The thought “I didn’t exist before I was born, and I will not exist after I die” is an actual comforting thought to me. I used to feel edgy about my own mortality too. What a tragedy not to see what happens after I die. What exciting things will I miss? What is being dead like?
Then I thought, being dead is like being before I was born. Nothing scary. I just thought about history, and how I wasn’t there for most of it. Was that such a tragedy? No.
So, having a concept of what it was like before my earliest memories, my state after I die has a certain familiarity that comforts me when I ponder my mortality.
What does “reincarnation” even mean? That is to say, what does it matter if I was a dog or a tree or Benjamin Franklin in a past life if I don’t retain any knowledge or memories from that past life?
It doesn’t. You didn’t exists before you were born and you don’t exist after in any sense other than people’s memories.
I thought that this existence was supposed to be some kind of computer simulation. If so, then the entities that run it can copy/paste me into a different being.
Yes, but this is begging the question. If “you” can be cut and pasted into a different being, how exactly is that different being still “you”? What makes you you? And if you weren’t you, how would you still be you?
I get it, if there were such a thing as a soul (which there isn’t), and that soul is attached to your body, then we could identify “you” as the soul and not the body. But why would we do that? Supposed we could track souls, and we see one attached to your body. Then you die, and the soul float around for some time, and then attaches to some other life form, like a frog or a gestating baby. But that life form has no memories or personality in common with the being consisting of the body and soul that used to make up “you”.
So how and why do we say that the soul is you? Isn’t the soul more like some weird parasite that attaches itself to random bodies for a while, and when the body dies it goes off to find some new host?
The existence of souls doesn’t make the problem of your identity any easier. I mean, sure, if your soul contained your memories and thoughts and personality, then that would be one thing. But if it doesn’t, then how is “your soul” the same thing as “you”?
Of course, this is all made much easier if we simply ask for some evidence that an entity worth calling a “soul” exists, and since we lack any such evidence we don’t have much call to speculate about the properties of a phenomenon that we haven’t established to exist yet. “What color is the turtle the world is resting on?” is a silly question when we haven’t even established that the world is resting on the back of a turtle yet. And also we have some pretty good evidence that there is no such turtle, when we go underneath the planet to look for it we don’t see it, so at the very least if it has a color that color is “invisible”.
Yeah, I was just using the term “unconscious” because it seemed easier.
What I really meant was that if they did not reincarnate, then that means that “they” would be somehow just floating around as a non-existent being in nothingness forever, but that doesn’t make sense to me, since “forever” would literally be “forever”, but not just forever as in a short term period, but literally until a giant green universe snake comes in and revives you or something. I mean that MUST happen, or in my head it has a very large chance of happening, because how could it not? So I think I was saying that umm as soon as the “universe death cycling machine” has made sure you ARE dead, then it will instantly reincarnate you as something else at a random chance. Since there are more non-human entities than human entities, there is more likely chance for you to reincarnate as a non-human.
Then I was also saying that I thought it would be very unlikely for this process to NOT exist, because then I wouldn’t be a human, you see? I wouldn’t be one, because I would have a higher chance of being a non-human because there are infinitely more non-humans in probably five seconds of typing than this then there ever will be humans. The chance of being born as a human is so absurdly unlikely out of all the things that I could have been born as.
Now with reincarnation as “A THING”, then you would keep dying as nonhumans and cycling over and over again until you must eventually hit a human, right? But if reincarnation was NOT a thing, then that means you would be a bacteria and die, perhaps from some soap someone put on their hands or the infinite amount of other stuff they die to, since hardly any bacteria actually die from people at all. But then because the universe death machine would have marked me as “meh, he’s already gotten dead” basically a really powerful DNR order, then I wouldn’t have been born as a human again…
Well to be honest those were just two different thoughts that I had. I mean, both were sort of an afterlife, except the reincarnation thing was sort of only a hybrid afterlife since it’s not really you, even thought it’s your singular consciousness.
IMO, if the aliens had a computer powerful and eldritch enough to simulate our entire universe, then… they probably know things that we couldn’t physically even dream about…
Well, I am just saying, that, either way, there, must be some sort of afterlife, whether it’s a magic green turtle reviving you a trillion big rips and big bangs away, or whether it’s a continuous cycle of spawning and death.
The fundamental disagreement in this thread appears to be between your idea of ‘you’ as an entity which exists prior to, and after, the biological vehicle it inhabits (e.g. a human) - and the other view that ‘you’ are a product of your biological vehicle.
I actually agree with the OP, I think. In that the line “After death will be just like before I was born, i.e. nothingness” doesn’t really work if you take it seriously.
You can just turn it around, and say the last time I was in the state of not existing I then transitioned to the state of existing…why couldn’t it happen again? And you also have issues with using lack of memories as proof of something.
This is not to say I believe in reincarnation, obviously. There are lots of reasons to assume that the end of your body is the end of your POV, your consciousness. Just that this one doesn’t really work IMO.
You have two pieces of wood and a couple of nails. You use the nails to fasten the pieces of wood into a cross shape. Now there is a cross. You take out the nails and separate the pieces of wood. Now there is no cross. The end.
its not different. if you believe in reincarnation then you reap the karma you have sewn (good or bad). if you do not believe, then you pass the benefits of your life (good or bad) to the future.
