Spirit of Devil’s Advocacy
Spiritual/Religious Person: “Death doesn’t particularly bother me.”
The Devil: “Yeah, right . . . {erupting into evil laughter}
A number of comments to the previous post fell into certain broad categories. Below I’ve briefly summarized each – and then, despite basically agreeing with all of you, played devil’s advocate. Because I noticed that if I hadn’t already had certain experiences that make me see your points, I’d want some further explanation. I thought that by challenging your views on what makes death not so much of a problem, this would give anyone who may want to a chance to expound.
And of course, anybody who’s inclined to comment in any other manner is also welcome.
Why Death’s Not a Problem – Followed by Sinister Replies
1. Continuity/Wholeness of Life: Death’s not a problem because life is all one whole and/or the same energy.
The Devil Replies:
So then, it’s like your friend gives you a cat. You immediately have it killed, cremated, and put it in a vase on your coffee table. Your friend visits you a few days later – “Where’s Fluffy?!!”
“Well, right here, really, it’s just that now I call her Smokey . . . But don’t worry; it’s the same cat in a different guise.”
2. I Have Faith: Death’s not a problem because I believe X, Y, and Z {insert religious beliefs}.
The Devil Replies:
Faith is belief based on one fact: the fact that you want something to be true despite a lack of evidence.
3. Life’s an Illusion: Life’s just an illusion anyway, so death is no big deal.
The Devil Replies:
What makes you suppose that death is an improvement?
{Further evil laughter, exits the stage with voice trailing off – “I never even liked James Taylor . . .”}
Posted by Paul at 4:50 PM Permalink
41 Comments:
Acceptance of the unknown is an essential requirement for effectively coping with change. If one is obsessed with the known it is very difficult to face change, or its extreme form, death. Then one is trapped in procrastination.
Acceptance of the unknown as a part of one’s being is faith. Faith is not blind belief. It is the highest level of abstractions in the plane where the instincts operate. Anything that distracts one from this level is a devilish influence. A great amount of preparation is necessary to install within oneself real faith. A shadow of faith in operation can be seen on the face of a Wimbledon champion while contemplating his first service.
Devil, I think, is an advocate. He operates from committed empirical positions and keeps hollering to attract the attention. I think I saw him while walking down the flea market at Venice beach near Los Angeles.
If we had knowledge, why would we need faith? If, for example, scientific and historical evidence proved Christianity as you say, then there would be consensus around this as there is around, say, genetics, the theory of gravity, atomic theory, the major events of WWII, etc.
The idea of knowledge in this context relates to the idea of revelation as per my reply to Crystal below.
The statement that faith is essentially a matter of believing what we want to believe is a conclusion, not a premise. The devil would point to the weaknesses in alleged evidence for religious truths together with the human tendency to distort our perceptions to match our desires and say that this is why his conclusion follows.
CRYSTAL: Pretty much me too - hope and not knowledge. My impression from divinity school is that Christianity – as well as Judaism and Islam, the other two revelation-based religions – understands revelation (knowledge) as having been imparted to the authors of scripture and not to the individual Christian.
AVGW: Extreme change and facing the unknown – those do sound like additional major aspects of what can make death problematic.
As to what faith is, I’m less certain about what you’re calling instinct, but then it’s not so easy to develop an idea of what faith is in the space of a comments box. Your tennis analogy of “being in the zone” strikes me as having more to do with present centeredness than faith – not that the two have no connection.
I agree that faith includes acceptance of the unknown and isn’t blind belief. So when you say you think that devil is an advocate, no more than in the sense of “devil’s advocate" - not my views. It is true that in my personal efforts to understand spiritual life, my approach has been to think critically about the things that matter most to me.
I'm just hoping, praying, and keeping my fingers crossed that something enlightening, relieving, or at least reasonably pleasant will occur after the fact.
Love what you did here:
#1 - the cat's form has changed and would not be in the jar, it's energy would not be confined to our limited sight.
#2 - Does not mean that a persons overall faith is wrong, matter of fact, the fact the devil is talking to a person is probably a validation of one's faith.
#3 - Don't believe that answers the commment. No one said death would be better, just that life is an illusion.
