Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?
So far I haven't found compelling evidence for our continued existence after physical death. Some people feel like they believe in it with good reason, and others feel like they doubt it with good reason. But if there was a nonphysical existence that we could expect after physical death, what reasons could there be that it should be so well hidden from us that we tend to leave it to religions to speculate on it?
Comments (30)
True, and that's because 'dark matter' is physical.
If it's a physical phenomenon, then sure. I don't understand how a "nonphysical afterlife" can be physically "hidden" from direct or indirect physical observation.
Why would it have to be a non-physical life? Religions describe heaven as being in the presence of god and hell as being tortured by burning. How would either be possible in a non-physical form?
Maybe it is hidden in another universe!
I am interested in logical arguments, perhaps taking big leaps, as to why any such realm if it exists would be hidden.
1). Perhaps there is a deity that hides the living from the dead so we live our lives and don't commit suicide thinking it will give us peace.
2). Maybe the physical world is the minority of things and rarely interacts with the physical world. Like all we know being little more than colors on the EM spectrum.
3). Maybe what we call nonphysical actually is physical but is so subtle that our instruments don't come close to perceiving it.
I'd be happy to hear any interpretations of why an afterlife if it exists is so well hidden. I recently had a close relative pass away and have been in a bit of an existential crisis. I appreciate any concepts on this subject.
My condolences, TiredThinker.
I have speculated on a number of other threads about 'reincarnation', 'immortality', 'life extension' (e.g. immorbidity tech), 'transhumanism', etc but as a thorough-going naturalist, "spiritual after-life" (i.e. super-naturalism (e.g. ghost-without-the-machine)) makes absolutely no sense to me. That said, however, I've speculated about a 'concept of divinity understand, I'm completely agnostic about this wherein "eternal life", so to speak, is to live on (somehow) in the omni-memory of (the) deity-to-come at the end of all things (à la Frank Tipler's "Omega Point"). This concept, as I've interpreted it, is pandeism. Austere and remote, even cold, as it seems, I hope you can get something from it you may need in order to get through your crisis.
:death: :flower:
Because it implies that we didn't matter. We matter to each other while we're alive. But if we cease and get recycled into plant food what mattered to us doesn't matter anymore because we could not keep those matters alive because they are as limited as I hope we're not.
Anyway. If you reflect on your mortality, Thinker, and it seems to you that ultimately nothing matters, consider that this nihilism idea-feeling also entails that "ultimate nothing matters" also ultimately doesn't matter, that is, nihilism is self-refuting nonsense. And this too: how would 'immortality' make your life feel any less "equally pointless and possibly random" than it feels to you here and now? :chin:
Because if I were immortal in any form in a universe where nothing else is, it would become clear that we do matter. It takes only one world ending event to end the cycle of humans.
I don't remember starting this conversation, but I think I was assuming an existence that doesn't interact with the physical world in a way we can detect. And I'm assuming we can't detect much if our thoughts on the origins of the universe shift a lot each time we get a new telescope resolution.
As far as things having real meaning I don't consider only now in which I can feel a sense of pride for what came before, but also the knowledge that any knowledge or perceptions during this life could be voided out upon death making any previous perceptual functions exist as little after as before, so what makes them important during. Without a clear purpose what can we know, and with our lifespans being virtually nothing compared to the duration of the universe how can we even determine themes and patterns.
For us, then, that is nonexistence (i.e. fiction (e.g. ghosts)).
'Cosmogenic speculations' change far more rapidly in response to more precise and more varied observations than our well-tested cosmological theories which are glacially updated. There are not "a lot of shifts" in our knowledge, just click-bait press buzz about the latest computer-assembled telescope images du jour. Imho, metaphysical reflection "our thoughts on the origins of the universe" is not impaired, or informed, by mere 'scientific speculations' alone.
I don't understand what you mean. Elaborate (or reformulate)..
Without seeing a theme and patterns in our own lives in reference to all of time we can't get a sense of why we're here and what we're building towards if anything other than to spread DNA around like Nick Canon. Lol. We may than have no real purpose. We only exist with the characteristics needed to live at this time (except maybe children that die before adulthood who didn't get that luxury). I think we need a much longer existence to get any real sense of why we exist.
Mysticism takes it a step further and says, if theres a purpose there must be evidence of it here somewhere. You just cant get there through logic, you have to use other means.
Religion says you can talk(prey) to the mind that created us and do good works.
I think the longer one lives the more adaptive habits suffice and the less one needs a "real purpose". I aspire to the condition of a 'happy immortal': to affirm existing as an end in itself like music ... amor fati.
:flower:
[quote=Ludwig Wittgenstein]Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.[/quote]
:death:
I am not presupposing a heaven or hell. Those are primarily Christian beliefs. Not even a majority belief on earth.
Discontinuity by the erasure of all memory is unpalatable, because folks do not want to thrown again into circumstances of someone else's existence without intelligible cause. We also lose a lot of memory as we live and yet don't feel that we've lost an essential aspect of ourselves by such natural forgetting.
Since we know so little as individuals anyway, maybe we can say the world is mostly hidden. Yet everything we do know, focus on and remember and see takes up the entirety of our being and constitutes what is revealed.
Why is the afterlife hidden? Because it hasn't happened yet. Tomorrow morning is as hidden as the afterlife. It'll be absurd that when we do find ourselves in the afterlife (the present) we will still be looking forward to the afterafterlife. In any present time, if it is some other time's afterlife, our imaginations will be occupied with the future.
So... we have arrived. This is the afterlife. It is now. And there will be coffee again tomorrow, maybe.
Lets assume no deities so no tricks.
But if my colleague died yesterday and I am still alive. Today our presents are the same present. Why do I have no knowledge of my colleague today?
You do have knowledge of your colleague, that he is dead. If you have no knowledge of your colleague, how do you know that he is dead and a colleague? If he is dead, he is no longer present.
But Im working on the assumption that my colleague is experiencing an afterlife, as is posited in the OP. By definition an afterlife is some kind of presence continuing over time. So would presumably include the next day following the day of their death. So my colleague is present today along with myself, but somehow removed.
Very well said! :up: