The Afterlife: What You Want Versus What You Believe

Well... I personally believe that if there is a god (or perhaps more than one, but for simplicity's sake I shall assume one), such a god does in fact work on some form of scientific principles that theoretically could be understood—and must be, in some manner, for the god to function—but that we either would not understand now or could not practically understand. I.e. god is not supernatural only by virtue of our position.

Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, in other words.

Under that theory, if there is some form of afterlife, it would also work on some form of scientific principles. Just... scientific principles we haven't discovered and don't understand. After all, science is merely the understanding of the world as we know it, and is under constant revision. It's not implausible to suggest there are things beyond our understanding that are still theoretically understandable...

@L Mage: That presumes the existence of God, and a highly specific God that notices and cares about human existence. Why should our lives have any universal, absolute meaning? Our lives are meaningful to us, and that's what matters; who cares if it's all meaningless on some grand, cosmic scale?

Like I said, though, God is a bit of a Voodoo Shark (actually, so is every explanation science has come up with as well, but to a much smaller degree); where did a being that powerful and complex come from? How do we know which conceptions of a God or gods are the most correct ones? How do we know that there's only one? Divine uniqueness is a huge question that doesn't get asked enough; it would be more plausible to assume that there were a great many beings like the Abrahamic God in some far-off plane, than to limit the cosmology to only one, since we would need to explain why the process that led to its existence never repeated itself again. That's not to mention the fact that the existence of the Abrahamic God is a complex element conceived of as a whole, incomprehensible being, with no explanation, rhyme, or reason for being, rather than a directly observable process of nature, which we can prove to exist, as far as one can prove anything.

Even though I don't think there's conclusive proof for or against God's existence, I would be critical of any belief system that professes to know what happens after one dies, since there is zero evidence to support any claims made. That's why, the more complicated an afterlife gets, the less likely it is to be the right one, since they tend to extrapolate from unknown factors too much for me to trust in their validity.

edited 11th Dec '11 10:50:12 PM by tropetown

I suppose it dose. But really, it's hard to deny the existance of some higher power that constructed this uniserve and did so on a corner stone of clear princables and ideas, maybe not a God per say but....-something-.

That having been said: if we are logical beings, and from our known perview (which I accept might change over time) this is accepted as a rare occurence in comparision to other life forms, then that would seem to warrant some....uniqueness to humanity. After all if god is logical and built his universe to be logical, then it follows he would need a race to logicaly and reasonably observe it. If we are that race then it would seem to follow that god would care for us to some degree.

edited 11th Dec '11 10:33:37 PM by LMage

Why does the universe need to have been constructed by a higher power? The logic we see in the universe is apparent to us because our minds evolved within this universe and are well-adapted to recognizing patterns. Some patterns must be present because without patterns, the only possibility is total chaos — maximal entropy — in which nothing like consciousness can form.

There's no need for a "higher power" in there at all; the laws of physics are essentially just descriptions of the patterns we consistently observe in nature, and the existence of such patterns is to be expected regardless of whether the universe was created by an intelligent being. In fact, the indifference to our existence exhibited by all known laws of physics seems to suggest that there is no cosmic principle in the universe that cares about — or even notices — us.

It seems to me that you just brought God in without explaining why it is necessary to assume an entity additional to the one we already assumed (the Universe.)

Besides, even if you assume a God, couldn't it be the case that this God is entirely without reason, creating things randomly, and that he/she/it/they just happened to stumble upon a Universe with a set of rules that results in life? Sure, it's very unlikely, but when people postulate a God they usually also estimate its age at infinity, so in that hypothesis every Universe that could possibly exist does exist.

In fact, when you look at this issue in-depth, what you constantly find is that the assumption that a God must exist where there is something we do not yet understand (the origin of the Big Bang and the conditions of the Singularity) is basically unnecessary multiplication of entities. If you explain the Universe away by postulating a God, you haven't explained where that God comes from, and I'm entitled to ask that question if I'm entitled to ask about the origin of the Universe.

