If you believe that our conscious existence is caused purely by the interactions of atoms obeying physical laws, then you MUST also believe in reincarnation.
Lemmings, please read the post don't blindly downvote because you don't like the title - this is a debate forum so if you don't want to debate, unsubscribe or just ignore, thank you!
final edit: I guess I overlooked the sentence in the sidebar that says, “A place for theists to come and debate atheists”. I am myself atheist (using the definition in that same sidebar) so please forgive me and treat this as a debate between atheists. Thanks everyone for the great responses so far. The original post follows:
As the title says - if you believe that our scientific worldview is accurate and mostly complete, and that consciousness is entirely explained by the interaction of atoms in our bodies, then you must believe in reincarnation.
Here's the reasoning. If you believe your consciousness now is the same consciousness that existed in your head when you woke up this morning, despite the fact that the atoms that cause your consciousness are now arranged slightly differently and interacting differently, then there's not just one single arrangement of atoms that will cause the experience of "you" - there are many.
If you believe, as I do, that the consciousness that exists in your head now is the same consciousness that existed in your head as a child many years ago, and is the same consciousness as the one that will exist in your body when it is decades older, then there must be a whole set of different atomic arrangements which all generate the same unique conscious mind.
The universe today is actually fairly young. It's expected that it will continue for hundreds of trillions of years. It is a huge amount of time, and if atoms have come together in the right way to produce my consciousness now, after only 13 billion years, then it's reasonable to suppose that over the next many trillion years, the right arrangement of atoms will occur again at some future time long after this body is gone. And in fact, it's reasonable to suppose that this very same consciousness will be produced many many times over.
I do see one other option: consciousness is recreated anew every single moment, and we only have the impression of being a single continuous consciousness thanks to memory telling us what the previous consciousnesses that lived in our bodies experienced.
So which do you believe? You will live for ever, or you actually only live for a split second?
I'm not any kind of Buddhist or anything. In fact I'm vehemently opposed to religions of all kinds. I do believe science offers the best way to look at the world. Unlike religion, science starts from the reality that we do not know anything for sure.
Science questions everything and, from a starting point of pure ignorance, has gradually, cautiously and carefully, built up a coherent worldview that delivers real results - which is so much more than any religion can say.
However there are still very big and very important questions that have not been answered, and which we do not seem any closer to answering - to name but two, why am I me and not someone else, and what will happen to me when I die.
These are extremely important questions, and the honest approach right now is to say, "I don't know" and continue to live in ignorance.
By posing the question of this debate post, I'd like to challenge the seemingly widespread belief amongst atheists that once we die, we disappear as if we never existed. That might be a possibility, but it is far from the certainty that many atheists believe it to be.
I guess I overlooked the sentence in the sidebar that says, “A place for theists to come and debate atheists”. So please forgive me and treat this as a debate between atheists.
41 replies
No I mustn't.
Would you elaborate? (You did read my post didn't you...)
Well the premise of your post is inherently flawed because I do believe what you said but don't believe in reincarnation. Rendering your statement incorrect without having to engage further.
However, yes I did read it and it looks like a lot of the kind of metaphysical thinking that lots of reasonably scientifically literate atheists will eventually get themselves into. I've thought plenty about this kind of thing and the nature of consciousness etc as well ( as well as, you know, the entire field of philosophy has been doing for the last 4000 years or so)
You immediately run into all kinds of issues of definition in your post, what does it mean for "the consciousness in my head" to be "the same" in the morning as the afternoon?
I know the exact arrangement of physical matter that makes up my brain isn't constant. But there is a large logical leap to then say that therefore the fundamental aspects of consciousness therefore must also be different?
It's kind of a ship of Theseus style argument, you seem to be saying that any change at all to the underlying architecture of consciousness changes it fundamentally. But you don't explain why.
Our neurons are also constantly dying, being replaced etc. the brain itself will eventually be a brain of Theseus where all of the matter that once made your brain over time will be completely exchanged for new. You wouldn't argue (I assume) that this makes memory impossible, so why argue that changes at the atomic level must have deleterious effects to consciousness.
That's my story of slightly more grounded version.
The reality is my argument would be simple. My consciousness is not the same consciousness I "had" this morning, or a moment ago. Things have changed since then.
no I don't say that at all - actually that would be the alternative to reincarnation that I offer, where the consciousness is recreated anew every single moment. By the way, I don't *believe* in either an eternal reincarnating consciousness nor a fleeting consciousness that exists only for one single moment in time. I think the question however highlights that there remain very important puzzles that we are no closer to resolving than we were 500 years ago.
