Problem of Hell Thought Experiments

In Reply to A)
How so? The fact we experience this life is in itself an elemental proof which we can call knowledge. There is no objective evidence which suggests an afterlife, one might state that only proves lack of evidence to verify the claim, however I see this as using negative circumstance as reason to give the claim of an afterlife plausibility, in short, it’s arguing from ignorance.

In reply to B)
Yes, but after conception the existence of the unborn is visible to us.

In reply to C)
Yet you are still claiming the individual characteristics/attributes/persona of a specific being which are all influenced genetically via DNA code can some how transfer to another life in a different plane of existence, how do you propose this is possible? Can you provide an epistemological explanation?

In reply to D)
This analogy is fine if you’re comparing apples with apples, but it appears you’re trying to assert causality as a premise to justify the proposition of heaven and hell. This also suggests the Universe has a certain morality in which humans must abide by.

Tell me, do you believe all sentient beings are privileged enough to experience life after death, or just humans?

In Reply to A)
How so? The fact we experience this life is in itself an elemental proof which we can call knowledge. There is no objective evidence which suggests an afterlife, one might state that only proves lack of evidence to verify the claim, however I see this as using negative circumstance as reason to give the claim of an afterlife plausibility, in short, it’s arguing from ignorance.


In reply to B)
Yes, but after conception the existence of the unborn is visible to us. In reply to C)
Yet you are still claiming the individual characteristics/attributes/persona of a specific being which are all influenced genetically via DNA code can some how transfer to another life in a different plane of existence, how do you propose this is possible? Can you provide an epistemological explanation?
In reply to D)
This analogy is fine if you’re comparing apples with apples, but it appears you’re trying to assert causality as a premise to justify the proposition of heaven and hell. This also suggests the Universe has a certain morality in which humans must abide by.
Tell me, do you believe all sentient beings are privileged enough to experience life after death, or just humans?

A) I believe it is just as much a leap of faith to believe that a person only has one chance at consciousness/intelligence. B) This plane of existence is not visible to the unborn.
C) I said previously that it is more likely after death that you will not remember this plain of existence because your memory bank/brain is gone.
D) If you plant apple trees then apple trees will grow. If you plant corn then corn will grow. I don't think of it as being judged just succumbing to justice.

A) It's funny you say it's arguing from ignorance when it is the same argument your using to support your side. I'm saying it is obvious that we can experience life why do so many assume we will only experience one life? How many observable things only happen once?

B)It is visible to us, but not to themselves.

C) We are all made of the same stuff what makes a person unique? What ever it is it's not the stuff that we are made of because in that we are all the same.

D) Justice exists, planting an apple and getting an apple tree is proof of this.


Is it a privilege? or is it just another part of nature we don't know about yet? I don't know if it is true for anything much less all sentient beings it's just a theory I have come up with through my personal experiences.

A) It's funny you say it's arguing from ignorance when it is the same argument your using to support your side. I'm saying it is obvious that we can experience life why do so many assume we will only experience one life? How many observable things only happen once?

You have made a claim which is absent of evidence, I'm simply rejecting your claim due to that lack of evidence, I'm stating we have one life based on the fact I'm living it now. Rejecting your claim is not arguing from ignorance, it's simply not accepting your claim why should I have to even supply evidence to disprove something that in itself can't be proved, I am not obliged to believe something based on negative circumstance. You ask how many observable things only happen once? You have to be more specific, I could argue any specific event can only ever happen once, similar events may occur but they can not be identical for the fact two things can't exist in the same plane of space and time.

B)It is visible to us, but not to themselves.

So how does this support your claim? Your saying because we have no recollection of being consciously aware whilst inside the womb, when our brain is developing, that in turn it supports your claim that we can have an afterlife, but we have no recollection of the previous one. Your taking basic knowledge of what we observe in this world/universe and attempting to use it as evidence to support your claim of a world/universe which you have already made quite clear we have no knowledge of in the first place. It’s a logical fallacy. How can you claim what knowledge is relevant to a place you know nothing about?

C) We are all made of the same stuff what makes a person unique? What ever it is it's not the stuff that we are made of because in that we are all the same.

