The concept of an afterlife with no religious significance

shadowcomplex · 30-03-2012 10:56pm #1

I was wondering if any athiests around here have considered this concept, no god ,no jesus, no allah, no budda, just a life after this one with none of the current relgions are relevent, i know alot of athiests preach that life cant exist after brain death but life has always come before the brain

Gregor Samsa · 30-03-2012 11:43pm

If there was any evidence for such an afterlife, I'd consider it. But I haven't seen any worth consdidering yet.

shadowcomplex wrote: »

I know alot of athiests preach that life cant exist after brain death but life has always come before the brain

I have no idea what this means. Do you mean that there are organisms alive that have no brains? No person, let alone atheist, I know "preaches" that having a brain is a prerequisite for life. But it has been demonstrated that a complex organism like a turtle, or a cat or a person doesn't stay alive very long after the brain ceases to function. Some of the individual cells in the body in question might survive a little longer.

Dave! · 31-03-2012 12:04am

Nobody says that life can't exist without the brain, but rather that consciousness can't exist without the brain.

Kivaro · 31-03-2012 12:08am

Ah, no Ted.

GarIT · 31-03-2012 2:11am

We only think and feel emotion because of chemical reactions in the brain, when the chemicals are gone the feeling is gone. There is nothing that could go onto another life.

kylith · 31-03-2012 10:47am

I couldn't completely write off the possibility of an afterlife sans deity. However, OP, try this experiment: close your eyes, reach out with your conciousness and communicate with another person. Doesn't work, does it? Since your conciousness can't acquire any extra abilities when you're dead if it does continue after death then there'll be just your conciousness, in your body, in your grave; hearing nothing, seeing nothing, doing nothing. Forever and ever and ever.

I'll take oblivion, thanks.

WoundedRhino · 31-03-2012 10:53am

As an agnostic I'd like to believe there's some sort of afterlife, though pretty much admit that it's because the thought of being dead terrifies me so I'm clinging on to the hope that death is not the end. I reckon that's the reason a lot of people flock toward religion - fear of death.

Sarky · 31-03-2012 10:55am

Wishful thinking, really. And any time spent worrying about it is time you could have been spending having fun in the only life you know for certain exists.

If there is an afterlife, I suspect it would be filled with regret.

Zombrex · 31-03-2012 11:17am

I hope there is an after life (perhaps a super advance civilization some how takes brain scans of people just as they die or something) but I see no evidence for this.

As such I'm not going to assume there is an after live my life as anything other than the only one I've got (ie shame to waste it). Some of the things religious people do because they think this life is just a temporary stop gap are nuts.

Gregor Samsa · 31-03-2012 1:20pm

WoundedRhino wrote: »

As an agnostic I'd like to believe there's some sort of afterlife, though pretty much admit that it's because the thought of being dead terrifies me so I'm clinging on to the hope that death is not the end.

Were you terrified of before you were born?

I can understand being afraid of the act of dying - it often involves suffering of some sort. And I can understand fearing for the people you leave behind - how will your family get on financially and emotionally without you. But an afterlife wouldn't change these things. If there is an afterlife, you still suffer to get there, and you still leave people behind.

I don't see anything to fear from simply not existing. I already did it for 13 and a bit billlion years, and I didn't mind at all.

Dymo · 31-03-2012 1:22pm

Well I didn't exist for millions of years, so when I die I expect I will return to that existence.

Kivaro · 31-03-2012 2:59pm

Dymo wrote: »

Well I didn't exist for millions of years, so when I die I expect I will return to that existence.

........ return to that non-existence.

I am still confused on how rational human beings can believe that when the physiology of the body is destroyed (by death), that somehow a consciousness still exists.

Of course a lot of people would like to continue to exist in a nirvana-type state, but we're dead, people, DEAD.
Chemistry ends, the synaptic nerves stop firing, we decay.