This is actually what I believe - ignorance. We are ignorant, and know nothing for sure. We cannot be confident that our consciousness will disappear and be gone forever when we die. Many rational thinkers that I meet (and I'd like to consider myself also a rational thinker) are IMO unnecessarily confident that we will completely cease to exist when we die, and that confidence is really what I'm trying to challenge here.
Alright, so you believe then that our unique conscious self exists only for a single moment then, and is gone never to return? That's fine to believe, but you should IMO accept that you don't know that, and in fact you have no real reason to believe that over the alternative of an eternal infinitely reincarnating consciousness.
Nobody actually knows if that's what you're getting at. Yeah.
That shouldn't lead you to believe in reincarnation, other than as one possibility we can't prove and have no evidence for
yes that's kind of what I'm saying, we don't know. It's why I find religion so .. ahh.. revolting. Religion claims to have answers that it absolutely does not have. Anyone who claims to be certain about what happens when we die is either lying, stupid, or mentally ill.
I'm sorry, but this also goes for atheists. If you believe with high confidence that we cease to exist when we die then you simply haven't thought it through properly.
Well, I mean I would have to disagree. We don't know what happens and we can't prove it anyway. When we die as far as I know it's quite literally just as likely that:
A)absolutely nothing happens, my experience of consciousness stops, I return to a state just as I was before birth, i.e. there is no me to think so experience anything and if there were anything that was "me" anymore it is in effect meaningless
B) I go to heaven and a middle eastern Arab tells me I've been a good boy and get to live in peace and joy for eternity in the clouds
C) it's just an infinite roller coaster forever, but it rules and it never gets old.
Just because I can't actually prove or argue any one of these is more or less plausible than another, assuming nothing out of the ordinary as far as my lived experience so far has taught me is actually the best I can do.
Should my belief that nothing happens be particularly strong? Perhaps not. Should I hold that belief at all if I'm really a "good" scientist or a "good" atheist? Perhaps not.
I don't really care though. Because engaging my brain in trying to puzzle out what is effectively complete nonsense with no evidence or reasoning is just a waste of time.
You can consider my belief in nothing to be a belief in infinite roller coaster theory or anything else if you wish.
There is a flaw in your logic. If consciousness is the deterministic interaction of everything leading up to your moment in time, then it will never be recreated unless you could roll back time and replay it for the exact consciousness to exist again. Every iteration forward will always be slightly different because all the while the universe is changing, decaying, expanding, leaving existance in a wink, etc
Consciousness is a hypervisor ilkusion.
No. Science builds models that predict future results.
What you're engaging in is philosophical not scientific.
An identical arrangement of atoms as I have in my body could appear next to me. They would be identical to me but I would remain aware of only my original body and consciousness. The two bodies would then diverge on their paths as time goes on and they live different experiences since they don't ocuppy the same space. Same with any future doppelganger. Is it really reincarnation if there is no hint/remnant of the previous?
I'm not sure that's true. The possible combinations of literally OCTILLIONS of atoms that comprise your body could easily never be seen across trillions of years if you try a new combination every millisecond. And that's operating under the completely wrong assumption that things on the scale of humans are just formed randomly like that.
but which is which? how does your consciousness know to stay in the original body?
true, and that's why it's important to consider all the combinations that have previously existed in our bodies starting from when our consciousness first flickered into existence, plus all the combinations that are yet to exist up to the point when that consciousness fades away. That will give you a fairly large set of different molecular arrangements which all give rise to the same single unique consciousness. It's also unlikely that those arrangements are the only ones, given that your future arrangement will be different if you decide to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast tomorrow, or pancakes (and all the other various choices you could make).
So we have a fairly large set of atomic combinations, and given the sheer length of time the universe is currently expected to exist, it is much more likely that they will recur one day.
There is also the possibility that our universe is not the only one to ever exist, but simply one in an infinite series of different universes. In such a case, anything that is possible will happen an infinite number of times. (And has already happened an infinite number of times.)
Very interesting argument! I've thought a lot about this myself. If i can distill my thoughts into a single line it would be:
I exist, that is enough evidence for me to believe i will exist again.
From that i can expand and say it could be in another form. It could be me but a different life. It could be exactly the same again.
I do agree, if you believe in something rather than nothing you should believe in reincarnation.
That's good to hear! I love to speculate and imagine what might be, to explore what is possible through discussions such as this.
The post was created purely as a debate question. Maybe it comes across as if I'm trying to push an idea of reincarnation, but I'm not really. I was just using provocative language in order to challenge what I see as a widely-held view amongst atheists that consciousness ends at death, and began at birth. While that is possible, it is by no means certain, and there are other possibilities which fit the science IMO.
