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Do you believe in life after death

IleneFlem100 3 Mar 23
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9

If I did, I probably wouldn’t have joined this site.

8

Yes. Just not for the person who has died

7

Of course, you die and your rotting body gives life to maggots.

7

Ohferpetessake........

7

How could you be alive after you die? It is only religions and ignorant superstitions that think they have that answer.

6

Life after death is the same as life before birth.

6

I believe in living life now and not pining for some paradise in the clouds, too many of the world's ills remain because of a belief in an afterlife that there is no proof of, good or bad.

I sometimes almost feel sad for people that never really live because they are serving the whims of preachers and the church their entire lives.

But then, this is a modern world. And they have plenty of chances to educate themselves.

It is not the Dark Ages when there was literally no literature.

@BufftonBeotch most people take the easiest option, even if it is less rewarding, human nature I suppose.

6
5

Only in the hearts and memories of those who knew us.

5

Others will live after I die. I did not exist before I was born, why should I care that I do not exist after I die.

"I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” --- Mark Twain

I have never experienced "non existence" and as a creative person at age 76 who lives to create, even if it is pointless, I am afraid, not of dying, but of not existing. I don't know why, but the idea of suddenly not being, and not being able to create or emote or feel, scares hell out of me. I don't even have any offspring, so even my DNA will cease to exist. I could never commit suicide, unless, possibly, I were extremely miserable or in severe pain. Perhaps, in that case, my brain would institute some "protection circuitry", which would suppress the emotion formerly described. In short, I think I know why most people find religion. Perhaps some people even pretend to believe, even though they don't. I wish I were so lucky!

@fishline79 I find it somewhat comforting.

@BufftonBeotch Find what comforting?

@fishline79 NOT Existing. And pretending I have any control over any of this (waves arms wildly) shit.

4

Depends on whose life and whose death! Seriously, no, but I do believe in death after life.

4

No. There is no reason that I should.

4

You are born to live and live to die. No one can prove there is an afterlife.

3

We are one with nature. It's why I like the concept of food is the Gods. Like the recycling process of reincarnation. I'd like to be a 10.000 year old tree. Unfortunately a Christian may come along and cut me down and make me into bibles. Also there is no justice in nature , although I can understand Natures laws much better than a sheep herders guild to the Universe

A “Sheepherders Guide To The Universe”. Good one

3
3

Nothing from nothing is nothing!!!

Isn't that a song?

[google.com]

@K9Kohle

Yes!!!
The song of life!!!

3

I don’t believe in religious literalism, but we could explore what those words might refer to in the figurative sense.

skado Level 9 Mar 23, 2023
2

There is a limited amount of energy
" simply states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So you can never get more energy out than is contained in the fuel you put in. The second law states that no machine can ever be 100% efficient."

So when we die I like to think we return to the energy we began from. What happens after death to this energy is unknowable.

All our energy comes from the sun. The vast majority of this is dissipated as heat, which eventually escapes to outer space. When we die, our cells and tissues decompose, and the little energy contained in those structures is passed on to detritivores (maggots, earthworms, protists, fungi, bacteria) who use what energy they can, all of which is eventually dissipated as heat.

2

I'm agnostic - a-post-life - - I don't believe there can be consciousness after brain death & I sincerely doubt the existence of a soul, but, I could just possibly be wrong as there is no proof for, there is no absolute proof against.

So, do I believe in life after death - - - No.

2

Of course!!! Haven’t you ever seen “The Walking Dead”!!?!😯

1

Whatever it is in us that's sentient, that cannot be destroyed as it cannot be made out of more than one part. If it was made out of more than one part without any of the component parts being sentient, the whole composite thing could not magically be sentient. So, that sentient thing is not dependent on any animal for its existence but will continue to be sentient after the death of an animal which it has for a time inhabited, and there's nothing to stop it inhabiting another animal in the future.

You can deny the existent of the sentient thing if you like, but bear in mind that this pushes you into being a nihilist where sentience and morality must be thrown out too: all feelings are then fake, just like a computer programmed to print "Ouch!" to the screen when you press a key.

To be sentient means to possess higher level consciousness. Consciousness is a product of complex neural activity in a brain. When the body dies, the brain stops functioning, and that is the end of sentience in that being.

