Life after death

[yukoncpa]

An older friend of mine, he’s about seventy years old, asked me my opinion on life after death. I didn’t want to bum the guy out on my true opinion, so I opined that perhaps the Christian or Jewish version of a God may indeed be the best bet for a life after death. My friend, wasn’t satisfied with my response and wanted to know why in the world I would embrace such belief systems when he knew I was agnostic.

Well, with all the weirdness that we see in physics, a God like being, may very well have created the universe, even if he was just some child in a higher dimension world. If such a being actually cared about his creations on some small spec of the universe, then those small spec creatures may actually luck out and live after death, thanks to a caring creator.

This was too much of a parlay for my friend to feel comfortable with, so he wanted to know if I had any other brilliant ideas. Here’s my only other best shot:

If backwards time travel were possible, then Mark Twain, a person I would like to visit, would be alive and well, but just in a different time. Much like the folks currently living in Miami Florida. How do I know any of them are really alive? Well , I could just hop on board an airplane and land In Miami and discern for myself that they are indeed alive. No different than hopping on board a time machine. All people are alive and well, it’s just a matter of location. Time is relative.

My question is this: even if backwards time travel were to prove physically impossible, does that negate the real relativity of time? Even if we can’t physically make the machinery to go back and visit these people, does that mean that they aren’t indeed alive as we speak, just in a location we can’t reach?

[JohnnyHumongous]

I wrestle with the finality of death all the time. I really believe that you just... "die", that's the end of you and everything you ever were. One thing I've been thinking of recently is that, what if at 5:30 you are drinking a glass of water, then all of a sudden as you pull the glass away from your lips you die. Exactly twenty years later you are reanimated in the exact same position, it is now 5:31 on your watch as you set the glass down on the table. This scenario is 100% indistinguishable in experience from if you had just sipped the water, pulled the glass from your lips and set it down on the table all on March 19 2006. Your period of "death" was complete, utter nothingness, a shorter period of time than a nanosecond to your sensory system. Somehow this is comforting to me.

Another thing I think about is that, there have been 105 billion humans alive at one time or another in history, according to scientific estimates. But this is a tiny speck compared to the incredibly massive number of various animals, all the way down to trilobytes and worms, that have lived and died on Earth in the last 300 million years. The "odds" say that we should have been a useless sea urchin, or a mosquito, living mindlessly for a brief moment in time and then expiring forever more. But we as humans defeated the odds (to the order of improbability of getting hit by lightning every day for 365 days straight) by being born intelligent. Rather than being 2 or 3 days long like a mosquito's (or most living creatures for that matter), or mindless and meaningless like a caribou's, our brief flash of existence allows us to contemplate incredible things; love, emotion, science, philosophy, the beginning and the end of time. We should have been so much less yet we lucked out and saw the wonders of the universe. In a sense, by being able to see the laws of physics, the beauty of art, the power of emotion... we as humans saw God in our existence, or whatever God is in this universe.

Anyways, the idea you're talking about with regards to existing always in time is straight out of "Slaughterhouse Five" (so it goes). Have you read this book? It offers a great take on the possibility of living forever in the fourth dimension. However, I do remember reading once when I was younger that, if time travel were possible, it would necessarily involve moving to a parallel universe (and never returning to your own universe). You would never be able to move through time in your own universe. I can't remember the reasoning behind it but I do remember that being the author's conclusion.

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
An older friend of mine, he’s about seventy years old, asked me my opinion on life after death. I didn’t want to bum the guy out on my true opinion, so I opined that perhaps the Christian or Jewish version of a God may indeed be the best bet for a life after death. My friend, wasn’t satisfied with my response and wanted to know why in the world I would embrace such belief systems when he knew I was agnostic.

Well, with all the weirdness that we see in physics, a God like being, may very well have created the universe, even if he was just some child in a higher dimension world. If such a being actually cared about his creations on some small spec of the universe, then those small spec creatures may actually luck out and live after death, thanks to a caring creator.

This was too much of a parlay for my friend to feel comfortable with, so he wanted to know if I had any other brilliant ideas. Here’s my only other best shot:

If backwards time travel were possible, then Mark Twain, a person I would like to visit, would be alive and well, but just in a different time. Much like the folks currently living in Miami Florida. How do I know any of them are really alive? Well , I could just hop on board an airplane and land In Miami and discern for myself that they are indeed alive. No different than hopping on board a time machine. All people are alive and well, it’s just a matter of location. Time is relative.

My question is this: even if backwards time travel were to prove physically impossible, does that negate the real relativity of time? Even if we can’t physically make the machinery to go back and visit these people, does that mean that they aren’t indeed alive as we speak, just in a location we can’t reach?

[/ QUOTE ]

You dont need your glass of water hypothetical to experience the discontinuity of time. Just have surgery or dental work and count backward to 97, and then regain consciousness. Without other clues (clocks, blood on the doctors clothes, etc) you have no idea whether you have been out for a millisecond or hours.