Reincarnation is a definite possibility, but I would not say there is enough reason to *believe* it.
In fact, I don't believe in belief! I am a non-believer, a doubter, an ignoramus if you will.
So with that in mind, I do love to speculate, but at the end I think it's best to come back down to earth and acknowledge our complete ignorance. There is no need to pick a horse and bet all your money on it - that's the realm of religion. We are free of that, and can flitter and float between ideas and concepts as we choose.
Yes it could. If time is infinite, then everything that is possible will happen an infinite number of times. This is actually what "possible" means. But is time infinite? Maybe is perhaps the answer. Our universe appears to be 13 billion years old and looks like it will continue to exist for several hundred trillion years. A hundred trillion years is certainly a lot of time, but it's nothing compared to eternity.
Scientific observation indicates that the universe began at a singularity, that time and space were created at once. There was nothing before that - there wasn't even a before. The universe of spacetime appeared and grew to what it is today in some kind of timeless and dimensionless realm of possibility, impossible to truly imagine in our human minds.
I saw a podcast with Roger Penrose where he was talking about what happened "before" the big bang (even though there wasn't a before, it was pretty mind-bending to try to understand!). It's possible there were previous universes, and he said that certain anomalies in the cosmic microwave background could be the echoes of structures and events in that prior universe.
So it's possible that our universe is just one in an infinite series of universes. In which case, yes everything that is possible will happen an infinite number of times.
Indeed! There are endless possibilities! It's fascinating to think about. One hypothesis i like is about the expansion of the universe.
If energy and gravity are balenced the expansion of the universe stops as you approach infinity which leads to the heat death of the universe.
If there's too much energy, gravity is unable to pull things back together and the expansion starts accelerating towards light speed. This is The Big Rip where atoms cannot hold each other together and the fabric of the universe is torn apart.
I prefer the scenario where gravity wins. Where everything in the universe is pulled back to a singularity. Probably creating a period where everything was very hot and dense before is suddernly expanding and cooling. So the cycle begins again?
Or idk, maybe the universe is stable and it's something completely different! I'm open to changing views depending on evidence and proof.
In any case it still leaves unanswered questions but it's enough to satisy me for now lol
Nonsense. But I won’t explain why because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
I need a new phone wallet with this inscribed on the inside cover 😭😭😭
Memories are stored in a different area of your brain and can be normally accessed by your consciousness. I see them as two different parts of the whole but one can exist without the other. You pose an interesting question. Reminds me of "are we really the same person?" when theoretically "transporting" ourselves from one place in space/time to another, due to the fact that our molecules(atoms) are destroyed and rebuilt, rather than transferred to the new location.
Thank you for taking the post in the spirit was intended, I love to speculate about these things! Yes I do think our consciousness is entirely different from our memory. I had an uncle who developed a serious case of dementia which got worse until he apparently couldn't recognise even his wife and kids before he died. I think it was still "the same guy" inside, that same consciousness that was always there, just now he didn't have the abilities that his body previously provided and which he, like us all, took for granted.
I wasn't able to visit him in the last couple of years, it was during Corona and he lived in a different country, but it really challenged me about the point of life. He was everyone's favourite uncle, a really chilled guy, down to earth and funny. Also very successful, and well off financially. He had a very successful and accomplished life, and yet in the end, he was an isolated and angry person, flailing around, not even knowing where he was in those final days. I don't mean physically isolated, I mean isolated because he didn't remember his closest family any more. I really wish I'd been able to see him one last time.
Are you referring to the teleporter argument? If so, that's a favourite of mine, and I mentioned it in a different answer. Yes, another very thought-provoking scenario!
I do believe our consciousness is a fluke, and that it does come from the function of our nervous system which operates because atoms are just doing atom things (they don't obey human made "laws" though, that's a misunderstanding of how science works).
Some of the atoms in my body have changed arrangement over night, and some of them have left via respiration, perspiration, etc and I have some new ones too.
But it's not the atoms themselves that cause consciousness. That's like saying what makes a car is it's atoms. Does a car stop being the same car when it burns fuel? When you change the oil, is it a different car?
I won't get into changing car parts because I don't think we know the whole picture of where thought and memory exists in our nervous system. Brain cells last very long, perhaps until the end of our lives once they are formed. The cells survive despite atoms changing arrangement, entering and leaving throughout the life of the cell.
Major religions don't agree on what reincarnation is. Buddhism differs from Hinduism in that the soul (it's more than just consciousness, so I'll use that word) is not plopped 1-for-1 into a new body but dissolves and reforms. I've heard the example of a flame being passed on. Hinduism sees the soul as eternal. That sounds more like what you are describing?
