Happy Atheist Forum

As I get older I find myself getting increasingly fascinated by certain of the mysteries of life and, because I cannot accept any religious claptrap in answer to the questions posed, like to theorise and would love to get both the serious and the light-hearted views of like-minded people.

One of the hardest things to get to understand is the thought of not existing before birth and not existing after death â€" is it like when I settle down in the evening to watch a good documentary of movie on the TV I am suddenly out of it and later wake up to find that I have missed it all? Is ‘not existing’ like that period of nothingness between falling asleep and dreaming?  
Of course, if I were religious I could believe that after death I could go to ‘heaven’/’paradise’ and, hey, if I were a Muslim I could become a suicide bomber and look forward to all of those lovely virgins awaiting my arrival in paradise (some people get all the luck!!).  
The thought of not existing has always led most people to want to believe in their ‘souls’ going to ‘heaven’/’paradise’.  Reincarnation is a popular alternative to spending eternity in some paradise (do the Muslim virgins get replenished after they lose their status? eternity must be one hell of a long time to be stuck with the same sexual partners!)  It is popularly supposed that humans have souls that came from a previously living entity - how come there are now 6.5 billion souls in the world when 100 years ago there were only1.65 billion?  has there always been a huge storage depot somewhere in the universe that redundant souls are stored until required?  What happens when the stockpile runs out?  Your thoughts please my fellow soulless heathens.

 :?

Hello tomday - good stuff.

Your observation about the number of souls seems solid to me - it must be bull because it couldn't possibly work.  I highly doubt that I have a soul, and even if I did, I can't see how it could have come from some previously living thing.  For that matter - what counts as a living thing?  Do viruses have souls?  Meh - this all just gets ridiculous to me.

Serious note: yes - I suspect being dead is identical to being completely unconscious.  Total nothing.  Which isn't really so bad at all - its the "dying" part I'm worried about!  As long as I don't suffer, what's to fear about death?  I'll just be dead - big deal.  This quote came up in another thread, but I like it so much I'll re-quote it here:

QuoteMr. Clemens [Mark Twain] was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he did not, in view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and billions of years before he was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

(Kudos to MommaSquid for identifying this quote)

On a light-hearted note:

Quote from: "tomday"if I were a Muslim I could become a suicide bomber and look forward to all of those lovely virgins awaiting my arrival in paradise

Never sounded too good to me, considering:

Quote from: "tomday"eternity must be one hell of a long time to be stuck with the same sexual partners!

Which is why I would favor experienced women!  True professionals.  Absolute wonders of the bodily pleasures and masters of passion.

I'm just saying, if I got to choose.......

Semi-lighthearted-note: what is the fascination among the Islamic faith with deflowering virgins?  Is this some kind of power-trip thing?  Personally, I've never been comfortable with a sex partner being a virgin (luckily for me, none of my sex partners ever were).  I had great respect for the good tastes of any girl who wanted to sleep with me ( :wink: ), but if the charming lady was already "experienced", then when she expressed a desire for intimacy with me I figured she at least knew what she was asking for.

I express this in the past-tense because I'm married now - only one sex partner.  Which, honestly, is just fine with me.

Indeed we will 'cease to exist' when we die, just as we never existed before birth...

... but honestly, in what sense do we exist right now? What are 'WE'? Molecules? No. Cells? No. Tissue? Organs? No and no. Are we the neurons and nerve impulses? Not really. We aren't even our brains. 'We' are just a thing that arises from all this energy and activity, which somehow briefly becomes  aware of itself (in fact it makes no sense to refer to a singular 'it') and suddenly stares out at this whole confusing universe... then reverts back to purely mechanical processes. But even this notion is flawed. Are we even 'aware' of ourselves or anything in the first place? Everything every mind thinks and feels was determined in fractions of seconds after the Big Bang, from birth to death. Nobody's home, we just think we are. Life is an illusion.

I think the one thing to take from the above pointless ramblings is that there isn't really a 'nothingness'. People tend to think of death as some kind of void but in fact life too is a void, just one in which energy does a lot of swirling, and will continue to swirl long after conscious beings have ceased to be aware of it.

