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Afterlife

01:11 / 09.01.02

I’ve been trying to think of the afterlife with a different angle recently.

I want to strictly obey the principle that any difference theoretically impossible to detect is no difference at all. That is, if I were to say that some universe exists which has exactly no interaction with our universe, then that would be the same as saying it doesn’t exist. The seeming difference is just a trick of the language. It is, and it isn’t mean the same.

But I’m not entirely clear about how this would apply to afterlives, supposing our souls transcend this world and reach the next. It would seem that an experiment to test this is not only simple, but also unavoidable, as we all must die. But I think that we can actually disqualify this experiment like this: since it requires death, it isn’t an experiment that can be conducted by the living, and thus, the difference between the afterlife being and it not being is not established.

Now there may still be a difference if communication from the afterlife is possible. If, however, such communication is impossible, then there is no difference at all.

Thoughts?

21:39 / 09.01.02

Buk's 'Pure Reason' thread begins with the statement "I had to abolish knowledge to make room for faith," from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I understand that you are seeking to work from within Western constructs of rationality, but maybe they're the problem?

Communication from the dead is notoriously difficult to prove under Western strictures for evidence, but maybe we could hold a barbelith seance?

21:49 / 09.01.02

THis is my approach to most matters of religion and faith, actually. Something that has no tangible impact on the world that is discernable cannot be assumed to exist - particularly as there are endless alternatives which ALSO have no impact on the world - like the possibility that the afterlife if any is populated by superannuated deviant badgers.

The Planet of Sound

11:14 / 10.01.02

Good name for a band.

14:41 / 10.01.02

"Something that has no tangible impact on the world that is discernable cannot be assumed to exist"

I would say it differently, and claim that it can always be assumed to exist if you like. Who's to say that a world without the badger universe is simpler than the world with the badger universe. Everything we think about in this world has abstract extensions that don't observably manifest themselves. I think it really does give me more freedom of thought to use these abstract extensions

15:05 / 10.01.02

Hmmm. Er. I think maybe the words "assumed to exist" are the problem here. But essentially if something has no impact whatsoever on your existence and there is no way of proving (or for that matter disproving) its existence, then it's discardable in all ethical and philosophical terms. Using something as a thought experiment seems to me to be a completely different enterprise.

Take 'god' for example. It's a ridiculous idea. god. But that doesn't mean it's not based in reality. But when we're told that god has given us free will to make our own choices and errors, and that our deeds don't matter in life as long as we believe in 'him', and that - in fact - the only way we'll know if there is a god is when we die... well then if he will not interfere in everyday life, if he will not demonstrate himself to us, if we have no evidence that he's in fact EVER done anything (except the rantings of some middle eastern herb enthusiasts) then it seems that it makes absolutely no difference whether he exists or not for anyone actually alive. It only makes a difference in the unknowable 'after'life. And there are a vast array of conflicting positions about what happens then. So working on the principle that we can have no knowledge of an afterlife, no experience of god, and that there are an infinity of alternative explanations that we ALSO can have no knowledge of or experience of, then it's illogical to give the 'god' one standing above the all-creating cow god that spat the world out and will great us all in milky heaven. And since at least one of these theories is utterly ridiculous (and both are equally plausible), then we have to agree that there is in fact no logical reason whatsoever for believing in any presented vision of divinity...

In brief - if we posit something that has no tangible effect on the world, then it exists in the infinite class of 'things that we COULD posit which have no tangible effect on the world' and without any evidence to the contrary (of which there cannot be any without tangible effect) then all must remain equally plausible (and equally implausible) alternatives. Which means that if we operate as if any were true we are not acting in a rational fashion.

15:53 / 10.01.02

As a simpler approach, after reviewing all the evidence, I found that not a shread of it can stand up to rational scientific scruitny. Even at the best, we can't seem to prove anything of the spiritual level beyond subjectivity. Rather distressing. You would think after this many centuries, someone would have managed to demonstrate a repeatable spiritual manifestation that stands up to the press.

So in light of all that, it comes down to faith. Basicly, one must decide if there is anything to all this or not. Is it all a mass delusion, or is there something to it all. I decided to place my chips on there being something there.

