The Afterlife

[jskains]

A lot of opinions are scattered throughout the internet about what, if any, proof there is that consciousness survives death. When searching for truth, it becomes confusing on where the comfort comes from for true believers. There are verses even in the Bible that remind us some of the Biblical people believed in a God, but seemed to think there was no afterlife.

In Eccl. 9:5. it talks about the idea that people who die are no more, and can gain no reward. In Genesis, there is a passage about how we just return to the dust and God takes back his breath.

From a scientific viewpoint, the question lies in "what is the soul"? Certainly one must ask what causes these chemicals to come together and form the "you" that is experiencing your life. Why were you born today? Why born a boy or a girl? Why not born in the medieval timeframe? And can those chemicals reunite to recreate the "you" (possibly supporting reincarnation?). But the chemicals can be so manipulated by science. If you have fear or depression, it can be countered with SSRIs. If you get Alheimers, your personality and experiences are radically changed. Memories can be lost due to brain damage. With so much of what is YOU being formulated by chemicals and electrical discharges, as well as the structure of your brian, what is left when the brain is destroyed?

In true traditional theology, we do not leave our body and go into heaven. We die, ceasing to exist (at least for a time), only to be resurrected for judgement. But this counters the NDE/Medium/Ghost/Hey Mommy is now in heaven ideologies we currently hold in popular culture. Though, ironically, resurrecting the body into perfect form and reigniting those chemical processes and brain structures fits in more with science. Then the entire question of "what is a soul" is obsoleted, as the very brain structures that neuroscience complains are necessary come back. As if God goes forth and rebuilds his robots and the conscious, memories, and personalities return as a psychologist would actually buy.

But as LDS, I believe we sit in both camps. We believe that souls are returned to heaven upon death and that during the resurrection, the bodies are pulled from the grave.

I guess I would ask what you really as an LDS believer, feel about the current afterlife debate? Seems people are losing faith as science discovers more and more about how the brain works, creating more of a dependency on the physical brain, making an argument that not much is left when those chemicals stop, leaving the question still of what exactly survives. Yet there are people who swear by NDE experiences, experiments like "The Afterlife Experiments", etc. But it also saddens me that powerful emotional ideologies like Love are also being widdled down to chemical reactions. Are we really just robotic creations of a God? Or even accidental (and very very very very very lucky) robots with chemical reactions and fear responses all well balanced for survival?

For me, that single idea of my "self" popping into existence because of some chemical soup has its own questions. More than that, why does that "self" need to exist? And if that exact same chemical soup accidentally reformed, would my "self" pop back into existence?

[Libs]

I am not active LDS, but I think the discussion is interesting and I'm sure these are questions we all ask, at some time or another. I know I do. (Perhaps, not as scientifically as you have laid it out , but I do wonder, sometimes).

I think we will have a spiritual body in the afterlife. I don't know what it will look like (may not even look like the physical body we have now?). I am not sure what part of us will survive, as far as memories and body...I just trust that it will be much better than what we have now.

[Xander]

Living forever... a fate worse than death.

Ugh.

[fatherofone]

Living forever... a fate worse than death.

Ugh.

amen

[Kevin Christensen]

A while back, I did lots of reading of NDE literature, and wrote this for the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=2&num=1&id=16

Later, I realized that Brigham Young had his own NDE at Winter Quarters. Hence, his discourses contain lots of details about the afterlife that do not appear in scripture. He spoke from experience, not tradition. For a glimpse, see the Spirit World chapter of the Brigham Young Priesthood manual. Hence, when Jeddy Grant reported his experience to Heber C. Kimball, his comment, "Why it was just as Brigham told us many times."

In 1999, I had the privilege of attending the IANDS conference in Salt Lake City. Very interesting. Of the four hundred people there, I think 2/3 were experiencers. I heard a young women report that, after her upbringing as a secular Jew, taught to believe that ethical behavior was for here and now, and that there was no afterlife, on finding herself out of her body, her first thought was, "I HATE being wrong!"

One of my favorite stories was of a cardiologist rising in protest on listening to a discussion of NDEs, saying "I've been cardiologist for twenty years and I've resuscitated hundreds of people, and I've never heard of this stuff." At that moment, a person behind him rose and said, "I'm one of the people you resuscitated, and you are the last person I would tell about my experience."

Nowadays, I take it for granted, and don't worry about it.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[Nofear]

I guess I would ask what you really as an LDS believer, feel about the current afterlife debate? Seems people are losing faith as science discovers more and more about how the brain works, creating more of a dependency on the physical brain, making an argument that not much is left when those chemicals stop, leaving the question still of what exactly survives.