Having karma travel with the eternal soul implies some form of memory or the like traveling along with it. My memories form as I live, as the atoms that make up my nervous system record them.
I suppose, yes, if given an infinite time period it is possible a nervous system could exists that matches my nervous system at any given instance, and maybe tracks identically to how mine developed over time. But that wouldn't fit with the Hindu concept because it's not reliving the same consciousness, it's that consciousness moving in.
But still, it is possible that someone a being comes into existence with the exact same nervous system arrangement I have at the moment of my death. It wouldn't be life as we know it, but that's probably not important in this thought experiment because we are talking infinite time spans.
But is that reincarnation? Does it make sense to call this second fluke reincarnation in the absence of the framework that reincarnation exists within the major religions? Can that second consciousness break the cycle of reincarnation and achieve moksa? I guess I don't know but I don't believe it does.
I don't know anyone who believes that. Our consciousness may go poof but our existence changed things, and those changes continue to ripple through time. Every action that occurs has an effect. Something doesn't have to be conscious to have an action. Temperature gradients cause convective movement, for example. I'm missing what reincarnation has to do with this.
Interesting stuff, thanks for that!
So to clarify, the question I posed here is not something I'm trying to persuade anyone of. I didn't really notice the line in the sidebar, "A place for theists to come and debate atheists". I am absolutely not a theist! I do not "believe" in reincarnation, I do not "believe" in any eternal soul. Nor do I "believe" the consciousness is destroyed and gone for ever after death. These things might be possible, I will speculate about them, but despite the accomplishments of science we have no way to know which if any is in fact true.
Ultimately my position is that we are all ignorant, we know nothing for sure. I am very strongly opposed to religion of every kind, for this exact reason - religion claims to have answers which it absolutely does not have. This certainly applies to Hinduism, and all of the Jewish family of religions (Judaism, Christianity and all its many offshoots, Islam and on and on). In my mind, all those religions are definitely wrong - yes I did say we don't know anything for sure, but nevertheless we can actually be sure that religion is not true, with the same degree of confidence that we might have about the earth being a ball floating in space. Definite, 100% confidence IMO.
There are many other religions that I don't know much about, so maybe I can't write them all off. Is there one which is not based on some degree of unfounded certainty about the unknown? I don't know. In any case, I do sometimes think of a chap I worked with who claimed to be Buddhist, and who said that Buddhists don't believe in god - the way he described it, the world is a mechanical thing, there is no big cheese in control of it all, and karma is not some kind of divine justice being meted out, rather it's just the way the self naturally evolves through time. That viewpoint - of course I may be misremembering it - could possibly be consistent with the "reincarnation" thought experiment of my post.
Which is all my post is, a thought experiment designed to provoke debate and above all to make atheists challenge the confidence they may have that death is the final end of consciousness, and with that everything that ever existed (from the self's point of view, which is the only one that really matters).
I have to disagree with this position quite strongly I'm afraid. I've heard it in various forms - for instance, the somewhat trite idea that "we don't really die until we are forgotten". I'm sorry but once I'm dead, I certainly leave this planet Earth. I will not care if someone thinks of me. The person I am now, that they are thinking of, will no longer exist. That is pretty clear I think. If someone thinks of me now, while I live, it has no effect on my consciousness, it doesn't make me in some way conscious in that person's head alongside them, does it? That's just something going on in another separate consciousness, it doesn't involve me in any real way.
I'm sorry to all the Roman Emperors who struggled so hard to create a legacy and have their names be echoed in eternity, but the consciousness that referred to itself as Julius Caesar is gone now, that consciousness does not still exist and experience anything just because we all remember his name.
I don't know if any given religion is right or wrong. I'm an atheist but that doesn't mean I know. I am an atheist because I lack faith. Why don't I call myself agnostic? Because I don't think it matters if I am right or wrong about it.
I agree with Thomas Aquinas that science is inherently biased by our imperfect perception of the world, but don't agree that it's a divine mystery that we are failing to grasp. I would strongly suggest the short story Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott as an illustration of how our perception influences our theories.
I agree with Kant that faith means letting go of logic. And proving something isn't faith. I don't think all religions agree with that though. I know Judism treats faith a little differently than Catholicism, for example. I don't know what the other major religions have to say on this topic.
Is this so? Or do they say, you don't need to understand everything just live according to the rules and have faith? Maybe that's an overall "answer" but I don't think they claim to have answers to every question. My k-12 education was in a roman catholic system. At least that brand of roman catholicism didn't think science was incompatible with faith. It did come up in class though, especially as creationism in the states was coming into the mainstream. The answer was "The bible isn't literal, god created everything, he doesn't object to us trying to understand it, but that's different than faith."