I enjoyed this very much!
For now, just to toss out: "the devil" is overstating, oversimplifying, and strikes me as having a really superficial view of faith and spirituality, but do you see him as being half right about anything or making any kind of valid point?
I don't want to have to dissect my own devil, although, of course, he does deserve it . . .
**Life’s just an illusion anyway, so death is no big deal
::What makes you suppose that death is an improvement?
nobody said death is an improvement...just it can get better/worse than life. No expectations, no qualms.
btw Paul, I want ur input in my current post...wud be great to know wut u think. tnxx!
Keshi.
that everyone is good and goes to a happy place after death
that 'good' people will get their justice regardless of their religious beliefs
that there is no Hell
They say the world is what we make of it. In a way, so is religioos truth - people seem to ferret out the beliefs that support what they already believe.
Ideas become very complex in the context of religious connotations. Otherwise, these words have simple straightforward meanings too. When I sign my letters - ‘yours faithfully…’ I suggest that I share the faith of the recipient of my communication in the common theme. The faith is in tact even when my views don’t coincide with his. Faith is imbibing the thread of common theme to an extent that there is no ambivalence that has the potential to cramp one’s style. Present centeredness is a derivative of faith. When one says that faith can provide protection from the fear of death what it actually means is that for him the intensity of faith fuses all the past experiences and future possibilities with the present moment. It is as if he has a potent mantra that unlocks infinite possibilities to deal with all changes. He is like an extremely stable system with an infinite bandwidth.
Please do not misunderstand my usage of the word ‘advocate’. It has nothing to do with the same word in ‘devil’s advocate’. I was only referring to the general behavior of advocates to split hairs and create distraction to serve some ulterior motive. You are doing just the opposite. While playing the devils advocate you are marshalling us towards a main theme.
Zero is the only thing that doesn't change.
The assumption that death is just a mysterious form of change runs purely on faith: the believe that the mind is not contained in the brain. There is still no evidence for the existence of the soul/spirit and I won't be wasting my time arguing against nothing.
I understand why a person might consider death a form of change because "willed change" is the primary source of our identities. And the unwilled changes are the second source of our identities. Throughout our life our inherited programs constantly repair our body. When that function ceases to perform it's function, to keep the equation on the black side of the balance sheet, our body enters the red and we are classified as dieing.
When that process reaches our brain and those cells begin to die, the critical point of no return is the line of death. Then our body is subjected to the mindless laws of the physics and we are unable to will any change. We simply will not be.
The problem people have with death is that no one is able to imagine a time without there self, for the simple act of observing, even if it's observing a future in the imagination, has to be done subjectively.
I agree with Paul when he says that everybody would be a christian (or whatever) if there was a provable body of historical and scientificky evidence undergirding it's claims...
because there isn't any,
people must develop faith to compensate for the lack of evidence and that is what makes it so special...even if you only have a mustard seed of it.
The lack of evidence (that defies all human understanding) is the root of all Faith. If IT was self evident then everybody would be onboard...
and on the same page...
no I take that back..
there will always be splitters!
RIMSHOT: I agree that the basis for faith isn’t wish fulfillment or seeing things the way we want to. That said, it’s not like people hate the central tenets of their own religions. Even though you’d like everyone to go to heaven instead of some going to hell, your belief that you and those you love may go to heaven is a comfort, right?
Per my previous reply I don’t see how faith is knowledge – but then that doesn’t have to make it blind, either . . .
MWM: I don’t know if any good at all can come of this, lol. But clicking on the pages of this site that have to do with the book is, for now, probably the best way to get some idea of my perspective.
MARK: 1. But an unseen energy could mean no more than “going up in smoke” – energy can neither be created nor destroyed and all that, but we do know that it changes form. So sounds like for you, there’s a religious belief in an energy that’s not the energy that science connects with matter but more like an unseen life force. 2. That’s true – because someone wants something to be true doesn’t necessarily make it wrong, even if its truth can’t be demonstrated. 3. Right – I (i.e., the devil . . . ) was assuming in the context that her contention that life is an illusion was supposed to make death less problematic.