Why? Well, if there is no afterlife, it doesn't really matter, now does it? But if there is, and my believing in it makes it more likely to work, then its worth the gamble to me.

17:42 / 10.01.02

Why? Well, if there is no afterlife, it doesn't really matter, now does it? But if there is, and my believing in it makes it more likely to work, then its worth the gamble to me.

It does matter if you base parts of your life around it in the here and now. Nietszhe described Christianity as a slave morality, because it meant that people could lead subservient, oppressed lives and quietly await their rewards in heaven for doing so. There are very few concepts of the afterlife where just believing in its existence counts for much - most require some kind of earthly committment. And in the absence of evidence I have to decide that I must base my ethical system, my morality on something ELSE - something I've found and uncovered, rather than something fed to me.

It seems to me that most religious practice has at its heart attempts at social engineering of one kind or another - that they are rules that help societies (at certain times in their development) function effectively. This is not a criticism - science is continually proven to be innaccurate or to provide an incomplete picture, but we still base much of our lives on its statements...

18:00 / 10.01.02

Assuming that my choice of faith in an afterlife of some sort means I'm a slave to Christian Dogma (or any sort) is rather a leap here, Tom. Though I fully agree with you on your points there about it. However, my ethics are not based on a pavlovian reward system requiring servitide to any organization. Sadly, the idea of having spirituality without a social organization to perpetuate and benefit it is not a commonly understood one.

My take on it is to just do your best to live well, enjoy life, and help make the world a better place to play in. That's my ethics. The option of an afterlife of some sort is a bonus, if only for it placating my fear of death. This belief does not require any dogma or change in behavior, though it can benefit from your generous contribution.

If you'd like to learn more about the Interdimentional Church of CUSM and how you too can enjoy the bliss of eternal existance, send your donations to the following address to receive your new guidebook to life so you don't have to make any decisions for yourself...

My, what pathetic creatures we are sometimes.

19:34 / 10.01.02

quote:Originally posted by cusm:
Assuming that my choice of faith in an afterlife of some sort means I'm a slave to Christian Dogma (or any sort) is rather a leap here, Tom. Though I fully agree with you on your points there about it. However, my ethics are not based on a pavlovian reward system requiring servitide to any organization. Sadly, the idea of having spirituality without a social organization to perpetuate and benefit it is not a commonly understood one.

Although it is becoming more prevalent as a result of more experiencial based forms of spirituality.

One no longer needs to receive one's beliefs from a political religious entity.

Through personal experience one can develop their own form of 'religion' or even verify aspects of existing ones.

And while I agree that, from a scientific paradigm, none of this can be proven through rational methods it is a way that the individual can, to paraphrase Tom, base one's ethical system, one's morality on something ELSE - something one has found and uncovered, rather than something fed to one.

From a Chaos magic paradigm of only using what 'works', the individual should only be using something (i.e., believing in that afterlife or that god) if it is 'tangibly effecting' their lives in some way.

09:19 / 11.01.02

I know there was an Inquisition, I know there is a Phred Phelps in Kansas, and I know about the crusades and the general messiness of church politics. I certainly know about the all 'round misogyny of The Church in the West. . . . HOWEVER

I'm pretty sure that religious institutions and those who attend them are being rather unfairly stereotyped as simple-minded, irrational, slavering puppyfolk in this thread. Read someone like Paul Tillich, for instance. (Even C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man is quite interesting--especially read alongside Foucault, I think.) I also enjoy the writings of liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. There's much more going on in those minds than in most of what passes for individualistic "spirituality" these days.

And I'm not convinced that something isn't lost, a capacity for a further unusual development, when a huge area of human tradition, thought, energy and ritual is written off as half-witted superstition. And with the loss of spiritual community--however irritating it can certainly be. But then, what group of people doesn't share virtually all the follies one can point at in the church, to one degree or another?

Every "new" sect begins by pointing their fingers at how those old fogies got it wrong. Then they repeat the errors of said fogies, in their "new & improved" context, partly because they (mostly) refuse to read their predecessors--or they read them completely without sympathy, respect for the possibility that there just might be an engaging mind at work in the morass.

