most "functionality" and you get accused of just being sentimental - as if that isn't a very good reason for not changing. The modern world is barren and souless and the idiots accept that because the soul can't be measured so think it doesn't matter. It does (at least to people above the animal level). However there's nothing really metaphysical going on and no reason to think that aesthetic appreciation isn't explicable.

Might not yet is a world of difference from any suggestion that there's some things that are fundamentally unanswerable by scientific methods, even if we're nowhere near able to do so with out current state of knowledge. There's no reason to think that there are any such things, and that brings us back to the ability to tell drivel from reality.

Excellent points. Most progressive Christian theology of the last 150 years or so has been an attempt to reconcile pre-modern, pre-scientific belief systems (which we can't get away from by ignoring or trying to create some sort of Marxist 'year zero') with post-enlightenment rationalism. Bishop John Spong is a good contemporary example of this. The problem is that people in the west are so used to the 'measurable' that they either reject all talk of religion as nonsense, or commit mental suicide by convincing themselves that they believe things they probably don't really believe, ie Christian fundamentalism.

The middle way - what we might call 'religionless Christianity' as Bonhoeffer called it - has never really seemed to catch on as it seems to be a somewhat anaemic alternative, like non-alcoholic whisky. It appeals to rational types who also like church traditions, like myself, but to the ordinary man in the street it doesn't seem to be 'real' religion.

[Austin Allegro]

Some traditions have gone down the route of utilising geometry as a supplement or an alternative to drawing pictures of concepts that couldn't be pictured.

Rewind a few thousand years from today and it's arguable that what passed for science and religion were once indivisible.

I'm not suggesting it's a certain outcome but it's not an impossibility that they could meet up again at some point down the line.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that makes some of whackier stuff that some scientists unself-consciously kick around not religious/ non-material is that they leave out any suggestion that it's in any way the product of a higher level of consciousness.

Good point. Mathematical concepts can be useful in understanding religious concepts, eg, perfect circles and lines cannot exist in physical reality, for example, but we can conceive of them as existing and indeed most of our civilization is based on such a concept.

I would argue that science and religion are become more closely linked anyway. The CERN project has, or did have, an anglican bishop as its spiritual consultant, for example. In what way is talk of a 'multiverse' any more rational than talk of a spiritual dimension or afterlife? Both are unprovable projections based on theory.

[Riedquat]

Excellent points.

Then I think that you've perhaps slightly misunderstood me. Or perhaps not, I think it's more likely that we're trying to say almost the same thing in very slightly different ways. I am still arguing that there's a completely rational, scientifc explanation for absolultely everything, including why we think and feel the way we do about all sorts of things, and anything that can't be (in principle) be answered with one isn't a meaningful question. However there's lots of stuff that we certainly can't answer like that now - but that doesn't mean we shouldn't still discuss them, they're still important since they affect our quality of life.

So if you were to ask me "What's the point of life?" I'd say that there isn't one, as in some purpose we're supposed to fulfil. It's not a meaningul question. That doesn't stop you making your own points for your own satisfaction though. It is in principle possible to know the complete functionality of your brain and your surroundings and work out what would give you that satisfaction and fulfillment. It's also completely beyond our ability to do that. However we're familiar enough with the consequences of whatever is going on to explore the resultant phenomena, even if we use metaphysical-sounding terms to describe it. We get pleasure and pain from life, and even if they're an illusion as a result of a complex system of the physical makeup of our brains and our world they're a good enough one to treat as real.

That might all sound a bit contradictory and waffly, it's not an easy concept to consider let alone put in to words (probably why it often gets over-simplified into conventional religious talk and ideas, but it's not right to call it religious IMO).