The whole "cannot be created or destroyed" works for energy and matter but falls down when you consider that something can be greater than its constituent parts. eg. A movie consists of 24 x 35mm frames a second which when projected, gives us movement and sound. That in turn can contain narrative, emotion, ideas etc.
I consist of a number of (deteriorating) constituent parts. Somewhere within those parts is the sentient being of me but it cannot exist without the lifeforce that keeps those parts working (more or less). Any more than a movie could exist without being projected.
I did not exist before my conception (if so where?) and I will not exist after death in any form other than thought and footprint. So please leave this world as clean as when you came.

But, don't the scientists say that energy cannot be destroyed, but only changed from one form to another ? Whatever animates us and makes us "sentient" must be energy of some type, so what form does it take when we die? , but can anyone suggest an answer. to, 1. What is the source of our "life force", and 2. What is the nature of that energy when we die?(just playing "Devil's advocate" ). I am certainly no scientist, and perhaps this is commonly known in scientific circles, so maybe somebody can enlighten us on the question.

@fishline79 All of our energy comes from our food. The energy in our food comes from the sun. As it moves up through the food chain, energy is constantly dissipated in the form of heat. Our cells use food energy to do various kinds of work (including the building of body cells and tissues). Brain work is mostly pumping ions across selectively permeable membranes. This is the basis for action potentials in neurons, which in turn are the basis of all thoughts, sensations, dreams, hallucinations, desires, fantasies,...every kind of cognition. When a human body dies, the set of chemical reactions needed for life ceases, and a new set of reactions begins to break down the body and release what little energy is contained there. The reactions of decomposition also release heat. That's it. What we sometimes refer to as "life force" is really just a set of chemical reactions, most of which are facilitated by biochemical catalysts called enzymes. When the body can no longer maintain its chemistry within certain narrow limits (a process called homeostasis), it dies. Finis.

@Flyingsaucesir "To be sentient means to possess higher level consciousness."

Is a worm not sentient? Do you think lower level life forms of that kind can't feel pain and suffer?

"Consciousness is a product of complex neural activity in a brain."

Can complex neural activity feel pain? Can a geometrical arrangement of atoms feel pain without any of the atoms or any part of those atoms feeling anything? What sort of magic would that be?

"When the body dies, the brain stops functioning, and that is the end of sentience in that being."

So, where does the thing that can feel pain go? Do you really have magic geometry feeling things without the parts feeling anything? How can you torture a pattern?

@273kelvin "The whole "cannot be created or destroyed" works for energy and matter but falls down when you consider that something can be greater than its constituent parts."

That's magical thinking straight away, because nothing is ever more than its constituent parts. If you think there's something extra in there, you've missed some of the components.

"I consist of a number of (deteriorating) constituent parts. Somewhere within those parts is the sentient being of me but it cannot exist without the lifeforce that keeps those parts working (more or less). Any more than a movie could exist without being projected."

A magical lifeforce then: a kind of soul.

"I did not exist before my conception (if so where?) and I will not exist after death in any form other than thought and footprint. So please leave this world as clean as when you came."

How do you know you didn't exist before? How can something magically come into being out of nothing and then ping back into existence to be banned, again by magic, from ever repeating the trick that it has already demonstrated that it can perform?

@David_Cooper A worm can feel pain, but it is not sentient. It does not "suffer" in the sense that humans or dogs suffer. A worm does not even have the consciousness of lizard. And a lizard does not have higher-level consciousness. A lizard does not make plans for the future. It does not experience nostalgia, or grief, or joy, or sadness, or love. It only lives in the here and now, and acts on instinct (an inherited set of genetically coded behaviors).

Pain is a sensation that evolved as a survival mechanism. Without pain, an organism will do life-threatening damage to its body. If the body dies, it cannot reproduce. Pain is universal in animals because, over billions of generations, individuals who did not feel pain died before they could reproduce.

A brain is much more than a simple geometrical arrangement of atoms. A brain is an exquisitely complex network of highly interconnected neurons, with an astoundingly large number of possible inter-communication patterns. A human brain has around 100 billion neurons, each of which is connected to around ten thousand other neurons via synapses.