If we accept it, then we may get more enjoyment out of the blink of time on this planet that we are so lucky to have.

WoundedRhino · 31-03-2012 4:25pm

phutyle wrote: »

Were you terrified of before you were born?

I can understand being afraid of the act of dying - it often involves suffering of some sort. And I can understand fearing for the people you leave behind - how will your family get on financially and emotionally without you. But an afterlife wouldn't change these things. If there is an afterlife, you still suffer to get there, and you still leave people behind.

I don't see anything to fear from simply not existing. I already did it for 13 and a bit billlion years, and I didn't mind at all.

True, but during those 13 and a bit billion years, you'd never experienced existence so you didn't know what you were missing! It's not the act of dying that frightens me. It's the not existing part. I like existing

GarIT · 31-03-2012 4:36pm

WoundedRhino wrote: »

True, but during those 13 and a bit billion years, you'd never experienced existence so you didn't know what you were missing! It's not the act of dying that frightens me. It's the not existing part. I like existing

I think everyone would agree but that isn't a sufficient reason for some people to make up ideas about what would happen next that have no basis.

A lot of people in the world today are exploited, they are told live how we want give us money and donations and in the end you wont be gone forever when you die.

swampgas · 31-03-2012 4:43pm

WoundedRhino wrote: »

It's not the act of dying that frightens me. It's the not existing part. I like existing

You exist right now - make the most of it!

Carpe Diem makes more sense the older I get.

fisgon · 31-03-2012 11:33pm

swampgas wrote: »

You exist right now - make the most of it!

Carpe Diem makes more sense the older I get.

I second that emotion

Iain M.Banks has an interesting idea in his Culture novels where, as one poster mentioned above, people's consiousnesses are constantly backed up - however that works - and stored, so that when the physical body dies the consciousness lives on and can be downloaded in to another body, or else simply exist in one of a number of virtual afterlives, including some virtual Hells. Fascinating idea for science fiction, but that's all.
When you're gone, you're gone. Deal with it.

Dades · 01-04-2012 12:33am

fisgon wrote: »

Iain M.Banks has an interesting idea in his Culture novels where, as one poster mentioned above, people's consiousnesses are constantly backed up - however that works - and stored, so that when the physical body dies the consciousness lives on and can be downloaded in to another body, or else simply exist in one of a number of virtual afterlives, including some virtual Hells. Fascinating idea for science fiction, but that's all.
When you're gone, you're gone. Deal with it.

Read Surface Detail a few months back!

I always thought that "backing you up" doesn't really change the fact that you're dead. It just creates a clone of your actual self that thinks its you.

King Mob · 01-04-2012 1:00am

Dades wrote: »

Read Surface Detail a few months back!

I always thought that "backing you up" doesn't really change the fact that you're dead. It just creates a clone of your actual self that thinks its you.

Yea but the meat that makes up your brain is replaced like the rest of your body over time. So you don't have the same brain you did 5 or 10 years ago. (Even ignoring other chemical and hormonal changes it undergoes as you age.)
So then is the "you" that was 5 years ago still "you"? What about 5 years from now? Or are these different "you"s? Or are they copys that think they are the real thing?
What makes the shift to a machine "copying" more than the normal process of aging?

If you replace the broom handle and the brush, is it still the same broom?

I think this is one of those questions we're probably not going to be able to answer until we get to that point.

CerebralCortex · 01-04-2012 11:16am

Sci-fi is the last place you want to look for answers to these types of questions. I'm studying cognitive science at the moment and it seems we haven't even got a good account of what a cognitive agent (person) is. It certainly isn't a symbolic computer and all that implies i.e. uploading, substrate swapping. As far as I can tell the probability of annihilation goes down with investment in life extension technology and cryonics at the moment. LE is where I'm banking.

DoubleBogey · 01-04-2012 11:39am

I think the only hope the poster has for there being some sort of life after you die is the multiple universe theory. If this is true then you will still live in another universe after you have died in this one. You've probably already died in another universe, making this one the after life (ever get that shiver described as someone walking on your grave?)

