Holding that life after death exists makes me angry
I want to point out this is not about religion. Religion doesn't make me angry. It is the idea that you will exist after you die that makes me angry.
The reason is that it becomes an excuse for humans to put up with suffering and lower states of being. You would think that it would inspire people to act more ethically or do great works, but I feel the opposite happens instead.
This is of course anecdotal, meant to be a discussion, and with different view points. I am not preaching nor claiming truth here. When I listen to those who have accomplished great things in life, be it financial, ethical, or personal goal oriented, I rarely here, "I did it because I know there's life after death." I hear, "I love people, I love myself, I wanted to be remembered. I wanted to accomplish great things, I couldn't bear to watch others suffer, etc. It is the here and now that motivates people to action, not the great beyond.
Yet when I have spoken with people who believe in life after death, and as someone who once believed in it, I have found it is a convenient excuse for why you don't do more. The mind can imagine that it is worth suffering today because eventually your later life will not suffer. Almost everyone who believes in life after death believes they are worthy of it, and it will be pleasant and not torturous.
Further, it is easy to implicitly deny the immediacy of other's suffering. When my Aunt died of cancer, my mother thought it was sad that my Aunt didn't believe in life after death. My mother than proudly claimed that she wouldn't be afraid of death when it came because she knew it wasn't the end. I had to tell her that she would be afraid regardless, and that was ok. It is not wrong to feel afraid, or to admit we and others suffer. Facing that head on means we are there to comfort, assist, and not judge. When we realize the reality of pain, loss, and things we will never get back, it can inspire us to be there for others instead of removing ourselves from it.
Further, I find the idea of life after death the ultimate in arrogance and hubris. All scientific evidence and even anecdotal evidence shows that when you die, you are dead. And yet many people insist that there is something out there because...you're more intelligent than other animals? Because you've thought all of your life, so why wouldn't you continue to think? Because what you strongly believe is more important than the facts in front of you? It is a denial of the world around you. And I feel denial of reality is a habit. When you do it in small things, it tends to bleed out in larger things.
And I suppose this is the ultimate source of my anger. It is not the belief in life after death per say, it is the belief in something that is not real, that I, in my viewpoint, see as self-evidently wrong after these years. And I suppose the anger I feel is not at the people who choose to believe in life after death, but the suffering, procrastination, and hubris it can cause a person to feel. It is the negative hear and now that I feel it causes other people, and that is what I wanted to examine, not in the afterlife, but today.
The reason is that it becomes an excuse for humans to put up with suffering and lower states of being. You would think that it would inspire people to act more ethically or do great works, but I feel the opposite happens instead.
This is of course anecdotal, meant to be a discussion, and with different view points. I am not preaching nor claiming truth here. When I listen to those who have accomplished great things in life, be it financial, ethical, or personal goal oriented, I rarely here, "I did it because I know there's life after death." I hear, "I love people, I love myself, I wanted to be remembered. I wanted to accomplish great things, I couldn't bear to watch others suffer, etc. It is the here and now that motivates people to action, not the great beyond.
Yet when I have spoken with people who believe in life after death, and as someone who once believed in it, I have found it is a convenient excuse for why you don't do more. The mind can imagine that it is worth suffering today because eventually your later life will not suffer. Almost everyone who believes in life after death believes they are worthy of it, and it will be pleasant and not torturous.
Further, it is easy to implicitly deny the immediacy of other's suffering. When my Aunt died of cancer, my mother thought it was sad that my Aunt didn't believe in life after death. My mother than proudly claimed that she wouldn't be afraid of death when it came because she knew it wasn't the end. I had to tell her that she would be afraid regardless, and that was ok. It is not wrong to feel afraid, or to admit we and others suffer. Facing that head on means we are there to comfort, assist, and not judge. When we realize the reality of pain, loss, and things we will never get back, it can inspire us to be there for others instead of removing ourselves from it.