I don't know. I set out to make a somewhat comforting rant about a secular 'soul' and I ended up depressing myself. Bah. Point is, enjoy life, don't worry about souls or reincarnation, just live knowing that life is wonderous and death is that necessary ending that makes it so.  :wink:

The thing that baffles me, when it comes to a soul, is Christians says animals have no soul. This is strange to me, because humans have a soul, so why not animals. How is it that an animal is able to live without a soul? According to Christians all humans must have a soul because that is your true self. My dog has a very distinct personality and shows signs of love, fear, joy, interest, shame and intelligence. If my dog or any other animal does not need a soul to live then why would a human require one? Seems rather arrogant that only humans get the souls. Why are we so special? Some times I compare my life to a monkey in the jungle. In the grand scheme of things I don’t really see how my life is any better than a monkey’s life or any other animal’s life. We live, we die and fill our life doing stuff. In a few thousand years who really cares? It is rather depressing, right? Not to me. I don’t need a way to distance myself from the rest of the animal kingdom. I like that humans evolved from monkeys. I don’t see the “yuck factor” like many others do. There is a lot of yucky stuff we humans do. I guess the soul just makes people feel better about being human.

SteveS - thanks for putting me right re virgins and experienced women - could have saved myself a whole lot of fruitless searching if I had known this earlier in life!

QuoteNobody's home, we just think we are. Life is an illusion.

pjkeeley - deep stuff this!  So, if this is all an illusion , how come I (who can't possible then exist) am writing a response to you (who also can't exist) about a response (which could not have been made) to an original posting that I could not have written because I don't exist?  If anyone else reads this, take no notice because you can't possibly exist either!
 :wink:

QuoteMy dog has a very distinct personality and shows signs of love, fear, joy, interest, shame and intelligence.

Sorry jcm, according to pjkeeley, it seems that your dog don't exist either!
 :cry:

In re: number of souls.  I've heard it explained that the waiting time for souls to be reincarnated used to be greater(shorter queue now that there's more people), and you also have to take into account the being reincarnated as a "lower" animal.  So, maybe more souls have good enough karma to be people instead of chipmunks or bees now.

Or, it's all bullshit.

Thinking about souls also gets me thinking about the concept of the 'heart'. Like 'Jesus lives in my heart.' And I remember imagining in my Christian days that he actually lived in some sort of spiritual realm located in my cardiovascular system. Which obviously is designed (using the word loosely, of course) to pump blood and carry oxygen to the extremities. Just a thought. I laugh thinking about it now.

Didn't Demi Moore solve the problem of running out of souls in "The Seventh Sign"?

She gave her life to fill the Guf:  

QuoteAccording to the movie's version of the Scriptures, when the Guf -- a k a the Hall of Souls -- is empty, and the first soulless child is stillborn, the Day of Judgment is at hand.

Not that I believe in that stuff.....

Quote from: "jcm"The thing that baffles me, when it comes to a soul, is Christians says animals have no soul. This is strange to me, because humans have a soul, so why not animals. How is it that an animal is able to live without a soul? According to Christians all humans must have a soul because that is your true self. My dog has a very distinct personality and shows signs of love, fear, joy, interest, shame and intelligence. If my dog or any other animal does not need a soul to live then why would a human require one? Seems rather arrogant that only humans get the souls. Why are we so special? Some times I compare my life to a monkey in the jungle. In the grand scheme of things I don’t really see how my life is any better than a monkey’s life or any other animal’s life. We live, we die and fill our life doing stuff. In a few thousand years who really cares? It is rather depressing, right? Not to me. I don’t need a way to distance myself from the rest of the animal kingdom. I like that humans evolved from monkeys. I don’t see the “yuck factor” like many others do. There is a lot of yucky stuff we humans do. I guess the soul just makes people feel better about being human.

My mom, who is an evangelical Christian believes that certain mammals have souls, like dogs. Any kind of animal that is capable of expressing emotion. We had a shitzu that died and she earnestly believes that she will see her in heaven. I've pressed the logical side of the argument, asking if pigs and monkeys have souls then, too. It seems in her estimation that pigs and monkeys, although intelligent, do not have souls. I guess it's just pets that get souls. Forget that chimpanzees have nearly identical DNA to humans. It's amazing how similar we are. I don't know how anyone could separate the obvious fact we are so intimately related to animals, especially to apes.

Quotepjkeeley - deep stuff this! So, if this is all an illusion , how come I (who can't possible then exist) am writing a response to you (who also can't exist) about a response (which could not have been made) to an original posting that I could not have written because I don't exist? If anyone else reads this, take no notice because you can't possibly exist either!

