Whether you are a theist or atheist and firm in your believe or disbelief, or agnostic and unsure, would you like to know right now and definitively whether you will be conscious, in some form or fashion, after you die?
Since the ratio of eternity divided by the average mortal human lifespan is a rather big number (bigger even than Dolly Parton’s breast size, I’ve been told), the question of an afterlife is arguably the most significant question one may ponder. And yet, at least in my experience, it’s a question that, while perhaps contemplated occasionally in the inner recesses of our private thoughts, is rarely discussed with others.
A case may be made, I suppose, that theism = assumption of an afterlife and atheism = assumption of disbelief in an afterlife and therefore a discussion of religiosity is a discussion of afterlife. But, I don’t buy into the absolute correlation between religion and afterlife, so let’s treat them separately in this thread (e.g. it’s not difficult to imagine post mortal consciousness lurking undetected in some type of quantum mechanical lair without the need for God as a middleman).
And, let’s not get bogged down with the question of how anyone or anything can assure you absolutely that the answer they provide, vis-à-vis afterlife, is definitive and correct—just accept that it is so.
Therefore:
Question 1: Do you want to know?
Question 2: If you want to know, and with no additional information provided, besides “yes” or “no”, do you *want *the answer to be “yes”, or “no”? Why?
Yes, I would want to know. Even if it’s completely meaningless, and I can’t do anything about it, I’d like to know.
Like the punk in Dirty Harry. I gots to know.
Actually, the meta-knowledge here is vastly more interesting: I’m fascinated by what means of knowledge could possibly exist that would convince me! The Bible doesn’t cut the mustard: what real source of revelation could there be, saying, “Yes, there is a heaven for good people and a hell for bad people” that I could trust? Or, likewise, if the revelation were, “There is no afterlife; death is an eternal dreamless sleep,” what kind of assurances would accompany this declaration, so that I could know, truly and fully, that it was correct?
One possibility: if the gates of death were opened, and we could talk to dead people. No “psychic” crap, no “channeling,” but real shades, like Odysseus talking to Tiresias. If my dear old departed papa tells me, “Boy, the fires down here are awful hot,” I’d at least have some reason to believe it. If Preacher Bobby says so, I have no reason whatever to believe it (knowing Preacher Bobby, rather the reverse!)
I think it’s better if I don’t know. If I knew but I didn’t know any of the details, I would be mad about that. If I get to know, I also want to know if I should be reining in the hedonism a little or if I can just let it all loose.
Going by all the evidence the answer is overwhelmingly “No”. But naturally I’d be curious. Especially since the odds seem good that if there’s an afterlife, it would be a good idea to figure out how to prevent it; if our minds somehow survive after death they’d still have no means of perceiving anything or communicating, so the most plausible afterlife is an endless drifting in total isolation and sensory deprivation.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if there really is an afterlife . . . in fact a heaven . . . and only atheists are admitted. How would that change a lot of people’s avowed theism?
They’d deny it, no matter the evidence. That’s the essence of faith; believing what you have been taught or want to believe regardless of the evidence or lack thereof. It’s one of the things that amuses me about all the believers who claim to be following “God’s Will”; if there was a God and he started issuing commands most of them would ignore him in favor of their pre-existing dogma. Atheists would probably be more inclined than believers to actually listen to a god; out of curiosity if nothing else.
2: I’m not entirely sure, but I lean towards wanting the answer to be “yes”.
Why?
Well… I see it this way. If there IS an afterlife, odds are that it’s not gonna be anything like what anybody has ever said it was. Unless someone else got a
, which is blatantly unfair, and I want a do-over. Tell me too, don’t be a jerk about it after answering 1 and 2!
So, let’s start by playing the long odds, that it IS like someone else said it was, but you’re just not telling me. Let’s also assume that we don’t know who it was that had this information, so we just know that ONE ‘myth’ about the afterlife is the right one. What do you do? Study 'em all, ya don’t have to believe them. Just learn them, understand them, and figure out what you’d do in the case that each one is the correct one.
