RE: Worried there might be an afterlife
April 6, 2015 at 6:55 am
(This post was last modified: April 6, 2015 at 7:41 am by Razzle.)
(April 3, 2015 at 9:55 am)robvalue Wrote: What we do know however, is how easily the human mind can be fooled. We are surrounded by spooky ideas, and the brain is very suggestive. It doesn't take much for people to fill in the gaps and jump to conclusions. There will almost certainly be a natural explanation for every report.
The thing is, even if they thought they heard or saw something, it is impossible that they can accurately know it is a ghost. We have no experience of such thing. How can they possibly say that's what it was? It's jumping straight to an unsupported conclusion based on the kind of things swirling in our subconscious. There's all kinds of explanations as to how the brain can think it has experienced things it hadn't, and even memories can be altered after the fact. People can be as convinced as they like, but it will always be overwhelmingly more likely that they are mistaken than they happened to have the first real encounter ever.
It just seems to be a likely explanation when some of the phenomena in these buildings include, for example, several mentally healthy people seeing a person looking out of a window as they approach the house. The only other explanation for that, which I can think of, is that they're living people from a parallel universe. But you never hear of people seeing people dressed in an unusual way, they're always dressed in clothes from the present or past of a time on this planet.
(April 6, 2015 at 6:54 am)Alex K Wrote:(April 6, 2015 at 6:47 am)Razzle Wrote: I have long been interested in neurology and have thought long and hard about consciousness, and as far as I can tell, the only thing we can identify is coherent thought and the ability to lay down events as memories and recall them later. You could have consciousness without coherence or memory, and vice versa, and it seems people are just conflating them when they say any studies have learned anything about consciousness. The fact that we can't remember being asleep, or remember being a baby, doesn't mean there is no consciousness during those times, it just means we have no memory of anything, for what could be any one of a number of reasons.
But it's not on/off, it's also that the quality of consciousness changes radically when you manipulate brain chemistry.
Does the quality of consciousness change, or just the content of consciousness? When I'm half-asleep, or coming round from anaesthetic, I'm less coherent, I'm confused, I'm experiencing very different things than usual, but I see the consciousness itself as being basically an on-off switch. I'm aware of something, therefore I'm conscious. Content is highly variable, but the concept I'm calling consciousness is only ever in an on or off state, at least as I see it.
(April 3, 2015 at 10:53 am)JuliaL Wrote: You are not afraid of the conditions you experienced before you were born?
There is every reason to believe that after death, the conscious person that is you reverts to the state it was in before birth.
So there should be no fear of that state either.
That's what I'm hoping for. I have no fear of non-existence. I don't even relate to that fear anymore, it seems strange to me. I'm worried that this might not be the state I go back to.
(April 3, 2015 at 3:50 pm)Alex K Wrote: Hey
It's pretty obvious that consciousness is a product of your brain, and your ocd is a product of brain chemistry and wiring. Even if there were an afterlife, which is a silly idea, why would the minutiae of your brain chemistry play a role there?
That being said, please don't kill yourself. There have got to be more effective therapies, and if not now maybe in a few years time.
I guess I was thinking of the possibility that the brain can set in motion consciousness, which is then independent of it in some way (though the content of consciousness - specific experiences - are clearly dependent on the brain while alive). There have been some very strange findings in studies on animals that suggest memories aren't stored in any particular brain structure at all, as if the brain is accessing them from somewhere other than its own tissue. So memories and thoughts from our lives, and perhaps consciousness of them too, could hang around. I know it sounds really bizarre, but consciousness is bizarre, it makes no sense to me that it exists at all, and the phenomena people report are bizarre. I'm trying to piece it all together in a way that fits all of the data I'm working with, and I'm not able to come up any explanation for it all that is not bizarre.
(April 5, 2015 at 11:00 am)Riketto Wrote: Could well be that the one (hypothetical God) who gave you the life may not like that you refuse his gift.
If I gave someone a gift that ended up torturing them, I would not be offended if they got rid of it.
(April 5, 2015 at 12:05 pm)MrNoMorePropaganda Wrote: Occasionally I wonder what will happen when I die (but not what happens after that). I have no problem with the notion, as some religionists like to put it, that I am "simply a collection of atoms". The reason being, because I am just a collection of atoms. People worry about death but they never ponder about what happened before they were born.
Death is described in detail in the religious texts because it is suppose to give a reason for people to live. Heaven is the 'carrot and stick' religionists use because they love this world, not matter how much they claim otherwise. They want to be listened to, they want to have fame and, most of all, they want money. Religionists want their chosen religion to expand because they want wealth. People pay to see them, they buy their books and they buy the proselytizing materials.
All around us we read stories of deities that do not value human life. If you do end up in hellfire know this: Lots of amazing people will be there. Think about that for a moment. Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox and many other awesome people will be there. Hellfire is not just. I don't want to be in heaven if the likes of Osma Bin-Laden (if Muhammad was right) or Hitler (because Hitler was a Catholic) will be there.
The concept of permanent unconsciousness doesn't frighten me at all, and the notion of hellfire is a lot of silliness to me. The only thing I'm worried might happen after death is that my memories and thoughts continue to play over and over, maybe some aspects of my personality, and that I'll be conscious of that happening, or that I'll be born in another human or even worse, a species that routinely suffers even more.
(April 5, 2015 at 9:01 pm)Iroscato Wrote: It's amazing how much trouble our inability to imagine nothingness has gotten us into over the centuries isn't it? That indescribable, existential dread of the abyss, the refusal to accept that once we are dead, there is no comforting embrace, no warm reunion with those we have lost.
Is it a particularly pleasant idea? I would say it's neutral at best or worst. After we die, it will be the same as before we were born. Non-existence.
How many of you can remember the world before you were conceived?
That's what I want to be convinced of. I have no fear of a simple abyss.
