Exactly what will happen upon my demise

[DoctorTwo]

You will have noticed the title is a statement not a question. What is certain to happen is you lot and all this will cease to exist.

I'm not trying to be mean, but that's just the way it is.

OK. I accept your apology - and I apologise for responding in the way I did.

There probably isn't any harm in you personally believing, or being open, to the supernatural. Why would there be?

Believing something is never the problem. It's when people take those beliefs and behave in a way that negatively impacts on others that we have a problem. That's why I think it's important to discuss these matters.

This probably doesn't apply to you - or most people on MN. But that superstitious beliefs hurt people all the time is without question.

There is even some idiot who frequents these threads pretending that she can predict the exact time and date of someone's death. That's horrible - and it's to counter this sort of harmful crap that sceptics like me (and Back) see value in challenging the ideas that are out there.

It's not to pick on anyone personally - and no one is contractually obliged to talk to us!

So, that's where I'm coming from.

Dark matter & energy, again, is not a good comparison. Yes, they are deeply mysterious and can't be explained or even properly detected yet. Their existence is inferred by the mystery they would solve if they were there. Something has to explain why there doesn't appear to be enough matter in the universe for gravity to work. It's known that gravity works via it's effect on matter, but what we can see isn't nearly enough for gravity to work....which it obviously does. Half the universe is missing - and they call that missing half (more than half, actually) dark matter.

Whatever it is it's not supernatural, since it's clearly a functioning part of the universe. It's not analagous to ghosts, god or an afterlife because it's detectable in some way by us - indirectly and by inference, thus far, but still detectable.

So scientists have hypothesised dark matter based on an observation.

Supernatural woo hoo belief is not based on any actual observations - just the wishful thinking of those who'd like it to be true.

And, really, don't you think that a methodology clever enough to take us back the very first fractions of a nano-second after the Big Bang couldn't tell us whether it really is Grandma making the lights flicker and rattling the doorknob?

Now you see, I need to do loads more reading and research and thinking about this, because I don't think I'm coming from the perspective of belief in god or an afterlife either. More that we don't fully understand this life. There must be some hypothesis out there that proposes that different states might coexist in some way in the same space. I don't have enough of a hard theoretical background to put that in a more technical way.

Well, once you get going on the hypotheticals that quantum theory throws up then absolutely anything appears to be possible.

Maybe God & ghosts do exist if there are infinite universes....and so on and so forth.

I once managed to convince myself that none of us would ever actually die based on something called The Copenhagen Interpretation. Can't remember what my reasoning was now, but it convinced me at the time

The bottom line is that it's illogical to think that because there isn't definitive proof that something isn't true that that gives us a good enough reason to carry on believing it is.

Quantum theory is very useful though because without it half my favorite films & boos would have to be rewritten. When I watch something like Star Trek, Star Gate etc I know that any moment now someone is going to mention wavefunction collapse or quantum entanglement.

It's essential for faster than light travel, instantaneous communication and meeting your evil twin :)

Or in my case meeting my good twin.

books not boos (which are something that ghosts say when they leap out at you with their head under their arm)

The thing about it being "wishful thinking" though, is that I'm not afraid to be dead and just be dead. I don't relish the idea, but it doesn't strike me as something to be afraid of. It's not fear, it's just that I don't believe it to be true.

hettie - only just come back and seen your reply. i totally agree.

i also think that IF there was a god it would be science that would reveal it, not religion. probably quantum physics. it's unfathomable to me that people would rather look to archaic, patriarchal, myths and means of social control for their sense of awe and mystic wonder than to the amazing, mind bogglingly awesome discoveries being made by quantum physics.

i also think that IF there is anything like a god it won't be the big god out there but at the actual mini mini mini.... miniscule, in absolutely everything, level. the stuff being explored on how everything is connected at this level is mind blowing.

and on that level there is a strange 'sort of' omniscience hinted at whereby quantum particles seem to respond to each other even when far away from one another. all way above my pay grade but the little bits i manage to grasp are fascinating.

Xposted. There is a well known saying: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

gaelic, have a Hitchslap. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Science and religion are two sides of the same coin. They are both human attempts to explain the universe

Oh dear.

