Why do atheists assume that non-existence is a real thing?

reply to post by spy66


''If you ask your self; Who controls you.
Is it your brain or is it You''

That's not really true. Your brain makes the decisions 6 second before your conscious mind makes the decision. Consciousness, you, what you think, is your brain nothing else.

It's really amazing to think how great our brains are, the even create the illusion that you are you.





So when your brain stops making you conscious, when you die, you won't know, so no need to worry about it just get on with your life and enjoy it. peace (btw this is my first post

Originally posted by Mr_Awesome
reply to post by mahajohn

 

I use coincidence for lack of a better word… perhaps miracle would be more suited. Anyway I’m trying to say that if you believe that our consciousness ceases to exist when we die then you have to admit it is amazing that you are here now experiencing something and not already dead or yet to be born. Or maybe you are experiencing something now because you always experience ‘something’ whether in a physical body or something else.

edit on 17-5-2011 by Mr_Awesome because: (no reason given)

I think its just the opposite. If there is no consciousness before or after this, life is the only state you would expect to experience, 100% of the time.

Originally posted by jimgibson10
reply to post by spy66

 

So when your brain stops making you conscious, when you die, you won't know, so no need to worry about it just get on with your life and enjoy it. peace (btw this is my first post

Nice first post, since that's about how I feel about this. When looking at evidence presented and research done, what we have found so far really does point toward the end of consciousness - or, at the very least, any form of consciousness that matters to the person reading or writing this right now.

Research points toward the brain being what produces consciousness. When a person dies, the electrical signals and activities that make up what produces consciousness stop working. So, to say that the consciousness ends at death really isn't out of the question, and in fact seems like the most likely scenario.

If that's the case, don't worry about it. Without a consciousness, you can't really acknowledge the fact that you don't exist, so it's not like you'll care.

I welcome anybody to shoot what I've said down, though. I don't mean that sarcastically, either. If you've got a counter-theory, I'd love to hear it.

Originally posted by v0ice0freas0n

Originally posted by Mr_Awesome
reply to post by mahajohn

 

I use coincidence for lack of a better word… perhaps miracle would be more suited. Anyway I’m trying to say that if you believe that our consciousness ceases to exist when we die then you have to admit it is amazing that you are here now experiencing something and not already dead or yet to be born. Or maybe you are experiencing something now because you always experience ‘something’ whether in a physical body or something else.

edit on 17-5-2011 by Mr_Awesome because: (no reason given)

I think its just the opposite. If there is no consciousness before or after this, life is the only state you would expect to experience, 100% of the time.

edit on 18-5-2011 by v0ice0freas0n because: simplification

Ok i'm trying to understand. So you are not suprised that you exist right now because this is the only state that you could exist in as non-existence is essentially nothing... right I understand this too but it's not the point I am making.

Non-existence is tricky because the only way that we can explore the concept is from a point of existence, so while I understand that time is meaningless if one does not exist, we still have a concept of time while we exist and from our observations we understand that the universe is approximately 13.9 billion years old.

So while you may feel that the odds of existing now are 100% because you do infact exist I am talking about the timeline in its totality. So if we were to take the years that a person lives, lets say 75, then the odds of a person being in that 75 year moment of existence on a universal time scale would be 75 divided by the number of years from start of the big bang to the end, if there is even an end.

So you see the odds are astonishing that you are experiencing existence rather than just not existing. However if consciousness is eternal then those odds are infact 100% that you exist at any point in time, which is why I suspect I find myself existing right now.

Originally posted by jimgibson10
reply to post by spy66

 

''If you ask your self; Who controls you.
Is it your brain or is it You''

That's not really true. Your brain makes the decisions 6 second before your conscious mind makes the decision.

edit on 02/05/2011 by jimgibson10 because: (no reason given)

edit on 02/05/2011 by jimgibson10 because: Forgot something

That is totally made up.
That is like saying my brain knew what to answer you before you post your reply.
It is also like saying my brain new how to walk before i saw someone else do it before me.

reply to post by Mr_Awesome


you assume that there is some form of me passively existing for the rest of eternity to factor it in to your odds.

