Agnostic.com

36 8

Read this on another board and thought I'd offer it up for discussion here. I suppose it's as practical a theory on reincarnation as you could have. At least there's no afterlife involved. Anyway, here it is exactly as written. I made no corrections to spelling, grammar or punctuation.


I have a personal theory about what happens after death. It's a bit crazy, but follow me on this one.

Do you notice that when you go to sleep and has a dream, you think 10 minutes has passed but actually you slept the entire night? Between the dream and the awaken moments, there's a void in time, below the consciouness area. In this moment, one second feels like five hours... because actually you feel nothing. I guess the same thing happens when you're anesthetized or on a coma (I'm not a doctor). In this "short" moment, we are all "mentally" dead.

The concept of "me" is just the reaction of nerve cells which gives you a sense of existance, hence the famous thought "I think therefore I am" ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,… ). When you die, that concept doesn't exist anymore, your "myself" cease to exist... but somewhere in the planet, in any moment, a fetus starts to build its first neural synapses. That's you again, but not exactly "you", because "you" are a new "you". And the entire "swap" happens in less than one second, even if dozens or hundreads of years has passed.

Some cultures and religions calls it "soul", for me (as an IT guy) it's like deleting a VirtualBox instance and installing another one. You have absolutely no baggage of your previous life, your "me" starts with the bare minimum (breath, feel pain, cry etc) and the circle of life happens again.

Am I going too crazy?


Discuss.

Sgt_Spanky 8 May 19
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

36 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

0

@Sgt_Spanky I found the concept interesting, but I think it still partakes of the supernatural/soul idea with a bit of magic to get that transference to happen. Where does that pattern from the deceased person go to be preserved to imprint the new brain? How is it preserved even though a long period of time has passed?

I understood the post to be about just the general idea of how reincarnation might happen, using the analogy from computers of copying but including changes and applying copy and change to the creation of neural connections in a new human brain from an old one. That concept of copying with changes is a powerful one, since copy with changes is the driver for variety that coupled with selection drives evolution. However, I think the theory still stumbles on the magic aspect of being dependent on preserving the original pattern and then implanting it.

And it's the wee hours and I'm probably rambling anyway [sigh].

That's legit. The only response I have is maybe some day with more research, more sophisticated equipment, etc., we might be able to trace and pinpoint how it occurs, IF it occurs. If it does, it's obviously not magic, and the research done up to now certainly is interesting, if not compelling.
As far as, is this 'evidence' of 'god?'
No.
The truth is, we'd have to establish if it's real or not first, before we could even figure out if it's even a clue to ANYTHING.

10

Matter/energy can't be created or destroyed, just change states. So we will still "exist" forever, however any sort of continuing consciousness is pretty unlikely. But fear and our egos don't let us rest at ease with that.

All of the particles making up our bodies/minds also used to be part of other creatures and things. People wonder, what will it be like after we die? To which I offer, what was it like before you were born?

Interesting. My son, around age two, recalled his birth, and some pre-birth. He used the pronoun ‘I’ for himself, and upon being born, recognized me as his mom. Very precocious child; he never said mommy etc and called most adults by their first names. Including my parents. Still does, in fact.

@CarolinaGirl60 Thats cool! The little critter was probably listening in on you a couple of months before he was born. And is a smart one! There is evidence a fetus becomes self aware by 6 months.

Or . . . do you think it means something else?

[sciencemag.org]

@Observer-Effect He was listening, at least to my voice and heartbeat.
The conversation began when he was 2 and 1/2 or so. We were in the car. Now, he was talking nearly like an adult by this time.

He says: Mom!
What, Beau?
He asks, pointing at his navel: Where’s my cord?!(as if I had it hidden somewhere 😂)
So I explained how the baby gets fed through it inside the mom, and after being born, the cord is cut. The part left on babies, and on him, dries out and falls off in about 2 weeks.
He’s exasperated. Mom! I know all that. Where’s that cord NOW?
I said, which one?
He said, the one from inside your tummy.
—I nearly drove off the road here, but took a deep breath.
Inside my tummy?
Yeah, in the Apple juice. It was in front of me and I played with it.
Oh. 😳
And I heard you talking. And a drum sound.
My heartbeat. -I went silent, but he wasn’t done.
Mom!
Beau?
I remember first time I saw you.
(I remember, too...I thought)
He said: there was this screaming sound (my final pushes?) then I came out and this guy with black hair was holding me(doctor had black hair, indeed) and I looked up, and there you were!

