The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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BigQuestioner
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The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by BigQuestioner »

My article "The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife" was published May 2020 in the Journal of Mind and Behavior. (A postprint copy is available on ResearchGate.) The article claims a non-supernatural, i.e., scientifically supported, timeless, eternal consciousness, which can be a natural afterlife. Moreover, this afterlife can be heavenly or hellish. Thus, for the first time, this article actually identifies a Heaven and Hell that are real, though as you will see if you read the article, they are not what most people envision in that they are timeless and "all in the mind."

For those who read most of the article (you may skip some of the more technical parts if you wish), get the gist of the natural afterlife, and are open to its possibility, I pose the following questions:
1) How does the natural afterlife impact various religions? Can it be seen as compatible?
2) Does the possibility of a natural afterlife benefit society? (For many, I believe it "puts Hell back on the table." Is this good or bad.)
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

The notions of Heaven and Hell provide an allegory for possible future conditions on Earth. As the proportion of people who seek good for others as well as themselves increases, life on Earth will become more like Heaven. As the proportion of people who seek to benefit themselves at the expense of others increases, life on Earth will become more like Hell. I believe that is the reality that the allegory points to.

If your post-life consciousness is a computer loaded with all of a person's memory and running simulations, then it is not a continuation of any person's actual life, but an entirely different life and consciousness running on a computer. The person and their consciousness would be gone. And everyone interacting with the computer would be playing a game of make-believe.

So, (1) I don't think this would have any impact upon any religion, since they would see it as a make-believe after life and (2) if there is any benefit to society, it would be a placebo effect, and work only upon the gullible.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Wossname »

Marvin_Edwards wrote: August 22nd, 2020, 10:21 pm Marvin_Edwards » Today, 3:21 am

If your post-life consciousness is a computer loaded with all of a person's memory and running simulations, then it is not a continuation of any person's actual life, but an entirely different life and consciousness running on a computer. The person and their consciousness would be gone. And everyone interacting with the computer would be playing a game of make-believe.


I agree with that but a quick look suggests that is not the proposal offered. The proposal as I understand it from a quick scan through is that you are paused in a timeless state at the point of death which becomes your forever now. It involves conjecture concerning NDEs, the fact that personal perception of the rate of the passage of time can vary, and that we are probably unaware of the exact moment of death. The authors suggest that the experience could be (subjectively eternally) heavenly or hellish depending on the nature of the NDE.

I confess to scepticism here. You are unaware of the exact moment of falling asleep (or, in my experience, of passing out), but you fall asleep or pass out all the same. The author suggests that when you die you transition from an active to a static state of mind. I think Greta has posited something like this view elsewhere on the forum and this issue has been discussed not so long ago. I do not dismiss the possibility out of hand, but for me it entails a degree of conjecture that I am unhappy with. I am more inclined to the view that when the brain stops so does the mind. There is no transition, just an end that you probably won’t notice. Dreams end, life ends, end of. I think Greta did offer the sage advice that if it is true then it’s probably best to be thinking happy thoughts as you go.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Terrapin Station »

The notion of something being both timeless and eternal, in the sense of "lasting for all time," is incoherent.

If all you're saying is that there's a final mental state for the dying in which that mental state doesn't change to something else, so that insofar as that person knows, they're in a final unchanging mental state and that's it, that's fine for what it is, but it's not saying much, and it would make your title misleading in a clickbaity way.

What sort of reviewers are working on that journal?
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Terrapin Station »

Although really, saying that one can know one is in an unchanging mental state is even coherent. It doesn't really make sense to say that one can propositionally know something without any sort of change or motion being involved. We'd have to claim something like, "We can instantaneously think/parse/judge a proposition," which has no support. Aside from it not being experientially the case, there's no support for brains working so that the processes involved there could be instantaneous.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Terrapin Station »

Oops, make that: "Although really, saying that one can know one is in an unchanging mental state is even incoherent."
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Sculptor1 »

BigQuestioner wrote: August 22nd, 2020, 12:06 pm My article "The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife" was published May 2020 in the Journal of Mind and Behavior. (A postprint copy is available on ResearchGate.) The article claims a non-supernatural, i.e., scientifically supported, timeless, eternal consciousness, which can be a natural afterlife. Moreover, this afterlife can be heavenly or hellish. Thus, for the first time, this article actually identifies a Heaven and Hell that are real, though as you will see if you read the article, they are not what most people envision in that they are timeless and "all in the mind."

For those who read most of the article (you may skip some of the more technical parts if you wish), get the gist of the natural afterlife, and are open to its possibility, I pose the following questions:
1) How does the natural afterlife impact various religions? Can it be seen as compatible?
2) Does the possibility of a natural afterlife benefit society? (For many, I believe it "puts Hell back on the table." Is this good or bad.)
God help the University of Illinois to allow this sort of Spiritualist to get in to an academic journal from a computer user Bryon K. Ehlmann.
Have they abandoned peer review? Ehlmann has no understanding of physiology, biology, nor the Eisensteinian maths that he invokes in his tawdry little article.
What the hell are you Americans doing wasting time and energy on this utter BS. Maybe the Journal is desperate to get something sensational to print?
Truly the long awaited decadence of the Western World is upon us.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Terrapin Station »

I think it's long been time that we abandoned the notion that a paper has merit just because a journal decided to publish it.

