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What Happens When We Die?

#1
Secular Sanity Offline
This might be interesting.  We’ve discussed something similar before.

(Dec 22, 2016 03:52 PM)Ben the Donkey Wrote: The Church (pretty much all of them) have always argued against suicide primarily because after millennia of trying to convince people that some form of paradise awaits after death, they are now faced with the conundrum of having to prevent people from wanting to go there a little earlier than intended. Which, you know, if you think about it, would be exactly what all believers would want to do... were they not informed it was a heinous sin.

Sundance 2017: what happens when we die? 2 new movies propose an answer.

"In the near future, Dr. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) scientifically proves that the afterlife exists — that when a person dies, their consciousness leaves their body and ascends to some other plane.

The Discovery doesn’t really dwell on or explain the mechanics of this revelation, because the outcome is far more interesting. People begin killing themselves in mass numbers in an attempt to escape the pain of this life, or because they’re desperate to discover what’s on the next plane. Funerals take on a different cast. Even the way people think about murder shifts.

The Discovery’s greatest strength is its element of surprise. The film’s opening scene is one of the strongest sci-fi world-building scenes I’ve ever seen, and there are moments throughout where characters say or do something that makes perfect sense given the Discovery, but that are shocking nonetheless. It’s enough to keep the film gripping.

It’s not an allegory for or critique of religions that preach an afterlife and their effect on the way adherents experience the present life. Which is good; the movie could have wandered off too easily into ham-fisted territory. But it does still point to how much of our conduct in this life is dependent on what we believe about what happens after we die. If our beliefs were proven, how would they change?

The Discovery eventually becomes interested in regrets, and how we deal with them; as regrets are something people contemplate at the end of their lives, this is natural territory for a movie about the afterlife."



https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/rm-FjYW24JY
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#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
I hope it avoids the scientific proof of the afterlife in the movie. Who knows if there'll be people who off themselves after watching/hearing the flick. I'll wager someone commits suicide after viewing the movie and someone gets sued. My other bet is they don't reveal the science behind the discovery because it's next to impossible to sound convincing. 

What's after death? No one knows but I think everyone who possesses a mind probably has some idea of what they hope happens. Personally I would like to become omniscient, even if it takes an eternity. Or I become a spirit and haunt MR for laughs.
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#3
Secular Sanity Offline
(Feb 2, 2017 05:42 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: What's after death? No one knows but I think everyone who possesses a mind probably has some idea of what they hope happens.

What do you mean no one knows? We know. We’ve seen it with our own eyes.

I love Sundance films. They’re unique and creative, and like the article said, the filmmakers have the freedom to explore religious topics that traditional studios shy away from.

Robert Redford is an atheist.

"Is there an afterlife? As far as I know, this is it. It's all we've got. You take your opportunities and you go for it."—Robert Redford

Unlike before, where theism is overtly represented in numerous films, films with an agnostic or atheistic slants are being produced. There is definitely an audience for them. Isn’t it about time?

Atheist Movies

Theist have always used art as a vehicle. Artists force you to explore. They see things in a way that others cannot. Do you think that atheism can inspire great art?
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#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
Quote:What do you mean no one knows? We know. We’ve seen it with our own eyes.

Perhaps that's why I started new thread in Philosophy.  Wink Amazing to think my mind played with this thread while I slept. Cool.

OK. I don't know. Maybe someone does.

Quote:Do you think that atheism can inspire great art?

Don't see why not. Are talking about art that screams at the theists or art in general? My kid's an atheist and an artist. She has won many awards and her art has been shown on TV many times. Unfortunately revealing her identity may reveal mine or worse, get her into trouble with theists. Christ, why do we always have to be careful around theists. I don't want to argue, I don't get agitated and I don't spout quotations from some mysterious atheist bible. Jeezuz it's an uncomfortable feeling at times.
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#5
C C Offline
Quote:What Happens After We Die?


Depends. Usually a mundane ceremony around an intact corpse. A child swallowed by a large python still abides in a mildly lengthy digestion process. Conventional explosives still leave scattered bits of a body to find, observe, catalog and place in storage or discard. But the story of "what happens to one" completely ends an instant afterwards if under ground zero.

http://factsanddetails.com/asian/ca67/su...m2516.html
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#6
stryder Offline
I'm pretty sure Catholicism came up with a neat way of stopping that from happening, consider the notion they see Suicide as a mortal sin and that should someone do such an act they will be placed into Purgatory.

What would this be if it conveyed into the light of fiction?
Well imagine you commit suicide thinking your escaping from this life to the "next" and instead you literally get stuck somewhere similar to an overflowing A&E(Emergency Room) for... well as long as it takes for you to realise that suicide was wrong. The idea of having somewhere to hold those that attempt to "cheat" the system is the only way such systems would work (and stop unnecessary death.)

To be honest though I'd be more concerned with the rendition that in the future there will be the equivalent of an Insurance system where you pay money to a company to give you an afterlife (with the contractual agreement that suicide would null and void the contract) This would lead literally to people selling their "souls" to the corporate machine, of course somewhere deep within the unfathomably illiterate small print would be some clause that anything and everything that you would currently see as Intellectual Property in this universe, if existent in their provided visualised afterlife would become the property of said company. (Your IP becomes their IP). The reason for this is if their afterlife mirrored the physics of our own and you were to invent something that could aid the world (or gain them a profit) they could produce in the world where you now longer reside.

