Is It Possible There Is An Afterlife?

[Oppressed]

I am writing this to challenge James Randi’s solid belief that there is no afterlife. At least, I read an article that indicated to me he believes that there is no afterlife.

I believe it is possible there can be an afterlife. I don’t know whether or not there is, but it could be possible and I will explain why.

To explain why I start first with looking at the future of Humanity with the following assumption, that Humanity does not kill itself off or become extinct due to some other reason before achieving mastery over Molecular Engineering.

As the Human Race masters molecular engineering, our society will change so drastically it is really impossible to say exactly what it will be like. However, there are a few things that are certain.

1. Some, if not all, Humans will become virtually Immortal, able to live open ended life spans which last for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or more years. The greatest cause of death will be suicide due to boredom and depression.
2. Virtual realities will be available where the connection to the user will be so complete that the user can become completely submersed in the identity of the character they are playing. The sensory input would be so detailed as to be undistinguishable from real life. The mind of the player while in the Virtual Reality would be so immersed as to fully believe and know only what the character being played is supposed to. Thus while living the mortal life, the Virtual Immortal will not know they are actually a Virtual Immortal. That would become a very important part of the Mortal lives lived.
3. The importance of such Virtual Realities will be tremendous, because they will help keep the Virtual Immortals from becoming bored, depressed and committing suicide. These Virtual Realities will also become very important because they will be able to teach moral concepts that Mortals learn but Immortals would have a very hard time learning. This would lead to the full Mortal Life Virtual Realities.

In effect, what this means is that, assuming the Human Race does not become extinct, we will become a race of virtually Immortal beings who repeatedly live Mortal Lives as a vitally important requirement to their mental health and ability to continue living an open ended life span.

Now, time is very long.

Who says this has not already occurred.

If it has already occurred, then we may be virtually immortal beings who are living multiple mortal lives and our current mortal life is but one of many we have lived.

 

[wollery]

It's possible, but can you suggest a way we might test this idea?

But I think more important questions would be, why are the things you suggest certain, and why would virtually immortal beings have difficulty learning moral concepts?

Also, what does this have to do with the afterlife?

 

[ChristineR]

Of course this is possible. But this is not consistent with most concepts of afterlife, God, and the immortal soul of course.

But the more important question is this: if your supposition is true what should we do about it? How does it affect our lives? How shall we change our behavior?

So far as I know, there is no evidence that would indicate that we are playing in a virtual reality game. For example, the game never breaks down and our "real" mother never tells us to quit playing and go to bed. Different games never get mixed up. So the first problem is that we have no basis to believe, as there is no evidence.

The next question is how we should change our lives. If this life is in fact a preparation for a different life, and that different life is wholly unknowable, what strategy should we adopt? Any time spent speculating on this is time not spent making our virtual lives better. Since we have no input from the "real" world, how can we make decisions to interact with it?

The conclusion is that there is no reason to adopt a belief without evidence, and no reason to act on a belief without benefit.

This sort of idea occurs frequently in literature and philosophy, and other than being mildly entertaining, it hasn't produced much.

 

[slingblade]

I am writing this to challenge James Randi’s solid belief that there is no afterlife. At least, I read an article that indicated to me he believes that there is no afterlife.

Have you written to Mr. Randi? Because to challenge his belief, you ought to be talking to him, oughtn't you? Why are you asking us about his beliefs?

We need to start with this, before we cover any of the rest of that post.

 

[Yiab]

For me, before you can begin talking about an afterlife you have to answer the relevant question of personal identity:
In any "next life", in what sense is it me?

In the traditional Christian afterlife the question is easily answered: it's "me" by virtue of remembering my life.

Reincarnation has more of a problem dealing with this since the only thing giving continuity between lives is your "soul" (for lack of a better word), so in order to discuss identity between you and other potential "yous" in virtual worlds you'd need to demonstrate some sort of soul present in you and them and demonstrate continuity of soul between them.

Your suggestion, however, seems to basically boil down to identifying a long-lived person with the characters they portray in a variety of consecutive virtual realities. To me this sounds like saying if I play Diablo 2 and then World of Warcraft that World of Warcraft is the "afterlife" of the character in Diablo 2.

I hope my absurd example demonstrates the problems I see in your suggestion and how your example says nothing about a life after the one we're currently living.