Dades · 01-04-2012 12:24pm

King Mob wrote: »

Yea but the meat that makes up your brain is replaced like the rest of your body over time. So you don't have the same brain you did 5 or 10 years ago. (Even ignoring other chemical and hormonal changes it undergoes as you age.)

I guess the difference is that with our bodies there's a continuous consciousness. We're never actually dead.

blatantrereg · 01-04-2012 12:33pm

You weren't alive before you were born. Why would you be alive after you die?

muppeteer · 01-04-2012 3:32pm

CerebralCortex wrote: »

Sci-fi is the last place you want to look for answers to these types of questions. I'm studying cognitive science at the moment and it seems we haven't even got a good account of what a cognitive agent (person) is. It certainly isn't a symbolic computer and all that implies i.e. uploading, substrate swapping. As far as I can tell the probability of annihilation goes down with investment in life extension technology and cryonics at the moment. LE is where I'm banking.

Sci-fi is great for asking these kinds of questions though.:)

the culture of deference · 01-04-2012 4:39pm

Our atoms will go and live on somewhere, part of our DNA may go on for millions of years

Kivaro · 01-04-2012 5:28pm

the culture of deference wrote: »

Our atoms will go and live on somewhere, part of our DNA may go on for millions of years

And since part of us (about a teaspoon) contain stellar material, it is fantastic to think that maybe we are the remnants of life on other planets from billions of years ago, and so it continues ........

CerebralCortex · 02-04-2012 8:18am

the culture of deference wrote: »

Our atoms will go and live on somewhere, part of our DNA may go on for millions of years

Atoms living? What? Gimme a break.

aidan24326 · 02-04-2012 11:42am

blatantrereg wrote: »

You weren't alive before you were born. Why would you be alive after you die?

That about sums it up for me. The idea of an afterlife is nothing more than wishful thinking, and sometimes I wonder with religious people do they really stop to consider the implications of what they're actually wishing for?

Though I expect there's an evolutionary explanation for why we (well, alot of people anyway) would so want there to be an afterlife. We abhor the idea of death, for very good reasons, so I guess humans wishing for an afterlife and even going so far as to convice themselves that there is one is probably just a natural extension of that self-preservation instinct that we all have.

WolfgangWeisen · 03-04-2012 1:37am

I had no consciousness before I was born so I have no reason to believe I will have consciousness when my brain ceases to function.

As much as I love life, nature and the universe, I'm not going to cling to some desperate hope that something exists for us to move on to when we die.

dominiquecruz · 04-04-2012 12:24am

I think I believe in an afterlife OP, and I'm an (agnostic) atheist. It wouldn't be an extension of my life or consciousness as I know it right now, but some kind of existence that is beyond the reality I currently inhabit. It's hard to articulate these things without sounding like you're on drugs :pac:

WolfgangWeisen · 04-04-2012 12:39am

dominiquecruz wrote: »

I think I believe in an afterlife OP, and I'm an (agnostic) atheist. It wouldn't be an extension of my life or consciousness as I know it right now, but some kind of existence that is beyond the reality I currently inhabit. It's hard to articulate these things without sounding like you're on drugs :pac:

So you don't believe in a creator, but aren't 100% sure there isn't one, but you are sure (or almost) of something that has an equal amount of evidence supporting it (i.e none)?

I don't believe you sound like you're "on drugs", you do however come across as someone who isn't entirely sure what they believe nor are confident of their convictions in said belief.

I'm certainly not attacking you on the matter but something seems awry when someone claims to be satisfied that there most likely isn't a God, yet at the same time is holding on to a belief of equal improbability and is actually derived/a fundamental part of the aforementioned and discarded belief.

blatantrereg · 04-04-2012 12:57am

Belief in a god and belief in an afterlife are not one and the same though.

