RE: What happens to you when you die?
June 6, 2010 at 1:58 pm
(This post was last modified: June 6, 2010 at 1:59 pm by rax.)
Well, I guess I'm speaking more of something that you could call a soul, essence, spirit, mind, or maybe something else that is there but is undefined by man or maybe is defined, basically 'me', with disregard to my physical body. 'Paul the Human' said that "the mind is a product of the brain". Really? Are we certain of this? We certainly don't have any evidence that any of these things exist and I'm not making the claim that we do. I'm also not stating that I believe they exist, I lack a belief. However, I'm not ruling out the possibility that something could exist because of hope, a hope that I don't put much stock in, but is interesting to think about all the same.
This notion that there's evidence that when we die, "that's it", is false, in my opinion. There is no evidence either way and it might even be unmeasurable so there is no way to take a position. Now I understand if one doesn't believe in heaven or hell or other blatantly fantastical conjurings, but can you not even entertain the idea of a continuation of 'yourself' after death, somewhere, somehow?
I would say that the proposition that there is some sort of soul/spirit/thing that continues on to some other sort of existence, however improbable, is possible within the realm of possibilities, and that to claim with almost certainty that 'nothing happens'/'worm food, that's it', is as much of a claim to knowledge of this event as the religious claims.
There is no evidence of an afterlife... but to my knowledge, there's no evidence of a "blinking into nothingness" either...
(If I am nothing more than some electrical-chemical computer program that runs within a biological meat bag, then as far as I can tell, it is possible for science to advance to the point where my brain could be perfectly replicated within a computer, where I would then 'exist'. If I think of it this way, then it would be entirely possible for the program 'rax.exe' to be deleted and cease to exist as easily and as certainly as a deletion of 'tities.jpg'. I guess if I think of it this way I can understand the 'nothingness' position. However, I guess I would still like to use my imagination to ponder what could happen after death.)
This notion that there's evidence that when we die, "that's it", is false, in my opinion. There is no evidence either way and it might even be unmeasurable so there is no way to take a position. Now I understand if one doesn't believe in heaven or hell or other blatantly fantastical conjurings, but can you not even entertain the idea of a continuation of 'yourself' after death, somewhere, somehow?
I would say that the proposition that there is some sort of soul/spirit/thing that continues on to some other sort of existence, however improbable, is possible within the realm of possibilities, and that to claim with almost certainty that 'nothing happens'/'worm food, that's it', is as much of a claim to knowledge of this event as the religious claims.
There is no evidence of an afterlife... but to my knowledge, there's no evidence of a "blinking into nothingness" either...
(If I am nothing more than some electrical-chemical computer program that runs within a biological meat bag, then as far as I can tell, it is possible for science to advance to the point where my brain could be perfectly replicated within a computer, where I would then 'exist'. If I think of it this way, then it would be entirely possible for the program 'rax.exe' to be deleted and cease to exist as easily and as certainly as a deletion of 'tities.jpg'. I guess if I think of it this way I can understand the 'nothingness' position. However, I guess I would still like to use my imagination to ponder what could happen after death.)
