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Judaism

0 (0%)

Christianity

17 (23.3%)

Islam

1 (1.4%)

Hinduism

0 (0%)

Taoism

0 (0%)

Buddhism

0 (0%)

Scientology

2 (2.7%)

Other (please tell)

7 (9.6%)

Athiest

35 (47.9%)

Undecided

1 (1.4%)

Agnostic

10 (13.7%)

Total Members Voted: 70

[Imic]

If you look at it from another angle, when you think about it, the mind is just energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only turned into something else. So when you look at it like that, you possibly proved some afterlife of some form, even if it's just a universal mind recycling system as in reincarnation.
So... Yeah.
That was a scientific look at it though.

[Egan_BW]

Here comes the Atheism, here it comes:
You won't be damned, because that's just a stupid idea. Eternity doesn't even make sense as a concept. It's not even worth thinking about what happens to you after you die because you will be dead and thus not be there to see it. Destruction of the brain is destruction of the soul, simple as that.

...And the mind is not energy. It's information, which damn well CAN be destroyed, or at least fractured and corrupted beyond any hope of recovery.

[Imic]

Here comes the Atheism, here it comes:
You won't be damned, because that's just a stupid idea. Eternity doesn't even make sense as a concept. It's not even worth thinking about what happens to you after you die because you will be dead and thus not be there to see it. Destruction of the brain is destruction of the soul, simple as that.

Read my above post. If I was right, then when we die, our minds will be recycled into something else, because of... Physics.

[Egan_BW]

Yeah, no.

[TD1]

It is true, to the the best of our knowledge, that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

This does not indicate that the mind, composed though it is of matter which contains energy, can neither be created nor destroyed.
That's like saying if you destroyed a watch, or a toy horse, because it is composed of energy, it will reincarnate.

They, like the brain and the mind which it allows to exist, do not need to exist. Once the energy they possessed changes form or function, there is absolutely no reason to suppose it would decide to rearrange itself to anything resembling your mind.

I believe I may not have put my idea across well, so to sum: Yeah, no.

Edit:

Here comes the Atheism, here it comes:
You won't be damned, because that's just a stupid idea. Eternity doesn't even make sense as a concept. It's not even worth thinking about what happens to you after you die because you will be dead and thus not be there to see it. Destruction of the brain is destruction of the soul, simple as that.

Read my above post. If I was right, then when we die, our minds will be recycled into something else, because of... Physics.

No, the energy our mind uses would be used elsewhere, and for different things. The fuel an engine burns does not an engine make.

[Criptfeind]

Your mind will be reincarnated into something. Worm poo.

[TD1]

His brain will be - his mind is a concept which he himself has constructed.

Edit: To answer Rolan, I believe the Bible is quite explicit. You will be punished for not believing.

Worship no idols, and all that. I believe some people do say, that as God is all good, so too those who are good and not simply Christian will be admitted to heaven.

In which case, I am happy with my own position. If God exists and is good, I go to heaven. If God exists and is not good, then I am not sure whether I would want his company anyway.

[wierd]

I dunno. I am rather partial to the following interpretation:

Assuming that the many worlds hypothesis is true:

1) All possible universes exist simultaneously.
1a) This means that if it is even remotely possible, there exists a universe where I achieve apotheosis.
1a^1) This means that in that universe, I have access to the full knowledge/minds of all other universes in which I do no myself directly achieve apotheosis.

Ultimately concluding in:

If it is even remotely possible that I am capable of accessing other universes, and am capable of transcending normal reality/mortality (eg, apotheosis), then in at least one such universe, I get access to, and absorb the knowledge/consciousnesses of all other universes, the one I am currently in included.

This means that if it is at all possible, I *will* exist as part of a godhead after my "death", somewhere in the greater multiverse, should many worlds be true.



If you dont want to ascribe to many worlds as a thing, there is always this fallback:

Altering the past of this world line appears to be impossible, as it results in causality violation. Assuming the universe exists in a naturally timeless state, and we, the inhabitants of the universe simply experience time as a local phenomenon, then the mere fact that I have existed at all means that I am eternal, like the universe is.

