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Post by qooqǝɯɐƃ on Nov 14, 2010 18:26:42 GMT -5
Yes, I'd rather not exist than live for ETERNITY (in the case of common religious afterlifes), it would get unbearable, imo. Why do you keep mentioning common religious afterlifes? I'm Atheist, I don't believe in Heaven, Hell, or Reincarnation. I'm speaking from a scientific point of view not a religious one. Same reason you didn't, it's the first thing I think about when talking about afterlifes, just like ghosts are for you. And why would an afterlife be unbearable? Presumably all the pain of this life felt by nerve endings in our bodies would not carrey over into the next life. Well sure, although there's no way to prove that. However I wasn't talking about physical pain. If we conscious in the same way in the afterlife as we are now I would imagine it would be painful in the way that missing a leg is unbearable. It would be psychologically painful to know that your mind will be conscious for and infinite period of time, you'd probably go mad. But again that only the afterlife was forever, like in common religions. If it wasn't, if it was for just another 80ish years it wouldn't be so unbearable, but even so I don't believe in anything that doesn't have a sound scientific basis -- you probably think I'm crazy for thinking that don't you =P There's plenty evidence to support the existence of Ghosts, you only need to stop thinking of them as being religiously or magically connected and start thinking of scientific explanations for how a person might be able to live beyond the death of it's body. One theory for this is the idea of the electrical impulses continuing to exist outside the body. This may not be the right answer but it could be an answer. Yet with all this evidence ghosts and the afterlife are still not scientific fact. Every Vessel would presumably have it's own spirit develop so the idea that a person who already existed taking it over would be kinda like using an organ donner except you're taking their entire body and essentially killing the person who was meant to be there. Presumably. None of this is fact. What makes your imagination more credible than anyone else's. Whatever I mentioned is just as unlikely/possible as whatever you've said. Or If the theory that the soul outgrows it's vessel is accurate then there would be no way for a soul to re-enter a new body once it had moved on unless that new body was bigger than the one they just came out of. And if that were the case then each time someone was reincarnated they'd always have to come back as something bigger than they were the last time. As energy, I doubt a spirit would have size limitations. And simply proving that some kind of soul does exist seems allot more likely than proving Heaven and Hell actually exist. Ok... I can agree with that, I never said I believed in Heaven or Hell... That logic seems flawed and contradicting. You first said that in order for an afterlife to exist that there would have to be this life first but this life is not proof of an after life which may or may not be accurate but lets say it is. So if an afterlife actually did exist simply having one would be proof of this life we're in now. If B is proof of A that does not mean A is proof of B. An afterlife is proof of a first life because of what it inherently is -- an afterlife -- but you can't seriously think that what I wrote means a life is proof of an afterlife -- it can only work the other way around. You then go on to say that this life we're in now is not proof that there was a life before this one. I don't know how that even became part of the argument no one said there was a life before this but sense you brought it up according to your logic of the first part this life is proof that we have lived before this but I don't see how existing as we do now is any such proof of any kind of life happening before this life sense we have no such memories of any life before now. Yes, I admittedly read this wrong: I assumed you meant this was cyclical. Although, you understood me wrong in your quote above. I never actually said that life is proof of a previous life -- only that an afterlife is proof of a previous life. As I said above: My logic is simply that some kind of energy we don't fully understand leaves our bodies when we die but the energy itself does not die. There's no flaw in that. There are no flaws in the imagination. Since you can't prove that there is special energy released when we die it does not matter that you have a flawless imagination. Your logic on the other hand seems to be based in illogical and irrational belief systems. Right back at you. Most of this "debate" is being lost in translation, you don't seem to understand simple logic and it's quite annoying.
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FranticProdigy
Planet
[AWD:1c]
Im classy because I use words like touch
Posts: 312
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Post by FranticProdigy on Nov 14, 2010 18:52:03 GMT -5
Looking at the basic laws of quantum mechanics, no it does not exist. When you die, the light bulb goes out.
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Post by newschooled on Nov 14, 2010 19:07:38 GMT -5
Looking at the basic laws of quantum mechanics, no it does not exist. When you die, the light bulb goes out. Which laws in particular?
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Post by krzych32 on Nov 14, 2010 23:10:42 GMT -5
The funny things is that deep inside we all know the truth, but there is still a debate about it.
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Post by newschooled on Nov 14, 2010 23:36:55 GMT -5
The funny things is that deep inside we all know the truth, but there is still a debate about it. I see what you're saying, but I would challenge that. Not EVERYONE has intuitions about what's beyond our observable reality.