Taoism is atheistic really, yet suggests an afterlife (and before-life) of a kind.

dominiquecruz · 04-04-2012 1:02am

WolfgangWeisen wrote: »

So you don't believe in a creator, but aren't 100% sure there isn't one, but you are sure (or almost) of something that has an equal amount of evidence supporting it (i.e none)?

I don't believe you sound like you're "on drugs", you do however come across as someone who isn't entirely sure what they believe nor are confident of their convictions in said belief.

I'm certainly not attacking you on the matter but something seems awry when someone claims to be satisfied that there most likely isn't a God, yet at the same time is holding on to a belief of equal improbability and is actually derived/a fundamental part of the aforementioned and discarded belief.

Let me clarify a bit; perhaps I should have defined myself as an agnostic (atheist). I don't believe it's possible for us, as humans, to ever know or attempt to comprehend what lies behind the make-up of our universe, but I like to believe that there is something else. I can't even define exactly what this belief entails, but I have an inherent sense that that this life is only a very small part of our experience.

Of course, this means I must be open to the idea there is also nothing. I am indeed open to this, but I don't believe it to be true. Just looking at the complexities of every system we know, from the structure of capillaries to the design of the cosmos, I don't think it is without purpose.

Actually, maybe someone could tell me how I should label myself? :rolleyes: I don't believe in a God as such, just some kind of undefinable creative force or energy. I couldn't possibly elaborate on what constitutes my beliefs, because again I don't know what happens after, I just think that something does.

I'm not religious; don't practice or observe any spiritual rituals.

blatantrereg · 04-04-2012 1:08am

dominiquecruz wrote: »

Let me clarify a bit; perhaps I should have defined myself as an agnostic (atheist). I don't believe it's possible for us, as humans, to ever know or attempt to comprehend what lies behind the make-up of our universe, but I like to believe that there is something else. I can't even define exactly what this belief entails, but I have an inherent sense that that this life is only a very small part of our experience.

Of course, this means I must be open to the idea there is also nothing. I am indeed open to this, but I don't believe it to be true. Just looking at the complexities of every system we know, from the structure of capillaries to the design of the cosmos, I don't think it is without purpose.

Actually, maybe someone could tell me how I should label myself? :rolleyes: I don't believe in a God as such, just some kind of undefinable creative force or energy. I couldn't possibly elaborate on what constitutes my beliefs, because again I don't know what happens after, I just think that something does.

I'm not religious; don't practice or observe any spiritual rituals.

You're a taoist

dominiquecruz · 04-04-2012 1:09am

blatantrereg wrote: »

You're a taoist

Really? News to me! Hope this doesn't mean I have to do anything.

Just doing some Wikipedia reading I discovered the terms Ietsism and Ignosticism, both of which feel relevant to me. Should have put them on the census.

WolfgangWeisen · 04-04-2012 1:28am

What is the rush to stick labels on yourself, dominique? You're asking for others to label you, then you had a brief look on wikipedia and decided that that is what you are and indeed you should have put on the countries national survey?

Relax.

blatantrereg · 04-04-2012 1:31am

dominiquecruz wrote: »

Really? News to me! Hope this doesn't mean I have to do anything.

Just doing some Wikipedia reading I discovered the terms Ietsism and Ignosticism, both of which feel relevant to me. Should have put them on the census.

Not at all. Non-action is a central principle of it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism#Principles

dominiquecruz · 04-04-2012 1:33am

I was being facetious about the census. I've no urge to label myself, never have, but the OP asked if anyone who didn't believe in a God believed in an afterlife, and I thought I should state my position! Besides, labels can be handy, it's nice to be able to concisely express your persuasions when someone asks if you're a believer. Not that I'll be telling anyone I'm an ietsist, mind :P

blatantrereg · 04-04-2012 1:34am

WolfgangWeisen wrote: »

What is the rush to stick labels on yourself, dominique? You're asking for others to label you, then you had a brief look on wikipedia and decided that that is what you are and indeed you should have put on the countries national survey?

