(September 30, 2018 at 2:25 pm)purplepurpose Wrote: Are there atheists here who believe that there is some sort of afterlife? I personally still believe that there is something in afterlife, even if I dislike the idea.
There is something after our lives -- the lives of others.
What defines a particular individual is the neural programming and memory. Our brains produce a feeling of "self", even though the brain is a community of 3 layers, 2 hemispheres, and various specialized regions.
Consciousness is a process, produced by this virtual machine we call a brain. It creates an internal representation of the external world, and an internal dialog that we identify us something individual and special.
When that process ends, it ends. The "miracle" of that process can be recreated billions of times in other beings. If we want to think of consciousness itself as being reasonably immortal (neglecting worldwide extinction), perhaps that can allay our fears of death, but the individual lives only once.
We are a way for the universe to know itself (Carl Sagan).
