General Philosophical / Afterlifish Question

[Beavis68]

[black_knight6]

[excession]

[black_knight6]

[antneye]

[Stoneburg]

[excession]

LOL of course evolutionary biology impacts on the chances of a 'soul' existing (and therefore any chance of an 'afterlife' in the sense it is meant in this discussion).

To have a realistic chance of life after death there has to be some part of you that is capable of continuing on. Usually that is called the 'soul'. It isn't material, doesn't weigh 13g and can't be detected. We feel we have an existence apart from our bodies because of our perception of consciouness. This is why just about all ancient cultures believed in a separate soul.

Until Darwin it was also rational to believe in a God (who else made and designed the world and all the things in it right?), so God tended to become the person who is responsible for putting the 'vital essence/soul/life force' into all living things that 'must' be responsible for animating them. The 'ghost in the machine' indeed.

But we know now the incredible true history of life on this planet. It has survived, thrived and developed from very simple organisms hundreds of millions of years ago. We are direct descendants of these first organisms and can trace our ancestry back to the very beginning of life on the planet by an unbroken chain of digital chemistry.
Molecular biology has proved this beyond any rational doubt. Anyone who continues to deny this is literally 'irrational' as they are not using reason but other bases upon which to argue (usually faith-based arguments).

Now you are saying this is irrelevant to arguments about the existence of a 'soul'?

Well you can believe that all living things have a soul (Star Wars 'life force' anyone?)
I guess, but I'm not sure what that means. As I said in the above, we (well Craig Ventner's team) are now on the cusp of creating living bacteria from scratch. Will that bacteria have a 'soul'? There isn't any need to add a mysterious life force to make it alive. It seems unlikely that it's going to have a life after death or be self-aware, and its soul can't be measured in any way - so the soul seems to have no menaing in this context.

So let's assume that the bacteria from whom we are descended don't have souls/an afterlife...

When is an afterlife/soul supposed to become a possibility for a living organism?

Is it just limited to humans? To homo sapiens or earlier hominind species? To the great apes? There is some evidence that several spcies of mammals and birds have a degree of self-awareness. Is that a sign of a 'soul?'

The problem if you link it to the species you then have is that species take time often tens of thousands of years to diverge from their parent species and that classifications around the boundary are pretty arbitrary. If you link it to self-awareness then does it disappear depending on brain function? Of course you can just link it to 'whatever God says is so, but then you have a God who is literally popping souls into bodies at His whim.

Each human being has a perception that he or she exists 'behind the eyes', separate from the actual body. That is what self-awareness means and why lots of people intuitively beliee in a soul.

There are three possibilities:
1. This perception is correct and there is an immaterial ghost in the machine that is our body.
2. The perception is incorrect and is a necessary emergent property of very complex brains for reasons we don't understand.
3. The perception is incorrect and confers some sort of evolutionary advantage in operating a complex organ like the mind. Perhaps a bit like trying to consciously think about each step running downstairs can cause you to trip, some mental distance from an action means it can be carried out faster and more efficiently (and thus confer an evolutionary advantage over competitors without that trait).

Personally I'm for 3. and so is most of the research I've seen on the topic to date, but the study of consciousness is one of the most cutting edge fields of science and will no doubt progress rapidly over the next few decades.

As for afterlife - the only one I see on the horizon is uploading your brain into a computer network/simulation - I'd give that maybe 100 years. I'll be long gone, but my son and daughter may well live forever in digital form..

[antneye]

[black_knight6]

[T-Rod]

Here's something I find interesting in these discussions:

There's a group that clearly favors a point of view that leans towards: no God only science type methodology.

That's fine in my book, but I obviously disagree with it.

The part that I find interesting is frequently, this group refers to those that don't agree with their point of view in some pejorative manner.

Words like "self-delusional" are used. People who are in the pro-God camp are called irrational. Gigant bold statements are made that almost no one believes in what the pro-God camp is saying (when if fact the opposite is true where way more people believe in God than don't)

Why is that?

Why does this group feel the need to belittle their dissenters?

If we ever truly want to have a discussion on such weighty matters as the soul or the afterlife, it would seem a prerequisite that both sides do not claim that the opposing side is not entitled to its opinion or is crazy for having such opinion.

[Pwnd]

I think it is because most atheists (me included) find religious people scary. Let me try to explain how I feel. Please let no one take this as an attack on their faith or person. I respect peoples right to believe anything they want (but still find them weird ) as long as they don't force me to believe or do as they do.

Why I find (some) religious people scary:

1. They use the argument "God want us to do this" or "God don't like this" to justify their actions. I don't think you can find very many non-religious people outside KKK and the nazis who think it is ok to discriminate homosexuals. A large portion of religious people think homosexuality is a sin and that they go to hell when they die. This is scary.

2. They actively work against progress and scientific knowledge when it doesn't fit with their beliefs. We KNOW that the world is not 6000 years old. We KNOW that we evolved from apes. People tho wants us to not tell this to our kids because it goes against their religion are scary.

3. Historically, countries and societies based on religion have been (and are) extremely opressive. You can argue against man-made laws and take your case to court, hopefully get a fair trial. You cannot argue against a law made by god. Even if it seems as stupid as "though shall not eat pig" or "Cows are holy". Religious societies does not incurage discussion becourse the guiding laws cannot be quistioned.

What I am trying to say here is that the reason I find religion scary is that I am very sure that any religious group in power would create a society were I would not want to live (and would probably get burned as a heretic).

Discuss please

[excession]

[black_knight6]

[antneye]

[excession]