Praise JEHOVAH forever in Heaven? Ok, if you’ve ended up there you know what’s expected of you. Burn forever in the firey pits of Hell? Learn to have fun with it, I mean you’re gonna be there a while. Reincarnated as a frog or a dolphin or something? WEEEEEEE! Who cares if you’re caught by a heron or a fishing net, that’s just another step up the reincarnation ladder; have fun until then. Regardless of where you end up, ya know what to expect and have a plan ready to make it as good as it can be.
The better bet, however, is to change your life, and I don’t mean in some crazy spiritual way. We’ve already determined that NONE of the religions (that discuss an afterlife) are correct, and also that NONE of the religions that claim there is NOT an after life are correct. That leaves, what, two or three at best? I can’t really think of any at the moment, but somebody’s gotta fit that bill. Judaism doesn’t believe in one, right? Doesn’t right out say there isn’t either, as far as I know.
First off, stop worrying about… well, about pretty much anything in this life, with the exception being survival long enough to learn as much as you can ABOUT LEARNING AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. Learn how to observe the world around you in an impartial way, learn how to do basic science and how to reason logically about those observations. Learn how to use that knowledge to DO things: engineering, computer programming, medicine, etc. Don’t learn the specifics, exactly, concentrate on how these things came to be in the first place, how the concepts fit together and how they were discovered and invented.
This will give you the best chances to figure out what’s going on, once you reach ‘the other side’.
Now comes the fun part: you’re on the other side, start making use of what you learned. You’re in effectively a whole different universe than the one you were just in, in which there was assumed to not be an afterlife. Observe the new reality, learn how it works and how you can make the best use out of it, to make the best afterlife you can for yourself there.
The fun part of this is that you have one bit of knowledge in the second life that you didn’t in the first… that you’re effectively immortal and that you can retain your memories after ‘dying’. Now, you just gotta ‘live’ long enough in the afterlife to decide whether or not you like this new incarnation.
Don’t like it? Ok, fine. Off yourself. You’ll re-incarnate in the after-after-life, which may have still another set of rules. Don’t like that? BAM! Dead again, re-roll the dice, don’t stop until you ‘win’. This is called “Taking the Suicide Express!”
If ya do like it however… yer gonna have a big leg up on most everybody else there, in that you’re as prepared as it’s possible to be to pretty much do whatever you want!
The downside however would be if you turned out to be in a Matrix-style universe, which wouldn’t surprise me much now that I think about it. The difference would be that when you die in the Matrix, you just wake up in the ‘real’ world. Then of course, you could end up dying in the ‘real’ world once, and that’s the end of that. Which would suck.
Hmm. I may need to think about this some more…:smack:
This is brilliant. I was about to post that I’d rather not know, for the specific reason that I find it very hard to imagine that there is one, but the hope that there might be - a kind of atheist faith - brings me a psychological benefit.
And I think adopting your attitude is the best way to deal with either scenario.
Before asking about whether there is an afterlife or not, consider the reverse - where did your consciousness come from when you were born? Of course, that is just as unimaginable as an afterlife, but one has to feel that your consciousness (or soul or whatever you want to call it) had to have come from somewhere, even if there isn’t any evidence that it exists outside your brain.
I also wonder about this. It is the only thing that stops me from being a proper materialist/atheist. No one has ever given me a satisfactory answer to it. Stuff about it being an illusion is irrelevant - an illusion to what?
I can understand how free will may be an illusion. Consciousness - no. At least until someone explains it to me - and it’s one of the most important things in my life, this.
In fact, the way so many ignore this fact, I do wonder if some or maybe many - or even most* - people are not conscious in the way I am. I don’t see how otherwise they could ignore it so.
*I doubt most because of how popular religion is but that may not be a rational argument
What’s so puzzling about it? It “comes from” the same place your body did; it grew. Before you were born it just didn’t exist, and it’ll go out like a broken lightbulb when you die. It didn’t come from any “place”, and it’s not going to any place. Where does the picture in a painting go if you burn it?