Perhaps the current biggest gun in the nihilists' arsenal is observations that we make decisions before we become aware of them (one of many sources). This is commonly used to argue that freewill does not exist. As a latter-day saint, I have no problem at all with this observation sine I believe that my freewilled decisions come through my spirit body and not my physical body. So, we can make a decision and it's not until later that our physical body becomes aware of it.

[thesometimesaint]

Living forever in the physical body I have now isn't appealing to me either. OTOH a Glorified Celestial one I can go with.

[TAO]

From a scientific viewpoint, the question lies in "what is the soul"? Certainly one must ask what causes these chemicals to come together and form the "you" that is experiencing your life. Why were you born today? Why born a boy or a girl? Why not born in the medieval timeframe? And can those chemicals reunite to recreate the "you" (possibly supporting reincarnation?). But the chemicals can be so manipulated by science. If you have fear or depression, it can be countered with SSRIs. If you get Alheimers, your personality and experiences are radically changed. Memories can be lost due to brain damage. With so much of what is YOU being formulated by chemicals and electrical discharges, as well as the structure of your brian, what is left when the brain is destroyed?

In true traditional theology, we do not leave our body and go into heaven. We die, ceasing to exist (at least for a time), only to be resurrected for judgement. But this counters the NDE/Medium/Ghost/Hey Mommy is now in heaven ideologies we currently hold in popular culture. Though, ironically, resurrecting the body into perfect form and reigniting those chemical processes and brain structures fits in more with science. Then the entire question of "what is a soul" is obsoleted, as the very brain structures that neuroscience complains are necessary come back. As if God goes forth and rebuilds his robots and the conscious, memories, and personalities return as a psychologist would actually buy.

But as LDS, I believe we sit in both camps. We believe that souls are returned to heaven upon death and that during the resurrection, the bodies are pulled from the grave.

I guess I would ask what you really as an LDS believer, feel about the current afterlife debate? Seems people are losing faith as science discovers more and more about how the brain works, creating more of a dependency on the physical brain, making an argument that not much is left when those chemicals stop, leaving the question still of what exactly survives. Yet there are people who swear by NDE experiences, experiments like "The Afterlife Experiments", etc. But it also saddens me that powerful emotional ideologies like Love are also being widdled down to chemical reactions. Are we really just robotic creations of a God? Or even accidental (and very very very very very lucky) robots with chemical reactions and fear responses all well balanced for survival?

For me, that single idea of my "self" popping into existence because of some chemical soup has its own questions. More than that, why does that "self" need to exist? And if that exact same chemical soup accidentally reformed, would my "self" pop back into existence?

There's a lot of curious things about souls that could be worked.

First of all, let me tell you, science will never be able to determine if there is or isn't a soul. In order to do that, it must watch every outgoing 'link' from every particle in your entire body. A link can be any interaction with another particle. Considering we don't even know all those yet, nor do we even know alot about what we do know concerning such, it is way early to say anything imo.

But about memory - memories are rarely 'wiped' from your brain. Oftentimes, they are stored in hard to get places, or part of the material is damaged, or the technique used to get the material has been cut off. Luckily, your brain is good at problem solving, even on it's own, and sometimes can get 'faint' glimpses of the memory. My opinion --> memory is like a giant web really - you have an object, and it's associations. You just need the right 'key word' in order to be able to remember the thing. True memory loss would be when the object isn't connected to the web anymore. Which I'm not sure if the brain has a way of fixing or not.

As for whether or not memory transfers to your soul, I think it does, but when our physical memory connectors are cut off, so are our 'soul/spiritual' ones too, I think. Perhaps they are put behind a veil of sorts. When you die, all of the nodes are restored, perhaps? This gives you back your memory, including that of the pre-existance? Actually... to think of it... I think that the nodes are perhaps not fully cut off... just too hard to find... your brain tries searching for it... and can't find it... even though it is there. Thus, when you are given a stimuli (and your brain processes it as a 'key word'), you have a chance to remember that memory. But again, I'm not sure about all of this. Tis confusing,a nd I speculate alot more than I should. It is enough.

But yah... ultimately... very confusing things that go on... I don't know exactly how, and I'm sure God has something more brilliant than what was layed out above, so yah, ask him instead =). He'll get it right, whereas, my explanation is not correct.

Best Wishes,

TAO

P.S. Again DO NOT take my explanation as correct. IT ISN'T.

Edited June 29, 2011 by TAO

[shalamabobbi]

The fact the we *obviously* have free will and can freely choose between multiple possible paths is one of the indicators to me that something more exists than determinism. The eternal intelligence that was not created or made neither indeed can be.

If we are nothing more than the elements I don't see how you can get away from determinism. Quantum Mechanics doesn't eliminate the problem. It just either changes determinism to a random variety or you could say that the law of averages working upon the predicted probabilities of the quantum laws restores classical determinism for all practical purposes.