Visual appearance & personality make us unique, both these two factors are determined by DNA, no two humans have identical DNA this is a fact you can't get around. So although the organic matter which bodies are composed of maybe the same, it is still unique in that it can be identified to a specific individual. You still haven't got round the problem of explaining how the individual characteristics/attributes/persona of a specific being can be transferred or carry on to exist in another plane after death.

D) Justice exists, planting an apple and getting an apple tree is proof of this.

Justice only exists to moral agents such as ourselves’ the universe however does not demonstrate these same principals. Planting an apple and getting and apple tree, only proves that seeds replicate thier own RNA sequence to reproduce; this is cause and affect nothing more.

I think I understand dparrott's position a little more now. It sounds to me that what are are suggesting is that what we are "goes beyond euclidean or other practical measuring systems, and that our existence is part of a reality which goes beyond what we understand now as reality" (Star Trek---sorry) In other words, there is more to our existence than which we can currently comprehend. I imagine that this is clearly true, in fact it would be arrogance to suggest that we understand everything there is to know about our existence. We do not even understand how our perceptual reality is linked to what appears to be a physical reality from which we gather information through our senses (mind body problem), and the only justified inference by which we claim to 'know' that this physical reality exists at all is merely an inference of the best explanation (because as we all know solipsism, whilst plausible, is an explanatory dead end---it doesn't explain why or how the illusion of reality is there).

However, I agree with Thinking critical that none of this implies that there is any kind of 'experiance' after the termination of our physical form. Of course we don't really know if our conceptual reality is dependant on physical reality or whether it is the other way round, or in some way both. Evidence in biology suggests that physical reality takes precedence, physical changes in the brain appear to alter our perception of the world. Physics seems to suggest the opposite, where the mere act of consciously observing an experiment physically alters the results (uncertainty principle etc). All we know is that there is correlation, which in this case seems to imply causality one way or the other. If there is a dependancy, one way or the other, then one logically cannot function without the other. The mind and the body are intrisically linked.

So whilst I agree that it is possible that we might have experiances that go beyond our current understanding of reality, I would not agree that these experiances can happen 'after' death. 'After' implies a linear frame of reference. They may happen 'in' death, and perhaps in the act of dying our perception of time alters, as does our perception of reality, and opens up into a greater understanding and experiance of reality that is 'eternal' in the sense that the experiance does not end, but all this would be happening 'beyond' or 'outside' any kind of current linear conception of time so 'after' is not the right terminology. More importantly, I have no evidence to support such ideas and do not even know if they are logically consistent, hence I would prefer not to speculate wildly---I think for that I'll start another thread.

Suffice to say, that I find it very much illogical and non-evident that humans can or do experiance and infinite time of torment, or indeed experiance anything, after death.

A) It's funny you say it's arguing from ignorance when it is the same argument your using to support your side. I'm saying it is obvious that we can experience life why do so many assume we will only experience one life? How many observable things only happen once?

You have made a claim which is absent of evidence, I'm simply rejecting your claim due to that lack of evidence, I'm stating we have one life based on the fact I'm living it now. Rejecting your claim is not arguing from ignorance, it's simply not accepting your claim why should I have to even supply evidence to disprove something that in itself can't be proved, I am not obliged to believe something based on negative circumstance. You ask how many observable things only happen once? You have to be more specific, I could argue any specific event can only ever happen once, similar events may occur but they can not be identical for the fact two things can't exist in the same plane of space and time.

B)It is visible to us, but not to themselves.

This didn't make sense to me when you said it either. I didn't understand what you were trying to get at.

You say my claim that becuase we have experience life once and that we will experience it again, lacks evidence. I believe you position that we only experience it once lacks evidence aswell. So on this it is just a position based on personal observation and I guess we both observe things differenlty. I see similar events occuring over and over in this reality and this is how I draw my conlculsion. That we might have a similar experience to this again.

So how does this support your claim? Your saying because we have no recollection of being consciously aware whilst inside the womb, when our brain is developing, that in turn it supports your claim that we can have an afterlife, but we have no recollection of the previous one. Your taking basic knowledge of what we observe in this world/universe and attempting to use it as evidence to support your claim of a world/universe which you have already made quite clear we have no knowledge of in the first place. It’s a logical fallacy. How can you claim what knowledge is relevant to a place you know nothing about?

