I think the actual probabilities are such that even the entire lifetime of the universe doesn’t leave enough time for such one-in-a-googleplex-type probabilities. In any case, you would then be talking about the existence of someone else who had ‘your’ memories: that is still another entity in a different temporal location to the 2005 Straight Doper.
I will not and cannot possibly experience my own death. I am eternal. I agree with Sam Stone on this one. Oblivion cannot be experienced. If it cannot be experienced then it does not exist.
Conciousness does not suddenly happen. It grows, fluctuates, then it wanes to nothing. A new born baby has less conciousness than a 1 year old, but has more than a feteus, which has next to nothing.
Not sure about free will, but the more I read on the subject, the more it seems like an illusion. But thats another story.
** Aeschines**, You wouldn’t be related to Archimedes Plutonium by any chance, would you?
That’s just mean, bizzwire.
Aeschines clearly stated that the premise of the OP is:
You will not be saved by the Holy Ghost.
You will not be saved by the god Plutonium.
In fact…
YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED!!!
I third this.
I still think the boundary is troublesome. It troubles me, anyway. It’s easier to put to rest in your mind if you envision slowly losing consciousness. But what if you die suddenly? Is a moment that isn’t followed by another the same as all the others?
When I had the flu I told myself - this will pass, and in a few days I’ll feel better. But what if I’d died? Would if the flu have never passed? I couldn’t have passed into “oblivion” as you agree. I wouldn’t wake up crying, I’m pretty sure. So from my perspective would I have had the flu forever?
If time only exists to the extent that our consciousness is able to perceive it isn’t it problematic to say that we just “end?” We can’t end from our own perspective.
No, you’d have stopped having the flu. You’d stop having anything.
Only from your perspective. I’d never experience a flu-less moment again.
You’d also never experience a flu-filled moment again. You wouldn’t experience anything again.
Again, only from your perspective do I cease to experience. From my perspective I only have one last flu-filled moment. No end. No oblivion. These just don’t exist in my timeline. So, I think it’s flu without end.
I get it, I just think this is an odd way of expressing it.
Anybody that talks with me about this think’s I’m a nut. I’ll stipulate that.
But as far as I can tell the OPs absolutely right to say there’s a problem with the way atheists talk/think about death. There’s a big problem. It’s just incorrect to say that your consciousness “ends.” That’s only true if you’re magically stepping outside your own consciousness and into somebody else’s. From your perspective it can’t end because the ending can’t be experienced.
So what happens? Maybe time ends for you? What’s that like? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s as problematic as talking about the end of the universe (ok maybe not that problematic, but it’s pretty tricky).
Oh good, another poster turning atheists into a homogenous group… anyway, this is not even close to what Aeschines says atheists are saying. He says they think consciousness continues after death, it just doesn’t go anywhere, not that it ends. Which is mind-bogglingly wrong. I’m guessing Aeschines doesn’t know any atheists, and I’m still kind of shocked he assumed we’re all so dumb.
We’re slicing a distinction very thin here. Your has to end because the brain it exists in is no longer working. You would not be aware of that, sure. I guess I’d be okay with this if I was hearing “from your own limited perspective, your consciousness is eternal” instead of “consciousness is eternal.”
Yes, this is what I meant. Marley23 makes no sense in his response to what you say here.
I am an atheist, so I feel myself at liberty to lump us in a homogenous group 
Especially when I get to be the exception.
Um, I don’t agree with the conclusion **Aeschines ** draws but I agree with the initial problem. I think that most atheists are unintentionally implying consciousness after death just by phrases like “it doesn’t matter, you’re dead.” There’s a paradox contained in that statement and he’s hit upon it.
But when we’re talking about what happens when you die isn’t that all we can talk about?
Although I’m open to the logic of the main post leading to additional questions and answers, I’m not trying to be overly mystical. I mean simply this: One’s consciousness is, within the whole of space-time, limited to that portion of space-time which one actually occupies.
You can’t face your un-being or oblivion. You don’t experience it. It is neither a burden nor a blessing.
Further, the passage of time does not erase one’s being within the space-time which one occupied. I existed as a 12-year-old in 1983, and that fact and what I experienced then is not blotted out by my eventual death; it is eternal.
Hence, when you die, you still remain whatever you were. You “wake up crying” almost in a literal sense, since as a newborn you woke up to being in the world outside your mother; you were thrust into your zone of space-time (albeit not so consciously as you would be at later times). This winking in to space-time mirrors the winking-out.
But you also “wake up” to being a kid on Christmas day; to being a teenager; to having kids of your own. There you are, with only that strange stack of memories (reflecting the past but not the future) to tell you which way time’s arrow is pointed.
Atheists are no more enlightened than “believers” when it comes to figuring out the nature of time. Nor are they necessarily more enlightened in how comprehend death. Those who have believed in the afterlife have never had much of a problem (whether they were factually right or wrong) with this whole thing, as they simply imagined a continuation. Atheists accepted the challenge of facing the end of one’s days. Their so facing it may be virtuous, but their individual approaches are still open to criticism, minutes as what I have to offer here may be.
Would you like to try saying what doesn’t make sense? I had to try making sense of your posts, so it only seems fair.
If I’m reading you correctly, this is obvious. Being something (or not being anything) doesn’t change what you were. Who said it did? I’m alive right now and I’m not whatever I was in the past. That’s why it’s the past; I’m not it and I’m not there anymore. I’m not experiencing it now. If you’re saying, in a roundabout way, that the past doesn’t cease to exist because we die, I’m not sure what to say other than “duh.” At times it’s sounded like you’re saying our consciousness continues to occupy the past, or goes somewhere else, after we die. That’s what sounded more than a little like attempted mysticism.
Of course. This doesn’t sound at all like your OP, though.
What? You’d have to give the sentence in context to show this paradox, but I’m not seeing it. If there is a paradox, you said it’s an unintentional implication - as opposed to something anybody actually believes, which Aeschines says they do. As far as I can tell, “It doesn’t matter, you’re dead” means “you’re not aware of anything after you’re dead, so it doesn’t matter to you.” Not “you’re dead and are worrying about other stuff.” It’s intentionally dismissive, and reading such implications into it is a waste of time. Especially if you know it’s not what the statement means in the first place.
You did it again, see? It’s hard to avoid.
There is no you “not to be aware.” And there is no you to whom things won’t matter.
There IS, however, a you in the space-time in which you occupied. Who is not, in that time, dead.
If we’re being this broad in our interpretation of the phrase “you wake up as”, could it not be said that you wake up as someone else, or as an animal, or as a disparate cloud of supernova remnants?
This is like saying that a donut partially submerged in coffee is, by virtue of its roundness, completely submerged in coffee. I’m having trouble taking this seriously anymore.
Truly, we don’t know what happens after death. There is no more evidence to say that our consciousness ends than to say that we go live in a big gold house in the sky with free donuts or that we reincarnate as duck-billed platypuses.
The thing we do know for certain is that no novel information is received from either entities who are not yet or are no longer physically alive. Receiving information from an entity is the strongest indication we have that it exists, with the possible exception of IRS records. So this strongly suggests that consciousness is bounded by the time immediately surrounding birth and death.
And yes, atheists do have a more valid viewpoint of whatever the “afterlife” may be, because we do not claim to know things about a time or place from which no information has ever returned (unless you intend to bring divine prophecy into it, which would thankfully carry this silliness into the non-falsifiable realm where it belongs).