Baraka_Guru

I'm sure this has been touched upon in other threads, but as far as I know, it hasn't been the focus of one.

As an atheist, I don't have any firm beliefs or concerns regarding an afterlife. In my mind there is no heaven or hell. However, I sometimes contemplate what an afterlife could be in an atheistic sense.

Most atheists, I imagine, view death as "lights out"; after which, all else is worm food. That's likely the case; however, I sometimes think of some "what if" situations that vary from that belief. Despite my atheism, I do have an imagination.

One theory of mine---though I'm sure it's not mine per se, in that I'm certain it's not a unique thought----is that an afterlife could exist in the sense that your consciousness could live on intact despite a bodily death.

After all, what is consciousness? What keeps it organized, intact? Is it merely contained in the brain? What if a bodily death means lights out on sensory reception but consciousness lives on? My one theory of an afterlife is one in which we relive, reinterpret, reorganize, and otherwise ponder our experiences over an indefinite period---time itself is irrelevant at this point. Perhaps it no longer exists. The boundaries of the afterlife is the sum of our sensory experiences---the sum of our memories.

What do you think of this? If you think it's impossible, can you move beyond that on a theoretical level and determine how such a consciousness would act?

This is an afterlife perhaps based purely in the physical world. The religious ideas of an afterlife, on the contrary, are necessarily nonphysical. I think that's where atheists get caught up. They believe there is no existence on a nonphysical level.

Philosophically, could there be such a thing as a physical afterlife? Thinking beyond my example, could you possibly load consciousness into a machine? Would that be immortality, or a physical afterlife? Is a machine necessary? Could consciousness remain organized on an atomic level perhaps?

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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girldetective

I havent looked, but is this something Ray Kurzweil could have theorized?

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Painted

If one day you could "load" or transpose your consciousness onto a more permanent vessel, you would cease to be human. Of course, under any and all circumstances of consciousness forever leaving the body you cease to be human, but all facets which the human body affords this consciousness, such as thought/reasoning, nervous stimulation, etc. would be lost. You cannot think, in the most pragmatic sense of the word, with anything other than a brain. Ergo, while theoretically one's consciousness could be placated in a non-human vessel thus endowing an "afterlife", this consciousness would be depleted of the ability of thought and sense as we know them to be. Artificial eyes can implant images onto a brain today, perhaps tomorrow brain synapses and neurons can function on an artifical mode.

So if your consciousness functioned like a computer, you'd be devoid of emotion, abstract thought, sensory perception; a self-contained bubble of operation sans any vivacity a body offers. Yet I speak through a narrow lens, some 60 years after the advent of computers. A question I've been grappling with of late is, if one day in the future we overcome the punitive limitations of our bodies and are able to achieve new immortality through the use of technology, what value does that give those who lived before? and how will the values of humanity change? (I realize the former question is furtive)

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Ourcrazymodern?

Examine your earliest memories. I also see no reason to imagine life goes on after death - that's like an oxymoron. I believe atheists waste valuable conscious time by thinking about it & I believe it's natural, but mostly due to childhood indoctrination into belief systems we didn't have the time for. "I don't know anything" is a dangerous, ineffective idea. Longing for answers is very human. I hope we never stop.

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WhoaitsZ

I hope there is some type of conscience without a god or without being trapped in the body.

As someone who spent 2/3 of his life sick as shit I have developed a phobia that I will end up trapped in my body after I die.

Anyhow, I think not questioning it is simply lazy and boring. We have no idea what conscientiousness is. We have no idea if our conscientiousness fades or dies or whatever.

I believe all of us share everything and also our conscientiousness is connected. I believe we are god. Just a huge hive of loosely connected conscientiousness.

DaveOrion

Believing in an afterlife is what makes it possible, it doesnt take vast computer memory or a USB zip drive, just the power that it takes to believe.

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bagatelle

Maybe there only ever was one big consciousness and to amuse itself, it created a way to appear as multiple ones by being born and starting all from scratch each time. After death it goes back to being the one or somewhere else, where there can be consciousness.

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ARTelevision

It is not at all clear to me that what is called "being alive" is what is occurring here in what is called "this life." For example, what is called "being awake" appears to me to be some form of being asleep. Similarly, to be conscious is, in large part, to be unconscious. There are many forms of this kind of dissonance - a radical disconnect between what is stated verbally and what is experienced directly. So, it is sensible to me to see this experience known as "life" to be some form of death and to consider what is called "life after death" to be a concept as hopelessly confused as the rest of our so-called "understanding." Ultimately, the whole notion of belief does appear to be our most essential pathology.