 

[Beleth]

Who says this has not already occurred.

Heck, I will.
I say that time has not yet been long enough for humans to have developed the science necessary to do this.

Prove me wrong.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Who says this has not already occurred.

...snip...

The actual question is "What evidence is there that this has already occurred?"

 

[Darat]

Heck, I will.
I say that time has not yet been long enough for humans to have developed the science necessary to do this.

...snip...

Don't need to - my nephew's future daughter's daughter's niece's daughter's daughter is going to invent a time machine and bring the technology back. Must go and put the kettle on so I can have a nice cup of tea ready for her.

 

[Oppressed]

One of the points behind such a possibility would be that the Mortals would not be able to know for sure or be able to prove anything about the Immortals existence or what the Immortals society and motives where. This is because the Immortals would not want it and they would be in control of what the Mortals could know. There would be an effective shroud placed between the world of the Mortals and the world of the Immortals.

If some breach of knowledge did happen, steps could be taken to prevent it from becoming provable or to discredit it. If necessary, memories could be altered to remove forbidden knowledge.

This then could explain how some supernatural existence could exist and yet we are unable to prove it.

As for what moral concepts would be harder for Immortals to develop and/or keep that would be easier for Mortals to develop and/or keep, I am speaking about the fundamental difference between Mortals and Immortals.

Mortals must face grim life situations that Immortals would never face. There are things Mortals must work hard to accomplish that Immortals would not have to perform any work at all to achieve. For example, Mortals can risk or jeopardize their lives in order to help another.

As far as the afterlife, that should be obvious. If something like what I suggest has already occurred, then we could be living one of many Mortals lives that our Immortal selves are experiencing. This does in fact have possible correlation to a number of religions.

Begin with the realization that extremely advanced technology would appear to be magic, supernatural power or Devine Godly power to those so technologically primitive they can not comprehend the how that technology works.

Many religions hold that people have “Immortal Souls”. By definition, an Immortal Soul will not die and thus will live/exist for a very long time. To think that an Immortal Soul would live a single life span of 100 years or less and then live for all eternity in Heaven never doing anything else is just silly. If we do have “Immortal Souls” then those souls will live more than one mortal life. If an Immortal Soul lives more than one mortal life, then the number of lives it will lead will be quite numerous and probability is, our current mortal lives are not the first mortal lives our Immortal Souls have lived.

Some religions recognize this and thus speak about reincarnation.

 

[Jimbo07]

Re-watched The Matrix again lately, have we?

 

[calebprime]

I am writing this to challenge James Randi’s solid belief that there is no afterlife. At least, I read an article that indicated to me he believes that there is no afterlife.

I believe it is possible there can be an afterlife. I don’t know whether or not there is, but it could be possible and I will explain why.

To explain why I start first with looking at the future of Humanity with the following assumption, that Humanity does not kill itself off or become extinct due to some other reason before achieving mastery over Molecular Engineering.

As the Human Race masters molecular engineering, our society will change so drastically it is really impossible to say exactly what it will be like. However, there are a few things that are certain.

1. Some, if not all, Humans will become virtually Immortal, able to live open ended life spans which last for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or more years. The greatest cause of death will be suicide due to boredom and depression.
2. Virtual realities will be available where the connection to the user will be so complete that the user can become completely submersed in the identity of the character they are playing. The sensory input would be so detailed as to be undistinguishable from real life. The mind of the player while in the Virtual Reality would be so immersed as to fully believe and know only what the character being played is supposed to. Thus while living the mortal life, the Virtual Immortal will not know they are actually a Virtual Immortal. That would become a very important part of the Mortal lives lived.
3. The importance of such Virtual Realities will be tremendous, because they will help keep the Virtual Immortals from becoming bored, depressed and committing suicide. These Virtual Realities will also become very important because they will be able to teach moral concepts that Mortals learn but Immortals would have a very hard time learning. This would lead to the full Mortal Life Virtual Realities.

In effect, what this means is that, assuming the Human Race does not become extinct, we will become a race of virtually Immortal beings who repeatedly live Mortal Lives as a vitally important requirement to their mental health and ability to continue living an open ended life span.

Now, time is very long.

Who says this has not already occurred.