Further, I find the idea of life after death the ultimate in arrogance and hubris. All scientific evidence and even anecdotal evidence shows that when you die, you are dead. And yet many people insist that there is something out there because...you're more intelligent than other animals? Because you've thought all of your life, so why wouldn't you continue to think? Because what you strongly believe is more important than the facts in front of you? It is a denial of the world around you. And I feel denial of reality is a habit. When you do it in small things, it tends to bleed out in larger things.
And I suppose this is the ultimate source of my anger. It is not the belief in life after death per say, it is the belief in something that is not real, that I, in my viewpoint, see as self-evidently wrong after these years. And I suppose the anger I feel is not at the people who choose to believe in life after death, but the suffering, procrastination, and hubris it can cause a person to feel. It is the negative hear and now that I feel it causes other people, and that is what I wanted to examine, not in the afterlife, but today.
Comments (77)
No, rebirth is no excuse, it's a fact.
A fact is something provable. Rebirth is no fact.
You can deduce the proof from cosmology.
Please provide that proof then.
Okay. I'll try. I'm not trolling or whatever. I'm serious. In my view, the singularity is a thin wormhole connecting two parts of a 4-dimensional universe. I consider particles as small geometric structures. Three large space dimension of a 6D space are curled up to tiny circles. A tiny Planck-sized torus. A cartesian product of circles. Almost, but not quite pointlike. They are confined to 3D space (which is 6D basically). Before I continue, you want me to continue?
No. This is all made up in your head. The more important question is, why did you make it up? Why do you insist on believing something you know you just came up with?
All cosmological theories are made up in heads!
Took me 15 years to come up with. It fits my belief exactly. It even inspired it.
How are you so sure you won't be born again?
I have the mechanism to make it happen.
Well, don't be (angry)! :smile:
Does the existence of God or a Supreme Being make you also angry?
Does the existence of ghosts make you also angry?
These are beliefs, not facts. I think that the beliefs of people, esp. when there's a huge amount of them on Earth, should be respected. I do. Almost the whole East believes in life after death and a big part of the West too. It is their reality. If that doesn't make sense to you, it just doesn't make sense to you. Adhere to your own beliefs and reality.
Quoting Philosophim
Quoting Philosophim
Not true. There may exist some cases like these, but it is not the general rule. Most people's belief in life after death is real. It is their reality. It is something much more real than you can imagine. They don't believe it in order to escape from anything or give excuses.
Quoting Philosophim
Exactly, this is your viewpoint! :smile:
You can see your present existence as proof of a previous existence. Why is that a lie?
I haven't come across anyone who has said that they feel angry about people believing in life after death, although I am aware that being preached to can lead people to feel angry. Personally, I am not sure whether I believe in life after death or not, as my thinking shifts a lot. Of course, the psychology of believing or not believing in it is variable and I do wonder to what extent the psychology of the belief influences belief in it.
Personally, I like the idea of rebirth because one life and one body seems a bit limiting and some have better circumstances than others. However, I try to not simply convince myself that reincarnation exists on that basis because it would seem like philosophical dishonesty.
:roll:
Quoting theRiddler
:up: e.g. Theology, no?
And this is my point. Coming up with something that satisfies our emotional desires is stunting growth. It is imaginary. Does it help you be a better person to others? Does it help you make the world a better place? I just don't see it.
Oddly, no. I think this is because they are concepts divorced enough from reality that I can understand why someone would believe them. When people are in the realm of no evidence, people will invent a reason or explanation to understand a mystery in some way. Life after death just seems counter to every single basic learned experience of life. The evidence is as solid as the sun shines. It seems immature to me to hold it, if of course you've looked at it reasonably.
Perhaps too if I saw more people motivated to be better people or do greater things in the world with a belief in their eternal existence, then I would be less angry. Honestly I'm not much against how someone reaches a point in the road, as long as they get there without harming themselves and others too much.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
All of our beliefs are our personal reality. It doesn't mean they match actual reality. And that's my point. This type of belief, in my eyes, does nothing to address or handle reality in a better way, but is most often used to avoid it. That to me is something that destroys a person's potential, and I do not like to see people's potential ruined.