Sure but like I said Buddhism (in really general terms) doesn't believe in a permanent soul or that reincarnation produces some sameness. They believe that the act of rebirth changes the nature of the consciousness (details vary between sects).
It's important to remember that words like Karma have very different meaning in different religions and sects. Two examples are more of a cause and effect vs justice. Karma as justice is more associated with Hinduism, which believes in a permanent soul. Karma as justice doesn't make sense if you have no soul, right?
This sounds like a case of you applying your own interpretation to what someone else says. I'm going to talk about the meaning of that phrase because it is in line with what I believe not because I think I can understand perfectly what the person you heard it from said.
I don't mean it literally in that my consciousness lives on if that's how you want to define death.
In my understanding of how the world works, I don't exist to other people unless I am perceived in some way. It doesn't have to be direct and it doesn't have to be real time. I exist to someone who knows the population of my village, province, country etc because I am part of that number. When I die and when the number is updated, I am no longer part of it. I don't exist in that number any more and I don't exist to that person anymore. They don't know all the details, but that doesn't make it less true.
I can perceive being alive and that perception will end with my death (I assume). If people remember me or if my actions are still having an impact on any consciousness they are still perceiving my existence. None of that is not tied to whether I am alive or not, or whether my consciousness is alive or not.
I don't think anyone can know another person perfectly and the version of ourselves that exists in others heads is a construct. Whether we are alive or dead. The phrase is about our relation to other people not our own consciousness. You have inferred that meaning.
Yes I'm the same, atheist because I don't have a belief in god or gods. It's possible that something along those lines might exist, but no one knows. The fact no one knows is IMO an indication that either there is no god, or it doesn't care at all about us, or it doesn't matter if we believe in it or not.
Which kind of rules out any of the religions I know about, and probably most of all the ones I don't know about, as they *do* require a person to accept that god or gods exist.
I also tend not to call myself agnostic, because many people would take that to mean that I think there's a possibility one of the multitude of human religions could be true. I don't think that at all, I think that we can be completely certain that all religions are bogus with the same degree of certainty that the floor under our feet is real. Yes it's possible that the floor is not real, but we'd have to be "brains in vats" with our entire experience created and controlled by some external entity, and that is the exact same level of deceit we'd be living under if any religion were in fact true.
I think this view just means those people don't fully get the implications of science. Science does entirely invalidate religion IMO. You can't both accept and follow the scientific method AND believe in magical thinking.
When I said religion claims to have answers it absolutely does not have, I didn't mean it has *all* the answers. I was really thinking of answers to those questions which science has not yet made much if any progress on - what happens when I die, why do I exist, what should I do with my life.
Prior to the modern age though, I think there was a widespread belief that religion was the ultimate source of knowledge and understanding about the world. Why was there so little rain this season - because you did not pray enough or sacrifice enough or fondle the high priest's genitalia tenderly enough etc etc.
I had a suspicion this was probably the case, and I agree it is important to remember. There can be a tendency to romanticise "exotic" religions when one doesn't know the details of them. What you said about karma and the various interpretations of it by different sects reinforces my feeling that Buddhism isn't any different to other religions, and it also makes unnecessary "leaps of faith" and claims to have certainty that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
I don't understand why this matters in any concrete way?
Let's say you live your life, do great deeds for your local community, and go on to make great contributions to global society, improving the lives of just about everyone on the planet. Then, you die and are mourned by the whole world.
Let's imagine two possible scenarios that follow. In one, society goes on to cherish your memory for a thousand years, building fantastic monuments in your name, and countless millions of beautiful people of your preferred aesthetic routinely masturbate over your image for multiple centuries.
In the other, just as the world is gearing up to commence the weeks of mourning and extravagant public celebrations of your life, the planet is hit by an unexpected asteroid, which causes huge suffering and ultimately leads to the end of all life on earth.
Neither of those outcomes has any effect on you personally whatsoever. So why should anyone be motivated or comforted by what happens to their memory after their death? I just don't really get the interest in this.
You're allowed your opinions. Science doesn't give a reason things are so. That's the job of philosophy. Religions fill the gap for some people. "It just is." fills the gap for myself.
Are you looking for a religion with proof? Doesn't seem like something that you are likely to find.
That's fine. It's an opinion. It matters to some people and not to others. I was going to say it doesn't matter to me until I read the rest of the reply...
The achievements I am most proud of are the ones that don't impact me personally whatsoever. While I don't care if people remember me after I die, I think I will take comfort in the idea that I have had a positive impact on at least a few beings.
Nope.
