Atheists, what do you think happens after death....?

Question

BEFORE YOU ANSWER 'NOTHING'.

We were created somehow once , I am guessing that , givin the infinitiveness of time and the universe would it really be illogical that it may happen again? That something will happen where we regain our perspective and sense of being?

I'm not saying you would remember anything about this life or that you are linked to it any way other than at some point you regain a sense of consiousness as..something.

Answer 1

You are talking about what physicists call quantum immortality.
It is certainly possible especially if the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct. It also depends on the nature of identity.

Too many of my fellow atheists think this idea has something to do with religion, gods, souls, or some other crackpot notions. It doesn't. Those physicists and Philosophers who have considered this idea are all materialistic atheists. There is nothing here magical or in contradiction with current physics. Nor is there any idea that our mind is the result of anything apart from the configuration of our brain. the Please Read the links I have provided carefully.

The idea is kind of like the idea that smashing a computer doesn't end the survival of Microsoft Word, as long as reality is large enough to include other identical copies of Microsoft Word. And providing these identical copies of Microsoft Word can't distinguish between themselves. This is a key idea called "Trans-World Identity" by the philosopher David Lewis.

Personally I am an atheist and think it is very reasonable, perhaps even likely. But it seems to me like the majority of survival scenarios you may end up in a nursing home in extreme pain or horribly maimed in some way. As a result I am not sure this is a good thing. So even if I think it may be possible. It certainly isn't anything I would wish for. This was also the opinion of the famous Princeton philosopher David Lewis who was one of the leading proponents of Modal Realism.

It is also possible as proposed by the famous Physicist and Cosmologist Max Tegmark an Associate Professor at MIT that before we die we undergo a period of diminishment of consciousness and hence there is no way of establishing a continuous conscious existence from this world to any alternate one in which we continue to exist. This might provide a means of saving us from the eternal torture that Quantum Immortality might otherwise lead us to. And instead lead us to a nice permanent death. There are interesting questions here having to do with the Measure of consciousness in Many Worlds Interpretations.

In effect we are like "Schoedingers Cat" surviving in some realities and not surviving in others. But always unable to observe any reality other than the ones in which we do survive.

Answer 2

Well if you're not saying we'd still have any of our memories, then you're really just saying that a person will one day be born who is genetically identical to us, yes? That's entirely not the same thing. It'd be like saying that identical twins are actually the same person. If our time on this planet were infinite (it's not) then it would take so long before there was even a remote chance of someone identical to us being born that the environment they would be brought up in would make them a different person. Also, in that theory there is no reason why we even have to be dead. When we die everything that makes us who we are is gone. It isn't coming back. Deal with it.

Answer 3

Most likely, nothing. It would appear that once a given copy of your mind is destroyed such that it cannot be recreated, any future minds that happen to be like yours will not share your perception. Although this is a philosophical matter and it is probably very difficult, if not impossible, to know the answer without actually dying.

On the other hand, this same problem MAY make death impossible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality

Answer 4

Well, there is that thing about enough chimps with enough typewriters and enough years would faithfully reproduce all of Shakespeare's works. And, in theory, the edges of the universe (bit of an odd concept in itself) curve so that even a straight line will eventually meet itself - sort of a Viking-like Ragnarok thing, don't you think? But, I digress. Aahh, it could happen, but I doubt it.

Answer 5

Once your dead, your dead. Nothing known today will bring you back. And if sometime, in the distant future, some way is actally found, there will be nothing left of your body to bring back. Its just illogical.

Answer 6

I think that when my brain dies, I will end. However, wouldn't it be great if I was wrong?

As for afterward, hopefully people will be a little sad that I'm not around anymore, and hopefully the reminiscences won't center around the times I had PMS.

Answer 7

My remains will once again become one with the earth through the process of decomposition. Plants will use those nutrients, herbivores will eat the plants, carnivores will eat the herbivores. Eventually the carnivores will die, and become one with the earth, and so on and so on, for quite some time to come.

For Marysia....the worms play pinochle on my snout.....

Answer 8

Infinitiveness of time?? Its not infinite, at least i dont think it is.
what we call time had a beginning so its not infinite.
sense of being depends on us being able to think, which requires our body, so no i dont think we will ever wake up again.

Answer 9

I think when you die, that's it...its the same sensation as you had before you were conceived. There is nothing.

I think people enjoy the concept of an afterlife because they're afraid of ending.

Answer 10

So you believe in re-incarnation?
No supportable evidence exists for that fairy-tale either.
When you die, you die, and become food for worms. That's it. If anyone tells you differently, they are selling something. Usually, they are selling you a policy in the christian afterlife insurance plan... sucker.