There isn't one shred of scientific evidence that supports material death

The life after death debate interests me because there isn't one shred of evidence that the material has any objective existence therefore how can it die?

Science tells us volume is an illusion. It tells us matter has never been touched. It tells us the distinction between past, present and future is an illusion. It tells us point particles don't have a location in space. A particle that doesn't take up any space? It tells us that information about an object is not found in it's volume but a 2 dimensional surface area.

It seems to me that there isn't a real debate and the universe that we see is a phantasm.

I think those who say that we die and that's it have to define what they mean by "we." We as in our material bodies? I think you first have to prove that our material bodies have an objective existence in order to say the "we" die.

So before there's even a debate about life after death, science has to show that something material has an objective existence in order for it to die. What is exactly dying?

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
What is exactly dying?

The game character.

Namaste,

Deckard

reply to post by Matrix Rising

What is exactly dying?

Your brain and everything it controls.

reply to post by Matrix Rising


Really good question. What defines life? Does not the same force which holds a rock together hold us together? Is Death the end of consciousness? What is it that tells our bodies to stop growing?

To me, death is like recycling. The body goes on to feed countless other organisms, plant, bacterial, and animal alike. These organisms go on to feed others; and on and on goes the food chain. Sorry if I got your meaning wrong. This is just my take on it.

reply to post by Matrix Rising


matter can't 'die' but systems made of manner can break down and cease to function. that's what we call dying.

Well if energy is never lost,only transformed or transferred, is the earth becoming more energized? Or does it go to heaven or hell.... I choose to believe the later.

reply to post by snusfanatic


"matter" is an illusion. All "matter" is made up of atoms flying around that consist of something like 99.9% empty space. One never touches another, they only get close and cause electric reactions. That wall you believe is a solid wall is really a grouping of atoms that are pretty much just empty space. It is the mind that creates the barrier. Therefore, there is nothing to "die" because the only thing ever there was empty space to being with.

How does the mind create the barrier?

I had an incident once involving a late night trip out to the car to retrieve a beverage that ultimately resulted in the illusion I call "big toe" contacting (at high velocity) another illusion we'll call "propane tank" that was invisible to my eyes as it was lying in the shadow of another illusion we'll call "pine tree".

There is something more that is holding things together, else everything would dissipate like smoke.

Two identical blocks of iron....you can hold them together all you want and they won't merge even though they're the same stuff. You have to apply great amounts of heat to bond them.

There was a birds nest a few feet from where I stand when I smoke in my backyard and during a windy night a couple of the baby birds had fallen out and hit the ground pretty hard.
It didn't take long for flies to start calling their bodies home and filling it up with maggots and when that happened it made me realise p erhaps material death IS the only death.
To see the way nature treats the dead makes it seem unlikely that nature would care enough to have a system in place to continue living in some other form after you die.

I've been watching the process unfold ever since lol. It's almost ironic I think watching an animal decay away while having a cigarette.

reply to post by Matrix Rising


Well, it really depends upon how you qualify life.

Is life the physical body, or is it the 'metaphysical' mind/character of a person? Perhaps more important is what the mind actually is in relation to the body.

It would be errant to conclude the mind and body are separate. As much as we'd like to be able to prove this and extrapolate the possibility of an afterlife, it's not so easy. Damaging the brain can easily damage a person's ability to think, reason, and perceive information - or, at least, from our own visible perspective. In many subjective studies using chemical and electromagnetic stimulants, a person's mental experience is almost directly influenced by the physical body.

Now - many people will tell you that they can sense 'something is not right' or that they were having difficulty doing what they really wanted to do - but it is unclear where the sense of "what I want to do" comes from - if it has a physical neurological origin, an emergent neurological origin (a sort of learned behavior or 'pattern' stored by your neurons), or if it has a 'mystical' origin from a 'soul.'

It's not completely unreasonable to suggest a number of functions related to conscious processes originate from outside of the known mind/body relationship. Everything the body does would still have to be processed by the brain - and damage to the brain would therefor damage the interface between any external factors and the body.

This also makes verifying the existence of such external factors very difficult, if not impossible via known methods. What is a 'soul' made out of? What energy does it use? How might one detect it? Or - supposing there is one - is it dependent upon our minds/bodies - will it persist beyond their function? How? What level of awareness would it have? Does it retain memories from a body it was connected to? Or is it merely a "key" - a pattern of actions and reactions that guide our neurons as a sort of baseline?

While one could say there's no evidence to support a death of consciousness along with the cease of biological functions in our body - the body is our only existing and reliable link to conscious processes and reasoning. Losing it pretty much places any consciousness that may survive on the other side of a barrier that does not appear to be easily bridged.

I believe we have a soul - and I believe it persists after our 'material death' - but in what form, and to what ends, I am not entirely certain. While I affiliate with Christianity - I'm not exactly intolerant of the concept of reincarnation (I'm also not so certain the existence of a body, or lack thereof, has much bearing on a soul's 'location' - IE - heaven is a state of being for the soul, and not a destination for it).

However, I'm also not sure how to go about proving the existence of a soul. I suppose I could go find a bridge to jump off of - but I'm sure there are others who have done that, and have thus been unsuccessful in communicating the results of their experiment - and there's not much point in an experiment that doesn't allow for data to be collected.

Makes you wonder on the purpose of life.

IS there a purpose? To ensure the survival of the next generation to breeding age & then die & become food for whatever chances along? IS that IT? What's the difference where the birds or flies lived or died since they had the same end anyway? The probability of there being more birds & fewer flies, or more flies & fewer birds? What's the point of birds overtaking the entire planet if the ultimate result is death?

I saw some spill on a BBC rip about the human body, talking about a particular child, saying that on average she would have 8 great-grandchildren, only of which two would ever know her name. Therefore, in the next generation, you could pretty much concede that she would be totally forgotten and rarely thought upon, if ever. It made me wonder if everything I've experienced in my 40 years is nothing more than electrical currents in a biological computer destined to fade from existence when I die. It's pretty depressing actually, if I dwell on it...

All in all though, I think that the above argument is an invalid one because I don't believe I've factored everything in. This was intentional.

Reality is a harsh item. It's rather ugly to think this is all there is for us. Maybe one of our forms of denial is seeking so hard for something else to be there that we find what we're looking for. I really don't think this truth will ever be known, or provable. We'll just have to wait to die to find out, and although I am curious, I'm not THAT curious.

Questions on existentialistic notions are fascinating to me.

I believe the mind exists outside the brain, with the brain being the modem, or interface, for the human organism (and most animal life on Earth).

When you die, the body simply fulfills the universes need to move to a disordered state, to have entropy. The mind disassociates from the body. From there, I cannot say for sure. Are we a terminal with the mind being like the mainframe? A collective consciousness behind the fallacy of individual consciousness that this realm provides?

Or are we actually individuals behind the mask, playing a hyper elaborate RPG on a cosmic scale?

It is an interesting question.