But much appreciated Tim! I can definitely say YOU do not make me angry, and am glad for your presence on these boards. :smile:
Well, I didn't come up on it to fit my desire. I never desire to live another life. It just turns out to be that way. And luckily. Maybe next time it's done better. I didn't ask for this world I live in.
It's not going to make a better or worse person of me. Is it that what makes you angry? That people believing in reincarnation forget to think about fellow people? Then you could transpone life every time to the next. Same as prolonging everything to tomorrow. I don't like that either. It's no excuse.
Its why I made this post. It is an odd thing. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know if I was jutified, or (more likely) not justified. Hearing other people's input on the matter gives that view point to either ease the anger, or redirect it towards something better than an emotional discomfort.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I think you have it right. Wanting life after death is motivated by a sense of unfairness or disappointment of our limitations, and I'm sure other emotions. To me, those emotions are not meant to be buried with the "liquor of immortality", but should be used to motivate and direct us to go past our limitations, and work on fixing the world's unfairness. It is the only way the world improves for ourselves and others, Getting drunk on thoughts of a better life beyond this one is no better than getting drunk every evening after work.
Yes, that is what makes me angry. I see it as rarely, if ever helping people to be a better person, and more often than not, an implicit excuse to settle for one's or other's unfortunate lot in life.
What if the experience surrounding "death" is eternal and the body dying doesn't have a way to delete the eternity once it has happened in its own time?
Theology definitely.
But we. as wild men, shouldn't be throwing anything out with the bathwater. It's just a treatise with death.
Honestly, the universe should have proven itself more than we can muster by now. Until proof settles in, which is a long way off, keep an open mind.
Or fall off the edge of the earth.
Retain the mere possibility...that this universe is grander than our perceptions. Which are VERY grand.
But I thought the theory was that what occurs in the next life hinges on your actions in this life.
As it is, I think a lot of people do many things which they wouldn't do, IF they believed they would suffer in the next life for it.
What if mass shooters really believed that they would suffer in the afterlife as a consequence of their actions? As it is, I'm sure most of them believe that when they die there are no consequences.
Very true. It can stand on the same ground even as escaping by heroin. No real solution. Maybe heroin is even better. That at least takes pain away. Better than: "Ah, WTF! Next life better! Let's focus on that..."
There is much to be said about the relationship between matter and consciousness. We are a body but consciousness might not rise from the body in a dependent way.
If you're going to revolve your whole philosophy around SCRIPTURE that's most definitely YOUR PROBLEM.
We've entered a real scientific paradigm beyond any of this, and you're all willfully ignoring weird, strange science for scripture.
Or it might. What is required is a hegemony between the two, regardless of how horrific.
And let's acknowledge that eternal life is infinitely scarier than death.
On the other hand, @Wayfarer makes a good point. Belief in a new life, be it secular or not, can give a good excuse from refraining doing harm. If that has repercussions for the afterthislife.
What about all those hideous crimes, from bride-burning to mass murder that are initiated by religious belief? Seems to me religions are often a benzedrine for atrocity. Think of the Saudis executing homosexuals on behalf of Wahhabi Islam. Bet they think this will take them to Paradise. I've met serious Lutheran Christians who thought the Shoah/Holocaust was God's work (perhaps based on ideas in Luther's sermons). So there is that.
It's interesting when you work alongside palliative care services, where people are dying, how many religious people no longer believe in anything at the end.
Quoting Philosophim
I'm not sure I can see hubris or pride in this. Fear and denial, yes. People don't want the show to end and they hate the thought of those they love no longer being extant. An afterlife, reinforced by society and culture, is an effective way to manage grief and dread. But I agree with you that supernatural beliefs like this often cause great harm.
