For darn sure if there is some sort of life after death it doesn’t involve wandering around on this planet in human or ghostly form. Or else we’d be hip deep in the Dearly Departed. Perhaps humans “come back” as insects; there’s certainly enough of them that the incremental addition of former humans to their vast cohort would be negligible.
The tiny island of baseless hope the religious/spiritual folks like to stand on is getting very, very small.
When there is no evidence either way we aren’t discussing, we are guessing blindly.
I’ve always presumed the concept of an “everlasting heaven” would violate the law of conservation of energy, and one or more of the laws of thermodynamics, so I’m pretty confident that such a thing does not exist. However, this doesn’t discount the possibility of a finite number of reincarnations, of which there is no way to prove or disprove.
It all depends on how you draw the system boundaries.
That’s the role religion or spirituality has given itself. If it hadn’t, would it be necessary to invent it? I don’t think so.
As to “need”, atheism is now basically the norm in Western Europe and much of first world Asia. The atheists don’t appear to be sick or dying. Are you sure about that word “need”?
There are lots of activities that are not religion or spirituality that release endorphins. And a lot of those activities are done at church, but aren’t religion or spirituality - they are just human interaction. I’d need a comprehensive cite to convince me religion scratches any particular human itch that is unique to religion.
The constant updating and schisms of religion remind me of the Emo Philips bit*:
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” … … … (JOKE CONTINUES, see below)
I don’t know how to do the blurry spoiler thing so i edited this to remove the end of the joke because it’s better to watch Emo do it but it’s long, too long for 21st Century attention spans.
.
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*4:16. It’s a long joke but out of all the stand-up bits in the world this may be the closest to a consensus pick of funniest stand-up bit EVER.
Gods never did give nothing to the Humans that they didn’t, didn’t already have.
He is truly hilarious. I only discovered him recently and am in the happy position of not having seen all his stuff so I have it yet to enjoy.
But I slightly disagree about this joke - its funnier if you have a religious background in the type of groups that he is describing. I mean, I know why the punchline is funny and of course it’s somewhat of a commentary on human groups in general (“Judean People’s Front?!”) but I don’t have the personal experience with that sort of religious clique-yness to really guffaw.
I suppose that could be, but the payoff of this joke is the sudden injection of absolute absurdity. Almost anyone can dig on that, one significant exception being… really religious people?
Religion, by it’s very nature, is the quintessential naïve “set-up man” for absurdist humor.
Absurdist humor is at its funniest when it has that little nugget of truth in it, I think. And I suppose what I’m saying is that I’m not familiar enough with religious cliques to relate quite as well as someone who is.
The whole brain, and everything else in creation. This is panpsychism, which is a different paradigm from physicalism – but you are taking it as an axiom that physicalism is the only possible paradigm.
A number of serious academics today are advocating pansychism as an answer to the hard problem of consciousness.
No I’m not postulating that. A quick look at the Stanford dictionary of philosophy seems to indicate that it is the philosophy of the gaps - we don’t understand consciousness, so we’ll make something up.
Again, what predictions does it make? A physicalist model of the mind naturally predicts that modifications to the brain would cause changes in the mind - which is what we see. That we don’t understand this complex organ completely yet is not reason to reject physicalism, just as the lack of understanding of the cause of the Big Bang is not a reason to embrace creationism.
What Voyager said plus my eyes glazed over when I tried to read about panpsychism not least of all because (as with so much philosophy) its all “Smith postulates this” and “the Jonesian view is that” and nary a hard fact or reference to evidence to be seen.
I keep getting the impression that you’re simply ignoring the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
It won’t go away just because you pretend it doesn’t exist, or because you don’t understand what the problem is.
David Chalmers gives a simple account of the Hard Problem:
When a noted philosopher says “it is my feeling that…” it means they have nothing. It reminds me of a deist whose reason for believing that some sort of God (not the Western one) created the universe was that it felt good to him.