And also on the claim of religion being an attempt to explain the universe:

Religion has rules against learning anything new.

heresy

1. opinion or doctrine at variance with the orthodox or accepted doctrine, especially of a church or religious system.
2. the maintaining of such an opinion or doctrine.
3. Roman Catholic Church . the willful and persistent rejection of any article of faith by a baptized member of the church.
4. any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs, customs, etc.

how making women dress in particular ways or stoning them to death for being raped, or outlawing contraception or excommunicating people for getting divorced from abusive marriages etc etc is an attempt at explaining the universe is a bit of a mystery. it seems far more clear that it is an attempt at controlling people and keeping power in set hands and institutions.

and yes, religion may once way back in the pre-institutionaled history of it (as in folk religions of isolated groups) have been an attempt to explain the world, then we had science and better ways of doing so so didn't need to believe that the gods were displeased hence the thunder storm, or the woman who died of a non understood disease must have been cursed by a witch or any other such fairy tales. they are not two sides of the same coin - if anything they are related in a linear fashion separated by time and increased knowledge.

Now I totally agree with that. As I said earlier, God doesn't come into the equation for me at all really. Only as a way of symbolising what might really be going on but is as yet unknown. The mere idea of an omnipotent creator figure presiding over so much misery in the world just turns my stomach.

Oops sorry, I wasn't at the top of the thread. I was referring to Numpty's post at 15:48. I see there's been more gaelic bashing since, oh well.

I didn't mean religion in the sense of organised religion, I meant it in its widest sense and I stand by that. I'm leaving this thread now as I've better things to do.

Not sure about gaelic bashing. I see people disagreeing about religion

Given that the most intelligent minds in the world still can't locate consciousness in the human body, thats a pretty fucking bold OP.

Why don't youcontact some of them, Dr? Tell them to stop wasting their time, you've got it nailed.

And fwiw, how the fuck did this even turn into a relgious debate? I'm sick and tired of the ignorance amongst people who immediately assume that belief in existence of consciousness/psyche/soul whatever the fuck you want to call it, after physical death, equates to a belief in Jesus! It doesn't!!! Get the fuck over it!

Fuck, fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

There, done. Sorry about that.

What a bizarre and pointless rant.

Erm, the most intelligent minds in the word are not trying to "locate" consciousness. It's pretty much universally accepted to be an emergent property of the brain. That it's hard to define and not entirely understood does not mean everyone is entirely clueless about what it is.

And I very much doubt many of these vastly intelligent people give very much credence to the notion that it can survive death. This notion flies in the face of everything science already knows.....which is quite a lot.

Perhaps YOU should go and talk to them. I'm sure they'll explain it in words of one syllable for you.

And, sorry, but the vast majority of people who believe in an afterlife are religious. Not all, but certainly most.

Those of us capable of rationality don't distinguish between different types of bullshit in the way that woo addled people do. THAT'S why these conversations always end up having religion at their heart....because that's the granddaddy of bullshit.

HTH.

I don't think that's it Hettie, after all plenty of people manage to put forward their rational thoughts without any reference to religion whatever.

I think I'm beginning to see what Numpty meant when she spoke of how difficult some people find it to rid themselves of religion. Even when they reject religion they cannot help but think without reference to it. That would explain why Doctor was unable to talk about his beliefs regarding his demise, without talking of how it contrasts to the beliefs of others.

So the reason that these conversations always end up having religion at their heart is because of the inability of some atheists to identify without it.

Interesting, Dione - except that it was actually you, on page 2 that turned this thread into one about religion. Until then it was all about the notion of life after death and the danger of believing random bollocks.

Was you who decided this meant religion. A Freudian slip if ever I saw one

Oh, and there's no rational thought process that can lead to a belief in life after death. Not a one.

I'm afraid you are mistaken Hettie, it was the OP who mentioned god in one post and religion in another on pg2. I only asked the OP about his experience of religion after his post.

Is this an example of your confirmation bias?

No, it was you. Any mention by the OP before that was in response to your fatuous and pointless "questions".

Atheist here. To me death is a state of non-being. With my last breath my consciousness will cease and my body will merely be an empty remnant (which I have left to science). I don't want, or need, anything more than that.