Neither will a non-linear view. The core reality of consciousness lies inside matter.
Quoting Tom Storm
Natural beliefs can cause great harm too. Just look at the state nature is in. And the worst has still to come.
Human beings cause great harm, period. :wink: But this doesn't change the nature of religious harm.
The core of reality lies within consciousness which is social.
"Consciousness finds that it immediately is and is not another consciousness, as also that this other is for itself only when it cancels itself as existing for itself, and has self-existence only in the self-existence of the other." Hegel
So the anger is about the people who put up with suffering and lower states of being, isn't it? What about them makes you angry? Is it that they don't try hard enough? Do you despise people stuck in lower states of being? What are the example of the "lower states of being" that make you angry?
Are there examples of people who believe in life after death but don't use this as an excuse to put up with lower states of being? Do these people make you angry?
Why would people stop putting up with suffering and lower states of being if they didn't believe in life after death? Wouldn't it become another excuse? "I'll be dead anyways. Nothing that I do now will matter when I'm gone. I'll just do whatever feels good." Wouldn't you feel angry about the people that say this?
Quoting Philosophim
How often do you hear "I did it because nothing matters after I die"? I don't hear this much often. Although, it does ring a bell. Après moi, le déluge. This expression is generally regarded as a nihilistic expression of indifference to whatever happens after one is gone. Can you offer a reason why anyone should care about how they live their life if nothing matters after they die?
Quoting Philosophim
I agree, it does seem uninformed and unsupported by evidence. But why being mad about it? I find the idea of being angry at others a sign of arrogance and hubris. What gives you the right to be angry at others? You don't seem apologetic about your anger. This starts making me angry. But then I'm able to defuse my anger. I don't have any reasons to have strong feeling about you or the OP.
Death is frustrating. People holding unreasonable believes is frustrating. Not being able to change other people's mind is frustrating. Being frustrated about many things is frustrating. I find empathy and philosophy to be good tools to defuse anger.
Although I didn’t specifically mention religion in my response, I guess that, because belief in an afterlife is usually associated with religion, then the kind of response I gave is categorized as implying belief. And then because of that association, we’d better not entertain such ideas!
What does he mean?
Untimately for Hegel conciousness only truly exists as love which transcends matter because matter cannot explain anything about it whatsoever. The difference between matter and experience is obvious. The very logical categories we think in of matter causing sensation has to be question from the very root
Heck, I've never known anyone who has evinced the belief that when they die, they will go to heaven. More likely for a lot of people, as the song says, 'I swear there ain't no heaven and I pray there ain't no hell.' ('But I'll never know by living only my dying will tell.')
Most probably you are talking about your experience and also the experence of millions of people. But, as I said, there is an equal --or maybe greater, if you consider the East too, but I'm not sure-- amount of people with a different experience on the subject. You just can't ignore it. Also, if Science has not proved it, it doesn't mean that life after death doesn't exist. Science has not proved anything about consciousness either. But most of us know that consciousness exists. (Some deny it ...)
Quoting Philosophim
What is this evidence?
Quoting Philosophim
That's very nice. I also say that if the belief in God make someone more ethical, or just more happy, then let him believe in God. I will support him. But unfortunately, there are innumerable atrocities that have happened in the histery and are still happening in the name of God! And this makes me angry too! Because it's not anymore about beliefs but about hypocrisy.
Quoting Philosophim
What's "actual reality"? I don't think it exists such a thing. There's only personal reality (as you say) and "common reality", i.e, the reality of tqo or more persons. Reality has to do with agreement. If we agree on something, we can say that we have the same reality regadding that thing.
Quoting Philosophim
My name is Alkis. But thank you anyway! :smile:
This is my problem. Studies show that the strength of the penalty passed a certain point does not deter crime. The death penalty for example, actually doesn't deter crime any more than locking up a person. This can indicate to us that broadly, people are not motivated by the degree of long term rewards or punishments for what they do. It may be that most people don't think about it.
