Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

The concept of an afterlife with no religious significance

  • 30-03-2012 9:56pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,097 ✭✭✭


    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


«1

Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 8,828 ✭✭✭Gregor Samsa


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


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 27,857 ✭✭✭✭Dave!


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


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,105 ✭✭✭Kivaro


    Ah, no Ted.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,671 ✭✭✭GarIT


    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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 17,736 ✭✭✭✭kylith


    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.


  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 66 ✭✭WoundedRhino


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 31,967 ✭✭✭✭Sarky


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,828 ✭✭✭Gregor Samsa


    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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,557 ✭✭✭Dymo


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


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,105 ✭✭✭Kivaro


    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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 66 ✭✭WoundedRhino


    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 :(


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,671 ✭✭✭GarIT


    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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,532 ✭✭✭swampgas


    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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,747 ✭✭✭fisgon


    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.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,553 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25,223 ✭✭✭✭King Mob


    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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,809 ✭✭✭CerebralCortex


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 141 ✭✭DoubleBogey


    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?)


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,553 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    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.


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,743 ✭✭✭blatantrereg


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


  • Registered Users Posts: 445 ✭✭muppeteer


    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.:)


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,196 ✭✭✭the culture of deference


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


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,105 ✭✭✭Kivaro


    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 ........


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,809 ✭✭✭CerebralCortex


    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.


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,925 ✭✭✭aidan24326


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 238 ✭✭WolfgangWeisen


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 236 ✭✭dominiquecruz


    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:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 238 ✭✭WolfgangWeisen


    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.


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,743 ✭✭✭blatantrereg


    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.


Advertisement