quote:

That is correct in principle. Most atheists I know, however, then by necessity concoct the notion that life then had to come about through purely impersonal natural causes.

Quite likely. But that doesn't make atheism a religion. Near as I can tell, the inference that way is simply that there isn't evidence of it being inconsistent with that - not because anybody decided ahead of time to assume it.

I could say that all that is comes from a Clifford Algebra protospace and that this protospace as a whole is conscious due to Simplex Physics connections. Would that be an atheist or theist idea? I could also say that it makes no sense to talk about what came before this protospace.

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/simph.html

quote:

“How did we get here?”

“Why are we here?”

“What happens to us when we die?”

Religion exists to answer (or attempt to answer) those three questions.

Donald, you keep asserting that atheists try to answer such questions. I'm pretty sure "why are we here" is a meaningless question. I KNOW what happens to us when we die--dead is dead, and the body generally decomposes. As for "how did we get here"--that's a question which may or may not be meaningful, depending on what you mean by it.

And I agree with bluelamp that it's not meaningful to talk about what happened before time existed; by definition, that's a meaningless question too. There's no "before." Time came into existence with the rest of the universe.

Jeff

Jeff,

I posed those questions and not Donald.

Here is my take on your post:

"Since I have no basis to answer the three question (how, why, what will?) I therefore will consider them meaningless."

Okay, you say

"I KNOW wht happens to us when we die ..."

Tell me how you know. I also KNOW what happens to the body. What I do not know is what happens to the information stored in my brain. If you do, please share.

Regards,

Apologies for the Donald reference, Glenn.

quote:

Tell me how you know.

How do we know anything? We observe and we think and we experiment. You apparently think there's a separation between your knowledge and your body. There's no reason to think that. You don't wonder about what happens to the knowledge of a mouse when you kill it, or a chicken, or your dog's knowledge. Why think we're any different? Dead is dead. No reason to think otherwise that I'm aware of, despite the lust to believe in survival of brain/personality/knowledge in some form.

Now, I'm not talking metaphorically. If you want to say we live in the memories of those who knew us or in their hearts and minds or in our children who incorporate our values, that's a fine way to look at things and I won't quarrel with it. But the actual knowledge in our heads? When the brain dies, that dies.

Isn't it obvious, really?

Jeff

quote:

Originally posted by CompGuy:
Apologies for the Donald reference, Glenn.

quote:

Tell me how you know.

How do we know anything? We observe and we think and we experiment. You apparently think there's a separation between your knowledge and your body. There's no reason to think that. You don't wonder about what happens to the knowledge of a mouse when you kill it, or a chicken, or your dog's knowledge. Why think we're any different? Dead is dead. No reason to think otherwise that I'm aware of, despite the lust to believe in survival of brain/personality/knowledge in some form.

Jeff, even if you want to think of it in a total amnesia-like way, one could still have scenarios where your worldline ended up in another brain thus you live again just as someone else. Actually I think that's what happens. One may get to be an angel-like being who could know some things about past lives but you as an angel would still be a different personality compared to your past lives. Some people can have a rather huge change in personality and/or amnesia just in a single human life.

-- John G.

quote:

one could still have scenarios where your worldline ended up in another brain thus you live again just as someone else.

Sorry, but that simply makes no sense, to me anyway. How is it "I" who lives again if "I" am someone else with someone else's memories and DNA and parents and schooling and experiences?

I used to think about the transporter in Star Trek. You know how it works--you step into it, you vaporize, and at some other location you're put back together again by a similar machine. (Unless of course something goes wrong and part of Captain Kirk gets split off into Good Captain Kirk and Evil Captain Kirk. Or a fly gets into the transporter and you become Vincent Price plus fly or fly plus Vincent. But I'm digressing. help me! help me! Squish.)

Getting back to the point--the put-together-after-transport me may look like me and sound like me and have all my memories and talents and quirks--but I always thought it would not be me. It would just be a copy, probably a good copy. But the real me? The real me was vaporized in the transporter and died. Dead is dead. I'm not getting into one of those things.



Jeff

Jeff, you said,

quote:

Isn't it obvious, really?

Depends on how you look at it. The human brain is the most complex information-handling device we know of in the universe. I had a rich belly laugh at an article in Time Magazine recently where some nit wit said the brain would shortly be reverse engineered. The next week, by the way, an IBM engineer pretty much refuted that statement. The brain can indeed, like a computer, add, store and retrieve information, make decisions and branch from one task to another. But just how would you go about programming a computer to fall in love or have an orgasm?

So based on what we know NOW, all information in the brain dies at death (or in some cases before.) The only way anyone can live on is in the memories of others. Yet, there is much about the brain we know little or nothing about. In fact, what we know about the brain is appalling little. (Another good article in Time explored what pain is all about.) So I am back to what we know today compared to what, say, my great grandfather knew. (My great grandfather was Dr. David Perkins the first superintendent of public schools in Des Moines, Iowa.) He was a well-educated man who didn’t have the foggiest idea of how the sun burned or what lay on the other side of the moon. So what my children and their children will find out remains to be seen. There may be ways of transferring information in and out of the brain we have no idea about.

In the meantime, the question of what happens to us when we die remains a matter of opinion and speculation.

     On the lighter side, our cerebral content is ordinarily so outdated by the time we die there is
no point in keeping it. Better have fresh new replacement units who can read about us in the history
books, if they should get the urge.
Seán

quote:

So based on what we know NOW, all information in the brain dies at death (or in some cases before.)

