After death.

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Of course some traditions believe in a Before Life too. Mormons for one.

That's an interesting quote of Sagan's. In many ways I would actually prefer there to be no afterlife. Not that my preference will make any difference. There either is one or there isn't. But I have already found this life quite exhausting, and I wouldn't mind a break.


(Edited for spelling).

Last edited by Henbane on 15 May 2011, 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is interesting. I'm not sure it's logical. But I guess religion isn't logical anyway. Maybe if I believe hard enough I can become One With the Force when I die?

That is not a person in the box. It is a dead body.

ruveyn

And just how does one do that?

ruveyn

Yoga, meditation, and magick. Do what thou wilt.

I've just seen this interview with Stephen Hawking, which covers his attittude to the concept of an afterlife. Its in todays Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... -no-heaven



A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a "fairy story" for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said.

In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain's most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time.

Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, shares his thoughts on death, human purpose and our chance existence in an exclusive interview with the Guardian today.

The incurable illness was expected to kill Hawking within a few years of its symptoms arising, an outlook that turned the young scientist to Wagner, but ultimately led him to enjoy life more, he has said, despite the cloud hanging over his future.

"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he said.

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," he added.

Hawking's latest comments go beyond those laid out in his 2010 book, The Grand Design, in which he asserts there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe.

The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an "elementary fallacy" of logic.

The 69-year-old physicist fell seriously ill after a lecture tour in the US in 2009 and was taken to Addenbrookes Hospital in an episode that sparked grave concerns for his health. He has since returned to his Cambridge department as director of research.

The physicist's remarks draw a stark line between the use of God as a metaphor and the belief in an omniscient creator whose hands guide the workings of the cosmos.

In his bestselling 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking drew on the device so beloved of Einstein, when he described what it would mean for scientists to develop a "theory of everything" – a set of equations that described every particle and force in the entire universe. "It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God," he wrote.

The book sold a reported 9 million copies and propelled the physicist to instant stardom. His fame has led to guest roles in The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Red Dwarf. One of his greatest achievements in physics is a theory that describes how black holes emit radiation.

In the interview, Hawking rejected the notion of life beyond death and emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives. In answer to a question on how we should live, he said, simply: "We should seek the greatest value of our action."

In answering another, he wrote of the beauty of science, such as the exquisite double helix of DNA in biology, or the fundamental equations of physics.

Hawking responded to questions posed by the Guardian and a reader ahead of a lecture tomorrow at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London, in which he will address the question: "Why are we here?"

In the talk, he will argue that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life, emerged. "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in," he said.

Hawking suggests that with modern space-based instruments, such as the European Space Agency's Planck mission, it may be possible to spot ancient fingerprints in the light left over from the earliest moments of the universe and work out how our own place in space came to be.

His talk will focus on M-theory, a broad mathematical framework that encompasses string theory, which is regarded by many physicists as the best hope yet of developing a theory of everything.

M-theory demands a universe with 11 dimensions, including a dimension of time and the three familiar spatial dimensions. The rest are curled up too small for us to see.

Evidence in support of M-theory might also come from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva.

One possibility predicted by M-theory is supersymmetry, an idea that says fundamental particles have heavy – and as yet undiscovered – twins, with curious names such as selectrons and squarks.

Confirmation of supersymmetry would be a shot in the arm for M-theory and help physicists explain how each forces at work in the universe arose from one super-force at the dawn of time.

Another potential discovery at the LHC, that of the elusive Higgs boson, which is thought to give mass to elementary particles, might be less welcome to Hawking, who has a long-standing bet that the long-sought entity will never be found at the laboratory.

Hawking will join other speakers at the London event, including the chancellor, George Osborne, and the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Science, truth and beauty: Hawking's answers

What is the value in knowing "Why are we here?"

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can't solve the equations, directly in the abstract. We need to use the effective theory of Darwinian natural selection of those societies most likely to survive. We assign them higher value.

You've said there is no reason to invoke God to light the blue touchpaper. Is our existence all down to luck?

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

So here we are. What should we do?

We should seek the greatest value of our action.

You had a health scare and spent time in hospital in 2009. What, if anything, do you fear about death?

I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

What are the things you find most beautiful in science?

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology, and the fundamental equations of physics."

Well, you got that one.

The following lyrics are from the last part of a song I wrote called
Death (Copyright ©1995 to The Bicycling Guitarist)

When you die are you no more or will you somehow live forever,
passing through some secret door beyond your life to where you never
hurt or sicken or grow old, never fear the loneliness,
never feel the heat or cold, living free and happy in the

loving arms of God's amazing grace,
talking with the friends you thought were lost,
free from all regrets and all disgrace,
at what a cost!

To believe this would be nice:
if you read the Bible,
it says Jesus paid the price.

But if there is no afterlife, it doesn't matter when I get there.
I won't feel the stress or strife. I will be completely unaware
as I am food for worms, turning back to dust I am made from.
I won't miss my parents then. I won't know a thing and so I

figure it's o.k. either way.
Death is part of life after all.
It will find each of us someday,
and when it calls, we all must fall.