We could propose supernatural explanations ad nauseam or we could do what scientists do; namely, embrace our ignorance as something we have to work on and draw inspiration from it.

Why couldn't he/she/they/it have granted us logic and reason as tools for survival without any additional purpose? In fact, why couldn't evolution have naturally stumbled upon the faculties of reason because the better we get at understanding the universe, the better we (as a general rule) get at survival and reproduction. It has not been established why our reason couldn't do things that have no "purpose" just because it has the faculties and natural tendency to do so.

I'm not seeing your logic. Isn't it at least as likely that our reason has certain purposes (such as enabling us to come up with better ways to do things like hunting and farming) and does everything else kind of on the side? If our reason works best when we're curious, then wouldn't we automatically end up thinking about things that don't lead to any useful results?

Furthermore, if we assume a God that wanted us to think about the afterlife, how does that necessitate the existence of said afterlife? Couldn't it be the case that God wants us to think about it so that we could come up with elaborate systems of postmortem reward and punishment to encourage moral behaviour (not that I would agree that this is the best way to come up with a system of morality?) If God wanted us to behave in a certain manner and made us come up with some heavenly reward for it - or even if he/she/they/it told us about Heaven/Valhalla/Nirvana/etc - it wouldn't necessarily mean that an afterlife exists.

edited 12th Dec '11 7:03:45 AM by BestOf

But logic and reason, to the extent that humans have it, are not essential to be a successful species. It's actually a very strange adaptation.

It's not absolutely essential, but if you're competing with the other animals of the savannah, having some basic notion of causality grants you a number of benefits, such as an ability to devise traps and set up multi-stage processes (such as those of manufacturing clothes or tools) without having to know how to do so instinctively. It also grants a huge benefit for adaptability to changing environments.

(Note that I added to my previous post before writing this.)

I don't know. I think with a lot of the human advances you're jumping too far ahead. You have to crawl before you knoe how to fly.

And if we were to look for God in human thought, I would look at the weirder parts of human thought, not reasoning. Lots of them create seemingly maladaptive behavior, and yet, here we are...

Logic and reason naturally follow from pattern recognition, which is one of the main human adaptations. It's an extremely useful adaptation to be able to identify patterns in nature and predict that those patterns will continue into the future. To take the example of the invention of controlled fire: fire always comes with heat; twigs burn quickly; rubbing things together causes heat; therefore, it is likely that rubbing sticks together can start a fire. An animal less adept at pattern recognition wouldn't be able to make the connection.

Evolution certainly creates instances of maladaptive behavior, but nothing too detrimental to the survival of the species on a large scale — and remember, many behaviors that appear maladaptive in modern society made sense in tribal hunter-gatherer societies; the invention of agriculture was pretty recent on an evolutionary timescale.

Speaking for myself, and at the risk of sounding superstitious, I find any debate of the universe and it functions to be lacking if the idea of God is excluded. Our finite understanding of the universe is…well…finite. But what we do understand of it points to greater pattern in creation, a basic consistency. If you perform the same action under the exact same circumstance then you get the same result, A + B= C etc. but also to our understanding the only creatures capable of creating patterns and understanding them fully, are humans. I drop a ball and it hits the ground, I ignite a candle and light is given off, I mark a piece of processed bark with a charcoal stick and draw a circle with it. There was time when the ball was not dropped, when the candle was not lit, when the picture was not drawn, a time before the universe is as inconceivable to us as it would be to the lines of the circle or the flame on the wick.

If there is pattern or a construct it follows that there must have been a time when there was not a pattern or construct, when it was separate parts not yet put together in a grander scheme, a larger design and thus the pattern or construct must have come into existence, things must have been ordered and put together, and in order to have come into existence something must have created it, a logical mind must have devised it.

You mentioned earlier about the concept of infinity and just what it was and how to properly understand it, correct? You asked us to imagine it then went on to explain why we could not.

Let me ask a counterpoint: Can you imagine omnipotence?

edited 12th Dec '11 6:18:52 PM by LMage

Among the things you'll find in my posts is a refutation of the notion of infinity. We can't imagine infinity, but it doesn't matter because it couldn't exist anyway.