Journals need content. They have subscribers who have paid for a certain number of issues per year, and they'd better deliver those issues. And there are so many journals that they need a steady stream of thousands of papers between all of them . . . many of which are basically crap. That's not helped by the pressure to publish in academia. Professors need to occasionally publish something, whether they have something worthwhile to say or not. So you write whatever. It's a relatively decadent system, where things are published just to publish, just to make money, etc.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Terrapin Station »

Re journals, even just for philosophy, there are over 500 journals worldwide. Most publish 2 to 4 times per year. And most publish at least 6 or 7 papers per issue. So on a very conservative estimate, that's a need for at least 6,000 papers per year! On a less conservative estimate, it's in the ballpark of 14,000 papers per year! Just in philosophy. All of which are supposed to unique, insightful and sound in terms of methodology, reasoning, etc. Obviously that's not going to happen.

If we include other fields, there are probably well over 5,000 different journals published multiple times every year.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Count Lucanor »

By definition an afterlife is not natural, more like a religious supernatural belief. So the real title will be The Impact of a Religious Belief on Religion and Society.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

Wossname wrote: August 23rd, 2020, 7:02 am I think Greta has posited something like this view elsewhere on the forum and this issue has been discussed not so long ago.
I seem to recall a discussion about Star Trek's Riker having a second, younger copy of himself stuck in a transporter loop. When rescued there were two Riker's on the Enterprise for a couple episodes.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Wossname »

Marvin_Edwards wrote: August 23rd, 2020, 3:11 pm Marvin_Edwards » Today, 8:11 pm

I seem to recall a discussion about Star Trek's Riker having a second, younger copy of himself stuck in a transporter loop. When rescued there were two Riker's on the Enterprise for a couple episodes.

Good to know.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Angel Trismegistus »

BigQuestioner wrote: August 22nd, 2020, 12:06 pm My article "The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife" was published May 2020 in the Journal of Mind and Behavior. (A postprint copy is available on ResearchGate.) The article claims a non-supernatural, i.e., scientifically supported, timeless, eternal consciousness, which can be a natural afterlife. Moreover, this afterlife can be heavenly or hellish. Thus, for the first time, this article actually identifies a Heaven and Hell that are real, though as you will see if you read the article, they are not what most people envision in that they are timeless and "all in the mind."

For those who read most of the article (you may skip some of the more technical parts if you wish), get the gist of the natural afterlife, and are open to its possibility, I pose the following questions:
1) How does the natural afterlife impact various religions? Can it be seen as compatible?
2) Does the possibility of a natural afterlife benefit society? (For many, I believe it "puts Hell back on the table." Is this good or bad.)
NDE is a necessary condition for the Natural Afterlife, yes?
And the occurrence of actual death during the NDE is the necessary and sufficient condition for the Natural Afterlife, yes?
If these two conditions are met, then a kind of eternal moment survives in and with consciousness, and this is the Natural Afterlife, yes?

If I have represented your hypothesis fairly, then:

1) The Natural Afterlife does not impact religion at all, it seems to me, inasmuch as religion seems to be completely irrelevant to the adventitious nature of NDE. The only argument that might involve religion in this event is an argument that religious beliefs somehow influence the nature and content of the NDE.

2) The possibility of the Natural Afterlife does not appear to benefit society in any way. First, because the survivors cannot know whether the deceased in fact had an NDE before death. Second, because no living person can prepare for NDE or influence it in any way. One can only hope to have an NDE before death, and a pleasant one at that, but even if that hope is realized, its realization will not be known.

An interesting possibility nonetheless, well argued. I particularly like its extension to non-human animals. I hope the cat I recently lost was dreaming about bounding about his world as he did in his prime.
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by Belindi »

Terrapin Station wrote: August 23rd, 2020, 9:52 am I think it's long been time that we abandoned the notion that a paper has merit just because a journal decided to publish it.

Journals need content. They have subscribers who have paid for a certain number of issues per year, and they'd better deliver those issues. And there are so many journals that they need a steady stream of thousands of papers between all of them . . . many of which are basically crap. That's not helped by the pressure to publish in academia. Professors need to occasionally publish something, whether they have something worthwhile to say or not. So you write whatever. It's a relatively decadent system, where things are published just to publish, just to make money, etc.
Well applied scepticism!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies

Whilst being cross-examined at Ward's trial, Rice-Davies made a riposte which has since become famous. When James Burge, the defence counsel, pointed out that Lord Astor denied an affair or even having met her, she dismissed this, giggling "Well he would, wouldn't he?"[9] (often misquoted "Well he would say that, wouldn't he?").[10] By 1979, this phrase had entered the third edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and is occasionally referred to with the abbreviation MRDA ("Mandy Rice-Davies applies").[11]
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Re: The Impact of the Natural Afterlife on Religion and Society

Post by BigQuestioner »

Denigrate the author, the journal, the reviewers of the journal, the author's affiliated university, and scholarly publication in general, but don't even bother to read the article close enough to understand what is being claimed (or get the university correct). That is, attack the messenger and his facilitators but not message, at least not the real message but instead, due to a lack of understanding, attack a straw man. That's how I would characterize many of the responses here.

Anyway, I'm not interested in debating the reality of the natural afterlife. I've already "been there, done that" on other forums often enough. Moreover, hundreds of psychology and philosophy scholars have now reviewed the journal article I reference and have yet to find any flaws in my theories--i.e., in their logical deduction or the psychological principles upon which the deduction is based, which are what should to be attacked if one wishes to denigrate the theories.

One must understand that the natural afterlife is an illusion that only occurs with death. I believe the article does the best job I can do in explaining this illusion, but it needs to be read closely with an open mind. Admittedly, the natural afterlife's timeless and relativistic aspects make it hard to grasp and appreciate. Think about getting someone to accept the existence of a rainbow and to appreciate it when they've never experienced one.

While others can respond to those who remain strong believers in (and perhaps want to cling to) the orthodoxy of death as a “before-life kind of nothingness” (from the perspective of the dying person), I will only respond here to those who are willing to discuss the potential impact of the natural afterlife on religion and society.
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