I often wonder about believers in a post death existence for individuals. Where do they think a person's mind exists? I believe that my mind resides inside my skull & is gone once I die. Others seem to believe in a mystical soul independent of the brain which has the memories/mind of the deceased. Various works of fiction are based on this concept, an example being Here Comes Mr. Jordan. In this story the angel of death takes a soul prematurely & the body is cremated. The soul is later given to the body of a person whose destiny was to die in his twenties. The new soul/body combination is expected to live for 50 or so more years with the mind/memories of the person desined to die young & the soul of the person who wrongly died young. To me, it was the person destined to die young who got the extra 50 years, not the one whose life was wrongly cut short. Opinions of others on this ?
It's as simple as 1000's of years of established ignorance not having caught up with recent science. For the vast majority of human existence there was no concept of neural networks or electrical activity. We now know from countless examinations and clinical studies of brain damaged individuals that things like emotions, thoughts, identity, memory, are all dependent on a functioning brain. When death occurs the brain loses its integrity and ceases to function and all those abilities are permanently lost. If there is a soul that survives death then it would lack emotions, an ability to think, no memory, and no identity. In essence a soul would be something without any meaningful properties, indistinguishable from something that does not exist. These were all the traditional qualities that were considered to be the essential features provided by the soul - primarily because we had no idea how they could be caused by anything material. We now know differently and the soul concept is now entirely redundant. But 1000's of years of conditioning and with all religions dependent on this redundant idea - that is simply too massive an issue for people to realize easily that it is nonsense. Unfortunately modern fiction, books, movies, etc, build on the ancient and established concept of a soul, and that tends to perpetuate the problem.
God is Spirit...Pay heed, you senseless among the people; And when will you understand, stupid ones? He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see?
The "mind" isn't strictly the "brain", depending on one's beliefs or belief system. Just as well, the concept of a "soul" or "spirit" may be conflated with "mind" or seen as something entirely separate. My religion, for instance, tends to view the mind and spirit as interconnected but distinguishable phenomena. When one dies, the spirit descends to the afterlife, and the mind dissipates. With a dead brain, there is no medium by which thoughts may process or form, and therefore there is no mind. The spirit goes on its own journey, but may or may not "feel" the way it did when alive. Ancient Hellenes often referred to the afterlife as colourless or dreary, with the dead having no real sense of feel or taste anymore. It fades the longer they dwell. Though some Hellenic philosophers, and members of various mystery cults, believed that transmigration of the soul was possible.
I appreciate the concept but if the spirit has no tangible abilities then an afterlife appears to have no value - it may as well not exist. What is the journey you mention and what is the expected destination?
If there were such a god and we have no soul then why would we care? An afterlife is where gods give rewards and punishments, their power base, but if we never get to that state then such gods become powerless and irrelevant.
My reply was in response to your assertion "emotions, thoughts, identity, memory, are all dependent on a functioning brain." God, Who is a spirit, possess those capabilities (including hearing and sight) without a body... Now, according to His Word, the essence of who we are (by virtue of our being made in His likeness) is not tied to our physical body, therefore insisting/assuming those qualities you mention are necessarily dependent on a functioning brain is incorrect. Consider these same bodies can be thought of as a hindrance with respect to all that the brain and other body parts prevent us from sensing, knowing, feeling, hearing, seeing, etc. So much remains hidden and out of reach because of the limitations of our bodies. Rather than such qualities ceasing upon physical death, they very well may be enhanced to a degree heretofore unknown to us 'on this side' i.e. once 'freed from the physical limitations imposed by the body. To 'think' all that is able to be known can only come by way of the brain whether directly experienced by it or concocted by it through learning or imagination is shortsighted at the very least.