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Post by Ryan on Nov 14, 2010 23:48:22 GMT -5
Life and death has nothing to do with quantum mechanics. All life occurs on a macro level. Rialvestro: your logic says that life implies an afterlife. The following statement is logically equivalent. A light bulb that is currently lit that turns off implies that at one point later on it will be lit again. I hope that you can see that this does not logically hold a tautology. While it is possible that it is true, it is not a logical guarantee. I can turn off a light bulb and NEVER turn it back on. To clarify continuing to use my analogy, Gameboob is saying something logically equivalent to this: If a light bulb is re-lit, then it was at one point before, lit and then turned off. This statement holds logical tautology and is guaranteed to be true, while it does not provide any help to debating whether or not the light bulb can be re-lit. I do hope that you see the error in your logic, or simply stop debating - as debating with flawed logic is equivalent to trolling and/or idiocy. If you cannot use logical reasoning, then you have no weight in debate and should be ignored like trolls should be ignored. I apologize for the harsh words, but I think they must be heard. newschooled and AlexC: Alex - if you hold that there is a god ("I believe in god") then you cannot hold that nothing is true without scientific evidence. You can, however, say that without scientific evidence, it is highly doubtful. You must realize though, that even saying something like that, you open the door to having your belief in god questioned as there is little scientific evidence that supports such an existence. Newschooled - shared experience does not qualify as scientific evidence, nor verifiable evidence in the existence of ghosts or dream-like apparitions. Until dreams can be studied objectively - it is impossible to say that two people have had the same dream, as the nature of dreams makes them easily forgotten and the details of these subconscious hallucinations are foggy at best. While you may be under the impression that you remember your dream vividly, you actually do forget most of the details. When a shared account of a similar dream is presented, you fill in the details subjectively, and not objectively. This makes it appear that two people have the same dream, when really they are only having similar dreams.
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Post by qooqǝɯɐƃ on Nov 15, 2010 0:16:43 GMT -5
It sounds like most of us need a lesson on debating...
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Post by newschooled on Nov 15, 2010 0:29:54 GMT -5
Newschooled - shared experience does not qualify as scientific evidence Ofcourse it does!!! If that was true, the entire vocation of Psychology would be archaic and passed off as 'mystical'! And also if that was true, we wouldn't have pain management specialists in hospitals. That, and otherwise we couldn't make a statement like "Pain is unpleasant". It's universal, but from an observable point of view, it just all reduces to receptors in our brains firing...Which is what ALL perception is on the biologic level. But as far as our concious selves are concerned, it's an experience. Like a dream, or eating a bacon double cheeseburger. (Going back to the dream bit) So what's your take on the third party identifying this occurrence with no prior knowledge? (I've posted a couple times about it already so I won't type out the details again!)
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Post by Ryan on Nov 15, 2010 0:47:19 GMT -5
Well, Psychology is actually not very accurate, and even still reduces to an applied form of brain biology. Dreams would fall into a realm of subconscious psychology, which is impossible to study (at least currently).
Even you identify though, that everything in this realm of dream subconscious psychology, would boil down to receptors in our brains firing in certain patterns. For a deceased person to appear in our dreams, they would have to alter these receptors patterns of sending and receiving signals. Even if existence in the afterlife were a form of energy, what this would imply, is that specific forms of energy can alter the pattern of sending and receiving signals in your brain. Since our thoughts (in the waking form) are also these patterns found in our receptors, that means that certain forms of energy could alter our thoughts. Also, energy is rather easy to manipulate. This means, that at some future time, humans would be able to create one of these specific types of energy that can alter thoughts. The implications of this, are loss of free will and self-awareness.
So, yes it is possible that ghosts exist and are forms of energy that were once the consciousness of a living body, and it is again possible that they appear in your dreams. But the consequence of this, is that you do not have consciousness, and that all of your thoughts are potentially some ghost altering all of your senses. And, while all of this is a potentiality, it is something would not be easily accepted. The consequence of your proposal, is the possibility of no free will, no self awareness, mass mind control, etc.
Are these possibilities worth it just so ghosts can exist and talk to you in your dreams?
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Post by newschooled on Nov 15, 2010 1:02:30 GMT -5
I see what you're saying, but keep in mind that if that was the case, there's no reason that it would have to be an absolute scenario. HOWEVER it would make one hell of an awesome scary movie! (Actually, now that I think about it, this did happen on an episode of that ghost-whisperer show...) This. Is perfectly incorrect. Self actualization models are not a biologic phenomenon. They include aspects that are, but biology is a piece of the puzzle in Psychology. If anything, it could be vaguely said about psychiatry, at best.