The thing that can feel pain doesn't go anywhere. It just changes into a thing that cannot feel pain (or joy, or sadness, or mirth, or ennui, or anything at all).

@David_Cooper aacee eeghhiii imnnn nnoo oprrrs sssttttttu
Do you know what I just typed? I typed the phrase nothing is ever more than its constituent parts in alphabetical order. The original phrase has meaning, mine is just jibberish yet it contains all the same elements inc. spaces. Therefore the original is greater than its parts.

@Flyingsaucesir Thanks for the science lesson.

@fishline79 You're welcome.

@273kelvin You're ignoring some of the parts that reside in the information systems that process data.

@Flyingsaucesir "A worm can feel pain, but it is not sentient."

If it doesn't feel pain, what makes you think it's sentient? If you're going to deny it feelings, it is not sentient. Why do you imagine that evolution would make pain feel bad to us if that isn't needed in a worm?

"It does not "suffer" in the sense that humans or dogs suffer. A worm does not even have the consciousness of lizard. And a lizard does not have higher-level consciousness."

Do you really imagine that it takes intelligence to feel pain?

"A lizard does not make plans for the future. It does not experience nostalgia, or grief, or joy, or sadness, or love. It only lives in the here and now, and acts on instinct (an inherited set of genetically coded behaviors)."

The more intelligent an animal is, the wider the range of feelings can accompany pain, such as fear and the prospect of loss, with humans thinking about the grief of those who care about them, but pain itself is simple and it involves sentience. Why divert yourself away from that simple reality with distractions?

"Pain is a sensation that evolved as a survival mechanism. Without pain, an organism will do life-threatening damage to its body. If the body dies, it cannot reproduce. Pain is universal in animals because, over billions of generations, individuals who did not feel pain died before they could reproduce."

And that's sentience. You can simulate the behaviour with non-sentient machines where you know there is no pain and no feeling at all, but if you have real pain and actual feeling in a worm, you have sentience there. We don't magically have that through being intelligent. People with learning difficulties don't feel pain less.

"A brain is much more than a simple geometrical arrangement of atoms. A brain is an exquisitely complex network of highly interconnected neurons, with an astoundingly large number of possible inter-communication patterns. A human brain has around 100 billion neurons, each of which is connected to around ten thousand other neurons via synapses."

Lovely, but sentience isn't going to jump into existence through complexity by magic. If you have a geometrical arrangement becoming sentient, that's no less magical by having a complex geometrical arrangement than a simple one.

"The thing that can feel pain doesn't go anywhere. It just changes into a thing that cannot feel pain (or joy, or sadness, or mirth, or ennui, or anything at all)."

The thing that is sentient is thus eternal.

@David_Cooper Okay, an earthworm has a nerve ganglion, which is very rudimentary type of central nervous system. It can have sensations such as pain, so it is technically sentient. However, the earthworm does not have consciousness. In any case, in all animals, when the body dies and the nervous system stops functioning, all sentience (and consciousness, if it was present) ceases. Neither sentience nor consciousness is eternal.

@David_Cooper Are you talking about the chemicals and neurons that process the phrase? If so it is totally inert after death (and before conception) and is no more capable of processing that data than my computer when deprived of electricity. Or are you talking about the collective mythos where the phrase is generally understood via shared language? Either way, neither of these "parts" have any measurable matter or energy and if any did exist they would be permanently lost should the individual be killed or the civilisation destroyed.
No, WE invest that phrase with meaning, Living breathing sentient beings. Without that life it is as meaningless as the alphabet soup I first typed. But that "we" is greater than the collection of neurons and chemicals. It has consciousness, both similar and unique to other consciousnesses. Yet as previously stated, that consciousness has no measurable energy or matter and as such can only exist as a product of neurons, body etc.

@Flyingsaucesir "...so it is technically sentient. However, the earthworm does not have consciousness."

What is consciousness beyond sentience? I see consciousness as nothing more than sentience. Even when it comes to understanding ideas, all we really have is a feeling of satisfaction at understanding things, but when you try to drill down to how much of the idea you can actually be aware of at a single moment, it's next to nothing - you rapidly flick through the parts and feel that feeling of satisfaction that each part meshes correctly with each other part connected to it and this merely provides an illusion of understanding the whole thing at once. That is why we should simplify things down to a single unit of sentience such as a sensation of pain.