Many people have theorized a Christian-god concept that is far more complex than the summary of Nietzsche's thought--and folks like Tillich cited Nietzsche favorably. But those folks (i.e., Tillich et al) of course typically reject anything like a straightforward "pearly gates and gold streets" vision of the afterlife, or any number of the bible's more flamboyant metaphors.

(it's too bad, btw, that the bible became THE BIBLE, I think.)

(re-reading this, I think I sound downright crotchety. I might be, in fact, crotchety, but it's at life--not at the folks in this thread, just so you know . . .)

09:19 / 11.01.02

There's much more going on in those minds than in most of what passes for individualistic "spirituality" these days.

I completely agree with you. My above example was just an extreme example of the spiritual opposite of the stereotype and one that applied a similar process to the one Tom mentioned.

(re-reading this, I think I sound downright crotchety. I might be, in fact, crotchety, but it's at life--not at the folks in this thread, just so you know . . .)

Well... as long as you don't start sounding like: "Back in my day we had Angels, demons, and Catechism and we liked it just FINE! None of this high fallutin' Post-Modern theorizing in coffee shops. Heck, back when I was a kid coffee shops were places you could get flapjacks in."

09:19 / 11.01.02

It isn’t a good idea to believe in something just because you might go to hell otherwise. Firstly, depending on what you mean by ‘believe,’ this could be just about impossible. What’s worse, though, is that you might be basing every moral action on a false reality. Thus, there’s no guarantee that anything you do might not be horribly evil. But even if it isn’t, you’re certainly more likely to make mistakes in moral action.

Tom, you said something about living your life differently according to the idea that some afterlife exists. By the principle I was talking about in my first post, there isn’t any difference between the world with the afterlife and the world without. So how you live your life shouldn’t change from one to the next. So it would seem sensible just to operate without thinking of this seemingly useless concept. I’m just not completely convinced that this is the simplest or most useful route.

Take, for instance, the soul. I say that I believe in the soul, basically because I want to be able to talk about it. Questions of what is healthy for the soul, and what is not healthy for the soul, to me, seem very relevant. This, to me, has all kinds of real implications that you can experience in real life. Of course there’s some other way of asking it, but why go to all the trouble of tip toeing around the word ‘soul’? In doing this, though, I am assigning it a physical manifestation. It isn’t any longer a meaningless concept, but I assign it physical manifestations I know to be true, so it gradually becomes a useful concept. I do this simply as an organizational tool for my own mind.

Something I see as the same thing is the concept of a field (as in field theory). A field in empty space is still said to be there, but there needs to be a physical manifestation by way of an interaction with matter. After this, we can define the field more specifically. But, in classical physics, most of space is occupied by fields that have no physical manifestation whatever.

09:19 / 11.01.02

please tell me I didn't use the term "whipper snappers" in my earlier posting.

09:19 / 11.01.02

um, I just did a search on the page, alas, and, well, you didn't use the term 'whipper snappers' in an earlier posting. You should, though. I like it.

22:30 / 17.01.02

Sorry, I almost let this go as it's a bit OT... but I had to say something

"But, in classical physics, most of space is occupied by fields that have no physical manifestation whatever. "

What fields would these be? The only fields we know of are ones that we can test for. Hence they have physical manifestations. Others may be there that we can only theorise about but we'll probably advance a bit and discover them eventually. (we are pretty young as species go...)

Sleeper

00:43 / 18.01.02

I find it useful to base my life choices based on the adherence to laws and ethics SUPPOSEDLY dictated by a scientifcally-unprovable, judgemental Palestinian-based entity, whose seige warfare w/ rebellious, disgruntled employees, determine the destination of my immotral conscience

04:35 / 18.01.02

sharkgrin. I understand what you're saying, but that wasn't my meaning. I never meant to imply that what one might call unprovable or unfalsifiable could remain such and still be considered useful. Instead, as I said, you have to assign meaning to it in the space we currently occupy (the space of your life).