KESHI: You confused the devil out of him. Now I see, or he does . . . As an aside, what makes you think life’s an illusion (unless you’re just playing devil’s advocate)? And is it all equally illusory? Sense perceptions, hallucinations, scientific knowledge, faith, dreams, imagination . . . Re. your current post: I believe in the angel I comment on there!
CRYSTAL: Imo, that’s an important point. My sense of it is that Christians are probably a more diverse group today than they’ve ever been in terms of their beliefs.
RIMSHOT: Who gets to decide who the “real” Christians are and which understanding of the Christian faith is correct?
VISHESH: Good point, really. If we take life’s goodness as indicating that God is in charge, it would make equal sense to take the world’s evil as indicating that a Devil is in charge. But then no one’s come out with a devil-bible claiming it to be the revealed Word of Satan. If there were one, I imagine lots would have to get bleeped out…
I guess if we want to get totally systematic here and think out all possible ramifications of presuming that the quality of life as we know it now reflects the qualities of a higher power/intelligence that created it, the third alternative would be Od. It’s kind of an odd world, really – lots of good stuff and lots of bad. Maybe the Entity in charge is ambivalent – can’t quite decide if (S)he want to be God or Satan. S(he)'s just really odd...
AVGW: Thanks for the clarifications. One thing I’ve noticed with cyber communication: it can be a pain sometimes because you don’t get to say “No, that’s not what I meant!” as soon as somebody starts to respond to you based on a misunderstanding.
When you bring up identity, I think you bring up something that lots of issues, more than we’ve brought up here, turn on. As to death involving “essentially losing one’s identity”, of course many believers in an afterlife don’t think of it that way – they think of it more as a kind of after-death preservation and perfection of their personality.
The way you speak of present centeredness with the implicit reference to meditation and the different kinds of consciousness it can produce makes me think that you may interpret such experiences as, to borrow Wordsworth’s phrase, “intimations of immortality.” A possible interpretation but not a necessary one I think.
DON I: Or not! There’s the rub, as Shakespeare, I suppose, would say if he were in on this thread.
Shakespeare, if you’re out there, this is a good thread for you to get in on since we are talking about immortality . . .
H KONIG: That’s really interesting and I never thought about it. I think you’re right: how can anyone truly imagine a time without oneself included? You’re implicitly “there,” at least in a background way, as the imaginer of such a time.
How do you know the laws of physics are mindless?
H ESCAPEONS: I have to agree with you, at least in so far as you agree with me. And yet to say that a “lack” (of evidence) is the “root” of faith – you’d think the tree would have dried up a long time ago . . .
RIMSHOT: Even if we claim (without really knowing what we’re talking about – prior to the big bang, it’s a black hole, where concepts like time, space, and causality may not apply at all)- Anyway, even if we claim that “something” must have “caused” the big bang, there’s no evidence that the cause was the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God outside of Judeo-Christian-Islamic scripture.
Also, in terms of logic, there’s no reason why the world, the universe, or being itself can’t possess the quality of “aseity” or self-causation that believers assign to God.
Likewise, because we don’t know how life sprang from non life doesn’t mean that there’s only one possible answer: that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God (who most of the world doesn’t believe in) must have done it. Anytime that we have to answer a question about life with “I don’t know” doesn’t mean that the only possible answer is “God did it.”
In divinity school they called this the “God of the Gaps” – whenever we don’t know the answer, we say there's your proof of God's existence. The problem with such a God is that God’s always in retreat in the face of science. Once you find out that the earth rotates on its axis, for example, then God isn’t the one who makes the sun rise and set. Once you find out that unusual astronomical events are things like eclipses, comets and meteors, there goes the evidence for God trying to communicate with us via celestial sign language.
I see a couple of presuppositions that you’re making that are certainly false – so I, like you, doubt that your faith actually rests on them.
1. You say that being as objective as possible, any person would see their way through to the doctrines you hold to.
The scientific method is as objective as it gets. Science doesn’t first decide that something is true and then look around for evidence that supports its hypotheses. It does the opposite: it generates hypotheses and tries to disprove them. When instead the evidence supports a hypothesis, then it tends to be true and often results in technologies that therefore really work: the computers we’re using, electricity, nuclear power, landing a rocket etc. etc.