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Post by rialvestro on Nov 15, 2010 10:03:06 GMT -5
Well sure, although there's no way to prove that. However I wasn't talking about physical pain. If we conscious in the same way in the afterlife as we are now I would imagine it would be painful in the way that missing a leg is unbearable. It would be psychologically painful to know that your mind will be conscious for and infinite period of time, you'd probably go mad. You can't really compare the loss of a leg to the loss of an entire body. If a leg is lost there are still nerves severed between the stump you have left and where the leg was and you can experience physical pain with this. If you loose your entire body then all of your nerve endings are gone with it so there's no reason you should fell any such pain with it. You may feel some loss for a while emotionally but I don't think this would drive you insane. It'd be kinda like going insane because your favorite shirt shrunk in the wash and doesn't fit anymore. No, I think I think your crazy for thinking it doesn't have a sound scientific basis. I mean you don't think scientific discoveries just appear out of thin air do you? It always seems to start off as a crazy idea that has no evidence of proof... YET. But if no one believed that there was proof to find we'd never make any scientific progress. Simply put saying ghosts don't exist because there's no proof of them is the same as when people use to think the Earth was flat just because there was no proof of it being round. If everyone had thought like you we'd still think that way today but no, because some people we're "crazy" enough to believe differently they managed to prove the Earth was in fact round. You know the same has been said about life on other planets and there's probably just as much evidence to support both. Nope, everything you've said is based in religious beliefs. That's kinda like saying that believing in clouds above the Earth and a molten core inside the Earth is just as credible as believing Heaven and Hell. Obviously clouds exist and we know that scientific fact clouds are simply formed by moister in the air but in religion Clouds are where heaven is. Energy does have limitations, this is a fact. You every fried a power supply on a computer? So your basis for saying this is purely on the false conclusion of what "afterlife" means. It's life after death not life after life. Having an afterlife would not be proof of life it would only be proof on it's own existence not it's previous existence. Having memory of a previous life would be proof of the life before not the life itself. I didn't understand you wrong, you praised it wrong. I read it as you wrote it which is to say that having one life is proof of a previous life. That may not be what you meant to say but it's what you actually said. Afterlife does not mean a life after a previous life as you're implying here. Afterlife meaning that there must be a previous life. By this reasoning there would have to be a life before this one and we would already be in the Afterlife. Afterlife actually means a life after death which means that Afterlife would not be proof of a previous life, it'd only be proof that we've died not that we would need proof of death sense we already know death exists. You don't understand I word I'm saying do you? Nothing I've said is illogical or irrational. It's all based in scientific fact. I'm using things in science to try and explain something we do not fully understand yet. That's rational thinking. You on the other hand keep coming back and debunking my rational thinking with irrational thinking which does not work. You're basically saying "Magic does not exist and so neither does science. Both are equally unprovable." but this is not the case. Magic is irrationally what we call what we don't understand, science rational thought process to prove how magic is possible. In other words, healing without medicine = impossible but it has been done. How? Because of the placebo effect. If you think you're healed, you will be. It seems like magic if you don't understand it but it's actually scientifically proven.
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Post by Ryan on Nov 15, 2010 11:25:33 GMT -5
*sigh* rialvestro, please learn logic. Your most recent post has misunderstood gameboob and his logic thus far has not presented flaws in logic, only in premise. In your case, you do start with sound premises, your lack of logical reasoning however causes you to draw outlandish conclusions that ARE NOT LOGICAL. So please, criticize bad premises, but until you learn to present a good logical argument, don't criticize others' arguments.
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Post by rialvestro on Nov 15, 2010 12:11:27 GMT -5
*sigh* rialvestro, please learn logic. Your most recent post has misunderstood gameboob and his logic thus far has not presented flaws in logic, only in premise. In your case, you do start with sound premises, your lack of logical reasoning however causes you to draw outlandish conclusions that ARE NOT LOGICAL. So please, criticize bad premises, but until you learn to present a good logical argument, don't criticize others' arguments. What outlandish conclusions? In order for any conclusion to be considered outlandish there first has to be a conclusion and I have not made conclusions of any kind for you to call outlandish or not. You should know that this sentence which I stated a while ago, means that I have not come to any conclusions yet. I've also used the word "theory" on many occasions which is not a conclusion.
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Post by newschooled on Nov 15, 2010 13:36:15 GMT -5
I think it's pretty safe to say that once it gets to the point where everyone is just over analyzing each other's logic...The topic is pretty much exhausted.
Although the debate is pretty awesome. I didn't expect as much involvement one way or another without the thread diverting exclusively to the classic biblical-God argument.