Originally posted by spy66

Originally posted by jimgibson10
reply to post by spy66

 

''If you ask your self; Who controls you.
Is it your brain or is it You''

That's not really true. Your brain makes the decisions 6 second before your conscious mind makes the decision.

edit on 02/05/2011 by jimgibson10 because: (no reason given)

edit on 02/05/2011 by jimgibson10 because: Forgot something

That is totally made up.
That is like saying my brain knew what to answer you before you post your reply.
It is also like saying my brain new how to walk before i saw someone else do it before me.

Lol you're kinda right. I should watch all of the video I post before I post a replay.
Anyway, I the case of the video, He is asked to make a decision on what buzzer to press and instantly press it.
The scan shows the brain starts to decide what side you will click 6 seconds before it's actually clicked. So your brain new what side it was going to choose before your conscious mind.

Originally posted by v0ice0freas0n
reply to post by Mr_Awesome

 

you assume that there is some form of me passively existing for the rest of eternity to factor it in to your odds.

Well no not passively existing, just not existing for the rest of eternity, which wouldn't matter to you becaues you wouldn't exist, but you can see from your perspective now that that is not what is happening because here you are existing.

If you don't exist it doesn't mean the universe and time and everything else stops existing. We can consider the odds because we do exist now and do have a concept of time and the continuation of time in the universe.

reply to post by ItsBlink


Well that is if consciousness is produced by the physical brain, but science has not been able to show this. It may very well be that the physical body is just a lens that consciousness experiences things through.

reply to post by Mr_Awesome

The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the one hundred billion neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 1 quadrillion. This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult (100 to 500 trillion).

(Wikipedia)

I'm thinking that that kind of number of neurons and the incredibly complex connections between the neurons could have a lot to do with conciousness. You say science can't prove this but i disagree, if you inject someone with anaesthetic they lose "conciousness" due to the drugs effects on the brain.

Thing about conciousness is it's something thats very hard to define, there's whole branches of philosophy that try and tackle this subject

Whichever time we exist in would be a miracle in the op's opinion. Yet we all have a finite time to exist and we don't know if we existed before, maybe we never will know.

Originally posted by Hopeforeveryone
reply to post by Mr_Awesome

 

The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the one hundred billion neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 1 quadrillion. This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult (100 to 500 trillion).

(Wikipedia)

I'm thinking that that kind of number of neurons and the incredibly complex connections between the neurons could have a lot to do with conciousness. You say science can't prove this but i disagree, if you inject someone with anaesthetic they lose "conciousness" due to the drugs effects on the brain.

Thing about conciousness is it's something thats very hard to define, there's whole branches of philosophy that try and tackle this subject

edit on 19-5-2011 by Hopeforeveryone because: (no reason given)

edit on 19-5-2011 by Hopeforeveryone because: added a bit

If science could prove this then we would know the answer, but the fact is that they can’t prove it. In regards to the anaesthetic it is not proof because there are different levels of consciousness and it is only a perception of the physical body after waking that consciousness was actually ‘lost’. The physical brain is limited and forgets many things that do actually occur, like memories as a child or how I forget most of my dreams upon waking.

reply to post by Mr_Awesome


In some ways i guess the brain is a product of conciousness. One of our ancient ancestors decided he like sea food so ate a lot of that, thus providing his evolving brain with many of the ingredients for better development. They also realised that comunication was a good idea so their brain evolved to handle speech and the complexity of large social groups.

If science could prove that conciousness is only a product of the brain then i seriously doubt that religious people would believe it anyway. So far the evidence we have for non physical conciousness is the various books of the dead ( tibetan, Egyptian ) which are belief inspired from subjective experiences. There's also mediums and spiritualists but all of them have turned out to be hoaxer and conmen/women. Science is a superior belief system as at least it provides anwers based on evidence and data rather than what some guy said down the pub.

reply to post by Hopeforeveryone


Intersting point you make about evolution. It seems the universe does have some kind of plan which is to evolved into ever more complexity. It would be such a shame if we only existed once and only once, which would essentially make us absolutely meaningless in the long term.

