Life After Death

[Lestat]

Even if God does exist it certainly doesn't follow there must be life after death. In fact, if the chance for God is one in a million, then life after death has to be some number considerably higher than that (albeit somewhat lower if there IS a God).

After 3 months of reading this forum I have an idea of the logic people use to conlude the existence of God (bible notwithstanding). But can anyone please explain the logic used to conclude there must be life after death? (again, bible notwithstanding). If the idea of God is ludricous to some, then life after death is sheer preposterousness!

[Peter666]

Humans are rational animals capable of realizing abstract thoughts. Thus there is a spiritual component within us that will continue to exist after death because abstract thoughts are non-material in nature.

Because we won't have our bodies, we do not know how this spiritual component will be realized, but it will be there in the same sense that abstract thoughts are there.

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Humans are rational animals capable of realizing abstract thoughts. Thus there is a spiritual component ...

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I don't see why an epiphenomenon of abstract thought, in turn an epihenomenon of physicality, should be spiritual (whatever that is).


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... life after death is sheer preposterousness!

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For me, yes.

[Lestat]

I don't understand.

Thoughts (abstract or otherwise), require a functioning brain. Or are you saying that thoughts are possible without a brain and live on after the body dies?

[A_C_Slater]

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I don't understand.

Thoughts (abstract or otherwise), require a functioning brain. Or are you saying that thoughts are possible without a brain and live on after the body dies?

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Is the brain merely a conduit for the electrical imupulses that pass between it's synapses? Or does the brain generate these impulses?

[Lestat]

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I don't understand.

Thoughts (abstract or otherwise), require a functioning brain. Or are you saying that thoughts are possible without a brain and live on after the body dies?

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Is the brain merely a conduit for the electrical imupulses that pass between it's synapses? Or does the brain generate these impulses?

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I'm not a neurologist, but my guess is that it the brain generates these impulses. Either way.. Are you implying these electeical impulses (or thoughts) are generated from a source outside the body?

[Peter666]

"Or are you saying that thoughts are possible without a brain and live on after the body dies?"

Yes, but after a procedure. First we need to have our senses to bring data into our brain. The brain processes the data and gives us our thoughts. Now that we have thoughts, our brains are able to extract information from them to form abstract thoughts. Once we have several abstract thoughts we can derive more abstract thoughts. These new thoughts have no basis in nature for being created. They are created by the powers of a rational human being.

What separates us from the animal is free will. The will cannot be derived from nature like instinct because we can deny our natural desires if we want. It is these immaterial powers and rational thoughts that can continue to exist in a non-material dimension.

[jthegreat]

Some of you REALLY need to learn some biology.

I'd suggest reading "How The Mind Works" by Steven Pinker.

[Lestat]

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Some of you REALLY need to learn some biology.

I'd suggest reading "How The Mind Works" by Steven Pinker.

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That is one amazing book! However, it is not a light read by any means. Pinker is super intelligent and even though he tries to dumb down for us non-clinical psychologists I found it very hard to comprehend some of his analogies. But I'm not that smart. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

Yes... Many on here would derive much benefit from this book.

[DougShrapnel]

Personally I think that Life after death is more likely than there being a god.

[Peter666]

"spiritual (whatever that is)."

Spiritual is anything that is immaterial, such as abstract ideas.

[Peter666]

If you advocate a totally material basis for ideas, then nothing would ever really die or disappear or cease to exist. It would just be changed into a different state, like energy. We would be immortalized in the physical universe albeit not in our present form.

[Lestat]

Can you elaborate? Is it that you think the possibility of God is really that low? Or do you have some reason to believe life after death is possible?

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Spiritual is anything that is immaterial, such as abstract ideas.

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That's an interesting definition. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

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... then nothing would ever really die or disappear or cease to exist. It would just be changed into a different state, like energy. ...

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Seems like a fitting idea to me. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Lestat]

<font color="blue"> If you advocate a totally material basis for ideas, then nothing would ever really die or disappear or cease to exist. </font>

So are the abstract thoughts and ideas you had yesterday or 6 years ago, existing somewhere outside your mind right now? Or do they stay put in your brain until you die? What about the thoughts and ideas you've forgotten all about? Will they continue to exist as well, but apart from you the person who forgot about them?

Am I even understanding you right? You're saying that when YOU die, your thoughts and ideas live on (as well as new thoughts and ideas)? Or are you saying that old thoughts and ideas die, but you (whoever that is once your dead), will continue to maintain new thoughts and ideas?

This is a very complicated belief system. Have you heard this elsewhere, or is it your own?

[DougShrapnel]

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Can you elaborate? Is it that you think the possibility of God is really that low? Or do you have some reason to believe life after death is possible?

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah, they are both low prossibilities. It's just that there are naturally occuring possibilties of "Life" after death that don't include a god. Everytime you include a god you include the possibility of life after death. So possibility of life after death is greater than that of a god, since life after death includes non god possibilities, as well as every god possibility.

[Peter666]

If our thoughts are just electronic nerve impulses, then they are just a form of energy being used by the brain perhaps leaving an impression. Energy can change its states, so who knows where the thoughts go. My thought could be changed into the heat between Jessica Simpson's ass cheeks and thus attain immortality.

But I don't believe that the basis of thought is purely material. I believe universal ideas and concepts are maintained by the creator of the universe, just like our material existence is constantly maintained by the creator.

Some of what I was talking about previously is covered under the philosophical study of Epistemology. The rest of the [censored] I make up.

[Lestat]

<font color="blue"> My thought could be changed into the heat between Jessica Simpson's ass cheeks and thus attain immortality. </font>


I love it! If they ever run a best quotes of 2005 on here, this one has got to be nominated!

Personally, I think you overestimate humans, I don't think we are that much different to animals.

I think we only think we are because of a limited capacity to understand ourselves.

Sure we can do some stuff we think is great, but is any of it really that significant in the scheme of things?

Your ideas on thoughts are interesting, but I would apply Occams Razor and assume thoughts are just our limited impression of the functioning of our brains, and when we die they stop.

If you meant to be really abstract and hippy, and meant that if you have the thought to create some art, and that it is still around after you have died and so you live on. Then Ok. But we know that isn't really being alive.