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...could we, upon dying, enter into a kind of new form of consciousness, a part of the earth, a part of the universe as a whole? It would be different, but still a potential consciousness. What does that sound like?
1.) Electrical energy of the brain/body is too small. Relatively soon after death this energy dissipates in a non-cohesive manner- not unlike the dissipation of energy from the high-voltage section of a CRT when current is removed from it- some energy remains for a [short] period of time but eventually it is gone, dispersed and unmeasurable.
2.) Consciousness/Awareness/Personality are dictated and constrained by the unique circuitry of the brain. Lacking this container and the pathways within it, the energy is no longer confined and cohesive, and consciousness/awareness/personality cannot exist.
A person can be brought back from 'death' for a short period of time after, with complete restoral of consciousness/awareness/personality so long as the circuits have not decomposed/degraded. As circuits decompose/degrade brain damage occurs, with concomitant degradation of function. The more degradation sustained, the greater the loss of function, with resulting effects of anything from minimal loss to a complete vegetative state depending on the length of time between death and resuscitation.
Whereas heart attack victims have somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 minutes or less to be revived after 'death' with little or no loss of function, cold-water drowning victims have been revived after substantially longer periods- the cold delays decomposition/degradation of the circuits.
Given that energy dissipated in a non-cohesive form cannot be recovered or 'recalled', but 'new' energy applied to the circuits can result in restoral of function, including consciousness/awareness/personality, it is reasonable to conclude that these functions are absolutely dependent on the brain circuitry and cannot exist independent of it.
I thought about this when I posted this forum, then thought about it some more and found a large flaw, but I'll post my original thoughts anyway, to find out if anyone has any thoughts.
My original thoughts were the following: emotions are widely described as mere neurological reactions, stimulated by chemicals to encourage survival, prosperity, and reproduction. Feeling is viewed as an illusion from this perspective. Self awareness is also viewed as an illusion from this perspective. It ocurred to me that any sufficiently complex system could potentially result in some sort of consciousness.
I am going to assume for this that everything relates to everything else, affecting it in some way.
If such networks exist, and such relationships are significantly complicated, could we, upon dying, enter into a kind of new form of consciousness, a part of the earth, a part of the universe as a whole? It would be different, but still a potential consciousness. What does that sound like?
The flaws I found, which is why I should have taken another five minutes to think about the idea before posting it, are two.
One weakness is that it is believed that the likelyhood of evidence for an animal's self awareness lowers as its brain becomes simpler. I would assume this would mean any consciousness would become progressively more alien the simpler relationships became, our consciousness as a deceased body becomming even simpler than that of fire or a virus. The energy released upon death wouldn't react with anything in any way similar to life.
Another weakness I thought of is that, all of our emotions and even our sense of self awareness have evolutionary uses, so far as I can imagine. A dead body cannot reproduce, and it looks like it's not thinking about much. I would think it safe to say it isn't very aware, and neither is the energy released upon death likely to be, for the same reasons.
Still, if everything interacts, there are an infinite number of relationships possible. Maybe there are consciousnesses out there which don't relate to what we'd call life, ghosts in space, sentient earth...even the universe itself. Now who thinks I'm full of it? because I do, but I'm not quite sure.
I have no major problem with this. Just whether it is quite was we would think of as 'afterlife' in the atheist subset of the religion forum. As Catman said above, we expect our atoms to become part of the wider cosmos again - in fact that's what they do all of our lives - we release and absorb atoms which could have been or return to mornay sauce, copies of the adi Granth or a lump of plasticine. Our genes keep our basic pattern repeating but our body is always reforming. We, like the whole cosmos are illusionary, but reliably repeatable.
But the afterlife question, to be meaningful, requires that our individual consciousnesses be perpetuated after our body dies. If our consciousness became part of a more or less conscious universe, I'm not sure that would be any more satisfactory than telling us we are immortal - in our offspring.
'Never mind the sprogs - what about me?'
This is where I run into a problem. The idea of my mind existing in any recognizable 'me' form floating about for eternity feels a bit appalling. Indeed, the idea of living any kind of life, corporeal or incorporeal, for eternity sounds like its giving the celestial redcoats a bit of a headache in keeping me entertained all that time.
However, there's no point in worrying about it any more than fretting about dying. It's going to happen so I'd better just shape up for it.
Which does not, in my atheist's mind, involve trying to work out the best religion to make my Pascal's Wager on. Any afterlife (should there be one) is not the property of one religion to give out or withhold tickets for.
Which does not, in my atheist's mind, involve trying to work out the best religion to make my Pascal's Wager on. Any afterlife (should there be one) is not the property of one religion to give out or withhold tickets for.
At this point when I see a user posting thread titles like „hahahahah I win!!!!“ and then the opening post is actually devoid of content, there is no option intellectually honestly available to me other than to point out that the user in question is deliberately trolling.
Such a thread title and such a content devoid OP can serve no motivation other than trolling. It is disgusting behavior for which I can find no excuse.
The flaw in the Ops later post is glaring however. The first part of it is based on assumption. We assume that a certain level of complexity, when attained, in the brain results in emergent attributes such as consciousness, and we could assume things like free will too.
The poster then assumes that upon death such consciousness is still possible. However since the original consciousness was based on an assumption tied into physical things like the brain… the poster has entirely removed consciousness from his original assumption and then made another entirely whole sale assumption…. That the consciousness that was tied to the physical can now magically, and entirely unexplained by the poster how, exist without it.
To put it in simplistic terms therefore, the poster is saying that “We get to Y via X, and now with some hand waving I am going to pretend we can then have Y without X”.
I have seen, nor has the poster shown, a single piece of evidence ever to suggest that consciousness can survive the death of the brain. I have seen instead a multitude of evidences that consciousness is entirely dependent on the brain and fully linked to it, and damage or other influences on the brain instantly causes alterations in consciousness.
When all evidence suggests X and Y are linked and no evidence says Y can exist without X, then a thread like this, trolling or otherwise, has entered the realm of pure fantasy.
The idea reminds me a bit of a story by Michael Swanwick, I think it was Swanwick anyway, the story was called "Radio Waves." Anyway he had a kind of "soul" which was energy patterns that dissipate after death until eventually becoming incoherent, something like radio waves emanating from a source, but surviving for awhile after death.
Another one I read, by what I think was an atheist, fits an idea I had during a manic episode. Namely that in your last moments before total brain-death your perception of time changes so you live "an eternity in an hour" to quote William Blake. This wouldn't really be an afterlife though, not as such.
One could reasonably assume that objects relate to other objects in a variety of ways, but to assume a relationship over distance and time is tenuous at best.
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