So we agree. Isn't the most we can hope for anything we say is that it's based on what we know now? We know a lot more now than we did thousands of years ago when the various writings we call the Bible were written. It's those who hold on to what was thought THEN but what is known to be false NOW who bother me.

quote:

the question of what happens to us when we die remains a matter of opinion and speculation

Only to a very, very minor degree. If the brain is dead, we are dead. Dead is dead. A rational person has to go by the weight of the evidence and what we collectively know now. And that weight of the evidence says dead is dead. Our brain stops functioning and we're dead. "We" no longer exist. Our body decays and rots...like most dead things. It really is as simple as that.

Jeff

     From all we know NOW, a person's only useful function is to transmit and thus perpetuate an individual
version of human DNA. All enterprise beyond that fact is ephemeral and vain; dispute this if you can.
Seán

What's wrong with ephemeral and vain? And why think that reproducing human DNA is useful in itself?

The cockroaches were here long before we were and will be here long after we're gone, most likely...

Jeff

Jeff,
     I have no quarrel at all with ephemeral and vain. Awareness of them is an antidote for the megalomania that is so distressing to mature observers. The usefulness in transmitting DNA lies in the faint hope that some day we may evolve into something meaningful, whereas an interruption of the process can only cause extinction.
     Do not denigrate the roach. Prize him rather, as a backup source of DNA, in case our efforts fail.
Seán

Don't forget that a chicken is an egg's way of reproducing itself....

Jeff

quote:

Originally posted by CompGuy:
Sorry, but that simply makes no sense, to me anyway. How is it "I" who lives again if "I" am someone else with someone else's memories and DNA and parents and schooling and experiences?

I used to think about the transporter in Star Trek. You know how it works--you step into it, you vaporize, and at some other location you're put back together again by a similar machine.

Jeff, the Star Trek transporter is a good thing to bring up since I agree with the way you describe it. The problem with the transporter is that you can't convert particle worldlines into something else and then hope to get back the particle worldines you had before. What you really need would be transporters with "wormhole" technology.

You may not like the idea of your brain's worldline ending up in another brain; like I said it would be like total amnesia and a total personality change in a single human life. Do you regret now that you are totally different than when you were two months old? Do you regret now that you may have been another person in a previous life?

I guess I agree with you in some sense that dead is dead, but not in the self awareness sense; just in the personality/memory sense. Even if some form of retrieval of past lives is possible, I agree you would still be a quite different entity from your past lives.

-- John G.

John, my point is that the "reconstituted" me may have all of my memories and talents and skills, but it is not ME. MY consciousness ended when I was vaporized. But the reconstituted me doesn't know that--the memories are continuous as far as that copy is concerned.

For all practical purposes, then, it doesn't matter to the universe that "I" have died in that scenario and a copy continues on. But it would matter to me.

I wonder about sleep in the same way. Is the "I" who awakens after a deep sleep the same "I" that went to sleep? How would the current "I" distinguish between being a copy and the original? I don't have an answer to these imponderables. I think it's a meaningful question, but I'm not sure about that either. All comes down to what is consciousness--and I have no idea what that is. If I can't think of a test to separate such a copy from an original, does it really matter whether I'm the original or the copy? Typical black box question, after all....

Jeff

     Consciousness is an individual's awareness of his own memories, emotions, sensations and environment. These fluctuate, like currents in a stream, but the flow is fairly constant. However, if you sleep and wake to find you have a different awareness, you may want to mourn a bit for you'll be someone else.
Seán.

quote:

Don't forget that a chicken is an egg's way of reproducing itself....

Jeff

I think there's a yolk in there!

quote:

I think there's a yolk in there!

Or a way to get egg on one's face!

You are referring, I presume, to the yolk of superstition?

quote:

Originally posted by CompGuy:
John, my point is that the "reconstituted" me may have all of my memories and talents and skills, but it is not ME. MY consciousness ended when I was vaporized... I wonder about sleep in the same way. Is the "I" who awakens after a deep sleep the same "I" that went to sleep?... All comes down to what is consciousness...

Jeff, I totally agree it wouldn't be you in any sense even the self aware sense. For the self aware sense, you would need the actual self aware worldline of your current consciousness to continue.

Say some brain particle worldline is the real you, say an electron though I would think since we are self aware of much more than a single particle's worth of information, it would have to be a bunch of electrons acting as one worldline (a superposition of some sort).

Since string theory worldlines can split (and merge), after death you likely get some splitting (in the many-worlds sense even a single particle can split into many paths) since the "bunch of particles" worldline splits into individual ones. You though would only be concerned with the path that is you (there are many "yous" but you only know one of them).

Thus if this worldline path electron ends up again in a brain it would be actually you in the self aware sense though with no memories/personality of the previous brain. It would though be your actual self-awareness since it is the same particle worldline.

The problem with the transporter is that it is creating new particles with the information of the old ones when it actually needs the actual original conscious worldline particles. Your arms, etc. could be new particles but the conscious ones in your brain have to be the originals.

-- John G.

    If, while dancing naked in a sunny park, one's toe stubs on a sprinkler-head, self-awareness suddenly excludes all other interests and makes the prospect of a acquiring a new identity attractive.
Seán

That sounds like something that could happen to somebody what doesn't toe the line.