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Post by George Ortega on Nov 28, 2014 19:45:35 GMT
A lot of people believe in an afterlife, free will, Santa Clause, god, and that life begins at birth. My decisions are determined by what I have reason to believe rather than what a bunch of other people believe who can't explain their reasons for believing it. I think we have to distinguish between beliefs that are based on an impossibility, at least at this time, of knowing the truth, such as with the afterlife, and beliefs like free will that fly against all reason, experience, and science.
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Post by chandlerklebs on Nov 28, 2014 22:25:36 GMT
I think that refuting free will is my top priority for a number of reasons. Rather than challenge their afterlife beliefs, maybe I should take your approach to it by pointing out that we can't be sent to hell for what we had no choice in doing.
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trick
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Post by trick on Dec 4, 2014 1:01:47 GMT
Agree that there is a distinction between something logically incoherent (such as free will and square circles) and something non-evident (such as an afterlife or leprechauns), but an afterlife sort of flies in the face of reason, experience, and science - it's just not logically incoherent. Given what we know scientifically regarding how we can turn off consciousness by interacting with the brain, how brain damaged people get an overhaul of their thinking capacity, how split brain patients can have one half with an atheistic belief and the other theistic, and everything we know through neuroscience, memory storage (short and long term), and so on in the brain, I just can't see an afterlife as a reasonable "possibility". :-)
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Post by Jamie Soden on Dec 4, 2014 5:32:00 GMT
Agree that there is a distinction between something logically incoherent (such as free will and square circles) and something non-evident (such as an afterlife or leprechauns), but an afterlife sort of flies in the face of reason, experience, and science - it's just not logically incoherent. Given what we know scientifically regarding how we can turn off consciousness by interacting with the brain, how brain damaged people get an overhaul of their thinking capacity, how split brain patients can have one half with an atheistic belief and the other theistic, and everything we know through neuroscience, memory storage (short and long term), and so on in the brain, I just can't see an afterlife as a reasonable "possibility". :-) Reincarnation is a possibility seeing as matter and energy appears to be in an endless cycle of formation, I don't believe it in a karma sense, I think it will simply happen via natural selection. You could say we live once then that's it, the problem with this assumption is it isn't well founded as even when matter decays its basic components still persist long after we die, law of conservation forbids the complete disappearance of something, that is why black holes have been a mystery for physicists, matter being crushed to infinite density and zero volume is nuts and something is wrong with this calculation.
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trick
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Post by trick on Dec 4, 2014 12:55:25 GMT
Well if you want to call the reconfiguration of a single atom of the matter/energy just happening to end up in another creature configuration as "reincarnation" then sure, but all of the atoms actually become dispersed, most ending up in the ground, ocean, or atmosphere after being consumed by worms and insects that poo it out. ;-) There is no reason, however, to think that a persons mind / consciousness gets passed along and every reason to believe such mind / consciousness is an output of a very specific brain state that when gone ...is gone for good.
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Post by Jamie Soden on Dec 4, 2014 13:11:08 GMT
Well if you want to call the reconfiguration of a single atom of the matter/energy just happening to end up in another creature configuration as "reincarnation" then sure, but all of the atoms actually become dispersed, most ending up in the ground, ocean, or atmosphere after being consumed by worms and insects that poo it out. ;-) There is no reason, however, to think that a persons mind / consciousness gets passed along and every reason to believe such mind / consciousness is an output of a very specific brain state that when gone ...is gone for good. That's what I mean and consciousness is still made up of energy, regardless of the specific 'computer program' that allowed us to come into being. We were already born once, you think if there will be countless new universes after this one that we will never form again into another physical lifeform? think about it, there had to have been something before the big bang and there are theories suggesting a multiverse exists.
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trick
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Post by trick on Dec 4, 2014 14:08:32 GMT
I guess I don't know what you mean by "we will never form again into another physical lifeform?" as the sheer amount of matter and energy in the universe is so abundant that the matter/energy config of "you" is quite insignificant and unlikely to form into another physical lifeform (with the exception of perhaps an atom or so being spread out and maybe ending up in one). But even if the entirety of your energy somehow became reconfigured as another lifeform, I still wouldn't see that new configuration as "you" in any sense of what makes "you"(the config) - multiple cosmological universes wouldn't help with such (if life happened to occur within them as well). ;-)
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Post by chandlerklebs on Dec 4, 2014 22:42:01 GMT
Since we are made up of nature and nurture, I don't think that there ever could be a complete duplicate of any of us. I think that death is truly the end for each person.
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Post by Jamie Soden on Dec 5, 2014 1:24:55 GMT
Since we are made up of nature and nurture, I don't think that there ever could be a complete duplicate of any of us. I think that death is truly the end for each person. If we do come back as physical lifeforms again, or if we had past lives, we wont remember them, obviously. To have all our memories, our intellect and what not intact would be too perfect.
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Post by chandlerklebs on Dec 7, 2014 16:37:18 GMT
The memories are such an important part of who we are that to live another life and not remember the past life would be useless. Because I didn't start this life with a memory of a past life, I assume that this is my first life and most likely the last.
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Post by Jamie Soden on Dec 7, 2014 16:44:45 GMT
The memories are such an important part of who we are that to live another life and not remember the past life would be useless. Because I didn't start this life with a memory of a past life, I assume that this is my first life and most likely the last. We're talking about consciousness though, not memories, I used to believe death was the end but that becomes sort of contradictory to how we came to being to begin with, an infinite past with no past lives, inconceievable. Law of conservation means even the particles that allowed our consciousness wont be gone forever, it's creepy in a way but for better or worse, I'm afraid this may not be our last life.
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Post by chandlerklebs on Dec 8, 2014 15:25:37 GMT
I think consciousness will go on forever. It is consciousness that separates the living from the dead.
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trick
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Post by trick on Dec 8, 2014 17:18:44 GMT
Memories are part of consciousness, and I don't see why no past lives is inconceivable? I think it's fairly evident that consciousness came about through an evolutionary process that didn't always exist - and that we can't equate our past or future evolutionary ancestors as being a past life of our own.
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trick
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Post by trick on Dec 8, 2014 17:20:41 GMT
Why do you think it will go on forever? I don't think single cells or even plants are conscious, but they are still "living". ;o)
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Post by chandlerklebs on Dec 8, 2014 21:30:01 GMT
What I meant specifically was that conscious forms of life will exist forever even though our consciousness ends when we die. As far as plants or single cells being conscious, I don't yet know enough to rule out the possibility of that.
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