I don't quite understand what you're asking. To clarify, I'm not saying you or I don't exist. But it depends on your definition of 'exist'. I say life is an illusion because it feels to us as if we are singular conscious identities inhabiting a physical body and making certain decisions about how to act. Most people think this way by default. But on another level, none of this is quite what it seems, because 'we' are in fact just bundles of stuff (cells and organs and tissues and nerves and so on) that somehow produce a weird feedback loop that we think of as self-awareness. The 'illusion' refers to the fact that all of this is determined in advance by cause and effect, and really our brain only generates an illusion of choice, or of awareness, after the fact.

So to return to your example, a bundle of stuff (tomday) is carrying out a process (sending a reponse on an online forum) to another bundle of stuff (pjkeeley), an event which was predetermined causally by everything else that had happened in the universe until that moment, at which point this bundle of stuff registers that it has been read, setting in motion a response (writing this reply) which the brain tells me was 'my' choice, but in fact was an automatic process, like everything else in the universe.

So yes, something does exist, but it isn't really self-awareness as we think of it, because there is no self and there is no awareness, only illusions of both. The illusions still exist though, at least while we're awake, and while our bodies are still alive.

I'm no expert on consciousness though so anyone who has any better authority on this can feel free to correct the impression I've given.

QuoteI don't quite understand what you're asking.

pjkeeley my friend, I am not asking anything, I am merely attempting to inject a little ironic humor in the hope that more people might be motivated to join the discussion as, IMHO, even the most serious of subjects can be made more interesting and meaningful by the injection of appropriate humor.  Maybe my typical British sense of humour is simply out of place in such an international forum?

Oh, okay. I thought you were objecting to my lovingly thought out reasoning so I went straight into argument mode.  :pirate:

I think that a 'soul' is just a metaphor for consciousness... just as heat energy is technically matter, a soul is just a few quarks of electricity in your brain, and when you brain stops working, it goes elsewhere. So I guess it's kind of like reincarnation, but you might never ever be inside a living organism again...

Human beings are selfish, self-absorbed animals. No, I don't believe there is a soul, but I can understand the appeal of the belief of going on forever in the form of a soul. I mean, wouldn't it be rad if I could go on and on and on? The fear of death? Gone. Oh yea, I can totally understand the appeal!

The brain is an amazing thing and philosophers/scientists have only recently (compared to the span of human existence) discovered that human thought and personality lies in the brain. The brain is made up of all sorts of chemicals and neurons... and it's even been shown that one's very personality can change when these things are altered.

A good example: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,881 ... 89,00.html (http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1580389,00.html)

*sigh* Further evidence against the "soul" crap that those people believe. How much longer until they wake up?

Quoteone's very personality can change when these things are altered

We all know that taking drugs, smoking, drinking alcohol, even coffee changes a persons personality by simply introducing chemicals into the brain.   Back in the seventies I suffered from 'clinical depression' which blighted my life, and those close to me. It wasn't just that I felt 'depressed', it was that I was emotionally numb and could not interact appropriately in any normal social environment (couldn't even smile no matter how much I wanted to) - i.e. my personality was shot!  I was advised by a psychiatrist that my problem was probably caused by a chemical imbalance in my brain and later discovered that IN MY CASE, by taking supplements of good quality, natural balance vitamin B complex, I was able to control the depression and have been totally in control of it since - regular daily supplementation keeps it at bay most all of the time and if I do get the early warning signs I am able to take appropriate measures to stop it from surfacing (I emphasized 'in my case' because it is not a general panacea and other people's depression may have different root causes).
The cynics amongst you may be saying "it's all in the mind!" - damn right it is!  simple fact is that emotions are controlled by chemical messengers in your brain -your body does not absorb these chemicals from the air around you, but from your food, and if you don't take in enough of what your brain needs from the food you eat, the messages from your brain just don't get sent effectively.    
Unfortunately, those who suffer from mental illness tend to become willing targets for bible-bashing vultures, It is my experience here in the UK that many people who suffer from depression get themselves drawn into religious groups always on the look out for easy, gullible targets (poor souls!).

Seems like it - they'll jump on a troubled psyche faster than a skirt-chaser will pick up a crying girl on the rebound....

They always play this card, too.  The JW's that hit me up were all about "Doesn't the world seem evil to you?  Aren't you afraid of dying?  Don't you wish there could be something more - something wonderful?  Wouldn't you want to live forever in paradise?  Wouldn't you like all your questions answered?"

Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.  As far as I'm concerned it borders on outright fraud - they can't deliver one single thing that they promise.  Near as I can tell, nobody lives forever, there is no paradise, there is nothing "more", nobody gets all their questions answered, and so on and so forth.