So that's my answer to "can you imagine omnipotence?" (You can substitute omniscience if you like.)

Yes, the Big Bang. We don't know the conditions of it, except that everything, including the laws of physics and time itself, were all packed in there and then expansion began.

A design, or an illusion of design? Things that aren't designed can look designed. Every single organism constitutes an example of this: at first glance they look designed, but when you look deeper and learn about the processes that gave rise to these organisms, you find that they aren't designed after all.

At this point, it's prudent to mention that the origin of life is not known. We know that it must've taken place no later than 3.7 (or so) billion years ago, when the Earth was just under a billion years old. What we call complex life began in the Cambrian explosion, about half a billion years ago.

I'll repeat an earlier point: it's OK to not know. If there are "gaps" in our understanding, it doesn't mean that we have to postulate supernatural entities or outlandish models of physics to explain them. We can look at the gaps scientifically and explore them until we discover something that solves the question, just as we've done with everything else we didn't use to know. Hasty minds have attributed the unknown to God(s) only to see the thing explained later. This is a mistake which will become obvious when the "gap" eventually is closed.

Science needs those "gaps". If there weren't any, there would be no work to do. Scientists are thrilled to know that no one understands the origin of life or that or the Universe yet. We know a lot, but not enough to have a working model.

I dispute your conclusions. As said before, it is entirely normal that seemingly complex entities arise out of simpler origins.

An illogical mind could conceive of (even if by accident) a logical system. So God could be this random Universe generator that gets lucky every once in a long while and lands at a combination of natural constants that yields life that can investigate it. But for science, we cannot postulate such a Universe-generator or creator unless the origin of that is known.

If you say "something can't come out of nothing," you've just disproved God, unless you're willing to define as God something that had a beginning.

Modern science is approaching models in which "nothing" can indeed give rise to "something." None of those models are complete yet, but that doesn't mean that we won't know eventually.

edited 12th Dec '11 6:45:41 PM by BestOf

Why is this the automatic human response, though?

I don't know if it actually is an automatic response. I know that many people do it, but I know people (like myself) that are perfectly comfortable with having an unexplained mystery around them. It's fun to investigate.

People might have been trained to tolerate something unexplained now, but they certainly didn't used to. Humans irrationally fill in gaps of their knowledge with junk. As far as we know, we know of no other animal that does this, but then again, we can't exactly ask salmon what they're thinking when they go upstream to mate and whatnot.

I believe there's a heaven for all of us; a higher dimension we would only see sometimes in life when we're very calm and attentive to the air. I also think of the possibility you get re-born the instant you die, the start of your life again where you're able to do differently from what you've done.

It probably feels safer to "know" that some god of Fire is behind these scary phenomena you're seeing when the forest burns than it would be to just go "that's one bright, hot mystery that's eating away that forest." Of course, knowing what fire actually is makes it easier to know how to put it out or for what kind of things it can be used under what conditions.

Christopher Hitchens says that religion is our first attempt at philosophy and science, filling in everything we don't know so we can stop worrying about it, and then we can embark on the journey of actually thinking about things and looking at them scientifically. In that sense, religion can be any kind of supernatural model of anything at all.

"Feeling safe" is one thing, but why was that an important thing for early humans to think? I mean, other animals do not require these flimsy rationalizations... do they?

In evolution, you can have a mutation (or set of mutations) that comes with benefits and costs, or only costs in the long run. The only thing that determines whether or not a particular mutation will make it is its survival, both through the individual carrying it and the offspring thereof.

With consciousness, it might be the case that the mutations that made it possible all had small benefits in themselves, and had to be grouped together over time to create a conscious, "complex" mind.

Now, if the individuals and families with the mutation are more capable of creating offspring and survival, the mutation will survive and go on. So all you need to explain a feature in an organism is to explain how it made them slightly better at survival and breeding than their competition, mostly within the same species. It's a gradual process.