Christian faith isn’t about trying to be objective and neither is any other faith. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong or untrue, but it’s certainly false to suppose that its basis is objectivity rather than scripture written prior to the rise of science or even modern standards of historiography.
2. You posit that the only or main reason that people aren’t Christians is because then they’d have to lead highly moral lives. What about the Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, etc. and the millions of atheists and agnostics leading good lives? And I haven’t noticed that Christians get into less moral trouble than other human beings. Christians, like all other groups, include saints, sinners, and everything in between.
PAULINE: That’s certainly what many people say – that faith is about choosing belief instead of being compelled to believe based on reason and evidence.
Keshi.
The laws of physics are mindless because they don't require a mind to be. In fact the word "law" is attached to physics reveals the prejudiced assumptions of the scientists that developed them. Law implies a law giver. Scientists aren't discovering what a being created, they are understanding what is.
And with my favorite observation (law of physics) universality what is, was, and with extremely high probability will be. Light that's hitting our eyes from the most distance stars is 12 billion years old. That ancient light from long dead stars is exactly the same as the baby light hitting us from the sun. That is incredibly strong evidence that the universe is consistent.
Even the arguments that the "laws" of physics are so "fine tuned" that there must be a tuner are ridiculous. The "laws" only appear tuned because we force them into a number structure. Ask a radio wave what a meter is and you'll find your answer.
You're assuming that nothing existed. No deep thinker I've ever known has believed that nothing ever was. You can have faith in nothing, though I think it's rather silly to do so.
What kind of god would create the conservation of energy?
Entropy is far more confusing to me than the conservation of energy. Yes, in my observations, I do see things move towered a more chaotic state as time progresses (as more stars form, more units spread photons in every direction). Though this is a relatively narrow observation in the universal perspective because photos are effected by gravity. Entropy is overwhelming observed in this section of our galaxy but I am simultaneously aware of black holes: massive stars that only accrue matter and never give off real partials.
That is significant evidence that the universe will end in a big crunch which makes all the possible atomic bombs on earth look like an eighth of a millionth of a trillionth of a kernel of pop corn in a micro wave.
I have faith that my mind, which is only capable of comprehending material things that have a beginning middle and end, will never understand the infinity of matter/energy. The real question is why so many people need to believe in a person who is infinity. Infinity isn't even is, that's how crazy we are.
'Should' is a cognitive distortion. -rimshot
Should ought to be philosophical.
If there was an infinite amount of time, time would NEVER progress:
1. An infinite number of days has no end.
2. But today is the end of history (history being a collection of all days).
3. Therefore, there were NOT an infinite number of days before today (i.e., time had a beginning)
Another way to look at it is, if there were an infinite number of days before today, today would never have arrived, yet here we are!
You say that 'so many people need to believe in a person who is infinity'.
I propose that there are exactly zero people who 'need' to believe that. I also propose that you're diminishing the concept of God by considering God a 'person' and equating him with the quality of 'infinity'.
At the most basic level, God is that which caused the universe. This merely assumes (rightly so) that the universe had a beginning and that anything with a beginning has a cause. Rather than considering 'infinity' God simply WAS before time existed (i.e., timeless).
The modern cosmological belief is that the universe literal came to be out of nothing. Since the atheistic beliefs have yet to give a reasonable explanation for this, it seems rational and logical to accept the theistic explanation until evidence to the contrary is provided.
Unless one can objectively accept the possibility that God exists, one is merely forming their beliefs on subjective presuppositions.
As to the 'big crunch' that you mention. Simply put, there is not enough matter in the universe to pull everything back together. This was confirmed in 2003 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In fact, astronomers are finding that the speed with which the universe is expanding is increasing, making the likelihood of contraction even more remote.
vir·tu·al (vûrch-l)
adj.
1. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name.
2. Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination.