Ph.., OK I see, fair enough. So the big question is how is that possible? We know all those things are dependent on a material functioning brain - God doesn't have one - so how does a spirit function exactly? I think our new knowledge about what a brain does, re thinking, emotions, etc, tend to suggest that spirit concepts are false, and hence the god you suggest is equally false - i.e. doesn't exist. I am arguing from what is known, you are arguing from the ancient perspective of ignorance when gods were invented by man in an attempt to explain what wasn't known. We now know, so your argument is signficantly out of date. "His word" was created and written by men. That those early mythmakers imagined us to be his likeness is simply human arrogance. Now if you can show a spirit entity that has the ability to think then we can have a different discussion. It's a nice idea but how would you know if something is hidden and out of reach if you have no capabilities to sense such things? Aren't those ideas simply more of the same creative fantasies that we see for gods and spirits? That's just the basis of every religion - the promise that death is not the ugly reality we observe but is really a magical gateway to as yet un-revealed wonders. Something that most would like to believe and for many they can't help themselves and do insist it must be true, but this is just wallowing in false hopes - life is hard and death is real, ugly, and entirely final. But that is the current state of our knowledge. That there might be more to the universe that we might one day be able to experience through perhaps further stages of human evolution, is perhaps possible and probable, but for now the religious hopes that death will offer a magical breakthrough is pure fiction and quite dangerous.
He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see? I stand by each of my earlier comments. I presented my ideas to you as reasonable possibilities. You dismissed those possibilities out of hand as creative fantasies without any substantive reasoning on your part to wit, you do not what death is, you only 'know' what presents itself to you from one angle. In spite of that knowledge deficit, you evidently feel completely justified in pontificating/'lamenting' what you think it is: "death is real, ugly, and entirely final." What I was suggesting was not focused on death itself nor the possibility of "a magical gateway to as yet un-revealed wonders" on the contrary, my intent was strictly limited to entertaining the possibility of enhanced awareness per se. You then labeled what you thought I was talking about as "wallowing in false hopes." You are unable to see past your biases and assumptions; these in fact mire you in what I would call the real false hopes i.e. "That there might be more to the universe that we might one day be able to experience through perhaps further stages of human evolution, is perhaps possible and probable." You don't have any reason to believe this anymore than your take on what death appears to your (limited) senses to be. Indeed it is I who am arguing from what is known (as little as that might be) while you are arguing from what is unknown and supporting that with speculations/assuming facts not in evidence. Take care.
Pho..., Why is the concept of a spirit a reasonable possibility? "Reasonable" asserts being in accordance with reason and logic. Such a position necessarily must draw upon facts for support. The spirit concept currently lacks any evidential support which suggests your claim to reasonableness does not appear to be valid. "Possibility" asserts that something is within the realm of being possible. We currently have no way to discern whether a spirit is possible, goes to the issue of evidence again. Your claim to being possible also appears invalid. "Fantasy" asserts something from human imagination that is far removed from normal reality. While my statements may appear summarily dismissive without substantive reasoning, they are in fact very carefully considered. The observation that religious claims lie firmly in the realm of fantasy is a carefully considered, precise, and an accurate description. Specifically the entire absence of evidence for the claims, and their nature being without precedent, leaves them only within the scope of creative human imagination - i.e. fantasies. These conclusions do not rule out the speculation that any given fantasy, while currently absent of factual support, might some day be discovered as a truth. The cessation of biological functions necessary to maintain a living organism. That is the only angle and from trillions of past examples, the results have been 100% final. But that is not the issue is it? We are considering if there is some element of a living person that is dualistic - an immaterial component that necessarily separates itself from the physical body at death. And from that - Enhanced implies an improved set of abilities or perhaps additional ones. I have stated that memory, thinking, and the ability to experience emotions, all end at death since these are dependent on a functioning brain - this is a