What happens after death?

Because...?

Not necessarily, but that's not what you said.

 

The way YOU treat people on these forums, I would be surprised if you believed in an afterlife.

 

BTW, you are right, it's conjecture. However, if one were to examine the history we know of here on Earth, one could surmise that humanity is nothing but a tiny speck of the evolution chain. Hence, if that is the case, do we believe that other animals on this vast planet go to heaven ? We jump in this late in the game and assume we are the chosen? Why? 99% of all of the species to ever have existed on Earth are extinct. The probability of an afterlife is harder to accept or even that there is a purposeful God in the sense religion tries to explain it considering the randomness of events which have led us up to this moment in time.

 

Science knows that consciousness is produced by physical brain activity. This has been confirmed through numerous lab experiments, case studies of brain-damaged patients, and statistical studies, all of which confirm the physical nature of human consciousness. When a person dies, his brain is destroyed, so it logically follows that his consciousness is destroyed as well.

This life is all we have. Live it to the fullest.

 

Codswallop. What science has told us is that our environment isn't even physically real, therefore your body, and brain, are an illusion. They don't exist anywhere but in your conscious experience. Something that does not physically exist cannot create consciousness.

 

This sounds like Bostrom's simulation hypothesis (which has not been empirically verified) or something like Berkeleyian idealism (for which there is no evidence). I see no reason to accept these views over the scientific and philosophical consensus of mind-body physicalism.

Edit: I love the word "codswallop," though.

 

Sort of, but not exactly. I base my conclusion on what quantum mechanics calls the "measurement problem". It seems that a conscious observer changes experimental results of quantum phenomena. For example, the double slit experiment. Light directed at a double slit apparatus will radiate out from each slit, interfere, and arrive at a measurement screen in a diffraction pattern, as shown in the picture below.



But, they discovered that doing the experiment with electron, which are matter, not waves, produced the same result. So, they decided to slow it down and shoot one electron at a time at the apparatus. Even if, somehow, the electrons were acting as waves and interfering with each other, surely a single electron cannot interfere with itself. Except, after the experiment ran for a while, sure enough, they had a classic interference pattern. So, the next step they tried was to put detectors at the slits to see which one the electrons went through. Well, when that happened, the interference pattern went away.

Now, you have to realize, this is all very strange. Electrons acting like waves en masse is strange enough, but that they do so singly is completely against many rules of physics. But the fact that simply observing earlier in the experiment CHANGED THE RESULT is completely over the top a WTF moment for science.

I struggled with this for many years before I had an lightbulb moment. There is only one explanation that makes sense. The electron, rather than being a physically real bit of matter is actually only a probability that is calculated until it is observed, at which point it is rendered. That explains every bit of weirdness.

When a single electron is fired at the apparatus, there is a greater than zero chance it went through the left slit, a greater than zero chance that it went through the right slit, so the algorithm calculating it's behavior does so as if it went through both at the same time. That creates two non-physical probability waves that interfere with each other, and arrive at the observation screen in a quasi random way. I say quasi-random because any individual electron will arrive in, more or less, a random spot, it's only after enough of them have gone through that the pattern emerges.

However, when you measure "which slit", the probability of it having gone through both is reduced to zero, destroying the interference pattern.

The results that I just explained are not up for debate. It's a well known experiment that has been performed thousands and thousands of times. The results debunk physical reality. In other words, if our reality were physically real, this experiment would NOT perform as it does. The only way it's possible is if the behavior is being calculated rather than being actualized, which means our environment is a giant version of the Sims. Mainstream scientists just aren't ready to come to grips with that because it's so very, very counter-intuitive.

Einstein once said "Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." He was on the right track, but he was 70 years ahead of his time. There was no such thing as a "simulation", so he lacked the frame of reference to see what was right in front of his face.

Me, too.

 

You only believe this because you don't understand what human consciousness is.

 

This is circular reasoning -- fallacious.

 

You don't understand what that is either.

