Welcome to Gaia! ::

Well, I don't believe in past lives, but pretending I do: Maybe our consciousness prevents us from accessing memories or perceptions we couldn't handle? Maybe an animal, plant, or alien's experiences are so foreign to us that we'd just...block it out, as a defense mechanism.

As to my actual views on death: I believe that we will all experience the presence of God.

L

John Brunner's "Traveller In Black" series is grimly funny along those lines.

The traveller grants everyone's wishes, although they don't realize they may be wishing at the time. Just like people blurt out wishes without thinking.

The result is always justice but sometimes harsh.

it also reminds me of C.S. :ewis in "The Last Battle", where the dwarves think they're in a smelly stable eating rotten turnips because that is their (rational humanist) view of the afterlife. the others can see that they are in a fine banquet hall with a sumptuous feast, but that is a reality the dwarves cannot accept.

so they got what they "wanted".

Ah, here's a story.
-------------------------------------------------------------
The Veribig Memorial Library has so many books that every fact in the history of the universe is written down somewhere in there. One day while walking through the library, Fred Schmidlap is struck on the head by a big volume falling off a high shelf, and he suffers complete amnesia; he ahas no idea what his name is, or what any of the facts of his past life are. He thinks that perhaps the enormous amount of information in the library can help im, so he sets out reading to try to find out who he is.

Fred spends some time reading the history of thirteenth century Albania, about methods of refining bauxite, and about Portuguese irregular verbs. This is all interesting, but he doesn't feel he's making progress in finding out who he is.

Soon he stumbles on a huge room filled with books of biography; this, he thinks, is the place to look. He spends an enormous amount of time reading every biography oin the place, including one about some guy named Fred Schmidlap. Fred now knows a large number of facts about this Fred Schmidlap. But what he does not know is that these are facts of his life. And, it would seem, no matter how detailed the information in that boigraphy was, the information would never tell Fred that this was him. The strange conclusion we must draw is that, however many facts he knows about what is in fact his own life, Fred still wouldn't know that these are facts about him; he still wouldn't know who he is.
-------------------------------------------------------------
It made me think, that, well, he ISN'T Fred Schmidlap anymore.
He's an entirely new person, even if he has the same brain and body.
This has actually happened in history; people who's memories are erased actually are new people, who start their life after their birth.

What's more, people are not who they were, from one moment to the next. With every change in your personality, with every new memory and each passing thought, you change. And this makes you a new person; similar to your 'old' self, yes, but a new person.

So, what happens when "I" die? Well, I just did.
And when My brain becomes defunct, I can only assume that I'll die again, this time with no new person replacing "me".

Anyway, I've got a question for people that believe that people are reincarnated, or there is an afterlife:
Why do you believe this? I've never seen any logical basis for these beliefs before.

Note; they're not really two different laws.
Because e=mc^2, and they're interchangable, I think it's more correct to say that there's a conservation of 'stuff'.
It seems to me that life is not a type of energy;
That life is a process which uses energy.
And besides, it seems a bit absurd to think that all new life is reincarnated from somewhere else;
We know that mass/energy is conserved because when one form disappears, another form, from the same stuff, forms in the same place.
But when life ends, if the 'life substance' still exists, it's not in the same place, and so it's not exactly like energy and mass. You could say that it's made out of ether or something, but you gotta remember...
Occam's Razor.


When you eat food, no mass is lost. It is excreted through the CO2 we breath.
Where does the energy come from? The chemical bonds of the molecules.
Also: Why can you not comprehend non-existence? Afterall, up until you were born, you didn't exist, eh?

Well, I admit that I have a hard time comprehending a universe with noone that has conciousness. There's noone to be aware that this universe exists, so does it?

The way I'm thinking, Fred Schmidlap actually died at the moment that he got amnesia. He would, in fact, be ressurected if the memories were restored, but the fact is, The new guy, that has amnesia, doesn't have any of Fred's experiences, and HE didn't exist before he was "born".

Personally, I'd say that someone dies when their memories and personality (values, priorities, behaviourisms) cease to exist.
In the case of somebody with a split personality, there are still parts of the brain which allow for the presently non-functioning personality to be, so maybe their both alive, but at any time, at least one of them is 'sleeping'.
But I'm not so sure about this. Afterall, a brain can hypothetically be constructed; it's just an arrangement of atoms. So, someone with specific memories and personality could theoretically be ressurected. But then they weren't really dead, because the atoms which would allow for the person to be are still there. That means that noone dies.

No, that can't be right. So, I will define death as a condition where a "person" is not presently aware... of anything.
By that definition, only one of the split-personality people is alive at one time.

But it's an entirely new person; they don't have any memories.
This new person that doesn't have any memories might have theoretically existed at Fred's birth (or the birth anybody that doesn't have a very different brain), but they certainly weren't "there" until Fred got amnesia;
If that were true, then every possible person exists, at all times, just because they might exist in the future, right?

I don't think we have souls. When we die, that's it. There's nothing after death (or at least that's my opinion).