Even then, another study shows that most people believe themselves to be better than average. Why would a person who believes they are better than average feel like they wouldn't get a nice afterlife? So even when people do think about it, I believe its mostly assumed they will live forever, and it will be nice.
Thanks for your input Wayfarer.
Interesting experience, thanks for sharing.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, I agree fear and denial can play a part just as equally.
Yes.
What about them makes you angry? Is it that they don't try hard enough? Yes
Do you despise people stuck in lower states of being? Yes.
What are the example of the "lower states of being" that make you angry?
Procrastination. Dismissal of other's suffering. Dismissal of your own suffering. It is a pretend solution to problems in life, so that one does not have to work on fixing the actual problems.
Quoting pfirefry No. I honestly have no opinion on the means someone uses to get to a better place in life, as long as it doesn't unnecessarily hurt themselves or others.
Quoting pfirefry
Yes, I would feel angry with people who say this, but I think there is an easier time convincing someone to not feel this way. Such a person is motivated by the here and now, and works to solve the problems that they encounter in life. Teaching a person that life can be richer than just pleasure is not a promise down the road, but something that can also be realized "today".
Quoting pfirefry Yes. Because such a person is motivated by their own life today. And caring about more than your own life, matters to their life today.
Quoting pfirefry
I don't get to choose my emotions. Emotions are usually the first thing we rely on when we have not thought about a subject in depth. Its our gut reaction. What I can choose is what I'll do with that emotion. I chose to come to these boards and share that with other people. Not as a rant, not as a claim that I am the arbiter of truth, but as someone who is expressing nascent thoughts, and wants to hear other view points and thoughts on the matter.
I appreciate your input.
True. My experience is from a Western bias.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Science does not attempt to prove that life after death exists. Science is about falsification, about setting up a hypotheses, and trying to knock it down. Only if it withstands every attack, can we be confident we have something reasonable.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Your brain is you. This has been proven time and time again over decades. Damage the brain, you damage the person. Change the chemical balance of the brain, you change the person. Depression medication and anti-psychotics prove this. Alcoholism and drug use eat the brain like an evil smiling parasite, and the effects are plain for everyone to see.
You can read about all sorts of brain damage example. One man was brain damaged to no longer be able to process colors. His eyes were fine, but his brain interpreted everything in black and white. Why when he died would he suddenly see colors again? How could he process colors without light and eyes? Why would a brain, which is geared towards processing the physical world, suddenly "be" again after it is gone?
We are physical beings. Its like a modern day engine. I can't tell you exactly how it works, but if I take a hammer to it, it stops working correctly. There is absolutely zero evidence of some form of life and consciousness existing apart from the brain. Anyone who sees the evidence, cannot reasonably conclude otherwise. It is a belief in Santa despite seeing your parents put the presents out themselves.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Funny enough, religion does not make me angry. I believe that for many majority of cases, people live their lives in a better way because of it. And I am with you that if the belief in God makes a person happy and more ethical, yes, let them continue that belief.
Religion fills a need in humanity for a community that pushes them to be better people. Sometimes this is misguided and abused, no question. But if they did not belong to a religion, they would likely belong to something else that would be misguided and abused, like politics for example. :)
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Right now, I want you to try using the power of your mind to float 3 feet off the ground. Can't do it right? That is actual reality. The idea that your view of reality somehow shapes reality is an appeal to our vanity. Your view of reality does nothing to alter what is. The idea that two people can somehow shape reality from their viewpoints is also absurd. All we can do is recognize how reality works, then see if we can alter it to what we want within the limitations of what we have.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
My apologies! Much appreciated again.
Everyone I know who claims to believe in an afterlife believes that they will either go to heaven or be reborn as some fancy, exalted being.
In fact, in an argument with a Catholic lady, I once actually said, "Yeah, but for you, everything's easy, because you'll go to heaven and be happy forever", to which she smiled in a matter-of-factly manner, "We'll all go to heaven". And she's a Catholic!! What she said was heresy!