Maybe the trial lawyers will get a hold of this: world-wide class action lawsuit against religions for making fraudulent advertising claims.  The Catholic church alone must be worth billions, right?  They've got the deep pockets.....

If they can sue McDonalds, who never (that I saw anyway) made any claim that their food was healthy --- why not the church?

Hey guys:
  I'm new to this site. I'm an Engineer from Montana. I'm educated, well traveled, a collector of artifacts and dinosaur bones..... Who all is a member of this interesting site, and who all is willing to talk SCIENCE with me..??

Quote from: "doggone"Hey guys:
  I'm new to this site. I'm an Engineer from Montana. I'm educated, well traveled, a collector of artifacts and dinosaur bones..... Who all is a member of this interesting site, and who all is willing to talk SCIENCE with me..??

Welcome to the forum, doggone. You'll find a lot of different folks here on the forum. Feel free to read the introductions that others have posted and jump on in there yourself.

I think you'll find a few people here who enjoy science, scientific thought, and rationality in general.

Hi doggone!  I enjoy science although I am not a scientist.  I'm a software engineer.  If you've got scientific input please don't be afraid to share --- I for one will enjoy it thoroughly!  How do you collect dinosaur bones?  Do you find them?

QuoteIt is my experience here in the UK that many people who suffer from depression get themselves drawn into religious groups always on the look out for easy, gullible targets (poor souls!).

This is how evangelical church grows. They wait for a breakdown and then close in, offering support and friendship in a time of need. Has anybody seen that scene in 'Borat' where he finds himself in the middle of a Pentecostal revival after being stranded? Great stuff. Very visually demonstrative of your point.

Quote from: "myleviathan"This is how evangelical church grows. They wait for a breakdown and then close in, offering support and friendship in a time of need. Has anybody seen that scene in 'Borat' where he finds himself in the middle of a Pentecostal revival after being stranded? Great stuff. Very visually demonstrative of your point.

It's also why religious "aid" organizations always take bibles with them along with whatever "aid" they're taking to impoverished or disaster areas.

consciousness is a reflective brain function.  when the brain is dead, it isn't conscious that it's dead.  it can't really imagine being dead because that's the way it's engineered; it's too integral to it's functioning.

this metaphor is probably overused, but when a computer is shut off, it doesn't think about when it used to be on or when it will be on again.  it's just off.  the electricity that ran it or would be running it is being used elsewhere.  in time, the circuitry breaks down, and the matter is broken down for use elsewhere.  that's not reincarnation because the consciousness of the original collection of energy and matter and the functioning it once had is dispersed.

this is what makes life so precious as opposed to the false promises that religion advertises.

QuoteWho all is a member of this interesting site, and who all is willing to talk SCIENCE with me..??

Hmmm,   sounds like fun, but exactly to which branch of science are you referring??

Hmmm.  Existence and consciousness.  My chair exists, this doesn't seem to be a terribly difficult thing to accomplish for atomic matter.  Consciousness, on the other hand, seems to require a great deal more complexity than that.  Apparently consciousness requires memory and decision making from that memory.

We all go to sleep, wake up, forget.  It's not really nonexistence, just unconsciousness.  I had the unfortunate experience of having a head injury as a kid.  I was interacting, apparently speaking with my parents and doctors after the event, but my short term memory was non-functional.  According to what people tell me, I couldn't even repeat back a string of simple words such as ball, bat, pen.  The only knowledge I have of the accident is from what people tell me.  I didn't regain my short term memory until after I had slept and I still have gaps in my long term memory around that time in my life.  So where was "I"?

My grandmother had a stroke when she was in her late seventies, and lost all of her memories except for those when she was a young woman.  She didn't recognize her own son, or know who I was.  It was a terrible way to exist and I felt so sorry for her, because she was obviously in a great deal of mental anguish.  But even without these memories or the ability to form new ones, she still had intelligence.  She taught me how to hand sew after the stroke, even though she couldn't remember doing it later.

So what is consciousness?  What is a soul?  Is it our memories?  If we are constructed of mere information, how does that affect our definition of sentience?  What does it mean to create an AI on a computer system?  What does it mean to write in a forum?  Are these words an extension of my informational self? If I change my mind, do I change my "soul"?

If we start to look into the world of information, then the concept of AI and avatars begins to lend some very strange ideas indeed to the traditional concept of the soul.  We get into the realm of possibilities, imagination, mathematics, metaphysical weirdness and other quantum quackery.

The Judeo-Christian mind-set of the soul is just one set of ideas in an infinite sea of possibilities.   There is so much more out there.