 

I'm very familiar with the double-slit experiment and the measurement problem, and no, it doesn't mean we "aren't real" or that there is no physical reality. There is nothing inherent within the wave-particle paradox that implies we live in a simulation, or that current physical laws are somehow violated. Most physicists hold to interpretations of quantum mechanics that preserve the traditional view of the objectivity of the physical world.

 

Of course they do. They're deluding themselves. As are you. Do tell me where my logic failed.

 

Because I'm not buying into your straw-man scenario that's why, are you even following here?

Nevertheless, it can not be discounted that a human being would have the best chance of being part of another's 'neural-network' (so to speak) with their own offspring. Interaction causes more interaction...etc.

I know you are cocked and ready yguy so blast away...!!

 

Show me evidence of a thought or deed that a 'human consciousness' can achieve without a physical brain, until then as far as I am concerned you are talking out of your rectum.

 

Science has not told us this. It is just one theory, that hasn't even been fully hashed out and examined. Something fantastical like that is going to require quite a bit of confirmation and that just hasn't happened from what I've read. I'm not saying there's no chance at all that it's true, but there's definitely not enough evidence yet to conclusively state this as truth.

- - - Updated - - -

I think it is you who does not understand what human consciousness is. Why don't you enlighten us as to what you define it as, and how it is not an inherent part of the human brain. I know, I know, that might require more than a one or two sentence response that has actual facts in it instead of sarcasm and snark, but I think you can manage.

 

Read my supplemental post and you'll understand.

 

The term is generally applied to arguments falsely attributed to one's opponent. I have not done that. I have merely proposed a scenario which, though unlikely, is possible, and which serves to test the logical limits of your argument; and your refusal to answer would seem to indicate that you are averse to such testing.

I would be happy to, were this in apparent conflict with anything I said, or interesting in its own right.

 

You misrepresented my position by creating a false scenario that could never happen. Thus I reject your premise.

So you agree with me...I accept your white flag.

 

I did no such thing, obviously.

See above.

Since your stated reasons are nonsensical, I invite you to go back to the drawing board.

 

Yes you did.

They are not 'nonsensical' and your replies are more troll-like than substantive.

 

Are you aware of a double-slit experiment with dummy cameras? Would the electron pattern be an interference or non-interference pattern with dummy cameras?

Can the electron be fooled?

 

Now you're getting into the REALLY interesting stuff. Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser

 

Always remember that while people have different beliefs science presents facts that are completely unrelated to what people believe.

Science has found no evidence of a soul or spirit and it does document that when a person dies that their brain stops working. That's what we know happens at death. The person is dead, period. No more thoughts, no more memories, no more personality, as all of that ends at death and science has established this as a fact.

No one has ever been documented as coming back to life except in literary works of fiction.

 

Your thinking was as ingenius as was that of Neils Bohr, who came up with the same conclusion and called it The Copenhagen Interpretation of the Double Slit Experiment.

Basically, the idea states that nothing materially exist until some Observer recognizes it.

The problem which has every thereafter annoyed Dwakins, Hawkins, and atheist scientists is that this Physics requires an Observer, ie. God?, to have been present at the moment of the Big Bang.

The thinking is very much as you state, that as the highly energy charged Elemental Particles appeared they had to have been observed in order to manifect into Matter and hence, the Space/timeto contain that Matter.

 

Yes, you are so correct that the atheists who were also scientists began speculating about other possible hypotheses that might compete with what Neils Bohr proposed and is now the most accepted idea.

They "invented" the possibility of parallel Universes, where whole new existences became established because BOTH or all possibilities get actually fulfilled.

That is to say, in the double slit experiment, when the electron goes through the left slit, one of many "worlds" is formed since the probability is that that electron also went through the right slit.
Another World exists where the electron went through both slits at the same time.

But then these scientists are suggesting "heavens," are they not?
They also invent the two of everything theory, which means we all have a duplicate somewhere in another world.
Their attempt to avoid God as the Prime Observer has opened a Pandora's box of complicated and surrealistic ideas that seem unnecessary since Neils Bohr's idea is satisfactory, as is a God.