Continuity between life and afterlife?

[Bigdaddydvo]

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No more sex? Why God, why?!

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Channel Whoopie Goldberg and all your problems are solved.

[madnak]

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And you wouldn't need sex if you were in a constant state of euphoria.

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Does not compute.

Bigdaddy - are we talking heaven or hell, here?

[ALawPoker]

I'm talking about neither. I was just sharing my "non religious" idea for some comforting possibility. Not sure what you're trying to say, or why you're hung up on an idea that is admittedly based on nothing other than the figments of my own imagination.

[PantsOnFire]

I'm in the "nothingness" camp. It's entirely possible that once it's over, it's over.

That gives me a great incentive to extend what I have now to as long as possible.

[Subfallen]

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I'm in the "nothingness" camp. It's entirely possible that once it's over, it's over.

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Yes, certainly, most on this board share this stance. No doubt.

But I was trying to hear more from people along the lines of ALawPoker:

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I sort of imagine our consciousnesses hovering in some dimension, and interacting with each other in some way that's impossible to understand.

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If "afterlife consciousness" is impossible to understand in terms of "life consciousness", wouldn't by definition there be absolutely no continuity between the two?

If there is continuity, it would have to be at least describable right now, yes?

[IronUnkind]

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Channel Whoopie Goldberg and all your problems are solved.

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Ditto

[PantsOnFire]

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I'm in the "nothingness" camp. It's entirely possible that once it's over, it's over.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, certainly, most on this board share this stance. No doubt.

But I was trying to hear more from people along the lines of ALawPoker:

[ QUOTE ]
I sort of imagine our consciousnesses hovering in some dimension, and interacting with each other in some way that's impossible to understand.

[/ QUOTE ]

If "afterlife consciousness" is impossible to understand in terms of "life consciousness", wouldn't by definition there be absolutely no continuity between the two?

If there is continuity, it would have to be at least describable right now, yes?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I guess I didn't help you out much.

The one thing I can say is that I am not sure we can be aware of ourselves without our memories.

If we passed on to another "afterlife conciousness" without our memories, I don't see how we could continue to be who we are today. As a matter of fact, if this were true, I don't even see the point of worrying about it.

However, this seems to be consistent with the belief that when we die, our bodies are simply carbon material that will blend into the earth.

So I suppose for those who believe in the afterlife or heaven or different planes of conciousness, one would need to retain their earthly memories to make than transformation relevent (to them). It would be pretty pointless meeting your dearly departed loved ones in heaven if you couldn't remember who they are.

[WhoIam]

I've always been fond of this quote from Heraclitus: "There await men after death such things as they neither expect nor have any conception of."

[CORed]

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What about the huge % of our consciousness that is composed of chemical affective states? Does it make sense to talk about emotional gratification without social conditioning and human context? Does it make sense to talk about "pleasure" without nerve endings and a functional cerebral cortex?

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This is why I think it is extremely unlikely that there is any sort of "afterlife". While it is impossible to prove that there isn't some part of us that survives the death of our bodies, an objective look at available evidence suggests to me that most likely our existence ends at death and all beliefs to the contrary constitute wishful thinking to avoid that unpleasant reality.

[luckyme]

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I've always been fond of this quote from Heraclitus: "There await men after death such things as they neither expect nor have any conception of."

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Did he mention how he knew that?

luckyme