If I have one arrangement of me, and then add another arrangement of "me" to exist alongside myself. Those aren't both me. I'm not experiencing both simultaneously. That other "me" is a separate consciousness that I am not experiencing. Just like your exact molecular clone isn't you, a time displaced clone still wouldn't be you. You wouldn't suddenly find yourself existing in another time.
this reminds me of the teleporter argument, that was so well illustrated in an episode of Rocko's Modern World. In this episode, which I've never been able to find again, a teleportation device has been invented - you step into the booth, insert a coin, select your destination and bzz-oink - you appear there almost instantly. Everyone loves it and it's a great success.
However Rocko finds out that it's not really teleporting people - in fact it's scanning them at the molecular level, beaming that information to the destination booth, which then 3D-prints a duplicate person, identical down to the exact positions of every atom: only the atoms themselves are different. So the newly created person has all the memories of the original right up until they pressed the "teleport" button. They believe they did indeed travel huge distances instantly but they did not.
In fact the original person is still there, inside the first booth, and as soon as they've been scanned and their info beamed away, spikes descend from the ceiling and crush them to a bloody pulp, which is then removed and sold as dog food.
When Rocko runs around telling everyone the truth, no one cares. The device is so convenient and they've already used it many times, who cares if it doesn't really teleport you.
I certainly would never use such a machine, and clearly nor would you.
This is a different way to get to the same point - we simply do not know what causes our consciousness. I must quickly say that does not mean we can just make any old shit up, the kind of crap you'll find in religious teachings that far too many people all happily believe for literally no reason.
No, on the contrary, we all have to remain conscious of our ultimate ignorance in the face of the absurdity of our existence.
My existence is the continuation of these split seconds. I believe that consciousness is the myth we must tell ourselves to continue onwards, and that it is a useful and meaningful one.
After I am dead, I will be fundamentally changed by decomposition, so that continuation is broken. In comparison, unconsciousness isn't without brain activity and the brain's state persists (with minor modifications of dreams etc).
This sounds like that "consciousness is an illusion" concept I used to hear quite regularly. It was never very persuasive to me because what is the thing that is being deceived?
You say consciousness is the myth we must tell ourselves - well who is the "ourselves" here? This implies there's some other existence, separate to consciousness, which is the real true self, and it is this real hidden self that is being deceived into thinking consciousness is not a myth.
You're overthinking what I mean. It's a myth the same as how we perceive an object - our perception is based on reality but has evolved to be useful more than it has to be truthful, and it is beneficial to survival for us to learn from the past, plan for the future, and generally have a sense of continuation.
If we could put boundaries on how many molecules are needed to support a human mind that would be helpful in answering this question. They can't just be any molecules ether they need to be human DNA, RNA and proteins. That implies an exact evolutionary history full of many twists and turns that link to the geology and cosmic history of the Earth and all it's many previous lifeforms. This in turn reflects the history of our galaxy. So to paraphrase Carl Sagan to remake a particular consciousness you must first make a new universe and a new Earth and mammals and so on, zeroing in on your target. Humans in the future won't be exactly like us. In fact I'd hope they would be just a little saner but extinction is also quite possible. Also other species on similar planets might resemble us in many ways yet have taken a vastly different path to intelligence. We are not digital with a limited instruction set running on organic computers or your idea might be true. We are entirely analog. Our thoughts and sense of self taken as a whole are the products of a near infinite web of random events and decisions that will never reoccur. That is if parallel universes are excluded but that's a whole other discussion.
I was thinking of Carl Sagan with this question. I have heard people say that he was open to the idea of reincarnation. I'd love for someone to correct me, but I believe what actually happened is that he said he did not believe there was evidence for reincarnation, but that he thought that the studies into children apparently having memories from a previous life were done with proper scientific methods and deserved to be explored further.
I believe it might also be confused with his narration in Cosmos where he talks about atoms being recycled, and about religions believing in reincarnation. I don't think he linked the two the way OP did.
err no I didn't. I didn't link anything or even mention religion in the body of my post, it was supposed to be taken from a purely objective and scientific viewpoint. I didn't even say what my view was, everyone seemed to assume that I hold a belief in reincarnation. I never said that at all, I said, "if you believe that our scientific worldview is accurate and mostly complete, and that consciousness is entirely explained by the interaction of atoms in our bodies, then you must believe in reincarnation".
I didn't say what my viewpoint was. I was in fact addressing those people who do think the question of consciousness is pretty much settled science.
My whole point is that it is not settled. We have not really got any closer to answering those crucial questions of existence.
You linked atoms and reincarnation. Cosmos talked about religions and reincarnation, and separately how atoms are recycled. I did not say you talked about religion.
I'm no expert.
