Give Me a Plausible Theory For How An Afterlife Might Exist
I've needed to have this conversation for a while now. It all started right after Stephen Hawking died.
Not like I was an avid follower of his, but i knew who the man was. When he died, I felt a sudden tinge of curiosity, and on a whim I Googled his thoughts on the afterlife. As a staunch man of science, he held the unquestioning belief that death is the ultimate end. And he was comfortable with that.
As a longtime atheist/semi-spiritual fellow, I'd already come to a similar conclusion. There wasn't any particular evidence that God or an afterlife existed, and I was pretty secure in my logic. But that night I tossed and turned, had some weird dreams, and woke up with this sense of dread that I never experienced before. It dawned on me that dying isn't like being asleep. Because when you're asleep, you're still alive.
No, dead is just dead. No dreams. No underlying sense of being alive. No "spark". You're just gone. And everything I've ever thought, everything I've ever done, any "legacy" I might have tried to create will be rendered moot. When the time finally comes, I'm not going to care what I did or didn't leave behind, I'll just be dead.
I've more or less coped with this realization since then. I'm not suicidal, nor do I think my interactions with loved ones are meaningless. Quite the opposite; it's instilled a desire to not take them for granted. But that said, I still wonder about my own mortality as I approach middle age, and the young person's "I'm going to live forever!" attitude begins to fade. I know I can't "will" an afterlife into existence and, whatever may come, I'm not about to turn to religion for comfort. It's just not me. But still...
The best theory I've heard for the continuation of existence after "death" is the multiverse theory. Essentially, for every universe in which I've kicked the bucket, there's another universe where I didn't. As years and centuries go by, the reasons for my still being alive in alternate realities get more and more abstract, but heck, maybe there's a universe where I'm God :)
What are your thoughts on possible afterlives? And please spare me any well-intentioned speeches about how mortality is terrific, because that's a different conversation in my view. Thanks.
Not like I was an avid follower of his, but i knew who the man was. When he died, I felt a sudden tinge of curiosity, and on a whim I Googled his thoughts on the afterlife. As a staunch man of science, he held the unquestioning belief that death is the ultimate end. And he was comfortable with that.
As a longtime atheist/semi-spiritual fellow, I'd already come to a similar conclusion. There wasn't any particular evidence that God or an afterlife existed, and I was pretty secure in my logic. But that night I tossed and turned, had some weird dreams, and woke up with this sense of dread that I never experienced before. It dawned on me that dying isn't like being asleep. Because when you're asleep, you're still alive.
No, dead is just dead. No dreams. No underlying sense of being alive. No "spark". You're just gone. And everything I've ever thought, everything I've ever done, any "legacy" I might have tried to create will be rendered moot. When the time finally comes, I'm not going to care what I did or didn't leave behind, I'll just be dead.
I've more or less coped with this realization since then. I'm not suicidal, nor do I think my interactions with loved ones are meaningless. Quite the opposite; it's instilled a desire to not take them for granted. But that said, I still wonder about my own mortality as I approach middle age, and the young person's "I'm going to live forever!" attitude begins to fade. I know I can't "will" an afterlife into existence and, whatever may come, I'm not about to turn to religion for comfort. It's just not me. But still...
The best theory I've heard for the continuation of existence after "death" is the multiverse theory. Essentially, for every universe in which I've kicked the bucket, there's another universe where I didn't. As years and centuries go by, the reasons for my still being alive in alternate realities get more and more abstract, but heck, maybe there's a universe where I'm God :)
What are your thoughts on possible afterlives? And please spare me any well-intentioned speeches about how mortality is terrific, because that's a different conversation in my view. Thanks.
Comments (33)
Leafness isn't a physical object, it's a pattern with no substance of it's own. As example, if we throw a rock in to a pond the ripples we see are real, but they have no physical substance of their own independent of the medium of water they are moving through. The water has mass and weight. The thrown rock has energy, which then moves from the rock to the water. But the ripples themselves have no weight, mass or energy of their own. And yet, there they are, you can see them with your own eyes.
So when we say that we live and then we die, who is the "me" that we are referring to? Am I the particular individual leaf which comes and goes? Or am I the leafness which is the foundation of all particular leaves?
There isn't a right or wrong answer to this question. Each person is free to decide it for themselves. And how they choose to answer will have an impact upon how they feel about death.