It is the complete absence of consciousness of anesthesia that convinced me that indeed we were nothing before we were born and will be nothing after we die, except a bunch of lifeless atoms that happened to have organized into a sentient being for a period of time, nothing more, nothing less.

For life after death to be meaningful to us in our current existence it would mean consciousness and memory of this life. When consciousness can be so thoroughly interrupted by introduction of a chemical, I cant believe it could survive the cessation of all chemical/electrical impulses in the brain.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
For life after death to be meaningful to us in our current existence it would mean consciousness and memory of this life.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why does life after death have to be meaningful to us in order to exist? Why do we need to retain memory of this life in order for life after death to be meaningful? Does reincarnation (with no transferred memories) make life meaningless?

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
For life after death to be meaningful to us in our current existence it would mean consciousness and memory of this life.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why does life after death have to be meaningful to us in order to exist? Why do we need to retain memory of this life in order for life after death to be meaningful? Does reincarnation (with no transferred memories) make life meaningless?

[/ QUOTE ]

You missed some key words in my post..."in our current existence".

If there is life after death (or there were past lives) but I cant remember this life (as I cant remember past lives) then it is meaningless to my current existence. If no memory of this life carries over to the next it has no more meaning to me than the life of a stranger in China today who I have never met, will never meet, and will have no impact on this life (unless you believe in the butterfly effect).

[Stu Pidasso]

[ QUOTE ]
we were nothing before we were born and will be nothing after we die, except a bunch of lifeless atoms that happened to have organized into a sentient being for a period of time

[/ QUOTE ]

If the Universe is such that it crunches and re-bangs for enternity perhaps those same atoms will once again organize themselves in a manner that makes you...you. Perhaps you will live an infinite number of lives.

Stu

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
we were nothing before we were born and will be nothing after we die, except a bunch of lifeless atoms that happened to have organized into a sentient being for a period of time

[/ QUOTE ]

If the Universe is such that it crunches and re-bangs for enternity perhaps those same atoms will once again organize themselves in a manner that makes you...you. Perhaps you will live an infinite number of lives.

Stu

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I may be identically cloned in an infinite universe with an infinite amount of time. Without the continuity of consciousness, though, it doesnt matter.

A clone of me isnt me, even though it is an exact replica genetically, because it doesnt have the same knowledge, experiences and memories that I have. Hell..it might even like fat chicks!

[yukoncpa]

[ QUOTE ]
However, I do remember reading once when I was younger that, if time travel were possible, it would necessarily involve moving to a parallel universe (and never returning to your own universe). You would never be able to move through time in your own universe. I can't remember the reasoning behind it but I do remember that being the author's conclusion.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think the reasoning goes something like this ( layman’s version ):

The many worlds interpretation of Everett/Wheeler, postulates that the universal state is a quantum superposition of several, possibly, infinitely many states, states of identical, parallel universes.

One possible way of transferring information to a different world, would be to go backwards in time. Time as we know it is linear, but if you were to travel back and kill your grandmother before you were born, you would necessarily be in a different universe, one where a time traveler met your grandmother, but you were never born. In another universe entirely, you were indeed born, you grew up and traveled back in time and killed a woman.

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, I do remember reading once when I was younger that, if time travel were possible, it would necessarily involve moving to a parallel universe (and never returning to your own universe). You would never be able to move through time in your own universe. I can't remember the reasoning behind it but I do remember that being the author's conclusion.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think the reasoning goes something like this ( layman’s version ):

The many worlds interpretation of Everett/Wheeler, postulates that the universal state is a quantum superposition of several, possibly, infinitely many states, states of identical, parallel universes.

One possible way of transferring information to a different world, would be to go backwards in time. Time as we know it is linear, but if you were to travel back and kill your grandmother before you were born, you would necessarily be in a different universe, one where a time traveler met your grandmother, but you were never born. In another universe entirely, you were indeed born, you grew up and traveled back in time and killed a woman.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would argue that isnt really "time travel" per se. In laymans terms at least "time travel" implies that you exist at two different times in whatever universe your in. If not you are "universe traveling" not "time traveling"

[A_C_Slater]

"It is the complete absence of consciousness of anesthesia that convinced me that indeed we were nothing before we were born and will be nothing after we die, except a bunch of lifeless atoms that happened to have organized into a sentient being for a period of time, nothing more, nothing less.

For life after death to be meaningful to us in our current existence it would mean consciousness and memory of this life. When consciousness can be so thoroughly interrupted by introduction of a chemical, I cant believe it could survive the cessation of all chemical/electrical impulses in the brain."


This is a nice and logical train of thought. But it could be possible that you were conscious when you were under (dreaming) and you simply lose the memory of it upon awakening. Perhaps death could be the same. Totally independent of life yet still having "something" there.