The Afterlife: What You Want Versus What You Believe

Yeah, it's been talked about a couple of times in this thread.

The thread hasn't been active recently, though, so I don't remember how long ago it was that the subject was last discussed.

EDIT: I checked it just now, and it seems it actually hasn't been discussed, after all. I must've been thinking about another thread about this subject.

edited 19th Jan '14 1:28:35 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Is reproduction a thing post-resurrection? Because if no-one ever dies that's going to cause a problem in a finite area like Earth.

All the more reason for us to expand into space.

As for if it's possible it probably depends on what kind of resurrection it is. Are we talking undead that can still pass for human or people that woke up like nothing ever happened?

edited 19th Jan '14 1:53:22 PM by Kostya

The latter. Don't see why space travel or even teleportation can't be an option.

I'm honestly wondering why this sort of afterlife never came up until now. It's not exactly rare, as far as doctrines go.

edited 19th Jan '14 3:19:08 PM by Elfive

Maybe because out of all of them it seems like the weirdest. I know that's a strange thing to say but most others involve your soul(which we can't detect anyway) going somewhere else or into another body. You have the impression that it could be happening and we're just not aware of it. Resurrection implies that the body comes back to life like nothing ever happened despite all the decay that happens after death. So far it's never happened.

edited 19th Jan '14 2:55:16 PM by Kostya

I think resurrection (Christian varieties at least) involves the creation of a brand new body.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Well the old one is hardly going to be in decent shape, is it?

This feels like a huge red flag saying "examine this really, really closely and with a lot of skepticism to make sure it's not based in wishful thinking".

This thread is about expressing your beliefs and opinions, not proving anything to anybody. Lets stay away from that debate.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I wasn't trying to start a debate over anyone's particular beliefs. I was just pointing out that, quite generally, if what you believe to be true agrees with what you want to be true, then it's probably a good idea to put those beliefs under some extra scrutiny. Humans have a well-known tendency to subconsciously ignore or avoid evidence to the contrary when we want something to be true; if you care about whether your beliefs reflect reality, then it's a good idea to be aware of and take efforts to compensate for such cognitive biases.

I've recently been thinking that it'd be nice to get a choice as to what afterlife you go to. If you were to choose reincarnation your memories would be wiped for while you'r alive and restored when you're dead again. I think I'd keep choosing reincarnation until we figure a way to do it while retaining our memories (and restoring the old ones) ála The Culture.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

My objection to that system is that there will be people who will ask to be sent to Hell. They'll genuinely believe that they deserve it, and if what you ask is what you get, that's exactly what they'd have.

I'm talking about people with exceptionally low self esteem - very severe depression, or an intensely deep emotional investment in a religious doctrine that the person feels would condemn them based on their status or actions at the moment they died.

I posit that all of those people, if provided the tools and opportunity to think clearly about their belief and emotions, would probably (eventually) come to change their mind about the option they should choose; but if the choice that you first make is what you get, they would never have an opportunity to see - or even seek - a way out of their cage.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

You're right, but at the same time, there is nothing that says you can't be happy about what you believe in or that you have to have doubts about it. Not to mention that the inverse can also be true; that a person can not like or have doubts about what they believe in but believe in it anyway and their beliefs be false.

edited 20th Jan '14 4:50:50 PM by shiro_okami

Certainly. (Though, I think one should always maintain a little doubt about anything for which there isn't overwhelming evidence — perhaps "provisional acceptance" or "openness to further evidence" are better phrasings than "doubt".) My point is that, if you want something to be true, then there's a natural inclination to pay more attention to supporting evidence than to contrary evidence. If, on the other hand, you don't want something to be true, but believe it anyway because the balance of evidence is in its favor, then the same cognitive bias isn't present. (That's not to say other cognitive biases might not be, of course.)

edited 20th Jan '14 5:56:22 PM by Enthryn

Correction, one should always question something for which there isn't overwhelming evidence. You can question without doubting, and you can doubt without questioning. The two are not the same thing. The whole point of questioning is to make doubt unnecessary; either you eventually decide to believe something free of doubt or you reject it.

edited 20th Jan '14 6:04:28 PM by shiro_okami

I wouldn't say that. Believing in something isn't a binary matter. For example, I believe the universe is expanding, but not with absolute confidence; it just seems to be the most likely explanation for the observed evidence. Questioning is good, but often, the line of questioning leads to the conclusion that there's not enough data to decide with certainty — that some measure of doubt is justified, even if one possibility is substantially more likely.

Well, if we're talking about things that are far out of reach of scientific proof, certainty (in its typical sense) is absolutely impossible. What it boils down to is if you consider it possible for proof to be provided logically in ways other than empirical evidence; then you can gain a different kind of certainty. But yes, I suppose it is more likely for people to choose a middle ground and share a measure of belief with skepticism; it depends on what exactly the belief in question is and how a person reacts to it.

edited 20th Jan '14 8:05:46 PM by shiro_okami

Absolute certainty is never possible in science; strictly speaking, there's no such thing as "scientific proof", only scientific evidence. When it comes to determining how the universe works, I don't know of a reliable source of information other than empirical evidence.

But there are (scientific) facts. Proof that gravity exists is on a whole different level than proof of a particular afterlife, for example. When you can't prove what's possible, you consider what's probable, the oddity being that such a consideration is somewhat dependent on point of view, and can lead to radically different trains of thought for examining the unknown and logical conclusions that can contradict normal logic used to examine the known and knowable. Science and tested and thoroughly examined faith are simultaneously similar yet completely different processes that can both lead to conviction that one knows the truth.

edited 20th Jan '14 8:56:47 PM by shiro_okami

Many things can lead to the conviction that one is right. The question is, which of those can reliably distinguish between accurate beliefs and inaccurate beliefs? (Note: I'm not talking about normative beliefs here, only descriptive beliefs, since those are the ones for which it makes sense to talk about accuracy.)

By the way, I'm not sure what you mean by "tested and thoroughly examined faith". How does one test something that isn't based in evidence? (Or perhaps we're thinking of different meanings of the word "faith"?)

edited 20th Jan '14 9:23:07 PM by Enthryn

In the case of a global resurrection there's nothing that can be gleaned scientifically to prove it's going to happen. Under the laws of physics as we know them, it's impossible.

What you have instead is the assurance that at some point in the future some immensely powerful being is going to suspend that rule and raise a select few up again. So really it hinges on two questions: does a being capable of this really exist, and is it actually going to do this at some point? The first is potentially something one could learn for certain one way or the other, but the second is more akin to a promise. It's only "true" once it actually occurs.

“Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.” (Heb 11:1)

Notice the part that says "evident demonstration". True faith actually does examine evidence, the only difference being that said evidence may not always be falsifiable or may be falsifiable in ways completely alien to scientific falsifiability. For this definition, there is no such thing as "blind faith".

Another way to look at it is that faith is looking at the prior activity or more proveable aspects of something or someone and then using that to form an assurance about the future or something that isn't knowable. A person who has a reputation for being honest may be provoke people to have faith in him to give a truthful answer, even if that person can subvert those expectations at any moment. People have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, simply because the sun has done so for countless millenniums. People have faith that a sapling will grow into a tree or that a baby will grow to adulthood, simply because they have done so in the past. Scientists have faith that the laws of physics will continue to work in the exact same way tomorrow as they have for billions of years. The Cloud Cuckoolander may be crazy, but who will question him if he's always right? In the absolute sense, nobody really does know for a fact that these things will happen, because people can't tell the future.

edited 21st Jan '14 3:40:05 PM by shiro_okami

The constancy of the laws of physics is generally held to be a law of physics itself. We've tested it.