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Help On Life After Death Essay

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That is an interesting approach. You rely on factual information and statistics for something to be true.

I disagree, I think that this is a meaningful and challenging topic because it questions so many core beliefs, whether it’s in religion, culture or tradition.

That’s why I like philosophy, so many interesting views on something or a finite being that seems to be beyond our infinite minds.

Reply 21

Joe312

Original post by NonIndigenous

Yeah... I enjoy philosophy here and there, but not this sort of claptrap.

Life after death can't be proven. Therefore, it's safe to assume, it doesn't exist.

End of essay for me. Spend the time you saved discussing more meaningful and challenging things.

If you're to believe things on the grounds that they can't be "dis-proven" then you're lost. It's flying spaghetti monsters and all that nonsense.

It sounds like you find this claptrap... because you're absolutely certain that you're right?

Well no wonder you don't find debate interesting!

Reply 22

NonIndigenous

Original post by Joe312

It sounds like you find this claptrap... because you're absolutely certain that you're right?

Well no wonder you don't find debate interesting!

I find debate interesting provided it's meaningful. For it to be meaningful we need to establish certain ground-rules.

Burden of proof is a very basic, fundamental ground-rule (that even people experienced at debates often take for granted and so unintentionally neglect it). Other ground rules for example establish and stick to agreed definitions of words.

If you want to argue with no ground-rules whatsoever then we might as well be speaking different languages. If you want to argue with different ground-rules, then you've got to make that clear from the outset, otherwise people misunderstand everything you say, call you disingenuous, a liar, etc. (happens often in debates)

Nonetheless, abandoning "burden of proof" for me would be a very tall order in any debate. It's how we ground everything in reality, instead of flying off at a tangent and getting lost in ideology or hypotheticals where there are infinite possibilities. Occasionally I do it, usually when I'm bored or distracted and let my mind wonder. "Infinite possibilities" also raises the issue of how do you give some possibilities a greater weighting or probability of being true than others. You can do that for a finite set of elements, but not for an infinite set. Because you don't know... what you don't know. You can't compute an infinite set, let alone assign probabilities to it's discrete elements. It's like dividing by zero. Circuits fry. You go mad and never come any closer to the correct answer. Fruitless.

To bring this back to Earth... I'm rarely absolutely certain that I'm right. If I am, it's usually on the basis of certain assumptions I and other people make that underlie our presuppositions. Who knows, those assumptions could be wrong. I don't have all the time in the world to chase down every lose end (nobody does), as these are effectively infinite. Like most people do (if only subconsciously), I observe, read, corroborate evidence and draw conclusions based on what proof I see of "x, y, z" being true or not. This is limited by how much time and energy I have in a day to do such things.

I can't draw conclusions based on what I don't know or something that I've seen no material evidence of. It's illogical. Believing such made up stories to fill gaps in our knowledge is something other people may find self-fulfilling. It's self-comforting to tell yourself you know something, when you in fact don't know one way or the other if it is true or not. Good for them. It doesn't work on me at all. In that respect, I understand the usefulness of religion, to other people. Not to me. Often if not for religion, people just take a leap of faith and believe in something else that applies similar ground-rules in terms of burden of proof (aka little or no ground rules). Sometimes this has been quite dangerous and led to the growth of cults or ideologies that have killed far more than all the religions combined. After all, peoples' gullibility has always been exploited by psychopaths to start wars with, or even just for their own sadistic amusement. Any interest I have in religion is based on how it works to bring people together, or in some cases divide people. It does serve a purpose after all.

Afterlife is of course a subset of religious belief in general. How do you prove that there is an afterlife? Asides from dying and coming back to life yourself? I'm aware of odd cases like that. There is far more convincing evidence (corroborated across numerous scientific studies) that the brain hallucinates under those conditions due to oxygen deprivation because the heart stops beating. Any longer than 2 minutes though and the person risks serious irreversible brain damage. This is more convincing because:
- their brain activity can be measured with scanning equipment, and displayed on a computer screen for everyone to see
- we've already known for decades that oxygen deprivation induces hallucinations

Those scientific studies don't disprove the possibility of afterlife. But they do prove that most likely what people experience in near-death situations are in fact hallucinations, and not visions of angels or golden gates.

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 23

gjd800

Original post by NonIndigenous

Yeah... I enjoy philosophy here and there, but not this sort of claptrap.

Professional philosopher here and I'm with you on this.

Reply 24

Joe312

Original post by gjd800

Professional philosopher here and I'm with you on this.

Not into the philosophy of mind? : P

Reply 25

gjd800

Original post by Joe312

Not into the philosophy of mind? : P

Meh, to a point. I prefer to write about things that affect here and now, not in abstracto about logical possibilities of life after death, especially not from an RE perspective. But I have some odd opinions for a philosopher - I think metaphysics is largely a waste of time, too. :laugh:

Reply 26

Joe312

Original post by gjd800

Do you think there's a possible world in which it isn't largely a waste of time though.

Reply 27

NonIndigenous

The "Related discussions:" at the bottom of the web page often lead me to old threads. Maybe it's something the development team should fix?

Reply 28

gjd800

Original post by Joe312

Do you think there's a possible world in which it isn't largely a waste of time though.

Reply 29

NonIndigenous

Could just have a pop-up that opens for threads like that saying "thread is over 1 year old".

Like there were some pop-ups recently on TSR for something else, but I hate pop-ups so just close them out of reflex.