Very poetic. And it actually touches on something else I've wondered about. If I accept that there is no such thing as a soul, and my sense of self is completely comprised of the ones and zeros inside my brain, then that would in theory mean that I am just a program (or a pattern if you like).
If, in the vast stretches of time and space, that pattern randomly emerges again in another life form, even partially, then is that being also me?
We typically assume that life and death are two different opposite phenomena. This may have more to do with the dualistic manner in which our mind organizes information than with the reality the mind is attempting to model.
If we define death as the absence of our memories, dreams, opinions, thoughts etc, then death happens naturally and routinely throughout every day. While our attention is focused internally on our thoughts, we are alive. And when the focus of our attention shifts to the real world beyond our minds, we are momentarily "dead", by the definition offered above.
Life and death might be thought of as life/death, much in the same way we use the expression spacetime. That is, two different words which humans are using to describe a single phenomena. To us, it APPEARS that space and time are two different phenomena, but at least according to Einstein, they are one.
In my opinion, the view of the "eternal return" of Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most plausable scenarios of an "afterlife" that could - we don't know and we can't prove it - exist. Think in this way, you die, your body gets digested by the world - I'm resuming the thought - and the Universe goes on without you, yet, the atomic particles that once made you "you" still exist, and will forever exist. The only certainty we can have is that time passes, and if given time, anything eventually will happen - even in large scales of time in the powers of incomprehension -. So eventually, you'll be recomposed, everything that once made you new again. This kind of thinking makes me relieved in a strange way...
Soul may be a concept which is attempting to describe what I've called "leafness". Like the ripples in the pond, a pattern which is both real, and having no substance or energy of it's own.
My afterlife theory is, "What will life be like after I'm gone?" What impact will I have made on the world. Will I die proudly, or with regrets, shame, and "What ifs?"
It is more motivating to me than heaven or hell. And I don't say this as an armchair believer. I say this as a practitioner. Because of my choices, if I died today I could safely say that I had done everything I wanted, and left this world in the life I wanted. Its pretty cool! To me every other afterlife story is about, "Getting something later like we deserve it without effort." "You're so special and awesome, the universe has decided that YOU get to live forever!"
My afterlife theory? You are not any more special than what you make of your life today, and what you leave for others tomorrow. You are not deserving of anything that you do not pursue and obtain in life.
And the best part is, you can start reaping the benefits today!
This is the same question at the other end. When we're born, where does our consciousness come from? When we die, where does it go.
If one wants to use the word soul instead of consciousness, I would not object. It's the part of us that nobody knows how to explain in physical terms; and it's the part that animates our lives. The humans who built empires, or made scientific breakthroughs, or did anything at all significant, were driven by their minds ... something inside of them wanted to do all that. That's true for every human. Most of the time what we do is a function of what we want. And even though we can make robots Do; we have no idea what it would even mean to make them Want.
The first thing I would ask if I were the human interlocutor in the Turing test is: "What do you want?"
A computer would be unable to respond except by deliberately lying.
The most reasonable theory is that nobody has the slightest clue what death is, and all theories are just wild guesses. Imagine there was a continent on Earth called Deathland that all humans travel to sooner or later. But, so far as we know, not a single one of them has ever come back to file a report. But this complete lack of any information doesn't stop us from having opinions about what Deathland is like. I say this, you say that, we get in to big arguments about it, all based on nothing. We're worried about losing our intelligence, but maybe we never had any to begin with. :-)
But, to be as absurd as anyone else and play the game...
It could be argued that the "I" is like the ripples on the pond. It's real, but has no physical substance of it's own. It's just a pattern. Real. But not meeting the definition of existence. And so it could be said that the "I" can not die, because it never existed in the first place.
Evolution has trained our mind to focus on things. Watch out for the lion, grab the potato, find a mate, that's how we got here. But because our mind functions by dividing reality up in to conceptual objects which we then label with nouns, it doesn't automatically follow that separate things actually exist. Our perception of things could just be a pattern our mind imposes upon reality.
If boundaries are a convenient conceptual illusion, and all things are just patterns, and reality is a single unified system, then things don't really exist, and thus can't die or be born.
I can't provide what the original poster requests, but I can share an experience. This experience proves nothing at all, except that I type too much, but it may give some hint of how afterlife theories got started.