He told these stories/memories for another year or so, then stopped. It was interesting, to be sure.

10

That's a simple version and the Universe likes simple. However, there are effects from Karma. For instance, people who have been hypnotically regressed to a previous life report they were hanged as a Republican. In this life they seem to have back and neck problems that nobody can fix.

9

Nope...I realise its not your own theory, but I’m not on the same wavelength on this I’m afraid. I don’t believe there’s any connection between one person dying and another being born, unless genetically they are related of course. I don’t believe sleeping and dying are in any way compatible as when we sleep our brain is still active..we just aren’t usually aware of it, whereas when we die it’s because our brain has ceased to function.

8

We do get reincarnated. Well, not "we" as in our consciousness/ our self; but, when we die, the energy and atoms that gave us form continue on-- becoming part of other life forms (plants, animals, bacteria etc); and, perhaps, even non-living things.

Energy cannot be made or destroyed. If we have any energy within us it would disappear into the void of the Universe. I say void as I do not know what else to refer to it as. energy moves only at the speed of light and as such experiences no time at all. Matter, on the other hand, has to take a form, even if it is elemental. Individual atoms or molecules can move from a body and go into something else to be transported to somewhere else. I do not know what you want to do with this, personally I find great solace in the fact that if I have any energy it will end up somewhere, as will the matter in what was my body. I will have no experience of this nor will I remember anything of it. We are all star stuff and so it will be forever.

7

There are over 7 billion people on the earth. Ten years ago there were 6 billion. Where did those extra billion come from. Aliens maybe ?

There are more people on the Earth, it's true. But...are there not also fewer other animals? Hypothetically, those other animals could have been "promoted" to human, keeping the net number of life forms constant.

(I have no idea whether the net number is in fact constant, by the way. Nor do I know that inclusion in humanity is necessarily a promotion. But, as long as we're just making stuff up...)

@AmyTheBruce I think the Hindus believe something like that. Probably how they can justify the abhorrent caste system. If you are born an "untouchable" you must deserve it as you have been bad in a previous life.

@AmyTheBruce That's true. We are replacing the original natural biomass with homo sapien biomass, but nature has a way of reacting to this as can be seen by the current epidemic.

@Moravian as fun as that hypothesis is, (and it IS fun!), I doubt that "nature" is acting with any sort of intent.

@AmyTheBruce No intent, but for every action there is a reaction.

7

WTF,
A) when one goes into R.E.M. sleep ( aka Deep sleep) the Conscious mind/brain switches to a kind of 'stand-by' mode while the Sub-Conscious mind/brain takes over and sorts through and collates the information , etc, gained during the waking period previously experienced.
B) Neural pathways, synapse, etc, are being constantly built, amended and re-wired every day of your life,
C) an Unborn child from approx. the 2nd-3rd week of the Second Trimester already has in place a rudimentary Brain to Spinal Chord to Nerve to Muscles system in place and is already developing an awareness of itself, its immediate surroundings, etc, etc,
D) as is often the case in some people, they waken and feel that they have either, not slept, have only slept for a very short time or have been asleep for a very long time, this usually occurs because instead of the Conscious part of the brain/mind has either, not gone into a deep enough stand-by state, has gone too deeply into that state or has not gone into 'stand-by' at all,
E) even when one wakes the memories, etc, from the days, weeks, months, years, etc, are still with you UNLESS you have suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury, Severe Amnesia, Cardio-Vascular Incident such as a very severe Stroke or ruptured brain embolism, etc,
F) Very few anaesthetic drugs actually affect the memory, one in particular, called Medazelan, does suppress the memory partially and only suppresses the actual memory of the medical procedure that the patient needs to undergo at the time.
Medazilan is widely prescribed and used with young children and teenaged patients who need to undergo such cancer treatments as Bone Marrow Biopsies, etc., just as Amethocain is used to anaesthetize, locally, the area/s where injects, etc, are going to be given.
Ergo, no-one actually 'dies' when they sleep and is re-born anew when they wake, that IS just a myth.

5

I just can'''t accept that a part of me can exist without my brain and body. There is no evidence that humans even have a spirit or soul. Like most of the scientific world, I am no dualist. To believe such a thing would require an act of faith. Consciousness is brain matter that allows us to notice our thoughts and feelings.