It is relevant becuase before you and I developed a brain we could not experience this life. I'm saying a process similiar to this will probably be needed to experience are next reality.

C) We are all made of the same stuff what makes a person unique? What ever it is it's not the stuff that we are made of because in that we are all the same.

Visual appearance & personality make us unique, both these two factors are determined by DNA, no two humans have identical DNA this is a fact you can't get around. So although the organic matter which bodies are composed of maybe the same, it is still unique in that it can be identified to a specific individual. You still haven't got round the problem of explaining how the individual characteristics/attributes/persona of a specific being can be transferred or carry on to exist in another plane after death.

I have to admit I don't know alot about DNA and Genes, but if you find a person that doesn't have either, then you can tell me we aren't all made of the same stuff. I can't explain what exactly happens at the time of death or after, all we have on this is speculation. As I'm speculating about.

D) Justice exists, planting an apple and getting an apple tree is proof of this.

Justice only exists to moral agents such as ourselves’ the universe however does not demonstrate these same principals. Planting an apple and getting and apple tree, only proves that seeds replicate thier own RNA sequence to reproduce; this is cause and affect nothing more.

Justice exists for everything, cause and affect are justice. It would be unjust if there was cause and no effect.

dparrott wrote:

This didn't make sense to me when you said it either. I didn't understand what you were trying to get at.

You say my claim that becuase we have experience life once and that we will experience it again, lacks evidence. Exactly; because you haven’t provided any.
I believe you position that we only experience it once lacks evidence aswell.

How so? It is a fact that we experience the life were living now, so far no evidence has been presented that suggests we experience a life after death. Your arguing from the position that if something can’t be proven to be impossible it gives good reason to believe that it is possible.

So on this it is just a position based on personal observation and I guess we both observe things differenlty. I see similar events occuring over and over in this reality and this is how I draw my conlculsion. That we might have a similar experience to this again.

So what, that’s not a phenomenon, it’s nature, have you ever seen something die and be reborn into a different Universe?

dparrott wrote:

It is relevant becuase before you and I developed a brain we could not experience this life. I'm saying a process similar to this will probably be needed to experience are next reality.

It probably would be, but your putting the cart before the horse, you haven’t proved your premise so why speculate any further, furthermore, you’ve failed to explain how this is biologically possible.

dparrott wrote:

I have to admit I don't know alot about DNA and Genes, but if you find a person that doesn't have either, then you can tell me we aren't all made of the same stuff.

On that note everything is “made of the same stuff” Atoms, again this is irrelevant where not talking about things being made of the same stuff, your arguing that stuff behaves in a manner which has never been observed. Your also arguing that genetic information can some how be transported into an unknown Universe, not one of your premises is contains credible evidence.

I say life after death is possible becuase we are living now. Life is possible this is obvious. My belief is since we experienced life this time we will probable experience it again. You have a problem with the explination of how we maintain identity as we are born and die then reborn again since the atoms we are made of stay in this plane. It is obvious to me that if you die and are reborn on a diffrent plane you won't remember this one and you won't be made up of the same atoms. So why does it matter if you know who you are or not? I'm sure you'll struggle with it or figure it out just like you have this time. This brings me to hell. We agreed that people are born into horrible things and grand things on this plane. Why not the next?

I say life after death is possible becuase we are living now. Experiencing life isn't evidence of an after life, it's evidence your alive right now.
Life is possible this is obvious. My belief is since we experienced life this time we will probable experience it again.
Probability is subject to a mathematical formula, please demonstrate. You have a problem with the explination of how we maintain identity as we are born and die then reborn again since the atoms we are made of stay in this plane. It is obvious to me that if you die and are reborn on a diffrent plane you won't remember this one and you won't be made up of the same atoms. So all your saying now is that people die and different people are born. So why does it matter if you know who you are or not? Youv'e pretty much just changed your entire argument, your now saying that when people die they are reborn into another life, But they will have different genetic structure and they will have no knowledge of there past life, so what makes them the same person? Youv'e removed both the physical and ontological aspects of a person, all youv'e got left is the metaphysical argument, the soul, yet your description doesn't even seem to fit with the main stream beleifs of souls either. Furthermore your also faced with the problem of proving the existence of metaphysical entities, so far this has not be done sucessfully.
I'm sure you'll struggle with it or figure it out just like you have this time. The only thing I'm struggling with is comprehending the illlogical beleifs your attempting to argue for. This brings me to hell. We agreed that people are born into horrible things and grand things on this plane. Hell is an abstract concept you pointed it out yourself, it appears all your doing is attempting to rationalize irrational religious scripture, your arguing in an attempt to prove your own beleifs of God. yet at the same time your being intelectually dishonest with yourself. Unless your prepeared to provide some credible evidence that makes your claim plausible I see no point carrying on with the discussion.