A few months after my Dad died he sent me a final message from the beyond. My Dad was the kind of fellow who always had one more thing to say, and this was his last "one more thing before I forget", a phrase which let you know you were in for another 45 minutes of yack. :-)
So I'm stoned, just out of a hot bath, lying on the floor naked, listening to some corny lady jazz singer. All of sudden my Dad floods my brain, to tell me my deceased Mom is doing great, and has upgraded her singing from HYPER CORNY!!!! Barbershop she sang her whole life to just somewhat corny jazz. I got this very strong impression that death had liberated my mom from much of the psychological tightness we all carry around with us, and so now she can swing.
Then my Dad gave me a little lecture about looking out for my sister, whom he typically largely ignored, but you know, the intentions of his sermon were good. :-)
And then he drifted away, and I've not heard from him in that way since. I got the strong impression that it took him a few months on the other side to figure out how to get in the last word as usual, and once he pulled that off he was then free to melt in to void, or whatever it is.
So there you have it. PROOF!!! that getting stoned can lead to some interesting experiences. :-)
very instructive as also NDEs.
As long as science discounts using or investigating personal experience it wont have any satisfactory answers for these matters.
Oh God. Not this again. "I only do things to benefit me". Eh. Don't want to seem trolly or hostile but... yeah. Exactly. Don't live life with your hands out trying to grab every single thing to put in your little mortal pocket. You can't take it with you.
Meanwhile look at Steven Hawking. He did something with his life, he changed the world for others not just himself. And so he will live on as long as humanity does.There's a lesson there.
Pedantic quibble:
[i]After life
Before life
Before the beginning
Outside of everywhere
North of the North Pole[/i]
Etc.
Nonsense terms and phrases. Interrogatives using them merely look like questions - they're only pseudo-questions (Witty).
I agree, however, that Freddy Zarathustra's eternal recurrence of the same is perhaps the least nonsensical (though not by any stretch most comforting) answer.
And witty? This worship of this buffoon who thought he ended all philosophy and rendered any talk about experience as ineffable or nonsense. Wittys language games were dogmatic horsehit. Yes language can create misleading dichotomies and questions. Yes Language including feelings IS philosophy. But Language which excludes experiences which multiple people have? Nope,that's not linguistic analysis thats behaviorism and scientism.
Stephen Hawking doesn't "live on". That's kinda what brought me to this point.
Yes, Hawking was an award winning physicist, but if he'd been a bus driver it would've amounted to exactly the same thing in the end. He doesn't care if his books are still selling. He doesn't care if his theories all get outlawed and every trace of his research burned. He doesn't care if children dress up as him for Halloween. He's dead.
If there's no afterlife, then it changes the context of human existence. It doesn't make life worthless, but it does alter what's important. If you work for 70 years, determined to make people build statues in your honor after you die, then you've kinda wasted your life. Because you're not going to be looking down from a cloud and saying "Hehe, I'm still cool" when all is said and done. You won't care.
To provide a little context, I dreamed of being a famous writer. I have a few well-reviewed books, even if I haven't sold many copies. But any notions I might've had about literary immortality kinda ring hollow these days, because again, I won't care after I'm gone. So if I spend thousands of hours working hard on a book, or thousands of hours watching One Piece, it will still result in the same end. The only question being "Am I having fun right now?"
Hence my afterlife question. How I view my existence matters quite a lot in terms of how I live.
Why do you think you know all this?
To me, it seems every bit as much a made up story as Jesus in the clouds with his virgin mother and so on. And as made up stories go, it's not a very good one.
What if we didn't make up any stories? What if we just admitted that we have no idea what comes next? This has the advantage of being factual, and the unknown seems rather more exciting than pretending that we know.
A question to illustrate. Do like watching the same movie over and over every day of your life? Or when you sit down in front of the TV would you prefer to watch something you haven't seen already?
Ignorance has it's advantages, eh?
Doesn't he? We're still talking about him. Children who have yet to be born will continue to know and learn about him for the foreseeable future. Perhaps it's not the same.
Though, everything he chose to call important and dedicate his life to and contribute to, changing forever, will again forever have his mark on it. Everything he did or thought and "legacy" will indeed live on and this is an absolute fact. The afterlife or "soul" is a discussion independent of this that is generally not smiled upon in philosophical debates due to it's nature of faith or "no proof". Which is the only way to ensure people go to the right place- you don't judge a potential employee by their actions if they're surrounded by cops- you see how they act when they think there's nobody watching and will not face consequences.
