in the likely event that there isn’t an afterlife, you’ll never know, because the part of you that holds knowledge and understanding ceases to exist.
If there is an afterlife:
a) You can only be truly dead to know it exists.
b) Assuming you can come back from the afterlife, as in NDEs, there’s no way to scientifically determine if any claims of visions of the afterlife are either a process of your brain shutting down in the final moments, or indeed real accounts.
From here, all you can do is jump to your own likely conclusion or brand of philosophy.
First, if you’ve ever seen a corpse then yes, you’ve met someone who has died. Claiming otherwise is using your own conclusion as an argument in support of itself; that there is something left besides that dead body.
And there’s plenty of evidence that there’s nothing after death; we know enough of the mind to see that it’s generated by the brain, and that with death the brain decays away. You are basically trying to argue that we don’t have any evidence that a broken light bulb has stopped producing light.
The human brain has about 100 billion neruons and 100 trillion synaptic connections. And what makes us who we are is entirely contained in thosse connections? That kind of makes us sound like little mroe than highly evolved machines.
It’s not an assumption. It’s a declaration based on our knowledge of how things work. The theists declaration isn’t and shouldn’t be considered seriously.
Should we do that for everything? We don’t really know if a tree makes a sound when it falls if no one is in earshot? We don’t know if our cars disappear in the garage when we’re not there? We don’t need to have absolute knowledge before we make reasonable assertions about the world around us. We know enough about the brain and the absence of evidence of the ability to live without one that there is nothing wrong with concluding we cease to exist when our brains stop functioning.
Sure you can, and it is totally reasonable to do so.
It didn’t make sense to me because I knew that there was something more than this life. As I said, I have no empirical evidence for this, and it’s entirely possible that there is something in my brain chemistry that causes me to believe, but I do believe, and even though I accept all current scientific knowledge about brain function and decay of the physical body after death, and have spent over 10 years on this message board listening to people who don’t believe, I have never stopped believing.
So whether someone says to me, “Once you’re dead, that’s it” (as my parents did) or “Nobody really knows what happens after death,” my mind (or maybe just my brain chemistry) is not going to change. As others have pointed out in this thread, there really is no way to present proof that this is all there is. But I figure we’ll all find out soon enough.
Certainly not. There is evidence to support the hypothesis that consciousness ceases upon brain death. I find the evidence personally compelling. But it is still factually correct to say “no one knows for sure.” At the end of the day “what happens after we die” is an untestable question. We can make all sorts of inferences based on questions that actually are testable, and get to a conclusion that seems the most likely. But “really knowing?” Nope.
I just think calling it “politically correct bullshit” is mischaracterizing it, that’s all.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Saying that seeing a corpse is the same thing as meeting someone who has died is using your own conclusion as an argument in support of itself; that there is nothing left besides that dead body.
It’s factually correct to say that about everything. We don’t know anything for sure. But the only time people bring up the “no one knows for sure” argument is when discussing propositions that are bat shit crazy. I wonder why that is.
“What’s for dinner?” “Nobody knows for sure.”
“Is it raining?” “Nobody knows for sure.”
"Is the Easter Bunny real? “Nobody knows for sure.”
“What time is it?” “Nobody knows for sure.”
Why is it we only apply this “absolute certainty” crap to the supernatural?
The problem I have with saying definitively what happens to consciousness after death is that I’m not too clear on what consciousness is before death. How can I say what I will experience when I die when there is no I to experience it?
Sure, but then the issue is what it means to “know something for sure.” My standard is generally what is testable, verifiable, and replicable. I know with a high degree of certainty that gravity works predictably. My certainty is sufficiently high that I “know it for sure.” I do not know with any degree of certainty how the universe came into being.
I’m pretty damn sure the mind is a construct of the brain and the “I” ceases to exist at death. I have a pretty high degree of certainty. But as it is a question neither testable, verifiable, nor replicable, I am not confident to say I know it “for sure.”
However, all that is neither here nor there. Saying “nobody really knows what happens after death” might conflict with your beliefs–and your degree of personal certainty–but it is neither politically correct nor bullshit.
I don’t think we only apply it to the supernatural. Would it be fair to say that nobody knows for sure how the universe began? Or how the Higgs field goes tachyonic? Or whether tachyons even exist?
I would say that consciousness is pretty surely formed by the brain. We can alter consciousness by altering the brain either by chemicals or damage. If we had a soul that controlled us, why would we become different people (in sometimes very specific ways) from damage to the brain?
For instance, brain damage can alter memories, or make you into a liar, or reduce intelligence, or make you unable to read faces.
There would be no reason, if consciousness existed outside the brain in a soul, for these things to happen. Since our consciousness can be pecked away at by minor damage. And greater damage can lose us more and more functionality, I fail to see why someone would assume that as our brain rots the consciousness would shift from horribly damaged to perfectly fine and ready for heaven.
If you’re a computer, the running copy of Windows is your consciousness. If pull the plug is the copy of Windows still running? If I smash the computer is it still there?
Of course we don’t know for sure what happens. But there is no reason whatsoever to assume that at death your consciousness suddenly hops out of your brain (when in life brain damage would have damaged the consciousness).
Maybe because real life isn’t a strawman? Or, IOW, we don’t. What is dark matter? What is dark energy? Are there parallel universes? What happened at the exact moment of the Big Bang? Did anything come before the Big Bang? Is there such a thing as a Higgs Boson? What’s the ultimate question to the ultimate answer (42) of life, the universe and everything?
If you answered anything except ‘I don’t know’ to any of these non-supernatural questions (well, leaving aside the last one :p) you are either delusional or you should be applying for a Nobel Prize.
Uhuh…but our knowledge is incomplete, so saying ‘I don’t know’ is accurate, while stating that you DO know, when in fact you don’t, is an assumption of knowledge. Unless you do know, of course, in which case feel free to demonstrate. Please show your work.
How would I know, if I am. How would this “golden child” know, for that matter, that his claims are indeed part of some deeper reality or afterlife. Furthermore, how could he convince any rational thinker he’s right, and it’s not just utter BS?
I detect the sarcasm, I’m just not sure what you’re poking at?
Is there any evidence to suggest that these things are worth considering, or are they just concepts that scientists pulled out of their asses to provide a feeling of comfort? Unlike Life after Death, I suspect the former, not the latter.