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jewels

Technically, I don't consider myself an atheist, but I believe that the lights would go out as you surmised for atheists. As OCD said, your earliest memories usually begin once you begin to develop language skills, so once my brain is disconnected from my subconscious, how could it survive. Sensory functions are controlled by the brain, nerves and our bodies and although there may be some sort of matter that survives, I've always thought of it as becoming scattered and blended with matter in the environment. That's where I like to think the human connection comes in; we all contain part of this DNA/matter/collective consciousness.

At one point, I did believe in a Hindu-type of caste system (that's what I think I remember it to be) where your soul would return continually until you became capable of reaching nirvana, but now find it difficult to believe that my soul or consciousness could instantaneously transport to another being. Even if that were so, what would have happened to my memories and baggage?

I wish I knew more about DNA, though. Somehow, I wonder if DNA transplantation (not necessarily cloning) would accomplish this, enabling the soul or consciousness to live on. Somehow I think it may tie in with all that DNA out there floating around when we die.

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Zeraph

I think that is entirely possible BG. I've thought about something similar.

Another physical after-life possibility is that time is like a linear dimension. But our consciousness can only process a slice at a time. When you die, your consciousness simply restarts and you live your life all over again. Or parts of your life if you're an optimist

Another one, but far less 'consciousy' is the imprint theory. Basically as you lived your life it is a unique pattern, and you "imprinted" yourself over time, like a genetic string, or a computer program. When you die you then have a far different, but some kind of light, high consciousness over the period of time you lived. Almost like an AI outside of time.

Another (heh, I know quite a few theories) is the quantum immortality theory. Quantum suicide and immortality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Explains it better than I. Basically you live forever, but you're the only one in your universe that does.

Another, is basically infinity. The universe keeps going and going, forever, to infinity. To the point that eventually your life is reproduced again, exactly as it was, bajillions of years ago.


*************
Huh, that's my, and pretty much my entire families' belief. Never ran into someone else who had the exact same belief.

Jinn

No. We know where consciousness originates from, and we can stimulate it. We can even turn it off while leaving the rest of the brain running. A hot poker to that center and I'm nothing more than a flesh bag filled with some gooey fluid. Likewise, a loss of heart or circulatory function or severe head trauma does the same. I see no way that a consciousness manifested by neurons would be able to persist beyond the cell death of those same neurons.

The fundamental understanding of neuroscience is that neurons act both computationally and as storage. The very same cells that compute, store. You cannot think without memory, and you cannot store or retrieve memory without computation. Our brain is, by analogy, a computer where all the CPU has an enormous cache, and in order to any sort of CPU activity, it uses the cache itself to do the calculation. We have no 'hard drive', in the sense that we have non-volatile memory that can save a power-off. We "soft reboot" all the time, even sleep and hibernate. But if the power is completely cut, as in a computer, all non-persistent information is lost. For us, that's everything. The only thing that can persist beyond our death is our creations, things that survive our eventual brain death, and the 'memory' of us stored in other "soft-rebooted" human brains. Would you expect the running programs of a computer to stay around after a complete loss of power? Why would you think the brain was any different?

I do, however, believe that we will be able to 'transplant' consciousness to non human analogues and live persistently so long as those analogues are powered (if artificial) or alive (if biological).. some day, in the future.. if humanity survives and continues to advance our understanding of neuroscience, computation, and storage.

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EventHorizon

i'm a non denominational christian but i used to be an atheist.

my view on the afterlife were also at one point

death

lights out

worm food

but after i let that digest in my mind for a few years i thought that since all energy (kinetic, thermal, electrical) is interconnected through the Big Bang, consciousness is a result of energy and matter interacting. same thing happens when you're born, same thing happens when you die. you just get recycled to eventually be a part of something else. maybe you arent "conscious" in the sense that you can rationalize, you are self aware, and that you have motivations directing your actions, but i believe that if you trace everything back far enough you can see where it used to be a part of something else that was alive. that same energy that just wont dissipate (if you believe in thermodynamics) eventually creates life forever.

but thats just what i used to believe, im a christian man these days

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Does Marcellus Wallace have the appearance of a female canine? Then for what reason did you attempt to copulate with him as if he were a female canine?

Quote:

Originally Posted by canuckguy Pretty simple really, do your own thing as long as it does not fuck with anyone's enjoyment of life.

Ourcrazymodern?

