Don't know how you came to this belief, but I have to say it closely resembles impressions I sometimes harbor myself.Matt wrote:i, for one, do believe in life after death, i hardly believe in this life after death, nor would i want to. it is my belief that we are sentenced to roam the countless planets suitable for any conscious life, until the Universe ceases to be with the only saving grace being through death, our brains also cease to exist, erasing any memory of what you are or what you were.
But upon any level of consideration, this would not follow from the first quote. It seems to me that it is necessary to reject anything that leads one to believe "there is no real reason." If this were true, then there would be "no reason" to suppose there is any life after physical death.with that being said, i believe in no god(s) and i view the Universe as being very cold and indifferent to us humans, or any other life, advanced or otherwise and i also see no real reason anything should be alive or what purpose any of this serves.
I agree that the trappings of this life could not follow us, and nor would that be a desirable thing. Yet I think something must, and therein lies any possible reason for thinking there is any kind of existence after physical death.
Being as starkly honest as possible, I cannot concur with the all-too-easy blanket sentiment that the Universe is entirely indifferent. If there were an absolute lack of love, for example, it logically would not be possible, at any time, to bemoan its absence. In addition, if the Universe were absolutely "indifferent," it would forever remain entirely foreign. Instead, it displays an astonishing regularity and is for no discernible reason amenable to rational exploration, and its behavior closely mirrors mathematical models which are for the most part simple enough for grade school children to express.
An indifferent life would predictably never turn in one's favor. Yet it does so to a tantalizing extent, making proclamations of its "heartlessness" lie just beyond the reach of one's certainty.
But Matt, after this post, you are no longer displaying disjointed thoughts about nothing, are you? While I admit your first quote above expresses a state of mind I often experience, I should add that at those times I claw my way past it. For example, I do not think the brain is the repository of anything of us which may survive physical death. rather, I think it is the portal in and out of this thing to the physical world, which we would not encounter after death in the same way, so that our brains would be unnecessary at best, hindrances at worst, for they would then tether one to a plane in which one no longer exists.
The key, I think, lies in supposing there are planes of existence, all of which are experienced by a healthy mortal. The basis of dualism is our dual existence, in which we recognize equally real inner and outer worlds. In reality, we know nothing of any outer world, but merely interpret reflections it casts upon our inner world with its perceptions and later, conceptions. The world of perceptions is the tip of the iceberg; remove it, and the iceberg persists. Survival in the physical world requires us to fashion ourselves after it, devoting energy and time to feeding the component of ourselves that resides there, our physical bodies. Remove this link to it, leave it on a slab in the morgue or in a box in the ground, and we are free to pay attention to the vastly larger portion of ourselves. We have died; isn't this what we have really wanted all along? Isn't living a chore? Once Eros has been paid its homage and we have done our share to obey the urges which compel us to create newer, fresher outer shells and prepare these new shells to prosper as well as possible in this outermost plane, Thanatos can be satisfied and one can withdraw into the bosom of Death, where truer, more permanent Life resides.
If we are not guide-less in these newer realms, then the Universe cannot be without its gods, can it?