It seems to be an essential part of religious/spiritual life to have the confidence that God/karma is on one's side.
Someone once said that the distinction between past, present, and future was a persistent illusion. We have to come to terms with the fact that the past still is the present; then you can talk about how brain damage proves we're our brains.
There are a myriad of ways of survival of consciousness after death, but not if you're so myopic you can only see the small picture. And the breadth of some of your philosophies is very narrow indeed. Think in the box much?
Errata: It should be "it doesn't mean that life after death doesn't exist".
Quoting Philosophim
You are right. I mean, "there's no scientific proof".
Quoting Philosophim
No, it's not! :smile: I'm not my brain.
(See https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11791/you-are-not-your-body/p1)
Quoting Philosophim
Well, as it is proven through the ages and in all places on Earth, from the less civilized people (tribes) to the most civilized ones, "religion" is more than just something to fill a need or a kind of motivation for being a better person: it is a natural thing for Man. It is part of the human condition. Religion is what makes one a better human being. (And of course, I don't mean speciffic religions, and esp. the dogmatic ones.)
Quoting Philosophim
I can't! I always wanted to be able to do that! :grin:
Quoting Philosophim
No problem. And thanks again. :smile:
But this is a Sisyphean task.
It's not possible to motivate oneself consciously for such a task.
I do and don't care. I just feel that everything that's important to us, our lives, aren't the one thing the universe wastes completely.
I also am a firm believer that the past is as real as the present. I cannot say for sure what that says about my consciousness.
Matter is in time just as consciousness is in time
I think that's a very noble aspiration, and one that I'm sure many practising Christians would applaud. Not the tub-thumping evangelicals but those labouring quietly in service of others.
There's a Sanskrit expression for the 'liquor of immortality', which is am?ta, often described as 'the nectar of immortality' or 'the deathless'. (Etymological note - the word comprises 'a-', the negative particle 'not', and m?tyu, meaning death, which is the Indo-European root of 'murder'. So literally 'un-murderable').
Quoting baker
None of my social circle believe in it. My in-laws are devout Christians, so I suppose they believe it, although I've never really discussed it with them and they generally don't evangalise. But Australia is an overall secularist culture, I think the majority of people would say death means nothing more than simple non-existence.
My belief is that existence overflows the bounds of birth and death. That is influenced by my acceptance of the tenets of Buddhism. Buddhists have an elaborate system of the six realms of existence. It's true that their dogma has it that us uneducated worldlings don't get to see into those realms on this side of death. That's something I don't like much but I grudgingly will admit the possibility. I don't find hell difficult to believe in, looking at the appalling things that some people do. Not that I intend to persuade others to believe that.
Of course, people willl believe anything, especially in today's world where there is such a huge variety of belief systems rubbing shoulders and the enormous proliferation of screen entertainment and fantasy literature. There are UFO cults and all kinds of strange movements. But I think to understand how belief in the afterlife figures in traditional culture would take a fair amount of study - anthropology and comparative religion, to begin with. I think it's often very hard for us within the context of an advanced technological culture to really understand it from an 'insider' perspective as it's a very different worldview.
There's life after death whether you like it or not.
First, death is a harm. Yet death would not be a harm unless we existed at the time, for one surely cannot be harmed by something if one does not exist to be harmed by it. Thus, if death is a harm, then we exist when we die. But if death was the cessation of our existence, then we would not exist at the time. Thus death is not the cessation of our existence - and thus we live after death.
Second, our minds are indivisible. You either have a mind or you do not. There is no such thing as half a mind.
If our minds were complex objects then they would be divisible. But as they are indivisible, they must be simple.
Simple objects exist with aseity, that is they are self-existent and have neither been created - for there is nothing from which one can make them - or deconstructed - for there is nothing into which one can deconstruct them.
Thus, our minds are immortal. And as minds are always in some kind of mental state, and to be alive is to be in a mental state, then life does not end.