It definitely puts a twist on the whole "Selling your Soul to a Devil".

My take therefore on the statement of an afterlife is this, If we don't attempt to build one and deliver one, then one will not exist (or at least be in a fluctuating state between existing and not existing). I'm not one for praying to the star's and assuming someone is just going to hand a result, and even if they did the real question would be, "Would I actually want it?" I mean we assume we are all born free, but to find yourself entrapped into a system that you have no control over literally would mean giving your "freedom" up (I do use this term loosely because there is always someone threatening the concept of Freedom)

As for the Mechanics/Technology?
One of the main problems with a project to produce a solution for "What happens when you die?" is it could take many years to accomplish, so many in fact that some of the people involved in it's development would likely die from unforeseen events and old age. This means that such a project couldn't just have the fruits of it's labour exist in the future, but also a retroactive occurrence to capture those who would otherwise be missed before such technology exists.

Such technology/mechanism couldn't work like say "taking a photo", literally just capturing someone at death would not contain their whole sum, instead that person would have to be captured from the point of birth up until death. The method of capture would require routing part of conscious/subconscious through a ultrasound mechanism so they would actually be part of a network. Dreaming for instance wouldn't just be a phenomena of your mind while your body recuperates, it would actually be part of your transition to sentience within the network. Basically it would be a loop back method where you would exist as a duality of what you presume as real and ACI (Actual Captured Intelligence) within a network. Should your Real squishy self have it's life cut short, it's last connecting feeds to the network would take input but won't loop back to an output.

You'd be fully captured in a system, you wouldn't be a copy as your entire conscious process would have originally existed in that duality state, but breaking the bonds of the mortal coil would place you just within that networked state.

What religion would you be destined to land with?
It's not that simple, if such a system was created correctly it would run much Net Neutrality. What you would have is literally a service provided that is then re-badged by corporates and religions alike. It's core system is therefore the same, just with a few quirks here and there to tailor to peoples tastes. As I've mentioned there would definitely be need of a Purgatory system to stop people trying to escape what they think is misery, as after all any afterlife is always going to be a lesser rendition of the universe we exist in already. (I suppose you could suggest our universe is like a futuristic super computer compared to the rendition which would be the equivalent of a smart phone or tablet. Our universes level of definition will always be superior to the interpretive models produced.)
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#7
Syne Offline
The problem with suicide is who's to say whether the next life will be significantly different. Much like Mal in Inception, you may just find yourself wanting to escape that one just as much (or god forbid, more)...always imagining the grass to be greener on the other side of death (god willing it's available). By many accounts of an afterlife, you don't find better until you've learned enough to earn it...which would preclude trying to jump the line.
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#8
Ben the Donkey Offline
(Feb 3, 2017 09:21 AM)Syne Wrote: The problem with suicide is who's to say whether the next life will be significantly different. Much like Mal in Inception, you may just find yourself wanting to escape that one just as much (or god forbid, more)...always imagining the grass to be greener on the other side of death (god willing it's available). By many accounts of an afterlife, you don't find better until you've learned enough to earn it...which would preclude trying to jump the line.

With regard to having "learned enough to earn it", at the very least, you're still very much constrained by someone else's idea of heaven. Adhering to rules isn't learning, really.

What, for example, might be Butcher Pete's heaven, and is there one for him?
When speaking of an afterlife, it's very difficult to do so from any position other than one of an implied moral position. 

I actually like Stryder's post. Some interesting stuff in there.
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#9
stryder Offline
(Feb 3, 2017 04:17 PM)Ben the Donkey Wrote: I actually like Stryder's post. Some interesting stuff in there.

It's just a damn shame I never got around to writing the ideas/concepts up into a work of fiction. (I've spent way too much time thinking on a number of different subjects and while it comes out most of the time like a huge incoherent blurt, there is structure behind it)
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#10
Syne Offline
(Feb 3, 2017 04:17 PM)Ben the Donkey Wrote:
(Feb 3, 2017 09:21 AM)Syne Wrote: The problem with suicide is who's to say whether the next life will be significantly different. Much like Mal in Inception, you may just find yourself wanting to escape that one just as much (or god forbid, more)...always imagining the grass to be greener on the other side of death (god willing it's available). By many accounts of an afterlife, you don't find better until you've learned enough to earn it...which would preclude trying to jump the line.

With regard to having "learned enough to earn it", at the very least, you're still very much constrained by someone else's idea of heaven. Adhering to rules isn't learning, really.

What, for example, might be Butcher Pete's heaven, and is there one for him?
When speaking of an afterlife, it's very difficult to do so from any position other than one of an implied moral position. 

I actually like Stryder's post. Some interesting stuff in there.

Adhering to rules does teach self-control, discipline, etc.. As children, rules allow us to practice skills which become truly self-governing as adults. The external pressures and ideals aid in the development of internal regulation.
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