I don't know any of it. That's just the natural extension of there being no afterlife. Which is what Hawking believed. If there's an afterlife, then great. Maybe Hawking is somewhere up there right now with working arms and legs, popping a bottle of champagne for a life well-lived. Or maybe he's been reborn as a horse or something.
I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers, this is just a question whose answer I find important.
How do you know there is no afterlife?
You're not ruffling any feathers here, as I assure you I have no idea what the answer is.
Yes, but none of that will have any relevance to his existence anymore if his existence has in fact ended. The man contributed to humanity's understanding of the universe, and so he will be remembered. But remembrance isn't life, and so it can't be called a reward in the traditional sense. Hawking isn't receiving a benefit from it, is what I'm saying.
I'm aware that living your life for the sole purpose of receiving a "reward" would be considered selfish, but it's a valid consideration nonetheless. Personally, I don't live my life on the premise that I'll be rewarded or punished when it's over; I live according to my own moral code and I always will. If Hawking felt exhilarated by his work when he was alive, then that's all any of us can really ask for. If he had been slogging through it, hating every second, living for the idea of scientific immortality (doesn't really sound like he was) then his own happiness might've been better served by hiring more hookers :sweat:
People should do whatever makes them happy, and it's not for me to say what that should or shouldn't look like. I'm just asking a question.
I don't. Although I can't prove the existence of one, I'm open to the possibility. This conversation is about me "wanting to believe" in one. I would like there to be an afterlife.
I realize no one is going to give me a ticket stub from the great beyond as definitive proof, but I'm still interested in theorizing.
I believe that the potential for an afterlife can be demonstrated logically and have attempted to do so if you are interested:
(Not too long)
In writing:
https://tvclowe.wixsite.com/tvcl/post/a-reflection-on-death
Audio:
https://youtu.be/r4er2P0B05g
... until your body becomes so damaged with age that it will be incompatible with life. Then there will be exactly zero parallel universes in which you continue to live.
Religions say that after the death of your physical body your consciousness continues to exist because it is sustained by another structure which appears to be more permanent than the physical body. That more permanent structure is usually called the soul or spiritual body and it supposedly uses the physical body as a kind of vehicle or virtual reality headset to be able to interact with the physical world.
The problem is how the soul could interact with the physical body or world without being detected by our scientists who have instruments sensitive enough to detect even tiny subatomic particles. I once suggested that a solution could be based on resonance (here) but needless to say it's a speculative and less than half baked idea.
Not necessarily. Since there are an infinite number of parallel universes (in theory), and all possible alternatives happen in one of them, there could be universes where time passes more slowly than it does here, or where aliens land and start handing out immortality pills. Doesn't matter if something is preposterous, because as long as it's not statistically impossible it will happen somewhere.
Yeah. Woody Allen once said that he didn't want to live on in other people's hearts but in his apartment.
-Terry Pratchett.
On the one hand, you could look at that and say conciousness is an evolutionary accident, and that humans are basically the trucks from Maximum Overdrive. Built to do one thing, but then they start running wild and doing other stuff.
On the other hand, you could look at it as saying that early lifeforms spontaneously developed conciousness because they decided they needed it. Which is interesting.
We're a mysterious side-effect of the success/failure of microorganisms. Our consciousness, the only thing we can't seem to identify as material, is just something that happens when microorganisms run computer programs they've encoded in organic material. It's kind of an enigma. I don't think we'll ever fully understand ourselves because we aren't ourselves.
I think this is where belief stems from, the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that there's always some greater thing until it's everything, or gods, or whatever. If there were gods, they'd believe the same and would know little about themselves or their origins, and they'd be microbes in some larger microcosm, and so on, and so on, forever and ever, amen.
Effectively, nothing can be greater if infinite things are lesser/greater. It's all just mush. Consciousness is an intangible side-effect of an infinitely infinitesimal speck of mush that doesn't exist. The leaf doesn't exist, and leafness doesn't exist.
The only way to make sense of ‘absolute death’ is to set up a soul/matter distinction where you blipped into the material world and so can blip out.
If you don’t accept a soul, you’re more like a part of the world (a contortion of the material world) that felt separate for a time.
What dies is the contortion of matter that felt separate, and over time built up a structure of self-sense around that, but everything else continues.
Matter contorted itself into a sense of self, and can do so again.
What allows the boundless to feel bounded and separate is a mystery, but if it happened before, it can happen again.
(I think panpsychism, but that’s controversial and not needed for the above)