How would we know this? I think there's more we don't know than we do, but that's just a guess based on the sheer size of time and space.
I do believe this.
I do not believe this, because I do not believe this:
I think consciousness is technically different every moment.
Exactly, that's what I believe.
So... Why did you put "you MUST believe in reincarnation" when you already knew about an alternative hypothesis?
Good. Magical thinking can be deadly.
I agree. We observe, hypothesize, test, and draw conclusions with predictive power based on consistent, verifiable evidence.
And unlike religion, science requires some grounding in observable reality. Baseless claims are not accepted.
Why are you someone else and not me? We can only be who we are, otherwise we'd be something else. I'm not sure what the problem is. We don't know the ultimate origins of our existence or if there even is such a thing, but this is how our atoms came together in this world.
Consciousness ends, no more experiences. It's probably like it was before we were born. We won't see darkness, we won't be scared or in pain. We'll just be dead.
Basically, yes. I'll take honest ignorance over supernatural claims. I think belief in an afterlife devalues our real earthly lives. Part of our value is in our unique and temporary nature.
We can't experience anything without consciousness. It is possible our atoms will be recycled in some way and eventually some pieces might be part of someone else's consciousness, but the illusion that is "me" will be gone.
I'm not sure even trillions of years would be enough, but I don't know how to calculate something like that. Is that really more likely than our atoms spreading out and becoming part of other things?
Without memories, it will not be the same mind. Would the world also reform in exactly the same as it was during our time on it? Our minds are influenced by our environment, and the planet we're on will be uninhabitable in millions or billions of years.
Maybe if the universe is in an endless cycle of shuffling atoms via big bangs, EVENTUALLY we might be us again, given infinite time? It's a very weak maybe, making a lot of assumptions.
We don't disappear. We leave physical remains. We leave the effects of the deeds we've done, which will ripple forward in time until the universe ends. Maybe beyond? We don't know.
Even if there is nothing after this life, I think this life matters because we are living it now. We want to make decisions that make life better, and I think that includes cooperation. If you don't feed a hungry person, you and they will eventually die. If you do feed a hungry person, you and they will eventually die, but today they get to eat. I think it's worth doing for its own sake.
Thanks for your response. Your viewpoint seems somewhat inconsistent however. You say that you believe your consciousness only exists for a single instant and then is gone forever and a new one created in its place.
Why is there any point in anything in that case? Why do you (I know I'm talking to multiple "you"s as a new one pops in every moment, but bear with me 😁) care about what happens to the other consciousnesses that will inhabit your body after you?
Do you even believe in free will?
It's a debate question. I guess I overlooked the sentence in the sidebar that says, "A place for theists to come and debate atheists". So please forgive me and treat this as a debate between atheists.
I posted here to get a discussion going and above all to challenge the unfounded certainty that many of my fellow atheists have about what happens after death. Many rational thinkers will casually say that after death, our consciousness is destroyed and gone forever just as if it never existed. That is not at all certain. There is in fact no reason to believe that happens rather than the "infinite re-occurring consciousness" of my thought experiment. Even the view you hold, that consciousness exists only momentarily and is replaced by a new completely different one, is merely speculation. and it is not something which you should "believe" as some kind of religious credo.
Such unfounded certainty, faith you might call it, is completely unnecessary and should be left behind with religion. It is important to keep your mind open and consider all the valid possibilities.
To be reiterate, some options are not valid and should be dismissed. For instance the nonsense that the Jewish religions (this includes all flavours of Christianity and Islam) are all built on, and the nonsense that Hinduism is built on. I don't know enough about other religions to mention them by name, but I suspect they are all ultimately based on unwarranted confidence in what happens after death or similar.
Because the illusion is very convincing. It's like a relay race. The better choices I make today, the better off I'll be tomorrow. I have experienced suffering in the past. Whether or not I'm the same consciousness, I have access to those memories. I do not want any version of me to experience that again.
Nope. But as biological beings, our thoughts and feelings are still important to consider so we can make good choices. We are incentivized by natural motivators like fear and joy, which are products of our brains, which are physical things.
Sure, but the title falsely assumed there is only one outcome. It is not pleasant being told what I must think, especially when it is inaccurate.
I don't understand that point of view. We did exist, even if we later cease. Destroyed and gone forever, maybe. As if it never existed, no.
I try to believe what is most likely true based on available evidence. I acknowledge I may be wrong.
I do. Why are you assuming I don't?
I think it's important to separate race and religion. Not all Jewish people are judaist and not all judaists are Jewish. Judaism certainly has roots in Jewish culture, but christianity sort of hijacked it into something else for someone else, and islam did the same with both.
