One where you get to live on Solaris.

I believe we are causes with effects, and those effects can't be entirely extrapolated from the cause. The identity is a dynamic thing, and exists in the subconscious world of everyone's being. Yes, I believe in an afterlife, because I believe no one lives a lie, which is what we're all doing.

Eventually we do experience a higher truth than the one we perceive in our waking hours. And the dead live on in the memory. If I have dreams of my dead mother, for instance, this is her maintaining to have an effect on me. How could it be any other way? I did not create my mother. I did not just imagine my mother.

So, all of us will continue to be causes that have effects long after our deaths. The unspoken truth of each of us will linger on in the subconscious, and communicate with the living, whether this be in revealing dreams or just in that subconscious world we aren't aware of when awake.

hahah

This is beautiful, thanks for sharing.

Well, there is no 'walking' after legs stop moving.

And no 'symphony' after the orchestra stops playing and disbands. — 180 Proof

nice analogies, I like your firm opinions too

Once you have walked, you have always walked.

It's what @180 Proof said. When people talk of an afterlife, what they are describing is more life, only incoherent, magical life, the only basis of which is the imagination. (Real) life is this. Look around. Unreal/imaginary life is what is left when you exclude this. And the afterlife is one of many imaginaries. To say personal experience is evidence for it (as per @Sam26) is no more coherent than saying my memory of my dream is evidence my dream really happened. Of course, it's trivially easy to refute the reality of a dream when anyone can attest to you lying in bed when it allegedly occurred. But those claiming NDEs suggest an afterlife inure themselves from this criticism by creating a fantastic reality to which the only possible witnesses are precisely those who cannot possibly be witness to anything, i.e. the dead. Nice racket. So, it's merely intellectual feebleness to posit an afterlife, but it's intellectual dishonesty to pretend there is any evidence for it.

There is more basis the more aware you are. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, people are too caught up in their lives - their future happiness - to glimpse the unseen.

We are living in a world dominated by practical people with no imagination, and that is not a good thing. Trust me, you don't know everything.

And the afterlife is one of many imaginaries. To say personal experience is evidence for it (as per Sam26) is no more coherent than saying my memory of my dream is evidence my dream really happened. — Baden

This is what someone would say who never examined the evidence. First, dreams, hallucinations, or delusions don't describe real events as do NDEs. One can verify the accuracy of NDE testimonial evidence by talking to doctors, nurses, and family members who can verify or corroborate the evidence. This kind of response also shows a particular bias, because they don't respond to the arguments, they just give their uneducated opinions.

And yet none of this affects the hypothetical of reincarnations. For instance, some CNS gets produced in the far future whose nurture in the formative years results in an ego whose attributes – wants, aversions, metaphysical beliefs, and the like – present the same persona you hold in this lifetime.

I’m not saying this is a sure deal, and there is the issue of working memory not here playing a role between lifetimes, but the scenario doesn’t get nullified by life being an emergent process. Or even by physicalism’s tenets, for that matter. What it pivots upon is what one is to make of the notion of personal identity.

So, it's merely intellectual feebleness to posit an afterlife — Baden

No need to disparage. As it turns out, were death to be the instant cessation of all worry, strife, and pain via the obtainment of non-being, committing suicide would be the only rational thing to do for an overwhelming number of humans on this Earth. Why? Because they are in extreme pain and don’t want any. Do you then hold suicidal individuals – and suicidal murderers to boot – to be endowed with superior intellectual prowess? "No" is an easy answer; but why not, rationally speaking, if death actually is the obtained non-being of self?

Bunch of non-sequiturs and red herrings.

Here's the claim: There is no evidence for an afterlife.

Here's the way to refute it: Show me the evidence.

Bunch of non-sequiturs and red herrings.

Here's the claim: There is no evidence for an afterlife.

Here's the way to refute it: Show me the evidence. — Baden

Intellectual honesty would have addressed my question.

No, it's the imaginatively disabled that see the distinction between the imagination and reality as somehow an unacceptable limit. Those of us who embrace the imagination, artistically and otherwise, find life enough.

Your question is based on a false premise and just isn't worth answering. Really, read what you wrote. Think about it.

You don't own life.

That death is the obtainment of non-being is a false premise? I don't think that's what you intend. So spell out the false premise to my question.