Regards TC

I say life after death is possible becuase we are living now. Experiencing life isn't evidence of an after life, it's evidence your alive right now.
Life is possible this is obvious. My belief is since we experienced life this time we will probable experience it again.
Probability is subject to a mathematical formula, please demonstrate. You have a problem with the explination of how we maintain identity as we are born and die then reborn again since the atoms we are made of stay in this plane. It is obvious to me that if you die and are reborn on a diffrent plane you won't remember this one and you won't be made up of the same atoms. So all your saying now is that people die and different people are born. So why does it matter if you know who you are or not? Youv'e pretty much just changed your entire argument, your now saying that when people die they are reborn into another life, But they will have different genetic structure and they will have no knowledge of there past life, so what makes them the same person? Youv'e removed both the physical and ontological aspects of a person, all youv'e got left is the metaphysical argument, the soul, yet your description doesn't even seem to fit with the main stream beleifs of souls either. Furthermore your also faced with the problem of proving the existence of metaphysical entities, so far this has not be done sucessfully.
I'm sure you'll struggle with it or figure it out just like you have this time. The only thing I'm struggling with is comprehending the illlogical beleifs your attempting to argue for. This brings me to hell. We agreed that people are born into horrible things and grand things on this plane. Hell is an abstract concept you pointed it out yourself, it appears all your doing is attempting to rationalize irrational religious scripture, your arguing in an attempt to prove your own beleifs of God. yet at the same time your being intelectually dishonest with yourself. Unless your prepeared to provide some credible evidence that makes your claim plausible I see no point carrying on with the discussion.

Regards TC

I'm not a mathimatician, and I'm not a scientist. Just one person looking at what is infront of me and trying to deciphere it. You obviosly disagree with my point of view. How can I provide credible evidence about a place that no one living has ever been to or seen? All I can provide is my speculation. If you want credible evidence from these sort of topics I would suggest staying out of the Philosophy of Religion, Thiesm, and Mythology forums.

Well in my veiw, phillosophy is a credible tool for obtaining knowledge, a hypothesis supported by speculation is epistemological suicide, not philosophy. Short of exercising the brain via intelectual masturbation, I see no point in debating a proposition unless it's accompanied with atleast some form of logic and evidence, other wise we might as well be arguing over the colour of jealousy.

If philosophy is a tool to obtain knowledge then what do you suggest your senses are for?

Well in my veiw, phillosophy is a credible tool for obtaining knowledge, a hypothesis supported by speculation is epistemological suicide, not philosophy. Short of exercising the brain via intelectual masturbation, I see no point in debating a proposition unless it's accompanied with atleast some form of logic and evidence, other wise we might as well be arguing over the colour of jealousy.

Green

If philosophy is a tool to obtain knowledge then what do you suggest your senses are for?

Another tool for gathering a different kind of knowledge. There are many ways to justify true beliefs. Philosophy is one of the best...oh so say philosophers at least :S

See, i would have said purple, green is envy, I can't prove it, but I believe it, so unless you can prove me wrong, then it's quite possibily true.

Each sense has it's own use, in a very broad sense (no pun intended), when our senses detect something they send information to the brain, the brain then translates it into a format that our consious mind is able to comprehend.
The brain/mind stores all information so I suppose our brain is the tool which allows us access knowledge.

I believe the senses are tools for knowledge, philosophy is a tool for wisdom, after we obtain the knowledge.

On the subject of Hell I view it as being in a place absent of God.

At the risk of sounding like a completely petty pedant, could I point out to everybody that the correct abbreviation of "you are" is "you're" and not "your".

It's just been bugging me when reading this and other threads.

Carry on.

Noted Steve3007, I am sure that I'm guilty of this, my grammer is always subject to improvement.