When I referred to earliest memories I was referring to life in the womb. I don't remember anything about being gametes, so I expect no more of my inevitable dissipation. Believing Christ was right about everything, which I do, if the reports aren't greatly exaggerated or misquoted or fictional, whatever, doesn't improve my relationship with God. I think afterlife eternal came up during some dark ages.

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Bonkai

Remember those moments just before you were born of darkness...nothingness, that's the afterlife deal with it!...Lol, but who knows, you probably just become part of the Earth again recycled like the peoples/animals/plants of past.

bagatelle

I wouldn't exactly call it my belief, just an option. Could explain our past life experiences or mysterious connections with others.

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Zeraph

Well, how I think of it, "before the womb" is like blacking out on drugs and/or alcohol. You can do a ton of stuff, and never remember in the morning. No memory, yet I was clearly conscious.

Ahhh. Well its funny, cause I found another person anyway! And he was famous. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of him before. His name is Bill Hicks.

Bill Hicks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I love this quote (even gonna replace my sig with it I think):
"Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration — that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death; life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves... Here's Tom with the weather!" -Bill Hicks

Ourcrazymodern?

How I think you'd better think of it, Zeraph, is respectful communication with others about their beliefs. Or not. Bill Hicks was trying to be funny. Baraka Guru asked us a fairly serious question, & you haven't addressed it as well as bagatelle did.

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Mantus

No one can give us an affirmative answer to life after death. One simply can't make a strategy for an unknown. Thus I make the best of what I have right now. If there is a next life I'll deal with it when it comes.

Zeraph

huh? Did you see my post above? I gave 4 possibilities. What are you talking about?

EventHorizon

but what if your actions in life have consequences on how you experience what there is after death? i'm not gonna bible thump you, but just in terms of common sense, its better to be safe than sorry. if the worst thing that happens is that there is no afterlife and you were a good person for no personal gain, thats not such a bad ending anyways is it?

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Does Marcellus Wallace have the appearance of a female canine? Then for what reason did you attempt to copulate with him as if he were a female canine?

Quote:

Originally Posted by canuckguy Pretty simple really, do your own thing as long as it does not fuck with anyone's enjoyment of life.

Zeraph

Being a good person has nothing to do with believing in an afterlife or the bible...

WhoaitsZ

My problem with the 'live a life of a Christian and you can't lose' is the following.

1) I love sex. I have been having sex with a couple of different women lately. I have spinal muscular atrophy and there are a TON of things I cannot do. Sex, however, I can do. Most Christians sees this as immoral. fuck them.

2) if you become a Christian for safety sake (I am not saying you did, EH) then you must be reading Cliff Notes of the Bible. that's not how it works.

3) I try very, very, very hard to be a good man with great morals. I am nicer than most people I know in real life and I try to be straight forward and honest. When I had spare cash I always put my change in charity bowls, I use to do toys for tots and adopted kids who wanted specific toys.

4) For arguments sake let us say a god DID write the Bible. Since it was written multiple people have tampered and changed it. We have no clue whatsoever what was in there for the Truth versus what was in there for political convenience.

5) If god wrote it and allowed people to rape it then he can't be so terrific t begin with.

I rather be a good person and go to a 'bad' place full of good people than a 'good' place ful of arrogant dicks, including god.

SirLance

There is some evidence that consciousness is not predicated on a functioning brain. There is a scientist conducting a controlled study involving people likely to die (and possibly be resuscitated) to determine if in fact some of the reported instances of "out of body" experiences during near death experiences can be clinically validated as having taken place outside the body. I haven't heard any results.

Also, it is true that certain drugs can reproduce the subjective experiences reported by people who have had NDE's.

So, I think the jury is still out. For me, I am pretty sure something continues, but that's just my subjective opinion based on experiences I've had.

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Mantus

I want to add that we need to explore the possibilities of an afterlife. I've just come to the conclusion that I'm not the one to make a breakthrough of our fate after death.


Indeed. I imagine there is a high probability that our actions in the flesh will reflect on our life after death if one exists.

Here is a video explaining much better than I ever could why your question doesn't bother in the slightest.
Of course that video offers the "common sense, rational" answer to your question but we all know humans are irrational creatures. There is always that "what if" lurking in the back of the mind. I have an answer for that too:

As I've already stated I live life to the best of my ability. When I die I will know in my heart where my "spirit" belongs. If it so happens that there is indeed a God who judges me to be unworthy of his kingdom because, despite being a good man, I failed to go to church every Sunday then I will judge this God. If this creature expects me to act without common sense to attain his favor then he is not worthy of my presence. And I will take banishment, hell or even death of my eternal soul to protest such tyranny.

