Life after death
Discussion
A500leroy said:
Can anyone explain why we are breathing anyway, i know you say reproduction but some of us are gay so whats the point of us, and after
all the reproductions in millions of years whats the ultimate purpose of humans anyway?
Many religions have been asking that question and others for a long time which is why in most religions being gay is a sin all the reproductions in millions of years whats the ultimate purpose of humans anyway?
Smiljan said:
Johnnytheboy said:
Probably, but some things are so beyond being likely that absurdity sets in.
Argument one: what evolutionary advantage would it serve?
Ask yourself what's the purpose of evolution if death is the end anyway, why have life if all life ends. It doesn't matter, you'll have millions of years of evolution only for all life on earth to end anyway. It's all pointless.Argument one: what evolutionary advantage would it serve?
Until anyone can even remotely explain how that spark of life begins it's absurd to categorically state that death can only mean there is nothing else for that life form. Anything is possible, just we don't know for sure.
Smiljan said:
Ask yourself what's the purpose of evolution if death is the end anyway, why have life if all life ends. It doesn't matter, you'll have millions of years of evolution only for all life on earth to end anyway. It's all pointless.
I agree. It is pointless. I don't see the need to ascribe a point to it. That's why I don't think there is a rational argument for life after death, as it rests on the idea that there's any meaning to all this.
Digger said:
hucumber said:
I think having an opinion is fine, but flatly stating one or the other is ridiculous. Theres no way we will know until we are dead, so no one can say for sure either way
Huh?Anyone have any views on life before birth?
Don’t believe it myself, but it is an intriguing idea.
fesuvious said:
It's also constrained by the limits of our understanding.
Some believe a person occupies the carcass rather than the person being the carcass
Is that believe based on evidence, or wishful thinking?Some believe a person occupies the carcass rather than the person being the carcass
Some people need to feel there's some purpose beyond our physical existence. Which is fine, but again: what's the plausible mechanism? Until we have that then erring on the side of "this is it" is the only sensible response.
ATG said:
The exercise of forcing yourself to be precise about what you mean by consciousness tends to make the other answers pretty obvious too.
If by "consciousness" you mean an object's capacity to reason about itself, then many things are "conscious" to some degree including lots of machines. If you them say that machines and plenty of organisms are not "self aware", you're straight back into the "define what you mean by aware" space.
When you chip away at "life" and "consciousness" I think you generally find they mean far, far less than we initially think they do and they're really a portmanteau for a bunch of human characteristics that we value rather than ideas that have useful scientific meaning. "Intelligence" falls squarely in the same category which is why terms like "artificial intelligence" are pretty useless.
So use the words and concepts in domains in which they are appropriate and don't try to give them wider generality. If we're discussing human morality then thinking about free will, human agency, intelligence, life, consciousness are all absolutely fine. Like an elephant, we know it when we see it. But if you try to persist with those ideas and drill into their physics, you're on a hiding to nothing, because they don't mean anything in that domain.
What machines are conscious? If by "consciousness" you mean an object's capacity to reason about itself, then many things are "conscious" to some degree including lots of machines. If you them say that machines and plenty of organisms are not "self aware", you're straight back into the "define what you mean by aware" space.
When you chip away at "life" and "consciousness" I think you generally find they mean far, far less than we initially think they do and they're really a portmanteau for a bunch of human characteristics that we value rather than ideas that have useful scientific meaning. "Intelligence" falls squarely in the same category which is why terms like "artificial intelligence" are pretty useless.
So use the words and concepts in domains in which they are appropriate and don't try to give them wider generality. If we're discussing human morality then thinking about free will, human agency, intelligence, life, consciousness are all absolutely fine. Like an elephant, we know it when we see it. But if you try to persist with those ideas and drill into their physics, you're on a hiding to nothing, because they don't mean anything in that domain.
A machine doesn't realise it's achievement, doesn't feel joy or sadness, life or death. Only it's creator will be aware of what it realised.
When Deepmind's Alphago beat Lee Sedol in 2016, I don't recall seeing the computer going banana after it's victory.
When Kasparov got humiliated by IBM Deep blue in 97, Kasparov was devastated but when Stockfish8 was beaten by Alpha zero, Stockfish8 didn't shut down his algorithms because it was disappointed.
None of the below description apply to a single machine on earth:
The Cambridge Dictionary defines consciousness as "the state of understanding and realizing something." The Oxford Living Dictionary defines consciousness as "The state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings.", "A person's awareness or perception of something."
hucumber said:
Digger said:
hucumber said:
I think having an opinion is fine, but flatly stating one or the other is ridiculous. Theres no way we will know until we are dead, so no one can say for sure either way
Huh?Anyone have any views on life before birth?
A500leroy said:
Can anyone explain why we are breathing anyway, i know you say reproduction but some of us are gay so whats the point of us, and after
all the reproductions in millions of years whats the ultimate purpose of humans anyway?
As an individual you can argue what is my purpose. But all species have evolved to reproduce. That does not mean that every single "female" of a species has to reproduce. Just enough to keep them going. all the reproductions in millions of years whats the ultimate purpose of humans anyway?
Now there is a good arguement that the human race needs to slow down it's reproduction. If any of you feel this debate is getting a bit heated, try starting a debate about limiting human reproduction and see how that one goes.
There is a rational view to deal with what happens after death, and it was a broadcast by Aaron Freeman on NPR in the US; it has always struck me a very human way to deal with the reality of death:
"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.
Amen. "
"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.
Amen. "
Smiljan said:
I'm not arguing there is, I'm just saying it's unknown. Unlikely but unknown.
That's all.
Doesn't that apply to everything. Is the Earth flat. Unlikely, but it's not impossible that all the evidence to suggest it isn't has been placed their by a superior being to lead us astray. That's all.
Can you know for sure I don't have fairies living at the bottom of my garden?
Some things are just so preposterous, and ridiculously unlikely, I think it's safe to say "no". Life after death and God both meet that criteria in my book.
A little Shakespeare on the subject.
Prospero, from The Tempest:
"Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud capped-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vexed."
Prospero, from The Tempest:
"Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud capped-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vexed."
Edited by witteringon on Sunday 21st February 20:11
Edited by witteringon on Sunday 21st February 20:17
Digger said:
Huh?
Anyone have any views on life before birth?
There's always the belief in reincarnation, Buddhists, Hindus go for this I think.Anyone have any views on life before birth?
Personally I don't see the point unless you get a choice of what you come back as, who would want to come back as a house fly or a field mouse for example.
Do bacteria have life after death? How about other single cell organisms? Humans have evolved from single cell organisms - so at what point did our forefathers “evolve” life after death? And how? And for what purpose? The whole idea of life after death is bizarre when examined rationally.
Tom Logan said:
There's always the belief in reincarnation, Buddhists, Hindus go for this I think.
Personally I don't see the point unless you get a choice of what you come back as, who would want to come back as a house fly or a field mouse for example.
From what I understand, you don't choose your next reincarnation. It is decided by the way you behave in your current life. So, if you have been a good boy, you'll come back as a lion, if you have been naughty threadworm... Personally I don't see the point unless you get a choice of what you come back as, who would want to come back as a house fly or a field mouse for example.
Edited by E34-3.2 on Sunday 21st February 20:54
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