The soul is not simple. Consciousness is a subject, not an object. No soul
Consciousness is not a subject -that's gibberish. Consciousness is a state. It is a state of mind.
And it is minds that are indivisible and thus exist with aseity.
And we do have souls, for souls are immaterial minds and minds are immaterial, for minds are simple and no material thing is simple.
Those were all arguments. An argument - good one - extracts the implications of some self-evident truths of reason. What Gregory does is just express his views.
So, here's an argument:
1. Minds are indivisible (self-evident to reason)
2. Only simple things are indivisible (for a complex thing can be divided into its component parts)
3. Therefore minds are simple things
Here's another, building on the last
1. If minds are simple things, then they can neither be created nor destroyed
2. minds are simple things (see argument above)
3. therefore, minds can neither be created nor destroyed.
Don't just say some stuff. Engage with the arguments by constructing an equally valid argument that has the negation of one of those premises as a conclusion - then we can inspect the premises and see if they have any self-evidence.
Where's the argument. You define a soul then assume it's existence from it's definition. Is it an ontological argument?
I don't think you know what an argument is.
Quoting Gregory
Have you published on the nature of the mind?
I deny the first premise which is that souls are simple which we were trying to prove.
Construct an argument in which 'minds are complex' is the conclusion and then we can see what premises you needed to generate it. If those premises are not self-evident truths of reason - or themselves derivable from some - your argument fails.
I'm pretty sure I do, but more importantly, what do you think they are?
Quoting theRiddler
Feel free to list some. We're here to discuss and hear other's view points. If you can ease my ignorance, I'll have not issue with that.
There is no denying that you are your body. This is my premise because it's actually self evident unlike yours. Something simple means it's nothing because without parts is nothing. All self evident
How many meditations did Descartes publish again? 5 or 6?
I don't publish is journals, no. But this is a forum for everyone
So instead of talking about simplicity, you should have said you had direct access to the spiritual. And you do! This is because everything is spiritual.
However, a soul implies the person is divided between two principles as it's essential components. That is not something, though, that is experienced in life. Identity is unity
I know you don't. I do though. And you don't know what you're talking about. 'Consciousness' is a 'state'. It's not a 'thing'. Not an 'object'. It's a 'state'. And what it is a state of.....is called 'a mind'.
There's a big debate about what kind of a thing 'a mind' is - is it a material thing or an immaterial thing. But it is a thing, not a state.
Minds 'have' consciousness. They aren't themselves the consciousness. That's as confused as thinking that as water is wet, water is the wetness.
But anyway, this is pointless as, like I say, you're far, far too confidently wrong to be able to be aware of it.
A soul cannot exist without a state. It's state is itself
Perhaps Buddha would say you divide in yourself because you are divided. Idn
Hmm, "A soul can exist without a state: it is itself, not a state". Yep. I think we can safely say that your average Buddhist would go 'ooo' to that one just as readily as to the reverse.
Quoting Gregory
"A soul implies a person who is not divided between two principles as its essential components. That is something, though, that is experienced in life. Identity is not unity". Yep. You could just as easily have said that, right?
Anyway, do try and focus on the issue at hand. There is an afterlife. All the evidence implies there is one. Minds are indestructible, bodies not. So when our body is destroyed, we continue living. And it harms us to lose these bodies. So there's an afterlife, and it's hell.
Then dying itself is experienced in body and soul
Time
matter <> experience
matter <> experience
matter <> experience
matter <> experience
No matter <> experience
So we pass thru time experiencing matter. But is conscious experience always based on the matter staying biological? I say the experience can live on in the body, go into quantum realms, be everywhere, and feel anything. Just because the body changes state this doesn't mean experience can't continue. The experience at the end of death is eternal as the consciousness experiences a new way of feeling. You can't stop consciousness from experiencing even though experience springs from the body. As long as there is a universe the experience, the consciousness, can continue