I was solemnly pondering the ever-growing memorial thread. I realized that if there was such thing as an afterlife, and if there was any way at all for the dead to communicate with the living, a Doper would surely figure out how to do it.
Given that we have not heard from any of our departed comrades, I think that settles it. Case closed.
And of course, it doesn’t settle the idea that there may indeed may be an afterlife, but communicating with the formerlife is, for some magical reason, impossible.
As I see it, communication with the dead would cause many problems-not the least of which would be legal. Imagine all the wills that would be broken, for example!
There is no evidence for life after death - therefore there can be no proof.
And while that is sufficient for me to not be concerned with it - having no evidence for it does not prove that it isn’t there - it just becomes a matter of ‘faith’.
There probably is an “afterlife” in that, when you die, eventually you gain another self-aware consciousness somewhere in the universe, but obviously you don’t remember anything about your previous consciousness(es).
Which brings up all sorts of new questions, like, “Then why can’t someone have two consciousnesses at once?”, “Then why do we ‘remember’ our current consciousness?”, and, “What’s for dinner tonight?”
That isn’t an afterlife; that’s just a fancy way of saying that you’re dead. If that consciousness doesn’t have my memories then it isn’t me, any more than a bear is me if it eats me and digests my flesh making my atoms part of itself.
I realize this is meant as a joke, but seriously . . . would it? What would be the point? Nobody would believe you. What evidence could you provide that you were dead? You’d be mocked as a troll, pitted, and banned.
And to be both dead and banned would be . . . well, I don’t know. I’ve never been either.