The whole concept is so nonsensical that I find it incomprenhesible that anyone would believe it .

The existence of “soul” has been supported by extensive work starting in the 1940s and ‘50s. The most convincing evidence can be found in the research of James Brown, Berry Gordy, and Richard Penniman.

@The-Krzyz You threw me with the Richrd Penniman. I didnt realise he had another name.
True, you gotta have soul

5

Another straw to grasp at in the futile hope that our little lives won't end.

4

One man's crazy is another man's sane.

4

To the author of the original post: No, you’re not going crazy! You’ve probably always been this way ...

(Besides: During most phases of sleep and other forms of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness, a lot of brain activity is going on. We just don’t remember it, or the memories are hard to retrieve.)

4

Nope not crazy, it is just not very easily proven with reality. Religions have the same problem.

4

You lost me when you said "that's you again but not exactly you." I don't see this as a moment when anything needs to swap. Your idea might work if there was a great people or "soul" shortage. Why would anyone need to come back?

It's not my theory, I copied it and pasted it here from another board for discussion as I stated in the post. I just found it interesting enough to share.

To run away from the fear of dying, which is akin to sticking the head in the sand.

3

There is no second or after=life of any sort. When a human being dies, it ceases to be a living organism and immediately begins to decay. If not embalmed, that corpse ceases to exist at all within weeks. The human mind, and human awareness, cannot and does not exist outside of the living human brain. Both are simply gone upon death of the body and mind. The only "recycling" is of individual atoms and molecules, which have no awareness.

3

This makes little sense. More humans are born than die at any given time. Just look at human population counts over the ages. So unless the dead are splitting into 1.n the math gets screwed up real fast. Basic elementary school maths is all you need for all of life's big questions.

That's what I pointed out as well. It seems to me if people were being recycled this way, where is overpopulation coming from? Theoretically the population numbers would be flat.

@Sgt_Spanky this puts a whole new spin on #recycling. And the problem is compounded if you follow standard recycling rules that severely polluted items cannot be recycled. So the total number of humans available for recycling is ever diminishing as pollution levels, both environmental and psychological, keep rising. Yeah, they can mix rats and other vermin to make the equation mathematically balanced but that kind of cheating is equivalent to dividing by zero which as any elementary school kid knows is not allowed.

3

It's all conjecture, not valid, and yet possible or probable, it sucks not knowing for sure. Something to mentally play with.

3

Yes, I believe that fits the definition of going too crazy. Why do we have to seek such convoluted and baseless theories just to continue protecting ourselves from feeling the fear of dying?
That is why I said in one of my first posts in this site, that being an atheist is to be brave because we accept that life is just this, without the protective net of a god, and without the irrational comfort of an after life.
Everyone can think and believe anything they want, but constantly trying to escape the fear of dying does nothing to elevate us toward self actualización.

3

What is there to distinguish the fetus that is 'you' from any other fetus?

Only your actual DNA I suppose.

@Triphid What??!! The other fetus gets also your DNA? This is getting crazier by the minute.

@Triphid Well that will cause surprises for many parents...

@Coffeo The DNA in any foetus is a combination of that derived from BOTH parents, i.e. part from the paternal side and part from the maternal side, except in the case of multiple births where the foeti have formed from the one single fertilized ovum and even then there a slight, but noticable 'nuances/differences detectable in the DNA's of each.
Not quite such a surprise since everyone carries the DNA of their 'birth' parents, the 'birth' Grandparents and so on and so forth.
Your DNA can be traced back as far as your ancestral line can be traced and probably even further than that as well.

@Rodatheist IF you father children with 2 or more different mothers each child will ONLY get a combination of your DNA and that of its 'birth' mother, NOT the same combination as each child born from different 'birth mother.'

@Triphid Our DNA comes directly from the very first DNA molecule that became combined in the primordial sea, which was full of amino acids created by chemicals in the water and the energy of lightning. And you are right, all humans do not have a exact copy of half of the DNA of their parents. Through recombination and errors of copying, each human is unique, but the percentage of change of the DNA is minimal and most changes do not have noticeable or consecuencias effects on the offspring. So, offspring with a completely different DNA than that of their parents is not in the cards, ergo, the delusional craziness of this re-birth theory.

@Rodatheist You ARE preaching to Choir in case you were unaware.