I also propose that you're diminishing the concept of God by considering God a 'person' and equating him
As to the 'big crunch' that you mention. Simply put... -rimshot
The Universe without a crunch, just a guess…
Universes are finite cycles within infinity. All universes come from and return to infinity. There is no choice to infinities existence because if it wasn’t always, zero would have been. If zero ever was, zero would be the only thing. I think we can both testify to the fact that we are both something. Universes begin from infinite mass, which is without time. Infinite mass within no space is forced to expand into finite mass in motion also called energy, thus creating space and time. As our finite universe expands at an accelerated rate we loss more and more mass and gain energy. Eventually all mass will be lost and we will reach a state of infinite energy. As this energy continues to expand it cools and drifts towed the impossible absolute ZERO. Infinite energy flips back to infinite mass, for when the universes reaches this unimaginably large size, size vanishes. At that point, all remaining patterns of us will disappear from detection, setting the stage for a new universe.
Perhaps I'm having a semantic error in grasping your meaning. I understand the word "exist" to mean to be, to be means to exist in a segment of time. Therefor you're using circular logic in your explanation.
I am, err I mean I was, well I am now. No I will be, now... stop stop. OK in one second I will be. Now!
I've freely admitted that my mind can not comprehend infinity, and zero for that matter. I also have implied that our universe is nether infinite in time, matter or energy.
"Faith is not WANTING something to be true, it is accepting and KNOWING something as true in the absence of overwhelming evidence."-rimshot
What about absolutely knowing something with extraordinary underwhelming evidence... ANTIFAITH? I've got that one covered.
H KONIG: OK . . . you’re saying the teleological argument (from design) for God’s existence doesn’t work. Right, it doesn’t.
RIMSHOT: Cutting to the chase, you state that “something out of time” must have caused the big bang; that this Something must have been God; and that the universe couldn’t have created itself. For you to think the universe created itself, you imagine that I’d need to provide an example of self causation:
“You will have to show me (at least) one other example of self-causation or omnipresence for me to even consider that {the universe created itself}. Simplified: A. Everything that had a beginning had a cause. B. The universe had a beginning. C. Therefore, the universe had a cause.”
In life as we know it, where we only deal with parts or bits of the universe, causation by external forces applies (at least usually – a lot of weird stuff happens in particle physics). But as to life as a whole, the universe, being itself – it could just as logically be self caused as caused by something else that’s self caused. This is a matter of logic and not empiricism. I can’t show you being causing itself any more than you can show me God causing it.
Furthermore, if it did turn out that something else created the universe from nothing, then sure, you could define God as whatever brings something from nothing - but any such entity or process certainly wouldn’t have to be the good, loving, saving some while sending others to hell God that you believe in, all of which is based on scripture, not logic or science.
On “majority rule”: The fact that most of the world doesn’t believe in Christianity indicates lack of consensus, not majority rule. Consensus tends to happen around things around which there’s objective proof, like atomic theory, the theory of gravity, how photosynthesis works, that the French Revolution occurred. Christianity isn’t part of the public school curriculum any more than any other religion is because, if true, it isn’t demonstrable through any kind of objective procedure, either logical or empirical.
H KONIG: Your point is supported by what I understand of the origins of the big bang – not in nothing, but in something that scientists refer to as the “singularity.”
RIMSHOT: On your remarks to HK: I don’t know how you reconcile your view that science proves God’s existence with the fact that no reputable scientist or scientific body makes such a claim, including reputable scientists who have believed in God – Einstein, for example. Einstein would have been happy just to demonstrate grounds for a unified field theory.
It’s called “faith” and not “knowledge for a reason. In any case, you're clearly committed to believing that you personally have figured out that God exists, and that's OK with me. However, for me to share that belief is impossible for the reasons I've already given plus the fact that I'm unaware of any proof ever having been successfully given for the existence of God.
So we can agree to disagree.
Just the thought of nothingness when i die makes me very sad. I love life so much. If i wake up from death how wonderful that would be...if not then i trust God that he knows what hes doing...what will be will be and the future is not mine to see.
The Devil Replies:
"Faith is belief based on one fact: the fact that you want something to be true despite a lack of evidence."
i will agree to the devil,we don't know who we are,we want to believe that thats true...but once we realise,we will have faith,in ourselves....and we don't have any evidence as to what we are,do we?