Im not sure that science could ever adequately resolve these fundamental questions. Funny to think that there is indeed a truth to all this and it makes perfect sense. We just can't see it.

reply to post by Mr_Awesome


Well, I can sort of prove that I wasn't here 1000 years ago. Or 10,000. Or 8,739,386 years ago (was getting sick of round numbers). What makes you think being dead is going to be any different from not having been born yet?

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


You may be able to prove that your physical body wasn't around back then but you can't prove that you didnt experience existence in some form back then.

This is why I stated in my OP that... "I would like to add that the forgetfulness of the limited physical brain does not constitute evidence for non-existence... such as 'i dont remember before I was born, why would I remember after'. "

So by this I mean that what you experience right now is just a perception from your limited physical body and because your physical self cannot remember before being born does not mean that you (consciousness) didn't exist before then. For example do you remember the moment of your birth? I assume the answer is no... yet it did indeed happen.

reply to post by Mr_Awesome


All life that exists to day must be linked/chained
in one way or another to its beginning/past.

If you think of existence as a seed. As this seed grows/expands
new branches evolve.
But this seed can not form any life/branches that are not from the seed.

Our life is a link on the chain at present time from a evolving seed.

If we have consciousness then the seed must have it to, because we can not have something the seed does not have. Because we are from the seed which is evolving/expanding.

We can argue if the seed must evolve/expand first to be able to have a conscious function.

reply to post by Mr_Awesome

Originally posted by Mr_Awesome
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

You may be able to prove that your physical body wasn't around back then but you can't prove that you didnt experience existence in some form back then.

I have no evidence to conclude that my 'existence' is merely a label I ascribe to the consciousness which is an emergent factor arising from my brain meat.

This is why I stated in my OP that... "I would like to add that the forgetfulness of the limited physical brain does not constitute evidence for non-existence... such as 'i dont remember before I was born, why would I remember after'. "

And that's an illogical statement because there is no evidence to show that consciousness is anything more than a function of brain meat.

So by this I mean that what you experience right now is just a perception from your limited physical body and because your physical self cannot remember before being born does not mean that you (consciousness) didn't exist before then.

Ugh...Descartes, you old Frenchy, look what you've done to people who don't know any better...

How is the mind separate from the brain?

For example do you remember the moment of your birth? I assume the answer is no... yet it did indeed happen.

Well, I'm guessing it might be locked away in some back corner of by brain, but no, I don't have the ability to actively recall that event. Of course, there's no evidence to show that my consciousness is something which exists separate from my body,so stuff Cartesian dualism.

reply to post by spy66


I like your view point. I wouldn't say for sure I know what the nature of reality is but I do have a tendency to think that the depth of what reality actually is, is beyond our comprehension as humans at this point in time.

Models like this can be good ways to conceptualise what is essentially beyond us.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by Mr_Awesome

 

I have no evidence to conclude that my 'existence' is merely a label I ascribe to the consciousness which is an emergent factor arising from my brain meat.

And I have no evidence that my consciousness is an emergent factor arising from my brain meat.

And that's an illogical statement because there is no evidence to show that consciousness is anything more than a function of brain meat.

Actually there is evidence, the most convincing of which is subjective spiritual experience (which I realise to those who have never experienced something like this is hard to swallow). It has been written about and talked about in every culture. In our entire human history as if by instinct, there has been a belief in something beyond our physical lives (unfortunately organised religion hijacks these natural belief systems).

Ugh...Descartes, you old Frenchy, look what you've done to people who don't know any better...

How is the mind separate from the brain?

Because anyone who knows better would agree with you right. So are all brilliant scientists and mathematicians gnostic atheists? Well I guess the ones that aren’t just don’t know any better… right.

While we inhabit these bodies the mind and brain are connected. The fact is that we don’t understand how the relationship works.

Well, I'm guessing it might be locked away in some back corner of by brain, but no, I don't have the ability to actively recall that event. Of course, there's no evidence to show that my consciousness is something which exists separate from my body,so stuff Cartesian dualism.

Still you make a large assumption by believing that you know the answer instead of admitting that you cannot know for sure.