[TheDarkStar]

So that trailed off into skepticism pretty quick, but the context was that I was scared and hoping that, you know, I *won't* be damned if I'm wrong.  I've spent more time trying to learn about religion than most people, and I try to keep an open mind about it.  If I'm wrong, am I going to burn despite all that effort?

I don't think so, no. You're doing the best you can with what you know, and even if you turn out to be wrong, you still showed that you were willing to follow what you do know.

Edit: To answer Rolan, I believe the Bible is quite explicit. You will be punished for not believing.

Worship no idols, and all that. I believe some people do say, that as God is all good, so too those who are good and not simply Christian will be admitted to heaven.

In which case, I am happy with my own position. If God exists and is good, I go to heaven. If God exists and is not good, then I am not sure whether I would want his company anyway.

Unbelief is different from not having the opportunity to believe. But yeah, I also believe that if I'm a good and faithful person then I'll be able to be with God (who is good).

[TD1]

Not quite true. Mine is not wilful disbelief - it is simply a lack of belief in a theory which has zero evidence. Ergo, I suppose that no one in the world technically has the opportunity to believe, considering there is so little evidence to make one do so.

Wierd: That reminds me of an argument I read. I believe it was Platinga? Not certain. Anyway, he said that if there are infinite worlds, then there must be one in which a maximal God exists. This means he must exist in all universes, as to do otherwise would be to render him less than maximal. The obvious problem being that in an infinite number of worlds, a non-maximal God must exist, and ergo must exist (or not) in all.

As for the linear timeline, certainly you are eternal. You have existed since the beginning of all things. However, the organisation of parts that makes you you need not exist in anything but the most temporary time period.

[Trekkin]

If you look at it from another angle, when you think about it, the mind is just energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only turned into something else. So when you look at it like that, you possibly proved some afterlife of some form, even if it's just a universal mind recycling system as in reincarnation.
So... Yeah.
That was a scientific look at it though.

No. No, it was not.

The mind is not energy, it is information; there is as much of you stored in your neural architecture as there is in the precise states of your synapses. Information (in the thermodynamic sense) is what "cannot be created or destroyed", but it can be reorganized into something uninterpretable, which is very nearly the same thing. If I sorted all the data on your computer's hard drive so that there was a solid block of 1s followed by a solid block of 0s, it would be useless to you; the same is true of your mind, although the information is stored in more diverse ways. This is also the case if either were truly randomized.

There is no scientific guarantee of any sort of afterlife, except in the trivial and unsatisfying sense that the mass-energy now comprising your brain will persist. Your mind will not.

[wierd]

Dwarfy;

You are misidentifying the tongue firmly in cheek joke;

The apparent lack of my own divinity implies, through direct cognate, that it is NOT possible to become a god. (Otherwise, manyworlds asserts that I SHOULD be if it is at all possible, so either many worlds is NOT true (which does not seem to reconcile with some of the more interesting experiments in quantum physics)-- Or it is not possible to be a god.)

It is a good argument that a god does not exist, because it is not possible to become a god, because if it was, at least one universe would exist where I have become god, and could thus access all others.

[Egan_BW]

Assuming that you becoming a god gives you licence to fuck with the multiverse. It's possible for you to become a god with total control over your own universe, but no way to manipulate other universes.

[wierd]

Oh, but knowledge of other quantum instances implies observation, which implies decay of the quantum state.

[TD1]

I don't see how that contradicts itself. If you hold godhead in one universe, and can therefore see and know all others, then that godhead will see and know all other selves. But knowing does not mean being. If your clone achieved godhead, it would know and understand you, but you would not be a god. I suppose you could decide to incorporate all other incarnations of self into a greater whole, but you need not do so necessarily.

I sense I am missing something...?

Assuming that you becoming a god gives you licence to fuck with the multiverse. It's possible for you to become a god with total control over your own universe, but no way to manipulate other universes.

In infinite worlds, if at all possible, there will be a version that could do so if at all possible.

Oh, but knowledge of other quantum instances implies observation, which implies decay of the quantum state.

Let us not speak of that, for the sake of my sanity.