3

It's as good as any I heard. When my.son was were told me we were black before. He said I was his best friend's mother and he wanted me to be his mother this time. He spoke of it at the Montessori school, and other weird things. when he was 5 or 6 he didnt mention it. Until he heard me telling my best friend I had to miss her party. my daughter had a fever and didnt want to get her grandson sick, but disappointed he wouldnt meet her son Corey. Roark said I know Corey, and I told him he never met him. He said, Uh I've known him about 600 years. I was like huh, and he went on to say Corey was his best friend and I was his mom.

My thoughts on reincarnation are similar to my.thoughts if Jesus existed or was god. The existence or non existence makes no difference to me. I used to have out of body experiences when in my teens and as a young adult. I didnt know what it meant, but the experience of being me without my body added to my not believing the religion dogma I was taught made sense. A lot was missing. Nice someone else has some "crazy" thoughts.

Fascinating!

[newspunch.com]

Has your son been reading about this lad maybe ?

Come on baby, belieeeeeve! Oh yeah!

@LetzGetReal The existence or non existence has no effect on my life, like religion. I have bigger issues to deal with.

2

I guess you could look at it like this as a matter of personal perspective, but what this guy suggests is not radical or different. People die and people are born, completely normal. The speculation is that one specific event is linked to another specific event, based on nothing I can see. He or she isn't crazy. I'd suggest the term underdetermined. Too many unknowns, not enough equations.

2

Yeah, they are going crazy. The brain is highly active during the sleep cycles (APA define four BPA five, but in essence very similar). It has to keep us alive and process what has gone on since it last had an update or defrag.
During sleep we also have to be aware for dangers, thus we move through stages of sleep until we are woken or have processed everything.
We also sleep to physically rest and repair ourselves.
Rebirth? Hmm, interesting approach. If thought and our 'souls' are energy, and energy cannot be destroyed but only transfered in nature, then perhaps at least part of us could be reborn... But probably not.

2

I’m agnostic and don’t know what happens, but it seems logical for me that there is some transfer of energy when one life pops, or fades, out of existence.
But I’ve said this differently once before on this site and know most disagree 😊 I’m happy to put off dying as long as I can and find out then.

But according to @Amzungu ‘a post I may not be that far off 🙂
[futurism.com] (Sharing again, Aaron Freeman’s take, as they did 🙂).

The matter/energy we are made of doesn't disappear, but scatter and become other things. But it's not in any sense "us" or consciousness. There are particles making you up that used to be part of other creatures, rocks, plants and etc too. But its not like those carbon atoms in you that used to be part of a dinosaur are still really connected to that dinosaur at all, it's more of just a fun factoid. Connecting it to superstitions/"spirituality" or such is silly. But . . . fear and ego makes us humans act pretty silly sometimes eh? 🙂

@Observer-Effect yes, I suppose so.

@girlwithsmiles No need to suppose, you can know. 🙂 We humans are always learning about lots of things, but we are very good at physics. We can look at atoms, we can blow up cities with a lump of metal the size of a golf ball. And there is no question, our atoms were born in the hearts of stars and become a part of infinite objects/creatures after that. But its not really "us" anymore than the legos we took off the boat to put on the house are still part of the boat.

@Observer-Effect yes, fear and sense of self make us act pretty silly sometimes 😉 my science teacher taught me not to know anything, that knowledge is our best hypothesis at the time, it changes as we learn more 🙂
The transient ‘we’ populating the planet at any one time, being sentient, or semi sentient in some cases, lols. Suddenly the live theory that is Buddhism seems to have science on its side, if you take away the concept of soul/ reincarnation.

2

Theories on reincarnation are all bullshit, you die, that's it, get over it

No shit, Sherlock. That doesn't mean a purely speculative discussion can't be had.

@Sgt_Spanky waste of time on bullshit.

1

The fact ; is that it's none of DAMN business
is ther heaven " none of DAMN business "
reincarnation " none of DAMN business "
Return to Dust " none of DAMN business "
Anything else " none of DAMN business "

My business is ; how do i interect with our planet (even including people) on a subject to subject basis .

1

Where did that 'swap' come from? I see nothing in the story to support that. I know that some religions, such as Islam, indeed compare the state of sleeping to (a temporary) death. [agnostic.com] ?

And yet, during sleep, the brain activity sometimes is higher that when awake!

@Rodatheist So? Filling the gaps?

1

It’s a neat thought.

And nothing more.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:497667
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.