Allowing consciousness to be an emergent principle and free will to be an illusion creates a new parodox. Of what benefit is it in the evolutionary sense? How could evolution select for higher decision making powers if there is no free will? What exactly would be the benefit of that? There must be multiple possible paths to choose between for an evolutionary process to select for better decision making skills in avoiding predators etc.

Perhaps the current biggest gun in the nihilists' arsenal is observations that we make decisions before we become aware of them (one of many sources).

There are many decisions that are near split second. I know, I used to ride a GSXR 1100. I wonder if the 7 seconds is some sort of auto pilot mode of thinking..

[Questing Beast]

...

I guess I would ask what you really as an LDS believer, feel about the current afterlife debate? Seems people are losing faith as science discovers more and more about how the brain works, creating more of a dependency on the physical brain, making an argument that not much is left when those chemicals stop, leaving the question still of what exactly survives. Yet there are people who swear by NDE experiences, experiments like "The Afterlife Experiments", etc. But it also saddens me that powerful emotional ideologies like Love are also being widdled down to chemical reactions. Are we really just robotic creations of a God? Or even accidental (and very very very very very lucky) robots with chemical reactions and fear responses all well balanced for survival?

For me, that single idea of my "self" popping into existence because of some chemical soup has its own questions. More than that, why does that "self" need to exist? And if that exact same chemical soup accidentally reformed, would my "self" pop back into existence?

Sure, we are chemical "definitions" of empirical existence. That is inarguable. Existence of my tapping fingers, my eye-hand-thinking coordination, is REAL at this precise moment. You can read this in a moment when I post it.

And science can replicate chemical responses in the brain. All of them eventually, with 100% accuracy. So do these replicable chemical reactions mean that the RL occurrences are somehow invalidated as part of reality? If a chemical manipulation of an unconscious person duplicates the adrenalin rush of narrowly escaping a horrific automobile accident, does that somehow mean that a REAL narrow escape from the same is fake? That it didn't happen and the event does not exist?

Of course, where science is taking us is to the "Doll House". There, any memory or paradigm of memory combinations can be replicated. They can even be stolen from one and given to another. We have an earlier drama, "Heaven Can Wait", where Joe Pendleton is stuffed into another man's body (after it died and was "miraculously", invisibly, revived); soon thereafter, his memories of being Joe Pendleton were subsumed by the man's memories whose place Joe had taken: Joe Pendleton ceased to be, but the soul inhabiting the other man's body was "Joe Pendleton's" soul (so that he could finish out his mortal span - angels can and do, though rarely, make mistakes too). The point is, that the memories of the body were retained; the soul that had been known as Joe Pendleton took possession of those memories and continued on AS that man. And the story was asserting that this really can happen. The memories are in the brain. And furthermore, everyone who knew the man by sight would respond to him as one they knew; it would not work to have Joe Pendleton take over the body of the man and not retain the man's life history up to that time.

Of course, this is all just fantasy. Unless we are created to inescapably pursue the biggest concepts explaining our Existence that are possible. And by sharing our concepts we expand our own individual ones. This seems to me to be evidence that transcends any empirical explanation for what goes on in the brain. The brain seems, therefore, to be merely a conductor and recording device for this life span only.

I like to combine paradigms. And when you combine "mine" (God = Existence In The First Place), with Richard Bach's in "Illusions", and the little story The Egg, it seems that each is contributory to an infinite concept of "God" and what reality IS....

[Rivers]

I've speculated that there is a database somewhere in which out genetic information and memory are stored. So when we die, we have everything we need backed up.

[Nofear]

I've speculated that there is a database somewhere in which out genetic information and memory are stored. So when we die, we have everything we need backed up.

Clearly our memories are redundant someplace, for when we die we remember our mortal lives. I personally favor the redundancy being in our spirit body which is co-local with our physical body. If this were not the case, there would have to be some kind of transmission to allow the backup to occur. There is no such transmission occurring which is visible to the realm of physical matter and so such a transmission would have to occur via the interactions of spirit matter. Nevertheless, one would have to deal with the energy necessary to submit such a constant transmission, the potential of line-of-sight issues and interruptions to transmissions, and other fun engineering complications. Given these (potential) complexities, it seems simpler to me to have a local storage (e.g. our spirit body which is with our physical body).

[Nofear]

If we are nothing more than the elements I don't see how you can get away from determinism. Quantum Mechanics doesn't eliminate the problem. It just either changes determinism to a random variety or you could say that the law of averages working upon the predicted probabilities of the quantum laws restores classical determinism for all practical purposes.

This statement is an insight, though correct, one that I find uncommon among those that bother thinking about such things.