factual observation. If we consider speculative fantasies of an immaterial realm and spirits, then what enhancements would we consider? Like a computer hard drive, when it is destroyed (died) then all its contents (memory) are lost permanently, unless of course those contents are backed up. For a spirit to have access to its physical life memories it would need some form of backup, or log of life events. It's a fantasy, and we have no way to tell if it is possible or not, but equally we have no reason to believe that this could be true. The ability for a spirit to think is a different matter. This requires an active processing component, e.g. a physical brain, and is not solved by some type of data backup. Without some type of evidential description of the capabilities of a spirit there doesn't seem to be a way to describe how a spirit might think. Similarly with emotions. So I see fundamental issues with showing how a spirit might have even basic abilities, before we even consider any type of enhanced abilities. But these are your suggestions, so what could you offer as explanation of how these things might be possible? Futurists point out the exponential rate of computer technology and the inevitable development of AI and beyond, leading to intelligence greater than humans. At that point or just before, we as a race will have some decisions to make. One suggestion is that we will be able to map our brain activities and place them in a non-biological substrate and benefit from all the enhancements made possible by new technologies. We then proceed with heightened super intelligence and enhanced physical and sensory abilities. Or perhaps we are able to gradually replace/enhance our biological brain functions and activities with technology such that again we end up with significantly enhanced non-biological abilities. Is any of this possible? Many scientists suggest and can justify why this is likely and inevitable. But for now it is science/fiction and fantasy, although with considerable more likelihood of becoming a reality than the fantasies that we one day might discover a spirit world, which has no demonstrable path to a positive eventuality. While I will sometimes stretch observations to their limits and project beyond where I should hesitate, perhaps to be deliberately provocative, I do always start from what is known. Your suggestions re gods and spirits are consistently and always based on the unknown and entirely within the realm of fantasies and asserted as truth. However, it is not constructive to have a childish back and forth banter of "yes you did, no I didn't", so I would suggest you end this by making appropriate evidence based statements showing how any features of gods, spirits, etc, - enter the state of being KNOWN. Otherwise please recognize that your perspective and suggestions are entirely speculative fantasies.
The majority of Abrahamic theists or afterlife devotees probably are substance dualists rather than idealists of assorted stripes; or advocates of the perceived world falling prey to Matrix-like possibilities. They are as much metaphysical reifiers of the material world which they cognize in extrospection and attribute to one side of their "mind / matter" ontology as a particular biologist might be who laughs at their empirically unsupported creationism. Which places them at a disadvantage in trying to elaborate on how they fit their undetectable "soul" into a physical realm, and accordingly too inconsistent or meandering a maze to probably be worth navigating through. However, for any minority that went off the beaten path: Such believers in simulation dichotomies could use the crude analogy of how the data-structure of a computer character still exists in a program stored on harddrive (its "soul", so to speak). Even after that character gets "bumped-off" on screen during a particular round of activity or generated sequence. Also, that hidden or "transcendent" electronic substrate would be more the "cause" of such a character's identity / actions than its brain / body and its environment as represented by those images. In fact, everything transpiring on the screen would be mere appearance, or epiphenomenally impotent in terms of any quest for "ultimately true" explanations. Yet those illusory causes would be far more useful for accomplishing things in the science and technology of such a simulated reality than the inaccessible provenance of the underlying computer itself. This is how older philosophies enabled natural and supernatural views to tolerate each other: "Your belief in the supernatural seems to serve little purpose until after you die; whereas my approach of just taking things as they appear or as natural method warrants creates progress in this world of the living. You stay on your turf and I'll stay on mine." But again, spotting minority Christian groups who could be candidates for what one might call "dual representationalism" (as opposed to substance dualism), is difficult. The faction which Murphy mentions below discards the Greek-influenced idea of an "immortal soul"; placing emphasis instead on passages in the Bible