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Post by krzych32 on Nov 15, 2010 14:53:30 GMT -5
The funny things is that deep inside we all know the truth, but there is still a debate about it. I see what you're saying, but I would challenge that. Not EVERYONE has intuitions about what's beyond our observable reality. I think you are wrong about that. The difference between us and the animals is that we know we will die some day. When one realized that truth paranoia steps in. There is a scientific theory that to cope with that our mind invented what we would call "religions" but its much simpler then that. Its all the "buts" and "ifs" that we have in this otherwise very simple subject.
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Post by Ryan on Nov 15, 2010 15:05:21 GMT -5
I do not believe there is an afterlife.
If there were, then some part of me would have to 'live-on' past my current state of being. Since my body would die, as would all of the physical aspects of my body, I can say goodbye to my thoughts and memories, as all that could possibly be left, would be some form of consciousness. The consciousness of which I speak would be most aptly described as the reason I think my thoughts, and that you don't think my thoughts. While my environment may have shaped my consciousness, biology cannot explain why it is my thoughts are, the way they are, and so this part would be separable from my body, and could potentially live on after my body dies.
Since this consciousness would not have a brain to think with, it would not be self-aware. Nor could it have memories. Nor could it produce thoughts. It would not have physical characteristics, nor would it have distinguishable characteristics (by itself at least). While the consciousness is within a brain and can think, the thoughts it produces are characteristic of the consciousness. Without such an apparatus to think with, the consciousness would not be distinguishable. There would be no way of telling my conscious from your conscious, without giving them a brain to think with. So, while my consciousness might survive death, without a body, it can hardly be considered my consciousness. Nor could it be considered me. Therefore, I cannot survive death in any capacity. Since my argument depends only on the fact that I am human, and what I have described applies to all humans, it holds that no human can survive death in any capacity. Thus it also holds that there is no afterlife (at least for humans).
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Post by rialvestro on Nov 15, 2010 20:13:20 GMT -5
I do not believe there is an afterlife. If there were, then some part of me would have to 'live-on' past my current state of being. Since my body would die, as would all of the physical aspects of my body, I can say goodbye to my thoughts and memories, as all that could possibly be left, would be some form of consciousness. The consciousness of which I speak would be most aptly described as the reason I think my thoughts, and that you don't think my thoughts. While my environment may have shaped my consciousness, biology cannot explain why it is my thoughts are, the way they are, and so this part would be separable from my body, and could potentially live on after my body dies. Since this consciousness would not have a brain to think with, it would not be self-aware. Nor could it have memories. Nor could it produce thoughts. It would not have physical characteristics, nor would it have distinguishable characteristics (by itself at least). While the consciousness is within a brain and can think, the thoughts it produces are characteristic of the consciousness. Without such an apparatus to think with, the consciousness would not be distinguishable. There would be no way of telling my conscious from your conscious, without giving them a brain to think with. So, while my consciousness might survive death, without a body, it can hardly be considered my consciousness. Nor could it be considered me. Therefore, I cannot survive death in any capacity. Since my argument depends only on the fact that I am human, and what I have described applies to all humans, it holds that no human can survive death in any capacity. Thus it also holds that there is no afterlife (at least for humans). Now that sounds like an outlandish conclusion. You admit that your contentiousness might some how survive but that it would not be you simply because it doesn't have a brain to think with? What if you actually had that backwards, that your brain needs the contentiousness to think not that the contentiousness needs the brain?
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Post by newschooled on Nov 15, 2010 20:26:55 GMT -5
I see what you're saying, but I would challenge that. Not EVERYONE has intuitions about what's beyond our observable reality. I think you are wrong about that. The difference between us and the animals is that we know we will die some day. When one realized that truth paranoia steps in. There is a scientific theory that to cope with that our mind invented what we would call "religions" but its much simpler then that. Its all the "buts" and "ifs" that we have in this otherwise very simple subject. Actually, I remember a diddy on Discovery about how Elephants are aware of their mortality... Anyways, what I was getting at wasn't the fact that we KNOW we will die. Everyone knows that. I was referring to intuition of beyond what we can plainly see and feel. (The wiki definition of inuiotion: Intuition is the apparent ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason.)
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Post by qooqǝɯɐƃ on Nov 15, 2010 20:41:08 GMT -5
How do you mix up consciousness with contentiousness? lol
Anyways, what Ryan said makes sense, essentially all that lives on is energy, not consciousness. So the thing people think of when they talk about an afterlife, a place we live on with all our memories and thoughts and feelings and consciousness, isn't plausible.
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Post by rialvestro on Nov 15, 2010 21:59:34 GMT -5
How do you mix up consciousness with contentiousness? lol Lack of sleep and not paying attention to the words in the spell check. I wouldn't say place because the place we exist in the afterlife is exactly the same as the place we spend life. Anyway... consciousness could theoretically be converted into energy. Just think of it as a form of hyper evolution or survival fail safe.
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