Kyle Ruth
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Re: What do you think happens to you when you die?
I believe that thought is a product of living matter. (evidence: whenever thoughts occur, electrical activity can be detected in the brain - after death no electrical activity can be detected) When that matter ceases to be alive, thought processes can no-longer continue. For many this is a difficult concept to grasp -- not because it is challenging to understand, rather people don't want to understand it. The idea that after death the consciousness that makes YOU who YOU are no longer exists is scary. It makes people feel good inside to "know" that when they die some part of their identity will continue on indefinitely. I feel that this is one of the major reasons that questions like "what happens after you die" are asked in the first place. The truth is that we have very real evidence for what happens to a living being when they die - they decompose (barring rare events like mummification, embalming, etc.) There is no reason to invent mythical places or fantastical stories to create answers to questions that are meaningless to begin with.To conceptualize this think about the dead raccoon you drove past on the way home from work today. Does she have an afterlife? Furthermore think about all of the animals that have existed on our pale blue dot...4 billion years of life. Does every single life have an afterlife? If so where are they? … Read More
January 18, 2008 |
Kyle Ruth commented on Re: What do you think happens to you when you die? on January 18, 2008, 3:19 PM
This is really interesting, it plays on the idea of a collective consciousness or collective memory. Although as an atheist I believe that thought is a product of physical matter, ideas can continue on indefinitely if passed from one generation of thinking beings to another.
Kyle Ruth commented on What do you think happens to you when you die? on January 18, 2008, 3:12 PM
I believe that thought is a product of living matter. (evidence: whenever thoughts occur, electrical activity can be detected in the brain - after death no electrical activity can be detected) When that matter ceases to be alive, thought processes can no-longer continue. For many this is a difficult concept to grasp -- not because it is challenging to understand, rather people don't want to understand it. The idea that after death the consciousness that makes YOU who YOU are no longer exists is scary. It makes people feel good inside to "know" that when they die some part of their identity will continue on indefinitely. I feel that this is one of the major reasons that questions like "what happens after you die" are asked in the first place. The truth is that we have very real evidence for what happens to a living being when they die - they decompose (barring rare events like mummification, embalming, etc.) There is no reason to invent mythical places or fantastical stories to create answers to questions that are meaningless to begin with.To conceptualize this think about the dead raccoon you drove past on the way home from work today. Does she have an afterlife? Furthermore think about all of the animals that have existed on our pale blue dot...4 billion years of life. Does every single life have an afterlife? If so where are they?
Kyle Ruth commented on Another question for athiests. on January 18, 2008, 4:05 PM
Essentially early gods were created to explain events. In the eyes of an early Homosapien everything had purpose or at least an initiator of events. It logically followed for them that any natural event (volcanic eruption, earth quake, tornado, lightning storm, tsunami, etc.) was the intention of some more powerful being. Therefore it only makes sense that most cultures invented gods to explain the events they observed.This also has another interesting angle. Did most cultures develop gods to explain events that they observed, OR did one of our early ancestors' tribes invent gods and that tradition was passed along through the generations.