which refer to the "dead being asleep" and the cosmos acquiring a new appearance that replaces the old sometime after resurrection. Aside from regarding God as an advanced space-alien or archilect, I'm not sure how they could deem God as being able to preserve their information patterns for functional realization again in new bodies, and conjuring a "new world", without utilizing an idealism-related philosophy or context. T'would seem impossible for God even as a "space-alien technological singularity" to clandestinely acquire psychological data-structures for all humans (i.e., would have to be equivalent to Frank Tipler's outrageous Omega Point complex residing at a Big Crunch of the universe in the boggling distant future). NANCEY MURPHY: [...For...] the liberal half of Christianity, those who have a higher degree in theology [...] We’re just bodies. [...] ROBERT KUHN: But you certainly believe that people who have died, as Christians at this point are dead, they’re unconscious, they’re non-conscious, they don't exist until they may or may not be resurrected in the future. NANCEY MURPHY: Right, there is no part of us that continues to exist after death. ROBERT KUHN: And that God would have to resurrect the body and recreate your thought patterns. NANCEY MURPHY: Basically, yes, re-create us in a different form, a whole different world, because otherwise we would be equally subject to corruption and decay as we are in this life. --Can We Believe in Both Science and Religion?, CLOSER TO THE TRUTH episode
That reminds me of a thread from many years ago. There is no duality, or spirit or soul, instead every event is recorded in some mega log, much like the blockchain is to bitcoin. God's infinite memory perhaps. Mathew 5.5 says the meek shall inherit the Earth. The perception of heaven isn't some supernatural paradise but the planet Earth perfectly preserved for infinity and made into a real material paradise, where each person has ideal lives and death no longer occurs. At the time of judgement all the events of each person who ever lived including all their innermost thoughts, dreams, actions, etc, would be evaluated and those deemed worthy would be resurrected, i.e. recreated perfectly from details in the mega log, and then placed in the new Earth. So in the old Earth death is real and there is no spiritual afterlife. Your future life is dependent on judgement day and the decision to recreate you / resurrect you. Much of the bible is so open to interpretation, especially revelation, that I vaguely remember all of the above can be supported by bible passages. Anyway, it's an interesting alternative to the conventional soul/spirit/dualism paradigm.
On the contrary, the spirit in Greek religion was and is seen as a supernatural force that drives a person's being. It is separate from the mind, but still connected to it. In the same way that the gods are connected to the physical universe: indirectly, and quite probably not in a creative or generative role, but still vital for its continued existence. It's hard to describe in concrete terms, because all we have to go on is the fanciful stories about the afterlife. It is, in all likelihood, not a physical place. The abode of the dead is always described as approachable and perceivable only by the spirits of the dead or those trained to recognize it in life. In modern religious terms, it would be seen as a strictly spiritual realm. In Greek religion, it is believed the the gods Hermes and/or Hekate comport the souls of the dead to the underworld safely, and from there they live in the Asphodel Fields--a rather dreary, though not bad, afterlife world. Various mystery cults offered special, secretive ways to learn how to become reincarnated or how to find their way to Elysium. But I don't practise a mystery religion for purposes of attaining a special afterlife, so that's a bit outside of my scope.
And so they shall. See my quote of that, at end of post, at: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/climate-gate.97892/page-96#post-3281631 For how that will happen, see: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/climate-gate.97892/page-86#post-3277977 For the cause / mechanism of most dying, See: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/climate-gate.97892/page-97#post-3281868 But thanks for the reference, I had forgotten where Bible says that.
This is still all based on man made imaginative concepts created to explain what wasn't known at the time. The ancient Greeks had no concept of neural networks or how such things might be responsible for a person's being. To them such things seemed like magic or supernatural because they were entirely ignorant of more probable causes. Now we have neuroscience and modern physics that help explain a great many things the ancient Greeks never considered. With such knowledge the need to have a spirit concept as an explanation for anything becomes redundant. The only reason for some to maintain such concepts is the pressure from thousands of years of mystical conditioning vs the few decades of modern science that entirely eclipses those ancient myths.
