Do you believe in an afterlife.?

Aftrelife in what form??

http://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-wants-to-keep-you-alive-forever-2016-5?IR=T

I've been to Afterlife. In Space Ibiza last summer. Tale of Us were playing. Decent.

circadian wrote: »

Denying the existence of God would mean that there is a God that exists to deny.

So you seriously believe that every denial proves the existence of the thing being denied? So if I deny that there's an invisible green dinosaur sitting on your head that proves that there actually is an invisible green dinosaur sitting on your head?

Wow.

Ms Doubtfire1 wrote: »

Aftrelife in what form??

http://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-wants-to-keep-you-alive-forever-2016-5?IR=T

I'm fairly sure at some point (possibly not in our lifetime) they'll figure out how to transfer your brain into a cyborg type body that would look like you, but in robot form. This would keep the brain alive and essentially mean you'd live forever, constantly being transferred from machine to machine every few decades as new and improved 'bodies' come on the market. Not so much an 'afterlife' but an 'afterbody'.

The brain is essentially the part that makes you you, so why not?

storker wrote: »

I believe that if you want to know what life after death is like, think back to what it was like before you were born.

I'm an atheist myself, but this doesn't really make sense. How can you know what it was like before you were born? You don't remember there having been anything; ergo there was nothing? That doesn't hold though, does it?

I'd wager you don't remember being born either. Or being fed your first bottle. Or taking your first steps. I bet you don't even remember every meal you ate between February 6th 2007 and February 12th of that same year. OR going to bed the Wednesday before last Halloween. You wouldn't hold these up as evidence that none of those things happened.

[QUOTE= Originally Posted by storker
I believe that if you want to know what life after death is like, think back to what it was like before you were born.


Maximus Alexander;103878396]I'm an atheist myself, but this doesn't really make sense. How can you know what it was like before you were born? You don't remember there having been anything; ergo there was nothing? That doesn't hold though, does it?

I'd wager you don't remember being born either. Or being fed your first bottle. Or taking your first steps. I bet you don't even remember every meal you ate between February 6th 2007 and February 12th of that same year. OR going to bed the Wednesday before last Halloween. You wouldn't hold these up as evidence that none of those things happened.[/QUOTE]

Part of the problem here is the flawed way in which the original thought-experiment was described: it wasn't like anything, because you didn't exist.

Yes 100%

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

How can you know what it was like before you were born?

That's kind of the point, but yes, perhaps "think back" is the wrong way to put it. More correct would be to say that I believe that your existence after you die is the same as your existence before you were born/conceived/became a sperm/egg...etc.

lukesmom wrote: »

Yes

lukesmom wrote: »

Yes 100%

You sure?

mdwexford wrote: »

Do people believe we are the only intelligent life in the whole universe?

I don't think intelligent life is a natural consequence of life in general. Humans only came about due to a random sequence of events, we almost went extinct a couple of times.

Even the industrial, technological society we in the west live in today wasn't guaranteed, a number of events happened that allowed our current society to exist, it could have just as likely never happened and we'd be stuck in a pre industrial age today.

There's a channel on youtube called alternative history that highlights just how different things could be with just minor changes in history snowballing into a completely different world.



One man could have changed the history of the Americas and left us with no united states.



There could be countless lifeforms on other planets as smart as humans that just never educate themselves in the correct way to end up becoming a space faring peoples. There's still no guarantee humans will ever become a space faring nation.

Being an intelligent species is only one part of the equation.

I have huge trouble calling the human race intelligent.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

^ A general caution with that kind of thinking, rather than a specific one directly on your post, is that people thinking that way often allow themselves to think in terms of "Our current society or no society at all" or "Intelligent human life as we know it, or no intelligent life at all".

What I mean by that is many people think "If X Y or Z did not happen we would not be here at all" or as you wrote it "a number of events happened that allowed our current society to exist, it could have just as likely never happened and we'd be stuck in a pre industrial age today."

It is ALSO possible that those events might not have happened and OTHER events might have happened and we would still be where we are today.

It could have happened a different way, the videos always state it's a flight of fancy and there's no way of knowing, but they highlight that we ended up where we are today die to events that could have gone either way.

I was trying to point out that humans were a fluke, if climate changes didn't happen when they did humans may have never became the social intelligent animals they are today. Same with the industrial revolution, it was the result of circumstances and if it didn't happen at the very least it sets humanity back decades or centuries.

And let's Imagine there is a more intelligent species out there, lets say 10 times more intelligent, and not only that but has 10 hands and 6 eyes. They're so intelligent they don't need to develop computers to overcome their shortcomings in computing. Their ten hands and size eyes means they can control more complex machines and don't need another member of their species to keep an eye out behind. Because they're capable on their own they don't collaborate on bigger projects that are still beyond them, they're not social enough. These things presents their own obstacles to developing technology.

Not only is the human evolving in the first place a fluke but our society as a whole is a fluke, we already know that religious societies which most human societies have been up to now aren't going to be building space ships. There needs to be the right culture in place too.

There is no guarantee that being intelligent will lead to a technologically advanced society. so even though the statistics tell us there are probably thousands or billions of intelligent species in the galaxy it doesn't mean they ever got past throwing stone at other animals. even having literacy and mathematics is no guarantee they'll be social enough to work together and be able to achieve something as incredible as leaving their planet.

Humanity today is a fluke upon a fluke, upon a fluke. It's likely that would be similar in other species on other planets, sure there's a point where logic can take over and create a perpetuating advancement as we have today but any species is going to have to go through a number of fluke events to get to that stage.

My point being that intelligence is a statistical probability, utilising that intelligence to it's full potential is another fluke that's needs to happen on top of being intelligent.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Indeed but I wonder how many other pathways of "fluke upon a fluke, upon a fluke" could lead to a modern world pretty indistinguishable from the one we have today. The history might be different but our modern situation and stage might not. When faced with focusing on "fluke" events in history that brought us to where we are, it just feels like we are in danger of assuming that another string of flukes could not have had essentially the same result.

The recent flukes like the western world I could see happening eventually but we could be looking at a thousand years before there's another culture shift (culture is important when it comes to what humans are capable of).

But earlier ones like the climate change events that took the forests from our tree swinging ancestors would have stopped human evolution at the root. There were a number of humanoid apes around at the time that where slightly and wildly different from us and they didn't make it. We even have the example of neanderthals who could have been even smarter than us on an individual level that didn't make it because they lacked the more developed social app that humans used.

Compared to every other animal that's ever existed on earth, even stone age man, we are bizarre. We a complete departure from normal life forms. It's not easy for an animal to become so different.

Of course, some other animal could eventually come along that's as capable as modern humans but that would set our planet back another few million years when it comes to being space faring.

I don't think that intelligent life is inevitable on any planet with life, and I don't think becoming technologically advanced is inevitable if there's intelligence.

Any other series of flukes could have lead to another animal being in the position we are now, but it would be more likely that it just wouldn't happen. A series of flukes lead to mammals taking over the world and only two of them have been intelligent as far as we know, I don't really count the likes of dolphins as they can't interact with the world other than pushing things around with their noses their intelligence is locked in a body with no hands..

Intelligence is an expensive adaptation, it also has to be paired with a body that can take advantage of it, I think it's going to be super rare because of all these obstacles, we have no reason to assume that nature isn't as cut throat in other ecosystems, which makes intelligence hard to get to when things like strength and aggression work so well at a fraction of the cost.

It can happen at any point on any planet, but I think it's highly unlikely based on what we've seen over 4 billion years on earth. I know it's just one example but life anywhere is going to have to deal with the same physical limitations as life on earth.