Since my last thread got pretty nice response im posting this hopefully i can get some replies in b4 the thread is just going crazy Do you guys think theres a afterlife weather it be hevan hell or your just walking around dead ghost i guess whats your take?
findings of neuroscience + the implication of evolution is fairly convincing evidence our consciousness is just something that emerges from physical processes in our brains, and turns off when those processes stop. also all claims of ghost sightings etc invariably end up having better alternate explanations than continuation of life after death.
It would be awesome of there were an afterlife, but it sure seems like our consciousness is a matter of genetics, chemistry, and experience. When you die, it's game over. Lights out. Nevermore.
There will life after my death, by the living, who can remember me. That's the extent of it. I don't know there isn't anything else, but it's by far the most likely option. And considering this is at the crux of why people believe in religion, you could have just asked if people believed in any gods.
Not entirely. I know a few "spiritual" atheists who believe in some sort of afterlife. I've also read a few prominent ones who don't rule it out, including Sam Harris. Also a good number of atheist Buddhists believe the "self" continues after death, although not in the normal Christian sense of an afterlife.
it's not depressing at all if you think of life as one big freeroll. you should celebrate the fact that you won the lottery and were born at all!
There is an incredible amount of evidence of an afterlife. Read a few books about reincarnation, or life after death, or out of body experiences, or near death experiences. See what the great prophets/seers have to say - Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed. Read Edgar Cayce. Look at nature. Personally, my dear sweet mom visited me six months after she died. Maybe my favorite piece of proof though is Steve Jobs' dying words: "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow!" I wonder what he saw. Not blackness, that's for sure.
it's one thing if you believe your mother visited you, but otherwise I'll take working neurobiologists over superstitious ancient prophets and Edgar Cayce.
That's the mainstream academic/scientific view. But it's really a view based on ignorance. These fields can't even begin to explain how consciousness 'emerges' from physical processes in the brain. I think that without that understanding, they can't claim to have any leverage in knowing if it survives the death of the brain.
Not any actual evidence. "Personal Experiences" don't count. That's your mind playing tricks on you. There's real evidence for that.
the facts of evolution alone are enough to support a default assumption that consciousness is just something that emerges from physical processes. the implication that it's some kind of 50/50 proposition is just wishful thinking. also, neuroscience does not need to fully explain consciousness to have significant leverage if it can show that all aspects of what makes us who we are can be turned on and off by fiddling with different areas of the brain, which is the case.