The Ultimate Mystery

i recommend you follow your own advice then.

life came from chemical reactions. it is fueled mostly by the sun's energy being converted into chemical energy. life itself is one very very long chemical reaction. there's nothing that even hints at reincarnation existing or even a possible method for it to exist. therefore, it is bull****.

 

Do not feed the troll.

 

PROTIP #2: Don't tell others to follow their advice when you can't follow yours hahah

On the contrary there have been hints to suggest reincarnation existing, like for instance i read about this one case where a boy from india, bearing a birth scar on his head, and having visions in his sleep of being murdered was thought to be the reincarnation of a man who was actually murdered, and the visions he described were very similar to how the man was thought to be killed. Even the scar on the boy was located in the same place the man was shot. I wouldn't rule out reincarnation as an impossibility just because there is no mathematical data to prove it exists. There are many things that cannot be explained, even in science, yet they still occur. Sometimes I wonder if the energy our complex minds give off is so powerful that we give life to what we believe, and when a great enough mass of people believe in the same thing..... well, anything seems to be possible.

 

"Sometimes I wonder if the energy our complex minds give off is so powerful that we give life to what we believe, and when a great enough mass of people believe in the same thing"
What on earth are you talking about? First of all mind is a concept of the product of our brain activity so I assume you meant the brain. Second of all what energy are you talking about? There might be a bit of thermal radiation perhaps a very weak EM field. How does that grant anyone the power to "give life"?

 

Too much Pratchett

 

Higgs Boson, energy is everywhere, this whole universe is energy in various forms. Electrical signals shoot off in your brain from a simple thought is a form of a energy. Will, perception, memory, imagination... all of these processes are energy at work.

I am sure you have heard of a placebo. Just by believing that some fake miracle drug is going to cure them, some patients were treated of their illness. The mind is very powerful, and can have powerful effects on the body, agreed? Who is to say that energy doesn't have effects outside the body it is conceived from? There are empathetic people who are sensitive to the emotions of others just by them being physically present.

One person I know was able to tell what kind of person I am and the emotions i was recently experiencing, as well as a few others before he even really knew us just by sensing it, and he was dead on... at least with me for all I knew. I even met a preacher who was sick at the hospital from mixing coffee with fasting, and had miraculously healed a girl who was dying from a bad kidney disease by saying a prayer. I still remember to this day the look on the doctor who had gone through the diagnostic tests after she was cured, and believe me my religious views were mostly atheistic until that happened. I don't really believe in reincarnation, but it could be possible if one wishes it to be. Not saying that the power of believeth is true in every regard, but one thing I can trust on is the human mind is powerful, and mysterious, and we have yet to unlock all the answers, and potentials.

 

There are actually studies done on prayer in hospitals. None of them showed any positive correlation. Especially those that were done without the sick person knowing it as to avoid any bias or the evocation of placebo effect.
Energy is not magic. If you talk about energy then you either talk about electrical energy, light energy, chemical energy, etc.
"The mind is very powerful, and can have powerful effects on the body, agreed?"
No not agreed. That is exactly the sort of new age bull**** statement that is used to confuse and subdue the listener right off the bat. What does "mind is powerful" mean?
Yes there are empathic people, many of them are psychologists. Psychologists != psychics.

 

mind is powerful, as in the placebo effect?

 

And what are talking about here? How does a 'conception' occur of something in the first place? What conceives?

I would be interested to know what your theory of consciousness is. That awareness and mindfulness is entirely a product of chemical processes requires a jump for me that isn't quite satisfactory.

The only thing that makes reincarnation remotely plausible to me are perhaps the 'properties' of consciousness.

Let's say there were only two conscious beings left in existence, each cannot experience the other's awareness because they have their own identity, their own reality. If one dies, if one loses consciousness, is not the experience of the universe not entirely now the one? Would this not be a kind of reincarnation?

Of course, it would not be experienced as such, the 'history' of reality would be simply be the surviving being's experiences, including witnessing the death of the other. Assuming, memories and awareness die at death, the dead being's reality now retroactively never existed at all, except indirectly as experienced by the surviving being.

Of course, the fundamental premise here is that other beings are real, and have their own conscious lives, and that indeed, consciousness can be and is annihilated at death.

 

Stopped reading there. I have two words for you; Tough luck.
If you cannot comprehend how a computer can run software without involving magic then you are beyond my ability to persuade you.

Oh and I happened to glimpse your last sentence. Consciousness is 'annihilated' regulary. For example in a comma.

 

I think you're being far too cursory in actually understanding what I'm asking and putting forward here. I'm not saying consciousness requires magic, or something supernatural, but perhaps it is something that requires a different paradigm of understanding other than a purely mechanistic one, perhaps not. Also, the first part of the post is unrelated to the rest.

But this what I'm asking of you without rhetoric, how do you specifically think consciousness emerges mechanistically?

I understand the metaphor of software to the mind, hardware to the body, but not necessarily consciousness, there is a qualitative difference between software being run, and software being run that knows it is software being run, that conceives of the hardware as such. In this case as long as the comparison is only figurative it is insufficient. A computer running a program (at this time) is not consciousness, agreed?

You can argue that an extrapolation and projection from the computer into an AI is possible, but again, what I am asking is, what are the links and gradations towards this qualitative difference? From the sheer and dumb REAL of existence, to a beings 'reality'?

Well, if you bothered to read anything I posted, instead of being a dismissive snob, you'd realize I was relying on this assumption. It is also, 'annihilated' in a dreamless sleep, a knockout etc. What you missed in my post and ignore, and I assume you are an empiricist, is that multiple consciousness 'exist'. So when we say 'consciousness can be annihilated' this is only partially true, or needs to be qualified. In a universe where multiples awarenesses exist, one 'death' is not the annihilation of consciousness, but of a specific one.

If I see you die, consciousness is not annihilated, if my friend then sees me die, consciousness is not annihilated.

In this sense, reincarnation maybe formally true until everybody is dead, or there is no awareness in the universe left.

 

...that's like saying "if a dog dies, dogs (as a species) are not dead."

you're just arguing semantics.

when a dog dies, its "dogness" is not mystically passed on through some mystical dimension until another dog is born.

 

No. Well, computers at the moment are still far too primitive to reach any comparable stages of consciousness but in principle they are not excluded. Our consciousness is just an immensly complex software running on immensly complex computer.
By making your software more and more complex you don't suddenly gain the ability to transcend your brain. It is still only the product of your brain and if you brain is destroyed so is your mind including consciousness.

If I see a running computer get smashed the software operations on it cease to go on. You are just muddying the waters by dragging in your solipsism into the discussion.

 

God does not care about your petty squabbles! God will rule the world