There are no souls. So why do atheists think that their soul will magically go to oblivion after they die? The body is just a clump of atoms that combine in a mysterious way to form consciousness. Every moment the body is changing, and there is no soul or self to glue those moments together into one unified self. The only reason we make that identity is because of memory. We don’t believe in reincarnation simply because we can’t remember what was physically stored in other brains, but we’re still all the same consciousness. You will die and go on living as someone else for eternity. There is no such thing as non-existence or eternal nothingness. You are here forever. This is what has been said or hinted at by the eastern traditions, Whitman, Hume, Nietzsche, Schrödinger, Dyson, and many others. The standard atheist closed individualist conception of the self is simply untenable in a physicalist worldview. Conscious experiences do not belong to “you” or any other particular self. They are all simply occurring, existing as experiences. They are all equally real. They are all You. This truth has hitherto not been evolutionarily advantageous, so it’s no wonder that people reject it and call it crazy. But it is the best foundation for ethics, and, if it is true, then all of your actions are infinitely meaningful.
>The standard atheist closed individualist conception of the self is simply untenable in a physicalist worldview.
Why?
I just explained it. There is no self. A collection of atoms constructs conscious experiences from moment to moment. And those atoms are changing moment to moment. If you imagine a sort of objective view of all the organisms in the universe, and this physical process of consciousness being constructed every moment, but not illusioned with this idea of identity and names and labels, then you wouldn’t say “this set of conscious experiences belongs to a certain self and when the body dies that self will no longer exist and will rest in peace for eternity.” All consciousness is equally real. It all belongs to the universe. It’s just that consciousness can only be experienced internally.
If you didn’t have memories, you would not identify with your past experiences. But through your memories you understand that the consciousness in the past was real, you experienced it. The same is true for other people, but we simply don’t have the physical memories of their experiences in our brains. If our physical body is changing across time, and yet we are that consciousness throughout, then the same is true across space, among other organisms, and before and after we die. We are all the same consciousness. As absurd as this may sound, closed individualism is much more absurd.
>There is no self. A collection of atoms constructs conscious experiences from moment to moment
Lmao
Imagine still being a materialist in this day and age
Materialism is as sad as worshipping israelites
Once upon a time you surely made fun of anyone who thought that lightning was natural phenomena and not the manifestation of the rage of Zeus.
>If our physical body is changing across time, and yet we are that consciousness throughout, then the same is true across space, among other organisms, and before and after we die. We are all the same consciousness.
I don't follow this leap in thinking. Why would the idea of consciousness being the same hold when we are no longer in the same physical body? Consciousness arises from the configuration of atoms in the body after all.
There is nothing gluing together the moments in consciousness in my life. Since the body is always changing, it would even make sense to say that my identity is changing every moment, and each moment in consciousness is its own unique experience, unrelated to the preceding and proceeding experiences. But we feel that they are all “my” experiences, simply because I can remember them. I see patterns in existence, such as always seeing this body, this face in the mirror, which, though slightly changing across time, is relatively the same, especially compared to other people. Because of this, I have an idea that all of my conscious experiences belong to “me.” But they don’t belong to anyone. And if that’s the case, then why would it not be true for conscious experiences in other organisms? Why are all the conscious experiences in this body (which is changing every second) “my” experiences, while experiences in other organisms are not mine? They are in a different space and time, but so was my own body a few seconds ago. How do you justify believing that an individual’s experiences belong to a self when there is no physicalist account of such a thing?
>There is nothing gluing together the moments in consciousness in my life.
But there is, in the configuration of neurons in your brain, the various electrical patterns between said neurons, etc. Are these patterns constantly changing, as are your neurons? Of course. But there is still an unbroken chain of interactions between these cells from when they developed in the womb to when they all die, starved of food and oxygen after your body shuts down. That history of electrochemical interactions is what glues your consciousness together through time.
So if I destroyed your body but perfectly cloned those atoms before your death so that you didn’t even realize you had been killed, would that be you or not? You would literally have the exact same memories, but the atoms would be different. Why exactly does it matter that the atoms exist in the same chain of reactions, anyway? You’re imposing extra and unnecessary concepts in a physicalist worldview. There is a serious of chemical reactions and atoms re-arranging and they construct consciousness moment to moment. So what? Where is the self?
I would say no, because that chain I described in my previous post has been broken. You might have perfectly recreated it but that is a new chain. The copy-me would of course be indistinguishable from me, but it would be a copy.