So the rise of the conscious mind might've come about as practically a side effect of mutations that were in themselves beneficial in possibly entirely unrelated ways. And if, once you have it, this type of mind gives you an advantage, the mind will go on to spread throughout the whole population in a number of generations.

If 99% of the work that the mind does is wasted and 1% gives you the edge you need over your competition, the birth of the mind is explained. (This is slightly complicated by the fact that a process that wastes loads of resources is going to make you worse at the competition because those resources will have to come from something else, but I'm ignoring this detail to make the point I'm making.)

What I'm getting at is that if the mind gives you a slight benefit and comes with a whole lot of relatively harmless baggage like a tendency to postulate unnatural explanations when you "need" to "know" something you can't yet understand, you're still getting that mind if it's better than the competition because of the slight benefit.

I find it amusing that we assume that "supernatural" means "unscientific," rather than "some sort of scientific principles we don't understand yet."

"God" is merely a term for something that is unexplainable given what we know, assuming that any such thing exists. This is part of why I find automatic dismissals of god—not necessarily of religion, but just of an... other, of some sort—to be odd, because they always fixate on how such things are "unscientific." Well, who says? "Unscientific" by today's standards could be mundane and well-understood by tomorrow's standards...

I think I'd differentiate between what people call "supernatural", and what a scientist might describe as "paranormal". The latter implies that a given phenomenon simply operates according to an unknown scientific principle, but could, one day, be studied and understood. The former implies that it's inherently above natural law and thus, is beyond scientific scrutiny. Obviously, science cannot simply accept that something is inherently supernatural, without first attempting to find a natural explanation for it; supernaturality would need to be proven before it could be assumed.

edited 12th Dec '11 8:03:48 PM by tropetown

Well, the moment you do understand it, it becomes science. Before that, you're working with a hypothesis; and after it's accepted by the people that count, it becomes a theory (I'm using the definition of "theory" that is used in the sciences according to the OED.)

"Supernatural" means "beyond nature" and implies "beyond the laws of nature." Sure, gravitation would've been classified as "supernatural" if it were proposed without any evidence or a model to back it up. There are several qualities that a hypothesis needs to be considered scientific. It has to be predictive, it has to match up to all the facts that have anything to do with it, it has to be falsifiable (which is a primarily fault in most religious hypotheses,) and so on.

When I call a hypothesis (such as the "Flame Gods" I used earlier or Yahweh or fairies,) "supernatural," what I mean is that you're trying to explain something with hypotheses that aren't scientifically acceptable because they don't have the properties they would have if they were correct.

Well, the problem with the god hypothesis is simply a lack of a good way of testing it.

So, barring some god coming down and proving itself—which would be... quite interesting—I settle for agnostic theism, for my own reasons (I personally don't buy the "it merely looks designed" idea, myself, but that is neither here nor there).

edited 12th Dec '11 8:25:14 PM by USAF713

A problem, not the problem, with the God hypothesis is its lack of testability. It's not the biggest problem it has, but it is one.

But this is off-topic, so let's end this discussion here.

As a... Christian, sorta... I don't particularly believe in Hell. Seems more likely to me that there'd be more of a... purgatorial thing. Like what some Jews believe happens to the non-righteous but non-evil. It seems there'll be burning, yes. A burning off of evil and cruelty and iniquity within people. Something about regret and repentance that's born of an absolute perspective of your actions.

The righteous just get fast-tracked on to that road.

Heaven probably won't be boring. I trust in God. I don't even necessarily trust in the Bible nor in preachers, but I trust in God. I think He will give us Good Stuff To Look Forward To. I somehow very much doubt that any Mind Rape will be involved.

Fear of Hell's it's own little sword of Damocles, isn't it? Can't really enjoy what you've got here if you have it hanging over your head all the time. I believe that if you fear hell for a legitimate reason (not the fears that hit most people, even ones who don't believe in hell such as myself)then perhaps some repentance is in order.

The afterlife I believe in is the afterlife I want. Even if I have no idea what it looks like.