Cheers!

Ourcrazymodern?

Sorry I blew up...I didn't notice your expressing an opinion of your own. I should have read harder.

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rju12

I read all of your post and it is very interesting to me because my thought on this subject has changed numerous times over the last 2 years. I was brought up Christian but I have a lot of problems with some of the beliefs and actually those of most every religion. I was atheist for a while just because of questions like why would god send anyone to hell for an eternity for something they did in a finite time plus many other reasons. I actually took a class, Philosophy of Religion and it really made me think about such things. There are so many religions and the biggest predictor of what you follow is what you were born into so who is anyone to say one is right without looking into all of them? The biggest problem was they all seemed to be based around an after life... Now I wanna know (maybe i don't lol) what you guys think about this after being really depressed and crap with lots of stuff going on in my life like, got done with two years of school didn't know what i wanted to do still, parents going through divorce, dad gambled hella money and got like 2dwi's , I used drugs like every day and crap was taking medicine and all kinds of shit. Anyways I took shrooms and it changed how I thought about a lot of stuff. Lol what happened was i was tripping and was in my room with my girlfriend and i seen the clock spinning, she turned out the lights cuz was tired then I thought started to think i was dieing. I seen us both like turning into skeletons and she kept saying it is okay then we came to a point where we couldn't move. then i just seen like white and black half and half like a ying yang symbol. To me it kinda represented the good and bad of everything and continousness. anyway later i zoomed out and all was black I was like freaking out for the longest time crying and stuff then i was like this is it i'm still thinking and it felt like it was FOREVER then I like started realizing a lot of stuff (I feel like you really do sometimes, like the way things are, like you look at it different) then I seen my whole life flash before me and then like knew everything for a split second then started shaking and all turned to light and had the most crazy best loving feeling you could ever imagine. Like I realized everything was just in my head. Like I realeased every fricken good chemical in my had by wanting it. Then I came back. It was nuts Like the last part of knowing everything and shaking and stuff happened so quick. Like I only remembered what i needed to. I know I was just high or whatever but it was just so crazy i thought i was crazy. I was atheist my whole life and I now believe like everyone goes to "heaven" it doesn't matter what you do really you can't do wrong like this is just a learning ground before you move on (maybe if your really bad it just takes you longer in the blackness to see why what you did was wrong). I had other weird thoughts like I am god god is everything. Not thinking i'm god I don't know how to explain it. So many thoughts like we will always keep learning and eventually if we all were more like 1 it would be more like bliss on earth. I am smart in like math and science and that is how I looked at the world and thought life after death was what stupid people believed but now I think like Look at how much we now know that no one knew a hundred years ago... You can't imagine what you don't know? Kinda like what not existing would be like or having a consciousness forever. In math more than three dimensions are possible but it is really hard to imagine 4 dimensions let alone 5 or 6 and on lol. You can't use physical means to test for something non physical. Can a blind person imagine seeing if they haven't? You can't tell people what you experience. I want to ramble more but I want someone to actually read this and give feedback lol.

Ourcrazymodern?

It sounds to me like you have your afterlife as well in hand as any of us. I believe it can never be tested or proven until, well...after, at which point we won't be in any shape to report back. Regarding the drugged experiences, they're hard to communicate, aren't they? Stick around, okay?

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Zeraph

Yikes man, couldn't finish that. Learn paragraphs.

Ourcrazymodern?

& THAT resembles why I object to your approach. We're all on very much the same road, Zeraph.

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rju12

Sorry I know that was pretty choppy but I just started writing what was on my mind. I didn't go back over it or anything but should have anyway....

Ourcrazymodern?

Please don't be sorry, rju12. Getting to your afterlife is easier if you won't. Tell us where you think you're going.

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cypher197

If this reality is a simulation, then an 'afterlife' is possible from an atheistic perspective.

It doesn't seem particularly likely to me, given that there are no apparent signs of that, and also that mental function is so closely tied to the brain, and deteriorates with brain damage.

LunarEclipse

On one level I agree with Jinn that consciousness is the activity of the brain but I still want to believe in a larger "consciousness."

"Another startling conclusion from the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there’s an executive “I” that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is all an illusion. Consciousness turns out to consist of maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.” Steven Pinker, “The Riddle of Knowing You’re Here” Time - Your Brain: A User’s Guide (2009, pps. 12-16).

LunarEclipse

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