>What if we maintained the series of chemical reactions but slowly changed you along the way, like the ship of Theseus? We could change your memories, your appearance, your DNA, gradually until you seemed to be a different person, or maybe even a different species. But is it still you
Yes. The original chain is unbroken, even if it has taken a very odd direction.
Also, another thought experiment. What if we maintained the series of chemical reactions but slowly changed you along the way, like the ship of Theseus? We could change your memories, your appearance, your DNA, gradually until you seemed to be a different person, or maybe even a different species. But is it still you, simply because the atoms are “related” through a chain of chemical reactions?
Even buddhism doesn't deny the existence of individual mindstreams
>you see, consciousness is when you put together a bunch of particles which don't have the properties necessary to generate what you experience as consciousness
kek
Is the same true for intelligence? Or the existence of emotions? Do all animals have souls? Is that really what you believe?
I was making fun of that very position, what?
Atoms don’t have intelligence or emotions, but animals do. Are you suggesting that all animals have magic souls that allow them to have properties different from simple atoms? Also, why do you think water can exist when neither hydrogen nor oxygen have the properties of water?
absolute moron
nice argument. I guess you believe water has a soul lmao
why is this view funny to you?
because I'm not a hylic
also your comic is moronic because you have to first examine what is capable of perceiving the chariot as a chariot and how
>also your comic is moronic because you have to first examine what is capable of perceiving the chariot as a chariot and how
holy shit gnostics are clinically moronic lmfao
you CAN point out "the part of a chariot"
it can be defined as that which is lost when the chariot is dismantled which in the basest utilitarian view would be the function of a chariot ascribed by a conscious observer and to someone capable of thinking in higher terms a chariot would be something else depending on what philosophies you subscribe to
>there are no souls.
>so why do atheists think that their soul
You lost me before your second sentence was done.
But that’s how atheists think. They think that they have some sort of intangible essence that unites every moment in their lives. They believe in a self or soul, when it simply doesn’t exist.
The idea of some "self" which experienced the different stages of life is a very intuitive one. Maybe, a evolutionary necessarity in order to plan for the future, act strategically and so on.
If a deeper analyses show us that it is the case that no continuited self existed, like the buddhist teached since millenia, this change nothing about our naive feelings.
How could I be the same person during time? In which way is my 7 or 8 year old incarnation who has thought about this questions for the first time the same being as me in my 20s?
Many people think this is possible through an immaterial substance, the soul. Since the soul is the same at all times in life, the individual has a monolithic self.
In fact, this is not the only possibility to think about a continuity of self.
Consider the picture of a string. The individual threads that make up the entire string are not as long as the string itself.
Nevertheless, no one would deny that it is a whole.
I’ll put it like this. Suppose you die. Then how could you possibly be resurrected? The standard atheist thinks that “he” is somehow resting in an eternal void, but what if we wanted to bring him back? What if we cloned his exact DNA? Would that be him? He wouldn’t realize it, because he wouldn’t have memories of the past life. But why WOULDN’T it be him?
>umm because, uh, he’s just ok
This is the problem with closed individualism. It borrows The Abrahamic idea of a soul without actually explaining it in physicalist terms, because you can’t. There is no persistent self. That’s just an illusion created by memory.
I used to think a similar train of thought.
I was scared shitless that death was really just being a paraplegic and when you decay in the ground, your brain still works on some level, but as you're tortured and decaying your thoughts become incomprehensible and miserable half thoughts on and on for eternity.
are you trying to make me trans
>the egg
reddit meme
The idea behind the egg existed long before reddit.
Poojeets have refered to it as brahman for thousands of years you dumb Black person
>If there is no self then no meaningful differentiation can be drawn between objects and people, not unless you want to concede that one of these things has an essence.
most objects dont cry when you hit them
What's not to understand? OP is pointing out (correctly, imo) a certain structural hypocrisy in the thinking of fedoracore heccin sciencebro reddit-materialist atheists, like they claim to support a purely physicalist worldview & reject the notion of an afterlife because of its associations with judeochristianity, but then at the same time they typically dont behave in such a way or espouse views which faithfully reflect the true ethical & logical complexities & ambiguities inherent to a purely physicalist worldview
>most objects dont cry when you hit them
I don’t think most people would define crying as the distinguishing feature that defines their identity.
really? you dont think most people concede that the ability to feel & respond to pain is a defining characteristic of being alive & of being human?
No, animals feel and respond to pain as well.