Relax.

Your dislike of labels is also Taoistic.
Core Taoist text says that thinking in labels are like looking at the finger when someone points to the Moon.
So yep - you're a Taoist too.

dominiquecruz · 04-04-2012 1:38am

blatantrereg wrote: »

Your dislike of labels is also Taoistic.
Core Taoist text says that thinking in labels are like looking at the finger when someone points to the Moon.
So yep - you're a Taoist too.

Hmm, then do Taoists acknowledge themselves as so?

WolfgangWeisen · 04-04-2012 1:39am

blatantrereg wrote: »

Your dislike of labels is also Taoistic.
Core Taoist text says that thinking in labels are like looking at the finger when someone points to the Moon.
So yep - you're a Taoist too.

No you're a taoist

And so's your oul one

TomKat · 04-04-2012 1:41am

We just go to sleep forever. Everyone knows that

dominiquecruz · 04-04-2012 1:42am

TomKat wrote: »

We just go to sleep forever. Everyone knows that

Asides from the few billion who don't.

blatantrereg · 04-04-2012 2:10am

dominiquecruz wrote: »

Hmm, then do Taoists acknowledge themselves as so?

I dont know.

dj357 · 04-04-2012 10:13pm

I'd much rather live for ever (and be able to choose when I wanted to die) than experience an afterlife. I'm scared to death of dying, but only because I don't want life to end. As is the common atheist refrain, I wasn't inconvenienced by my lack of existence before I was born, so I'm not going to mind any much more when I cease to exist, but I enjoy life to much to be anything but churlish and fearful of letting it end.

wylo · 14-04-2012 12:13pm

Its really a question of whether
1. consciousness exists only personally,
2.or on a universal scale,
3. or if it exists at all other the idea of it by living things with brains.

Science hasn't gotten far enough to answer that question definitively. No point making assumptions based on what we know right now.

Im 99% sure Ill be slated for this weirdness!!:D:

If you make the assumption that consciousness is just you/the self/ and you alone, as in that feeling of being awake, the central ownership of your body is the same as the feeling of self/"I am" ,then its only natural and obvious to think that when you die that will be the end of the ownership/I am/conciousness.

But if you kill that assumption then you are really are left wondering is stuff possible that we never even imagined possible, personally I do think it is like everyone is saying, i.e. we die, and that is it, absolutely no acknowledgement of existence. But I dont know, neither does any of us and to lay claims based on a very limited neuroscientific understanding is pointless.

I watched Morgan Freeman "through the worm hole " on conciousness last night, some decent strange experiments being done at the moment that would throw alot of views out of place.

Helix · 14-04-2012 2:07pm

WoundedRhino wrote: »

True, but during those 13 and a bit billion years, you'd never experienced existence so you didn't know what you were missing! It's not the act of dying that frightens me. It's the not existing part. I like existing

as soon as you stop existing though, there'll stop being a you. so there'll be know knowledge on your part that you ever existed and then didnt exist

TomKat · 15-04-2012 4:35pm

dominiquecruz wrote: »

Asides from the few billion who don't.

No they don't

yellowfish · 15-04-2012 8:27pm

Dades wrote: »

Read Surface Detail a few months back!

I always thought that "backing you up" doesn't really change the fact that you're dead. It just creates a clone of your actual self that thinks its you.

http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=ringworld%20series&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRingworld_series&ei=ciCLT4izKJOFhQenooy0CQ&usg=AFQjCNFOID-Q8-6bVaBhOiive1RIVELcgw

Ringworld, loved reading this as a boy, they used to kill themselves as a method of travel.

Dades · 16-04-2012 12:05pm

^^ Loved Ringworld, too. The 1st sequel not enough to keep going, though.

The concept of an afterlife with no religious significance

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