It always amazes me how some people can be dogmatic about something on which they have no evidence, precisely BECAUSE they have no evidence.

Now while I have been through a good few rewrites in my life, but I don't think I have been there, at least not since my early teens.

Of course I will say certain things are stupid, nonsensical, insane. I get no sense out of them, to me they are senseless. I have been known to doubt there was in fact any meaning the poet intended in certain "great" poems. If Joyce PUT a meaning into Ulysses, you could not prove it by me - Finnegan's Wake may be easier for me to grasp. But when other people tell me the find meaning in cummings, or pictures in those turn your eyes inside out things, or even numbers in the circles in some pages of that color vision test, I do not deny it because I can't see it.

But the claim seems to be, "There ain't no such animal." "If there were something there, I would see it. I do not see it so there is nothing" A little idiocentric, nay?

Og, well, that is one thing I see and the dogmatists don't.

I'm inclined to agree with that.

I also note that even atheists might admit that to some extent people live on in an evolutionary sense through their descendants or perhaps other relatives.

Not convinced I agree. First, not convinced that people suicide because they have had little impact. Some may feel that - but my wife - not that she is suicidal - THINKS she has had little impact, though few who know her will agree. It certainly had nothing to do with my motivation the time I seriously considered suicide.

But secondly - One of my students committed suicide. Emotional young guy - girl friend leaves town and finds somebody else - he broods, goes after her TRIES to kill her and DOES kill himself. I don;t know about his friends, family, other faculty, girlfriend - but I know I still think about him more frequently than most of my students. Again, my aunt - I am not sure I ever met her, we are a scattered family. But she shot herself - depression, I believe - and not only her family thinks on her, but I - never having known her - am more aware of other relatives I have met. Same thing for my cousin [not part of the same family].

At Seminary, we reasoned that since lack of faith in God was the only unforgivable sin, that suicide comes about from a lack of faith, and that those who commit suicide will not be forgiven for their lack of faith, but will be sent to Hell instead.

This is simple absurdity, what you are suggesting (god) is as nonsensical as the hippies who hug trees believing them to be sentient beings.

The requirement for evidence is crucial especially when beliefs have the potential to effect society.

We often hear the right wing crusaders banging on about the increase in crime, the extraordinary percentage of social welfare recipients who are rorting the system, the vicious and criminal behavior of resettled Somalian refugee's etc etc The actual evidence often does not support these claims exposing them false. You seem to be suggesting that evidence is not required for belief, that logical fallacies should be allowed to continue.




You dont deny it because you know full well that an incontrovertible way could be found to show that the pattern depicting numbers does actually exist



So if someone tells you that unicorns and dragons exist, even though hey have absolutely no evidence, other than their brain tells them they do, you are going to give them the benefit of the doubt ???

I see what you're saying Bloodheart but I don't entirely agree with your assumption about a suicides motivation.

I can only comment from my own experiences and discussions with other suicidal people but think the following is worth considering,

I have attempted suicide inumerable times and like many things in life was not particularly good at it
Jokes aside, my reasons have mainly been through a feeling of having achieved as much as I can and no longer seeing much worth perservering for, I have a worldview that does not place me at the centre, I don't believe that I matter in the least, rather that the greater good [god?] is primary and I only exists as a part of that. Given that the planet is grossly overpopulated and teetering on the edge of a serious ecological colapse I see little point in my adding to the problem by hanging around if I have lost the inclination, it is not tragic, just a rational understanding of the situation.
Suicidal behaviour for altruistic reasons has been observed in several species of herd animals and apes while faced with predation in order to distract the predator, this did not nescesarily lead to death nor is it strictly 'suicide' however it does parralel my reasoning regards 'making room'.

As for reasons not to suicide vis-a-vis what happens after?
Well if the Judeo Christian tradition is right and if there is a hell, I doubt a trully loving and compassionate god would send you there for excercising the free will he supposedly gave you. This leads on to my questioning the very existence of hell when I was seven or eight, my sunday school teacher nor priests or brothers could explain how my devout mother could experience heaven as eternal bliss knowing that anyone she loved was in an eternal lake of fire.

I am inclined to believe that in reality you will as an ego disolve into nothingness, however I will neither bet nor bargain on my actually having anything more than a reasoned out hunch.

peace j

I don't have any spiritual or religious beliefs, but I'll give my two cents anyway. Their brain stops working, numerous bacteria will start to eat away at the tissues of the body, and the matter that once provided the structure for the neural firings that cause the mind ceases to be and hence that individual minds ceases to be in the same way an individual computer ceases to be if you fry all it's circuits. The material of the brain and hence the structure that gave rise to the mind is converted into food by other organisms.

On a side note, I find the Catholic belief of "suicide as always sinful" repulsive, dangerous, self-righteous, and harmful. While suicides are often tragic and I'm generally for counselling people out of it, in some cases it is justified (painful terminal illness being one of them) and to demonize attempted suicides or the memory of those who engaged in suicide is just sickening. I sure hope The Vatican reforms its ugly, wrong, and harmful beliefs on the status of people who commit suicide.

Salvation is not contingent on faith.