I will work my way to the other posts once I feel like I can answer them, if not answered in this reply.
Well, to paraphrase Mark Twain, I was dead for several billion years before I was born, and it didn’t seem to trouble me in the slightest.
Which is valid point, however, you had no recollection of being dead several billions years prior to being born. “You” had no choice whether or not of being born. Doesn’t this account for something?
From the perspective of someone who doesn’t believe that an afterlife exists, being dead is probably going to be the same as not being born yet. Before I was born, I didn’t find not existing scary at all – in fact, there was no me to find it scary.
It is true that we spend the majority of Existence being “dead” yet at some point we are brought from non existence to existence as a self identity. This self identity is capable of declaring inequality of degrees, which I use to look at Existence. Reality is Good, but there can be Better.
People can only imagine things in terms of their own consciousness, so of course you can’t imagine what it will be like. Someone earlier called it a “head full of darkness” – but that gives entirely the wrong idea. It’s not going to be me sitting around for all eternity thinking, “Oh, woe is me! All is blackness!” It’s going to be the absence of me.
I don’t claim heaven to be some sort of civilization, although thinking in those terms does have its benefits for mankind. If such afterlife exists, we will become apart of the unconditional Love which allowed for Existence… whatever that may feel like, I don’t know because I am not capable of such Power, I only understand How the Power allows for Existence.
As someone else indicated, the concept is similar to a dreamless sleep. If you’ve ever gone to bed and found yourself waking up the next morning – with no memories of the intervening eight hours – you already know what it’s like (or, rather, what it’s not like) to be “gone” for a stretch of time.
Yes but the majorities of us do in fact dream, just without remembrance of such dreams. I once agreed with this premise, but as I just said, those no memories are just my inability to remember all dreams in detail. I believe our bodies create a new first person perspective, which lets Us and our brains subconsciously “Know” we still exist. However, due to sleeping, our senses are used minimal, which they are what bind us to actual reality. Since they do not “Experience” our Mind is capable of creating a potential reality, where anything can happen.
Does our body need to be assembled as One in order for this to happen? I think that because all matter creates One body, our “I” will continue, but we just never know it, because we have no way of Experiencing (interacting) to know we do not exist.
Anyway, I can’t know for certain that death will be like that, and I suppose it would be nice to continue on in some form, but not only do I not see any good reason to think that consciousness can survive the death of the body, there’s a lot of good evidence suggesting that consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity, one that will end when the brain activity ends.
And there is our underlying problem! We could spend an entire Lifestyle wondering, never even coming close to the answer.
Here is how I look at it. “I” is formed from the collection of atoms that make up the Human body, but ultimately the human brain. Why can’t this be the same for the Universe? I am not saying the Universe has an “I” which can cognitively think as we do. It is more that the Universe creates its own perspective, which is logic and reason. This very perceptive allows, for example, plants to “know” to grow towards the Sun, or Life “knowing” it can only survive on certain conditions.
Those of us who don’t believe in an afterlife have different sources of comfort – some of us, for example, are glad that we have this brief period of existence in which to experience, and we intend to make the most of it while we can.
Two separate identities come together to form a new unique identity, to the point where we can no longer recognize the original two identities. But why/how do these two identities “know” to reproduce to keep the generation going?
How did Life “Know” it would have to reproduce?
I think it comes from the Universal Reason, which shaped our physical bodies, while also allowing for “I” to be created.
