I contest that afterlife is a lie.
I think one reason many people believe in an afterlife is because it actually makes sense, even though their picture of what it looks like is very unlikely to be accurate.
In my opinion it is simply a logical certainty that there is an “afterlife” (if one dies in the first place):
I can’t ever experience nothing in the present (even though I can say in retrospect say “I experienced nothing ”, which just means I failed to experience an experience with certain properties) , so I will always experience something in the present. And experiencing is not a static thing that could ‘stop’ in the present—it requires change -, thus I will always experience a future. What’s the alternative?
Ceasing to exist is a 3-person concept, it can’t happen to a subject. But we ARE subjects (notwithstanding our useful relative identify as a 3-person accessible thing, ie our current body), so we can’t cease to exist in a final 1-person sense. Or at least we can’t know what ceasing to exists means for us, anymore that we can know what the world would be like if there would be nothing.
So there is no reaon to be afraid of ceasing to exist or treat it like something that actually happens to us or any one else (though temporary death is most probably something we should worry about).
To frame it as questions:
What could ceasing to exist mean for me? I care about my experience, but there isn’t one in this case. The dead one isn’t me, it is just a body that used to be my body.
So why would I worry about a non-experience of something that isn’t me?
Why not instead solely consider experiences I could have (eg being revived after death)?
So what kind of afterlife awaits us?
I think it’s likely to be the case that intelligence at some point in some branch of the multiverse can run abitrarily good simulations of our past/present/near future and thus will ressurect every being with no violation of the laws of physics.
Actually I can’t think of an alternative that doesn’t require some fundamental things about the world or us to be very much unlike science think they are (eg there is a spiritual plane where we reincarnate from, or consciousness can eternally exist in random quantum fluctuations...).
I contest that afterlife is a lie. I think one reason many people believe in an afterlife is because it actually makes sense, even though their picture of what it looks like is very unlikely to be accurate.
In my opinion it is simply a logical certainty that there is an “afterlife” (if one dies in the first place): I can’t ever experience nothing in the present (even though I can say in retrospect say “I experienced nothing ”, which just means I failed to experience an experience with certain properties) , so I will always experience something in the present. And experiencing is not a static thing that could ‘stop’ in the present—it requires change -, thus I will always experience a future. What’s the alternative?
Ceasing to exist is a 3-person concept, it can’t happen to a subject. But we ARE subjects (notwithstanding our useful relative identify as a 3-person accessible thing, ie our current body), so we can’t cease to exist in a final 1-person sense. Or at least we can’t know what ceasing to exists means for us, anymore that we can know what the world would be like if there would be nothing. So there is no reaon to be afraid of ceasing to exist or treat it like something that actually happens to us or any one else (though temporary death is most probably something we should worry about).
To frame it as questions: What could ceasing to exist mean for me? I care about my experience, but there isn’t one in this case. The dead one isn’t me, it is just a body that used to be my body. So why would I worry about a non-experience of something that isn’t me? Why not instead solely consider experiences I could have (eg being revived after death)?
So what kind of afterlife awaits us? I think it’s likely to be the case that intelligence at some point in some branch of the multiverse can run abitrarily good simulations of our past/present/near future and thus will ressurect every being with no violation of the laws of physics. Actually I can’t think of an alternative that doesn’t require some fundamental things about the world or us to be very much unlike science think they are (eg there is a spiritual plane where we reincarnate from, or consciousness can eternally exist in random quantum fluctuations...).