God, afterlife, and humanity.

We have all thought about this more than once. Why are we here, why am I(you) here? Is there a God? Is there an afterlife? These are all great questions yet absolutely no answers to any of them. Here are my thoughts on the matter, and I would love it if you could add your thoughts whether you think they are crazy or not.

Why are we here? We are here, individually, we were sent back to this earth because we have not learned all lessons meant to be learned for our soul to be clean and full. We have done many wrongs in our past life, maybe we killed somebody, maybe we died a tragic death and our soul learned nothing from that. But we are all returned until our souls reach a full level of understand, compassion, tranquility, love, and peace.

Is there a God? I believe that God is unknowable, hence all religion is wrong, I applaud them for their efforts but they are just wrong. No mortal knows what God's rules are, if there is a hell or heaven, or even the future. I know the Christians will jump on me for saying that but I would have to say that the ones who wrote the bible were quite intellectual and they honestly believed that was God's will. I do not believe anyone can understand God, but I do believe animals can. I believe that humans were in fact at one time very close to God, not physically but mentally. We were one with the world, worldly possessions meant very little to humans and we were in touch with the our selves. Paganism in my opinion is the closest religion to God.

Is there an afterlife? Well I do not believe in an afterlife that is spoke of in the bible, torah, or Quran. I do not believe in the views of heaven and hell on the basis of punishment and reward. I believe that saying God would punish you if you are not a good person was a way to intimidate people into being good people, but they are false persons because their soul is not good. You can only be a good person if you are not worried about the afterlife as a threat or reward for being good but for just being a good person. Also in the bible it says that in heaven you receive all of your hearts desires whenever you want (to sum it up), if this is true then it will actually be hell because getting whatever you want whenever you want by just wishing it would eventually turn sour and there would no longer be drive or initiative, no more excitement. So to answer the question, yes I believe in an afterlife but only when your soul has finally developed into perfection.

Please give your opinions and your thoughts on the subjects I would love to hear them.


[edit on 15-1-2010 by Misoir]

Reply to post by Misoir

My opinion is that we are simply children here to learn, not punishment unless we decide to view it as such. What we do afterwards is up to us. The movie "What dreams may come" is an excellent illustraition of my beliefs though it only hints at my conclusions.


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Originally posted by Misoir
Why are we here, why am I(you) here? Is there a God? Is there an afterlife?

I don't know, and I'm not sure if it's even possible to know. So where does that leave a search for meaning to it? Without positive evidence, we're only speculating possibilities while adding nothing to what we know. Though I suspect that the universe is entirely what it appears to be: a deterministic flow of causal events. Since we cannot positively and objectively find evidence of a will to the universe, it's most useful to us to see it in mechanistic terms. However, this does not imply I accept nihilism - because the universe HAS produced intelligent creatures capable of self-inflection and directed will... even if that will itself can ultimately be described as emergent from a chain of causality. The study of Chaos Theory & Complexity Theory explain the -why- of apparent design.



An organism which only ever acts when acted upon makes a poor competitor in a competitive environment. What we perceive as the present is actually an echo effect lagged behind the actual present time - because it takes time for photons and sound waves to travel to our eyes and ears, for our nerves to conduct electricity, and for our brain to process the information into perception. The more you can remember, and the more associations of patterns you can make, the more successful you will be at predicting the immediate future - thus allowing navigation, strategy, and interaction with (rather than just reaction to) your environment. Mammals have become the most adept at this due to the neo-cortex, especially humans due the pre-frontal cortex which handles executive function and forward planning. Though, while it has had a remarkable effect on humanity it may have had an interesting side effect...



... because perfectly accurate knowledge of everything and it's causative effects is, in practicality, are impossible due to necessitating absolute knowledge of everything in the universe requiring more energy to calculate than exists in the universe, the evolution of a brain which does this is for all intents and purposes impossible due to environmental attrition. Since reproduction of the organism is most beneficial, brains evolved for efficiency. At any given time, your brain is only producing about 30watts of electrical activity (and roughly 1/5th of average calorie expenditures in a day). Most of us have higher wattage light bulbs on our desk lamps. One of the keys to this efficiency is the use of heuristic inference of perceived patterns within sensory stimuli based upon established memory and experience. This is the "perceptual matrix" we are trapped in, and which is responsible for a host of cognitive biases. We may be able to see through it with understanding, but we cannot escape it - because the prisoner and the prison cell are one in the same.