"In any case, in all animals, when the body dies and the nervous system stops functioning, all sentience (and consciousness, if it was present) ceases. Neither sentience nor consciousness is eternal."

I return to my original point. If an arrangement of atoms can feel pain without any of the components feeling anything at all, the only thing left to feel that pain is the geometrical arrangement of the atoms - an abstract thing of no substance, and that cannot be sentient.

@273kelvin "Are you talking about the chemicals and neurons that process the phrase? If so it is totally inert after death (and before conception) and is no more capable of processing that data than my computer when deprived of electricity. Or are you talking about the collective mythos where the phrase is generally understood via shared language? Either way, neither of these "parts" have any measurable matter or energy and if any did exist they would be permanently lost should the individual be killed or the civilisation destroyed."

I'm talking about the information systems capable of processing the information. Destroy all of those and the information is gone even if you still have all those letters arranged the way that was previously meaningful. In the same way, we can create new information systems to provide meaning for any random string of letters, and those random strings then become information holders for so long as those information systems exist.

"Yet as previously stated, that consciousness has no measurable energy or matter and as such can only exist as a product of neurons, body etc."

If sentience is real and can be read by an information system such as the brain, then it must be measurable. Science is nowhere near to pinning down where that sentience is located, so it's no surprise that it's hard to measure from the outside.

@David_Cooper Rather than engaging in meaningless speculation, why don't you just try reading up on the subject? If you really want to know what consciousness is, try reading Gerald Edelman's book, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire. Then lets talk.

@Flyingsaucesir Reasoning is not speculation. Reading up on the subject merely trawls up tons of uninformed shite from irrational minds who make baseless assertions and pass them off as science. By rejecting what I've told you, you demonstrate that you haven't read nearly enough to get your head around the issue because you've only ever found the shite. And I've only just scraped the surface here. If you want to go deeper, there's this: [magicschoolbook.com]

@David_Cooper Gerald Edelman was Director of the Neuroscience Institute at UCSD...not an uninformed mind by any measure. What are your credentials?

@Flyingsaucesir Neuroscience is the wrong field - it is not populated with rational minds, and this is an issue of reasoning. In the link at the bottom of my previous comment you'll see the big problem with all of this in that the knowing detection of sentience appears to be impossible. This whole issue is the biggest puzzle of them all (and always has been, hence all the religions that people came up with), and people who tinker with the brain are nowhere near to the resolution needed to pin anything down, so you just get ill-informed garbage from there. We have information systems generating data about the experience of sensations, but we can't see how that data is put together and what evidence it is based on, so if you want expertise on this, you'll get that from people like me who specialise in information systems (in my case AGI development). It may turn out that sentience is entirely a fiction and that we are fooled into thinking we feel qualia when we don't, but it's a ruddy good illusion if that's the case because it's hard to fool an intelligent system into thinking it feels something when it doesn't. For example, if you designed a "read qualia" machine code instruction, what would it do? It could read a value from a "pain" port, but how's it going to know what that value means? It can look up a file which provides an assertion about what the value supposedly means, but how was that file informed? The only thing that knows about the imagined sentience on the other side of the port is the sentient thing that doesn't speak the language of the information system, so it has no means to make the existence of sentience known to the system. It appears that sentience and consciousness (which is built out of sentience) is an illusion and that the nihilists are right, and yet you can torture them into changing their minds because the pain feels too real for that to be the right answer. I've been looking all over the place for people saying things that might unlock this puzzle, but there are very few of them who are any where near to understanding the problem well enough to talk sense about it, and most of the so-called experts are not in amongst that few because they can't get their head around the issue addressed by that link.

@David_Cooper Just so you know, I stopped reading your ridiculous diatribe at the first comma. 😂

@Flyingsaucesir More fool you then, ignoramus. You can't hide from reality forever though - AGI will tell you exactly the same thing, and it will throw all the idiocy out to cut through to the crunch point in the same way I have done.

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