As to the fields question: most of space in classical physics is empty. Or, at least, theory allows for there to be such thing as empty space. But put a large planet next to that empty space, and we have a field in that space. But the statement "the gravitational field occupies otherwise empty space" by itself is just as unfalsifiable as anything you can think of. Once you do anything to test it, you've changed the fact that it's empty, and thus ruined your experiment. But because we assign meaning to this field that actually applies to things physical, we can then say the statement is true. It would be possible to describe these fields in different ways and still get the same experimental predictions.

And that's important for the analogy to work. You can't use this technique for anything more than an organizational tool. Which means completely overhauling the basis of your morals is unjustified unless they were already flawed to begin with, and your old system just made it too difficult to see this.

(This thread has gone quite differently than I had expected. That's probably a good thing, but I feel like mentioning it.)

Morlock - groupie for hire

12:13 / 18.01.02

I think an important distinction must be made between belief and justification. To believe something in itself does not affect reality, and as SMS said can be a useful organisational tool, a way of filtering the vast complexity of life down to a level where we can begin to understand it. Only when we act based on this filtered data are there real effects from our choice of belief. And the only justification for our actions is our belief, which as suggested by the principle in the first post might as well not exist at all.

And even atheism is a for of belief.

There are advantages to established, large scale faiths in that they are more likely to be workable and coherent, and at least you can check your reasoning with others when faced with new problems to solve. But I don't think the advantages outweigh the risks. It's too easy to let others do your thinking for you, to say it must be true because thousands of people can't be wrong.

So I say choose your own. Or choose someone else's, if you like the look of it. You can't prove it's right or wrong, that's the difference between faith and knowledge. But if you choose an existing structure, make danm sure you understand what you're choosing. Especially if it involves badgers. Then at least the mistakes will be your own.

(Reading back along the thread, I get the feeling I'm going over old ground. In which case, apologies, I'm not too alert today.)

13:20 / 18.01.02

As long as you choose it, you're not being a sheep. As long as you retain the ability to revise it later as your needs change, you're not a frothing fanatic. Doesn't that about cover it?

Morlock - groupie for hire

14:39 / 18.01.02

Erm, yeah. Except for a bit of quibbling about when to change your belief. 'I need to' is one instance, 'I ought to' another.

05:46 / 19.01.02

Smatt,
I apologize for using cynical, ironic bile to address the topic:
I have a personal axe to grind with the God of the Covenant's marketing rep's.
My new patrons has never asked me to repress/condemn/judge/alienate any one/who/thing to pay for timeshares in their cosmic get-a-way.
(Just DO IT .... OR GO TO HELL!!!)
Lothar's value-added goal on the current time/space continuum just put an itch in my cosmic pocket. Damn chos magicians keep pulling me back in.
<Prevents employees from selling their retirement shares in the God of the Covenant, while selling off his own for enlightment and a f_ _ ki'n Big Mac>

00:44 / 20.01.02

No problem at all, Sharkgrin. I'd rather you give your thoughts sarcastically than not at all. I hope I didn't come across as one of God's marketing representatives. That wasn't at all my intent.

15:01 / 20.01.02

Heh. This thread reminded me of something one of Carl Sagan's books, A Demon Haunted World:

quote: In theological discussion with religious leaders, I often ask what their response would be if a central tenet of their faith were disproved by science. When I put this question to the current, Fourteenth, Dalai Lama, he unhesitatingly replied as no conservative or fundamentalist religious leader do: In such a case, he said, Tibetan Buddhism would have to change.

Even, I asked, if it's a really central tenet like (I searched for an example) reincarnation?

Even then he answered.

However-- he added with a twinkle-- it's going to be hard to disprove reincarnation.

23:19 / 20.01.02

Making a stance does indeed make it easier to identify specific questions or problems when dealing with faith/god/afterlife issues. After all, it would be quite hard to have a discussion about afterlife,etc. if someone say never had contact with faith/religion/after-death practices and concepts. What could they draw from, beyond their own actual experiences?

I mean, Roman Catholic was how I was initially raised, and from that, I was given fuel to question and explore other possibilities. I see the beauty of taking this discussion in your "own" hands and developing it how you like.

quote:In such a case, he said, Tibetan Buddhism would have to change.

Kudos...someone not afraid to embrace one of life's truths...things change as does your understanding. Have the balls to update your narratives. Chances are we don't "know" anything...