And getting defensive leads people not only to at times mischaracterize others' positions, as well as motives; here, it’s led you to assume disagreement where none exist.
Your first point is irrefutable: logically speaking, a lack of compelling objective evidence for God’s existence doesn’t disprove God’s existence.
As to grounds for my statement that God isn’t strongly supported by logical, empirical, or scientific evidence, I’d suggest taking a look at the larger society – for example, the lack of consensus I referred to earlier, the separation of church and state, the fact that Christianity isn’t included in the science departments of universities, that ministers and priests aren’t required to become scientists first as part of their curricula, that people don’t “learn” Christianity by way of objective proofs and demonstrations but are “converted” to it - or, far more often, are raised in ther tradition in the same way that adherents to other religious traditions are raised in theirs.
If that doesn’t do it for you, then going into the details of how it is that the idea of God lacks compelling evidence (and thus requires “faith” since God’s existence is neither known nor demonstrably probable) would be a waste of both our time. You’re clearly committed to not modifying your position, which is fine. But there’s no reason for you to continue demonstrating this to me. I do understand that you think you know that compelling evidence for God exists.
KATHY: Yes, a sad thought, where nothingness is taken for eradication.
In Buddhism there’s the idea of “anata” or no-self. The view is that the self as we understand and experience it is illusory and that ultimate reality consists of our participation in what might be described as a universal identity.
VISHESH: See what I just said to Kathy above re. “universal spirit.” Maybe Buddhism and Hinduism are similar that way?
On the second part of your comment, I’m not absolutely certain that I’m following, but here’s what I’m thinking: by “ourselves,” you may be referring to that same universal spirit or identity. And f we can experience something of that in the here and now, then this would constitute direct experience that doesn't require proof.
you said: "In Buddhism there’s the idea of “anata” or no-self. The view is that the self as we understand and experience it is illusory and that ultimate reality consists of our participation in what might be described as a universal identity."
yeah I'm still learning and i have yet lots to grasp in buddhism thought. Thanks :)
The Devil Replies:
So then, it’s like your friend gives you a cat. You immediately have it killed, cremated, and put it in a vase on your coffee table. Your friend visits you a few days later – “Where’s Fluffy?!!”
“Well, right here, really, it’s just that now I call her Smokey . . . But don’t worry; it’s the same cat in a different guise.”
The cat is dead (it no longer maintains a source of free energy and has reached an equilibrium with its environment), so it is no longer the same cat--just as a dead relative in a casket is not the same person in a different guise.
This does not mean that the cat (or relative) had some mystical divine energy that disappeared into the ether to be reborn in another being. The dead cat is no longer an autonomous creature that walks, meows, and purrs, but the totality of the cat's being are still part of the biological community of life. Right now, that place is on a coffee table. A thousand years from now, coffee table cat may end up in the ground where it will decompose and form the basis for other living things just being born.
This cycle of death and new life has kept life thriving on this planet for nearly 4 billion years. We see ourselves and others (including animals) as individuals, but we are really just components of a complex biological community.
The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are his core teachings. The path is very pragmatic - oriented toward actual day to day experience and behavior. This even ends up applying to the more abstruse sounding things like Anata, which is based on a kind of experience that can happen in meditation or sometimes spontaneously.
When I first read about Anata, I hadn’t had a clear and definite experience of the sort that it’s based on. While it was intriguing to me, it seemed vague and abstract. But it turns out not to be.
The emphasis on direct experience gives the core teachings of Buddhism wide applicability. It’s not asking you to adopt or reject any system of belief so much as saying “Try doing this and this and doing less of that and that, and see if it doesn’t reduce your suffering and make you a happier and more peaceful human being.” I’m not a Buddhist, but I got a lot out of adopting/adapting some of its practices and techniques. They’re certainly compatible with Christianity – anybody who stuck to the Eightfold Path with a high degree of fidelity would be recognized by Christians as a saint!
JACOB: It looks to me as though a lot would depend on how one views being part of the whole. A lot of people would see the “Fluffy” part in my scenario as having been exterminated – not living on at all. All the qualities that made everyone love Fluffy (we’re assuming that she was a nice cat, lol…) are apparently gone because they seem to have depended on a particular configuration/complex arrangement of matter that’s been scattered to the winds.