No, you work out which part of your post is nonsense. It's not worth my time.

You don't own life. — neonspectraltoast

What are you replying to?

It's not worth my time. — Baden

yea, ditto

I admittedly think about the possibility of an afterlife a lot (religious upbringing detritus), but if anything, I think what keeps me thinking of it, other than left over religious feeling, is a problem of nihilism. I can't get away from the sense that, for any moral statement to be meaningful, it requires an antecedent. And if the antecedent is argued to exist within the same physical world in which it's object exists (i.e. an argument from someone who denies an afterlife), then the moral statement itself breaks down. So for a moral statement to obtain, there needs to be a framework that's supraphysical, which suggests "life beyond life", if you will. Life beyond the birth-and-death experience that lasts 70 years, if one is lucky (or unlucky).

In other words, there's a lot of political screeds around here from folks who don't believe in an afterlife. What i don't understand is...why are these political issues morally problematic to you if you believe you'll die in x amount of years, and devolve into a state of nothingness? Why waste your energy windbagging about the latest horrible politician if, when you die, it's all meaningless?

So it's a nihilistic problem. Am I missing something? If not, how do we avoid nihilism and reject the possibility of an afterlife at the same time?

PS - also, I feel like a common sentiment from you non-afterlifers is the concept of "furthering the race"; "my life ends, but I make the lives of children better". So what? Who cares? Do you actually care? It feels like religious posturing.

Life is a good in itself, dude, as is moral behavior. What's nihilistic is to reject life because you can't have more. In this case, infinitely more. Or to reject moral behavior because there is no ultimate reward.

So, I was wrong, it's not merely intellectual feebleness to posit an afterlife, it's intellectual and moral feebleness to do so.

I want to embrace the sentiment of "life is a good in itself", but this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say "religious posturing". Life is hell for a lot of people. But sometimes, the people who's lives are a living hell seem to understand life the best. This seems like a complexity that can't be solved with a yes/no answer to the question of whether life continues after death. To the say the f'ing least, you know?

You haven't addressed the problem I'm trying to illustrate about whether a moral claim can work without a metaphysical antecedent, as far as I can see.

Yeah, it is exactly nihilistic to reject life because you can't have more, considering nihilism as meaning life is meaningless. If there's no "more", there's no antecedent, then there's no meaning, as I was trying to illustrate (probably didn't do it well). But your tone suggests that this is selfish; that it's selfish to want more than life. Under what grounds is it selfish? (or did I misread you?)

And no, for me, it's not about "ultimate reward". I can't give two shits about reward. What I want is for moral behavior to obtain concretely; beyond the criminal act, beyond the penitentiary, beyond the rehabilitation... it needs to mean something other than what it means in the blow-by-blow moment of our lizard brains. If it's going to mean anything at all. Off the top of my head...

You like Jeff Buckley?

"I can't help from looking outside for a guarantee
I can't help from looking outside for a guarantee
I can't help from looking outside for a guarantee
I can't help from looking outside for a guarantee
I can't help from looking outside for a guarantee
I can't help from looking outside for a guarantee
I can't help from looking outside for a guarantee
For a guarantee."

:meh: Damn, I remember the days when we used to have some discussions.

I'll not finished talking. The above is just where I'm coming from. You've already rejected meaning and morality when you need to search for some ultimate grounding to "make it real for you". Cart before horse.

NOTHING. Just my opinion. You might like to read Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife by Bart D. Ehrman. He explains how heaven and hell came to acquire their peculiar characteristics over a period of time. Back in the day (3000 years ago, say) the Jews thought that when you died you were dead. Nothing more.

It's a message preached in the Church Without Christ, where the blind don't see, the lame don't walk, and the dead stay dead. Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor.

"Morality" not "mortality". Predictive text wants to mess this up.

No, but you've started talking a lot more flippantly than you used to. Hop all's good in your hood...

You're summarizing an interpretation of my ideas rather than addressing them here, which is fine, I guess. But I won't amass more troops against your summarizations of your interpretations of my ideas.

I'm trying to get to where we're going to end up anyway. I reject the premise that it's ultimately possible to verify that moral claims objectively obtain. And I don't think it matters. In fact, I think that is what is playing politics with morality. Apologies, if I came across as flippant.