(In the below video, before the first animation begins, see if you can spot the horse in the ink blots - then hit play look for it again)



This is basically the illusion of the soul, from what I can tell, because despite seeing each other as complete purpose driven individuals driven by will - we are actually complex amalgamations of billions of cooperative human cells and microbial cultures - and every one of them dies or has it's molecules totally replaced within about a 7 year span - long before catastrophic system collapse (death). This is true of the consciousness, the soul, as well so far as evidence has shown. Severe trauma to the brain can cause specific regions responsible for cognitive function to die or become non-functional, resulting in a shift in personality and behavior. Phineas Gage being perhaps the most well known example after having a railway crowbar shot completely through his skull by high explosives.

(Below video is of a young woman's account of her experiences following head trauma)



But as stated in the video above, our modern human brain is virtually indistinguishable from early modern-humans - and nearly identical (if a bit smaller) than Neanderthal. One of the key markers of modern human culture is the development of language allowing for the communication of complex and abstract thought, but the diversity and phonetics of human language do not indicate any strong correlation between heredity and any specific language. An Asian baby born and raised in a Swahili speaking community will grow up learning Swahili with the same apparent proficiency as they would speaking an Asian dialect. However, learning to read and write a language takes substantially more effort and dedication which is not necessary to spoken language which can be learned by mere immersion into a culture for long enough.

This suggests that our brains have an innate language capacity with nebulous and as-of-yet undiscovered rules for syntax and association. This fits with other evidence such fossils indicating a progressively further developing hyoid bone (allows for articulation) in both early humans and neanderthals, and of the discovery of primitive syntax in Campbell’s monkey calls; thus indicating that language is an inherited (or commonly adapted) trait refined from a more general purpose. That both Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal had basic tools for sewing, jewelry, spears, art, music, fire, etc seems to indicate that it is the development of complex language via articulation which was the major enabling factor for humanity to become humanity.

But what of Feral Children? Though poorly studied, and widely hoaxed - a few legitimate cases indicate that after a certain threshold of formative years, basic social skills, emotions, language, and mental acuity become difficult - if not impossible to learn. For instance, take the case of Oxana Malaya - a Ukrainian girl who spent her life from age 3 to 8 with minimal human contact in her father's dog kennel. Although roughly acclimatized to human cohabitation, and able to speak in basic grammar, she still retains many core mannerisms picked up from dogs and has the mental capacity of a 6 year old child at the age of 23.

Evidence such as feral children doesn't refute the concept of strong genetic components relating to behavior correlates, because brain structure is determined by the genes - including increased risks for the development of disorders such as bi-polar disorder. However, complex systems are extremely sensitive to variation at early stage interaction - and since your brain self-organizes according to the expression of genes, the earlier in the development an association or skill is developed, the easier it will be to form the necessary neural connections. It becomes harder for older people to learn new (especially non-intuitive) behaviors and associations in part because of the sheer volume of new connections which must be made.

So as to the human animal, it seems that while brain structure and correlation to innate tendencies toward behavioral is inheritable... it's not really what we consider to be "Human". While what we consider to be "Human" in regards cultural interaction and the social structures we build are not innately tied to what is biologically human.

"Human" is something that emerges from a base template and honed by the social interactions of environment, experience, and culture. And it has been the gradual development of complex language from earlier proto-languages to a point at which communication allowed for the generation through inflection and sharing of memes in a population to become a basic culture and start socialization and human self-domestication.

I suppose that's why culture and society are always changing, but some things never seem to change.


In regards to God, I do believe that god (or gods) exist beyond this universe... but they apparently do not meddle in it. Given the sheer size and scope of the universe in contrast by which only the tiniest sliver which we can directly perceive... I wouldn't be surprised if such a being hasn't even taken notice of us. If there is a purpose for the universe, we are likely a byproduct of it.

None-the-less, I enjoy this existence, and I thank him for it.