>there is no soul or self to glue those moments together into one unified self
This is true, although it leads to a kind of self-contradictory nihilism that bites its own tail. If there is no self then no meaningful differentiation can be drawn between objects and people, not unless you want to concede that one of these things has an essence. You can take this even further by saying that truth itself lacks an essence and is incapable of being differentiated from falsehoods, leading to the premise of the argument (a self is illogical) being contradicted by its conclusion (logic cannot meaningfully be differentiated from the illogical).
>reads the introduction to Daniel Kolak's I Am You once
While I honestly consider open individualism to be a likely reality, I don't fully subscribe to the "center for reducing suffering" pragmatic ethical takeaways that Daniel does; I think each of our bodies, as the barriers that define you from me, have a right to operate in self-interest, as if we are actors in the elaborate play of life. Obviously causing unneeded harm is pointless and cruel, but that's taken for granted under any model of individualism.
>consciousness and other properties "emerge" instead of already being implied among the potential combinations of matter arranging according to the universe laws.
>no ontological status to entity existing as potentiality before "emerging" although being already implied by the premises of the system
>muh "emergence"
"Emergence" as a category makes as much sense as creation ex nihilo: either emerging properties are already implied by the conditions that bring them forth, and therefore exist as potentiality and beg the question as to what "potentially existing" means (i.e. a question about how to express and articulate the ontology of potential objects), or there is no such thing as emergence because time does not exist at all and all properties of the cosmos are already expressed at the same time (which again begs the question of what the ontological status of the "illusion" of time "passing" is).
But clearly, if something exists, it always exists and it cannot cease existing. What changes is the degree or modality of its existence, and the complicated philosophical work to be done is about the ontology of objects existing outside of present time. Yet, you guys are so read to talk about entities that come forth into existence (emerge) or leave existence as if the meaning of "to be" or of "existence" was already set - while you use it ambiguously in every given instance by somehow referring to entities that have ceased existing (Parmenides: if they don't exist anymore, how can you refer to them?) or about entities that emerge into existence (Parmenides again: if they don't exist yet, how can you refer to them?).
Please, instead of hitting people who are trying to have breakfast on a sunday before going (again) to work with your half-baked, undergraduate, philosophy 101 musings about things, read a book.
Pic related
https://sfss.space/the-egg-2009-andy-weir
Theosophical bullshit
midwit
It is more attractive to talk about the "soul" as some abstracted unity instead of myriad processes keeping a body alive. Obviously souls don't exists and are just a phantom conception of the religious/spiritual/theological mind to cope with the infinite emptiness of it all, but again being regressively rational about the matter does not seem to serve a tangible purpose in the bigger picture as well
> but again being regressively rational about the matter does not seem to serve a tangible purpose in the bigger picture as well
if we’re all the same consciousness, then it’s pretty fricking important. Even a psychopath could realize that torturing other people is bad because he is those people
That remark brings to mind the famous song by Maroon 5 - Animal. Which goes like - Baby I'm preying on you tonight, hunt you down in silver light, just like animal... and so on and so on. But, to get back to the matter at hand - you're looking at through a moral lense. I can argue like a parent that what if pain was somehow conducive to the flourishment of consciousness. Like how a ninja becomes a great samurai warrior after years of penance towards his/her master. Is the master a psychopath or a good guy then? Is the bigger picture the ultimate consciousness which is moral, is that what you're saying?? But then again I would ask, whose morality? And then we would go over this matter for quite sometime regressively until we reach a conclusion which I hope won't be like some meta morality where we talk about doing good things without it reflecting much in the real world, that would be anti climactic. What if "psychopath" is a modern social construct? And we're all just confused little kittens going meow meow in the face of a cold uncaring universal consciousness
Many instances of suffering can’t be avoided and may even be useful, that’s true. But if everyone truly believed that they were everyone else, then it would affect the way they treat people. It also prevents people from thinking their life is meaningless and that suicide leads to eternal rest from suffering. No, suffering will continue to exist, the play goes on. Killing yourself simply removes the instantiation of consciousness in your particular body at that particular moment, but other consciousness is still real.
There would also be more interest in creating a utopia, in improving the species. I want humans to one day be masters of the universe and themselves, and to create heaven in the real world, because I will be all of those people.
>What do you think has become of the young and old men?
>And what do you think has become of the women and children?
>They are alive and well somewhere,
>The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
>And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to
arrest it,
>And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
>All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
>And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.