On the other hand, if there’s an experiential component to belonging to the whole, then things might be looking up for Fluffy.
Fluffy vs. the devil. What a contrast . . . Maybe a movie or cartoon?
Suppose Fluffy were killed by a car and her body eaten by rats. She had value to us as a happy kitty, but she had value to the rats when she became dinner.
Which is it?
My money is on the big crunch. That is of course unless there is actual evidence of virtual partials existing. Though I highly doubt sufficient evidence will surface.
I misused the term infinite in describing the cold death. More accurately, if the entire universe ends in accelerated expansion and lacks any mass and therefor was comprised of pure energy, indefinite finite energy is a more accurate description. Or we could legitimately call the total sum of energy in our universe One.
Or: Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls: It Tolls for Fluffy - or Not . . .
JACOB: Not to take anything away from rats, but the rat isn’t what Shakespeare refers to in speaking of “the paragon of animals.” Of course, it could be argued that Shakespeare was self serving in describing human beings in such terms, not being a rat himself; nay, nor even a ruffian. And an argument could conceivably be made by an alien life form that in qualitative terms, the values and experiences of rats exceeds those of humans, rendering their appreciation of Fluffy one of a phenomenologically higher order - and thus making Fluffy’s demise, though cruel and untimely, a net gain for the universe.
And yet what of poor Fluffy herself? Had she no intrinsic worth?
H KONIG: LOL! I had no idea Fluffy was in such good company.
I used to know someone who had a degree in physics but that was fifteen years ago and I hadn’t heard of “virtual partials.” Last I’d heard, as I recall, whether or not it ends up in a big crunch depends on whether there’s enough matter in the universe to cause it to gravitationally collapse.
It would, in any case, be nice for Fluffy to be alive while dead unless it turned out to be like one of those dreams where you know you’re supposed to be dead and can’t move but you can still see everything going on around you.
If any of us happens to be afflicted (blessed?) with one of those pesky quantum particles rendering us dead as well as alive, it’s just as well that we don’t know - would be kind of creepy. But later on it would be good to know – that is, after we’re dead, it would certainly be nice to know that we’re alive as well.
Worth, as you point out, is in the eye of the beholder. The rats and aliens may find entirely different worth in Fluffy than we do.
Are you asking about the essence that made Fluffy more than just a lump of flesh and fur--that is, her personality or soul? I will not pretend that we understand everything about the brain (although modern cognitive science has some fascinating results), but for me it is easier to assume that the phenomenon of mind, personality, and cognition all developed by the same evolutionary mechanism of diversification as every other living thing on this planet.
Again, this does not mean that we have all the answers (or even that we can find them), but it does seem simpler than requiring an intangible and unobservable divine world where our mysterious and undetectable essence of "soul" undergoes a strange journey after death.
Fluffy--the happy cat that made us laugh--is certainly dead and will not come back to brighten our days. On a more personal level, though, I do not fear death because I know that the totality of my being--including whatever is happening in my brain to gives me my identity--has always been part of this Universe, and when I die that contribution will persist. For me, being part of this cosmic community is tremendously spiritually fulfilling.
VISHESH and JACOB: Sounds like similar sounding outlooks. Would you describe this as a religious belief? If so, what’s it based on? Does it include the belief that after death the universalized you, so to speak, continues to exist phenomenologically – that is, to have experiences, to be conscious or sentient in some way?
Or do you relate your perspective less to belief than to some kind(s) of experiences you’ve had in the present? If so, does death remain problematic in the sense of possibly eradicating further such experiences?
Don’t mean to pry or need an answer unless you happen to feel like it, mainly tossing it out as something to think about.
VISHESH, on a historical note, I’ve been wondering: was the Buddha originally Hindu, so that Buddhism would have historically emerged from Hinduism similar to how Christianity and Islam historically developed from out of Judaism?
After my personal death, I am confident that this community of life will persist, just as I am confident that prior to my birth this community also existed.
I'd have to guess yes, but that's just because of the sheer number of stars making it seem so improbable that life could exist only on earth. But it seems to me it's finally an empirical question.
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