If it has already occurred, then we may be virtually immortal beings who are living multiple mortal lives and our current mortal life is but one of many we have lived.

This post mushes together several separate ideas, as does your next one.

1) time travel
2) medical technology
3) religious notions of the soul and afterlife
4) insight to be gained from thinking about our lives in a different way.
5) the JREF challenge
6) Randi's beliefs
7) this forum

These are all separate things, and should be thought of separately.

For instance, it's possible to be inspired by the idea that--in some poetic sense--time is unlimited. By fixing our attention on eternal truths, by contemplating wonderful things, we can feel as if we live outside of time.

Then, separately, there's the usual Christian notion of an afterlife. As another poster said, what part of you would remain? Without your physical brain, you would have no memory, and no continuity of identity.

Then, there are far-fetched time-travel scenarios. Not worth thinking about.

Your notion that some people might already be immortal seems not worthy of serious consideration either, unless you have some evidence. This would be the most earth-shaking news of all time.

When a poster combines ideas willy-nilly like this, people here begin to wonder about the motives and mental-health of the poster. Is he/she a troll (just making stuff up to annoy), or quite young, or delusional?

Oh, and if we're living in The Matrix, all bets are off, unless someone's got the pill of a certain color, yes?

 

[Beleth]

One of the points behind such a possibility would be that the Mortals would not be able to know for sure or be able to prove anything about the Immortals existence or what the Immortals society and motives where.

If there is no way to collect data about it, there is no reason to hypothesize about it.

 

[brodski]

Don't need to - my nephew's future daughter's daughter's niece's daughter's daughter is going to invent a time machine and bring the technology back. Must go and put the kettle on so I can have a nice cup of tea ready for her.

don't bother yourself yet, just wait untill she's back here, they borrow her nachien to go back in time to just before she gets here, and then put the kettle on.

 

[andyandy]

Heck, I will.
I say that time has not yet been long enough for humans to have developed the science necessary to do this.

Prove me wrong.

assumptions;

1) human civilisiation will progess to the technological level sufficient to completely generating a virtual reality world

2) if capable of doing so then we will.

3) If we do, then we will generate countless virtual worlds for reasearch and for pleasure.

If you accept assumptions (1) (2) and (3) then the overwhelming statistical likelyhood is that our world as we experience it is virtual - for there is but one "real" world and innumerable virtual ones.

actually, this is a form of Nick Bostrom's computer simulation argument - the paper is http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea. The rest of this paper will spell it out more carefully.

 

[wollery]

Is still want to know what the basis is for stating that it is certain that we will achieve immortality through medical science.

 

[Davo]

Don't need to - my nephew's future daughter's daughter's niece's daughter's daughter is going to invent a time machine and bring the technology back. Must go and put the kettle on so I can have a nice cup of tea ready for her.

Time machines will never exist. If they did someone would have already come back from the Future to tell us about such technology (unless they didn`t want to...)

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

How would the Immortals know that they weren't themselves some higher Immortal being's Virtual Reality simulation?

Whoa...

[puff]

[puff]

[pass]

 

[Loss Leader]

If it has already occurred, then we may be virtually immortal beings who are living multiple mortal lives and our current mortal life is but one of many we have lived.

Oppressed - this is a very intelligent assessment and a fine first post.

Your ideas really are new and inventive. They opened my eyes to a whole series of possibilities that I had not considered.

Thank you for your contribution. I look forward to learning more from you in the future.

I have recently learned from an acquaintance with a firm grasp of psychology that some people actually thrive on opposition. The more they are told they are wrong, the more they enjoy it. I am experimenting with identifying these people and lavishing them with praise. If it works, the agreement should be just like starvation and they will soon look elsewhere for conflict.

I can't bring myself to try it with Yrreg.

 

[fromdownunder]

Oppressed - this is a very intelligent assessment and a fine first post.

Your ideas really are new and inventive. They opened my eyes to a whole series of possibilities that I had not considered.

Thank you for your contribution. I look forward to learning more from you in the future.

Must resist responding, must resist... I can't, the force is too strong:

You mean in a future life don't you?

I'll stick with solipsism. It makes more sense to I.

Norm

 

[The Atheist]

I believe it is possible there can be an afterlife. I don’t know whether or not there is, but it could be possible and I will explain why.

Why are you oppressed?

And who oppresses you?