The imagination can present endless variations on such themes, none of which we can show, or have ever shown, have any truth. Could there be some invisible and undetectable medium like "The Force" from Star Wars, or other variations? Or where a mirror image of each dead person in spirit form exists that holds our life essence that will one day be able to experience some type of activity again? These ideas that perhaps once were seen as possible and even probable, and asserted by many as certain, even now - today with our modern knowledge, all these concepts should only be seen as entertainment and fictions fit only for books and the movie industry.
To some extent, yes. They had no way otherwise to explain the dichotomy between mind and body, without an intermediary (i.e. the spirit). But my personal beliefs on the soul aren't exactly what the ancient Greeks believed; I've adjusted and adapted based on modern scientific knowledge about the mind and neurology, and based on different religious and spiritualistic ideas on the soul that have been developed since Classical Greece. I don't just dogmatically copy what the ancients believed. My view of the soul is partially based on ancient Greek ideas, but is influenced by ideas conceived in the Western Occult tradition as well. You say that is if "truth" were an objective standard. But it isn't. What is or isn't the "truth" or "real" is constructed from our experiences and our perceptions. Truth is so subjective as to not even exist in the first place. What you believe and I believe very likely differ greatly, but neither are any more or less "true". We each have our own "reality", because we experience the world in completely unique ways. We process those experiences differently. We engineer a world-view to fit all of those experiences into place. Everyone's is different. And outside of things relating to objective measurement of physical phenomena (i.e. science), there's no satisfactory and unbiased way to determine whose is wrong or right or better or worse. Outside of science, everything is just opinion. Which is why when these sorts of discussions come up, I just share my views. I don't attempt to convince others of them. I might try to convince others that my views are as equally valid as any other religious viewpoint. But I avoid trying to convert people; it just goes against my philosophy on the matter.
Truth and reality in the sense I intended are entirely objective and deterministic, e.g. 1+1=2 is true, 1+1=3 is false, etc. Spirits exist or they do not - these are matters of truth or not truth. They are not dependent on our perceptions or beliefs. And the existence of a god is not dependent on how many people it to be true, in the same way that the Earth is not flat despite the time when almost the entire world population believed it was. Perceived Reality, however, is something else. Actual Reality is something we cannot directly experience since everything around us comes to us indirectly through our senses and is then interpreted by our brain that constructs an internal model and it is ONLY that model that we experience. Do we live inside a matrix or not? If the signals from our senses are logically consistent then whatever model is subsequently constructed by our brain becomes our personally Perceived Reality. It may or may not coincide with the perceived reality of someone else. Recently on social media there was an incident that went viral - was the dress white and gold or black and blue? The brain interpreted the colors differently for different people and many from each group were quite adamant that their personal view was actual reality. The truth and actual reality was a matter of light wavelength and frequencies, and these were the same in both groups, independent of neural interpretation. When we come to religions and mysticism, what we find is the propagation of Imagined Reality - the portrayal of observed reality that coincides with an intellectually derived fictional model. Perceived Reality is derived from Actual Reality, whereas, Imagined Reality is vaporous. Logic, a term much maligned and interpreted to be inadequate for such topics such as this, does represent a very satisfactory and an entirely unbiased method for the determination who is right or wrong. Logic is an exacting methodology of reasoned thought. Unfortunately logic must be used to determine that logic is the correct approach and those who are resistant to the discovery of truth find that logic doesn't provide them the answers they desire. Truth often does not reveal pleasant answers, and logic can be hard. It's a catch-22. Admirable, and much appreciated. It helps me focus my thoughts in an attempt to comprehend your perspectives.
I generally try to see things as being more fluid than that. The 'reality' of something can only be determined by its measured effects. If something has a measurable effect on someone, that thing is 'real', or real enough for it to matter. I would opine that your 'actual reality' doesn't exist in the first place. Now that rather depends on what definition of god one is working with. There are various theologies that hold that a god's power, or even existence, is proportional to the volume or intensity of belief in it. Actually, viewing the gods as "thoughtforms" rather than concrete beings was once the dominant theological view among neopagans.