I’m not ignoring anything - I’m just saying we don’t have the answer, but that does not mean panpsychism is an answer. That kind of view I hear all the time from creationists - as I said before.
My border collie had a full view of the world integrating some of the things this guy seems to find difficult to understand. The dog could plan, the dog could even abstract - but the dog was not conscious.
My subconscious, without my being able to see the details, can write computer code, can solve plot problems in my fiction, and can do anagrams. There is nothing magical about it.
That some animals are either near conscious (though we can’t communicate with them well enough to prove it) makes me think that the gap between them and us is not all that large. Being a computer scientist I know even the most sophisticated AI cannot examine its own “thought” patterns the way we can examine ours. Is the establishment of this kind of feedback, or internal monitoring, the explanation? I don’t know.
What I do know is that some philosopher calling the problem “hard” means little or nothing. There were hard problems in natural philosophy which did not get solved until science began. You should read the atomists. Even when they were right (or had the right answer) they were wrong.
TLDR: I’m not impressed.
What Voyager said.
I’ve had far too many discussions with deists and UFO-ists and other purveyors of the paranormal that go like this:
“I have a belief in a [insert pet theory]”
“What is the evidence for that?”
“We don’t fully understand [something]”.
If you can’t see the massive gaping hole in that form of “reasoning” then there’s probably nothing that I can say to you further. And if you can, you will understand that I am more than a little cautious about bothering to put time into watching videos or reading long philosophical screeds without you providing some sort of very succinct summary of why “the problem of consciousness” is evidence for a theory about the nature of consciousness, let alone evidence for a “soul” as that term is defined by Christians.
Wow, talk about straw men! 
Who exactly has claimed that the ‘hard problem’ is evidence for anything whatsoever, never mind a soul as defined by Christians? Please tell me.
The ‘hard problem’ is a scientific problem that has not been solved, but puts some conventional understandings in doubt.
You obviously don’t even know who Prof. David Chalmers is. He’s a highly regarded academic who has had a major influence on the field.
He is a Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU’s Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness (along with Ned Block).[2][3]
In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.[4]
He is the cofounder of PhilPapers (a database of journal articles for professionals and students in philosophy) along with David Bourget.
Chalmers received his undergraduate degree in pure mathematics from the University of Adelaide in Australia[6] and continued his studies at the University of Oxford,[6] where he was a Rhodes Scholar.[7]
In 1993, Chalmers received his PhD in philosophy and cognitive science from Indiana University Bloomington under Douglas Hofstadter,[8] writing a doctoral thesis entitled Toward a Theory of Consciousness.[7]
He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program directed by Andy Clark at Washington University in St. Louis from 1993 to 1995.
His books have been published by Oxford University Press and MIT Press.
… and you’d rather spend 9 min building a straw man, then watch a 9 min video by him on a science channel?
As a scientist, you’re not afraid of new ideas are you?
I look forward to your substantial critique of the ‘hard problem’. Or at least an indication that you understand what the problem is.
Well now I am confused. I said in relation to your raising of panpsychism:
[emphasis added]
And you responded by saying there was a problem with our understanding of consciousness and put up a video. If you didn’t mean that to be a response to my complaint about lack of hard facts or evidence for the theory of panpsychism, I’m afraid I’m not about to accept responsibility for any misunderstanding.
What is the evidence for panpsychism? I’m not going to watch a video till you tell me that it provides evidence for that theory. All I have so far is you saying “there is a problem”. I’m happy to accept there is a problem. But problems don’t provide evidence for anything (they may provide evidence against).
And please, don’t bother with the arguments from authority, hmm?
Apparently.
The ‘hard problem’ puts into question physicalism, and indicates that it is not a comprehensive explanation.
It therefore points to some other understanding, which may possibly be panpsychism.
I mentioned Chalmers’ academic qualifications and reputation, because you apparently thought he was some random guy.
So you have no evidence. Gotcha.