I agree with your sentiment, though. The abrahamic faiths are death cults founded on the baseless claim that a god exists. Then they build and build on that baseless claim with more baseless claims, often illogical and contradictory because nothing is stopping new authors from writing whatever they want.
Most of them. The satanic temple is technically a religion, and one of its tenets is about using scientifically acquired knowledge, but it's more of a reaction to other religions with the goal of highlighting injustices caused by magical thinking. There may be other secular religions as well.
I don't mind costumes, rituals, meditation as long as everyone participating understands that magic isn't real. Superstition is the problem, and while most religions engage in at least some superstition, I can't make honestly blanket statements about all of them. I have come to dislike the word "religion", though. I'd call my club something else, if I had one.
You seem to ignore the fact that atoms on their own does not create a consciousness. Consciousness only appears when those atoms together forms the structures of cells, and those cells again form the structure of a brain. Each brain is a unique albeit temporary phenomenon, linked to the specific body it is part of. And even though the atoms that it is made out of may be exchanged, the structure of the brain which creates that consciousness remains the same (according to the biological growth and diminishing of it from birth to old age of course). So I don't think your theories holds up.
It is a somewhat poetic thought that atoms which was used to form our bodies may go on being part of the physical entity of another living body, but the atoms themselves carry no consciousness. They can create new consciousness if they form another brain, but that would be a different consciousness in a physically distinct brain which would have nothing to do with whatever brain they may previously have been part of.
It is a natual bias of your consciousness which insists that it must be universal, because we experience the world entirely through it. The thought of our consciousness not existing can be a difficult one, and thus we want to believe that somehow it must be eternal and not just a tiny blip in an incomprehensibly vast world, but in reality it is inconsequential to the universe, and the universe will continue to exist without it.
Thanks for the intelligent response. But if you don't believe in magic, then surely you must accept that the unique and remarkable phenomenon that is your conscious awareness is produced by the physical world in which your body resides, no?
That world is made up of nothing more than shimmering blobs of unconscious energy, interacting with each other in myriad ways, bashing against each other, becoming bound temporarily to each other, breaking away again, in a remarkable and beautiful dance.
Sartre said, in between heroic doses of mescaline, that the universe makes perfect sense by itself, and man also makes perfect sense by himself, it's only when you put the two together that you are faced with the absurd.
If you accept that the amazing and inexplicable experience that you call "being you" is caused by nothing more than the interactions of atoms, then why do you say that it's impossible for your consciousness to reoccur multiple times, maybe even infinite times?
To be clear, I don't "believe" that my consciousness will ever exist again, nor do I "believe" (in quotes to indicate that unfounded over-confident "religious" type of belief, faith if you will) that my consciousness will be extinguished forever upon my death. Either one is one of the many possibilities.
You’ve pinned your reasoning on something and glossed over it: “the atoms that cause your consciousness”
I don’t think I’m held in a physical state. I’m the movement of my organic self through space and time mashed with the movement of my reflection on my organic self, and the impressions I’ve collected. The singularity of the self is a vast dynamic cypher, and I don’t think it repeats.
Thank you for engaging intelligently. But your organic self (aka your body I think) is nothing more than a collection of atoms isn't it?
Why would the unique consciousness that is "you" - that singularity - never repeat? Statistically it just seems highly unlikely, given how much time the universe has left to live.
What does a collection of atoms tell you about water? Is it the water I felt when I stepped into the Atlantic for the first time? Is it the water that rained onto my hands and face as I screamed silently at the sky after my first cat died? Is it the water that was in the air of my first breath?
There is a finite contextual universe of the self’s movement through space and time that has no atomic structure. It is incidental. It’s personal. It’s part of that grand calculation that, when run and reduced to a hashed string, I don’t think ever repeats.
I'm happy with this level of speculation, you're saying "I don’t think ever repeats", which is all well and good, as it means you are open to other possibilities. Unlike religious people, you are not hooking all your horses to a single wagon. That's great, and IMO healthy. We should be open to different possibilities, and that's the point of my post. I want to challenge that over-confident nihilism that I've encountered too often amongst fellow atheists and rational thinkers.
I'll be honest though, hope you don't mind. I feel you're deliberately using over-complicated language to explain your ideas, as if you want to conceal your views from criticism. Like you're comfortable with your interpretation and you don't want it to be challenged, and you're willing to sacrifice sharing your insights with others to achieve that end. Sorry, sounds a bit harsh, but I wonder if you've grown up in a religious family and your family members were always scornful and dismissive of your personal experiences and interpretations. That's sad if so, and one of the reasons I really want to see the end of religiosity. (edit: my family was like this BTW, and I was really damaged by it, took me a very long time to work through)