Infinity issues

To be honest I was thinking of more extreme cases - s’cide bombers, monks and nuns, that kind of thing.

I recently watched a documentary about a banned practice that some Buddhist monks undertake to achieve enlightenment and break the cycle of reincarnation - they survive on scavenged nuts and tree roots for a thousand days, then they spend a hundred days drinking a poisonous substance that makes them vomit constantly then they rate buried alive in a coffin with a bell that they ring every day. When the bell stops ringing, the other monks dig them up and if their body has mummified they are considering to have been enlightened. If their body is decomposing, it was all for nothing.

Seems a lot of bother to me!

As a person of faith, I dont' feel the need to spend my incarnation in service to an expeted eternal life. It seems a very Abrahamic belief set and I find it really hard to get my head around, it's probably one of the many reasons I'm don't follow those paths.

I've been told by some of those that do follow an Abrahamic religion that they'll miss me in heaven if I remain a pagan, has it ever occured to them that I don't want to spend eternity with them?

Also if the universe is literally infinite it means there’s an infinite number of versions of me writing this post.

Some of whom will be sentient cauliflowers.

I think the issue of whether the universe is infinite is still a discussion point. Big bang implies it’s very large but finite (assuming BB is correct).

There is much to digest in what you say. Embodiment can mean different things to different people, for different purposes. Are you talking about the sense of giving form to our emotions, beliefs, likes, hearing, pain, etc?

I do believe in an after life, but I also believe in reincarnation, so any after life isn't eternal stasis or whatever. Part of me would welcome there being nothing at the end of this life, nobody could get to me anymore, I just have this horrible feeling that some sort of necromancy will be found just ater I die and I will be called upon to answer more silly questions and not be left in peace.

Whilst there's no accepted evidence of an afterlife, there's no evidence that there isn't one either, so until we die we won't know.

I find the spiritual world often closer and more real than this one and often communication easier. But it dosent' stop me from living this life as fully as possible and have always held to the idea of looking to that which repeats itself in life to learn the lessons for this incarnation. I've been able to learn from and shake off some bad habits by looking at life like this.

I've always had a weird 'chatting away to god in my head' thing going on since I was very small. It always feels perfectly natural and reasonable. I generally felt hugely misunderstood as a kid, probably something most people here shared, and talking away to god felt like a good way around it. Even when intellectually I've considered myself an atheist, I've still done it. I can't stop, anymore than I can stop stimming. Perhaps, that's what it is? I'm not really religious, and I don't sit down to pray, it just bubbles up when I'm walking the dog or out and about. 

Not sure what happens when we die. I lean towards nothing whatsoever, but some of the research into near death experiences and the nature of consciousness now taking place are intriguing. I think if we do go one somehow, it will be so radically different to what we experience here that questions about infinity will not really matter.

Deepthought said:

Finite bodies can only in part understand the nature of infinity,

It does not help that the one observable "infinite" system we can refer to - the universe - is measurably expanding.

Something that is infinite cannot, by definition, change size.

The same applies for eternity. It was proven back in the 1960s by Steven Hawking and Roger Penrose that time cannot extend back indefinitely and is provably demonstrated to start with a singularity we refer to as the Big Bang.

Before the Big Bang the laws of physics did not exist as time is one of the dimensions that was created by the big bang so there is no meaning to time beforehand.

Fun fact - there are 11 dimensions (not just the 3 spatial and 1 temporal one we perceive) as predicted by M-theory, a derivative of superstring theory, which moved into Multiverse theory and  a whole new noodle-baking bunch of implications.

https://interestingengineering.com/science/how-many-dimensions-does-our-universe-really-have

I'm not sure the average human mind has the capability of grasping all of this (mine struggles at the concept of infinite infinities) so we are relying on the propeller heads doing the research to make some sense of it for us.

Start looking down this rabbit hole and you are probably going to need some high grade medical relaxants to get over it all. A strong cup of builders tea is my go-to drug in this case

Sometimes it helps not to think about it at all.

A said:

Deepthought said:

You seem not to have considered the holographic theory where the cerebral brain processes memories rather than as storing them, remembering that people have lost considerable proportions of their cerebral anatomy, in part or whole, and have not lost the ability to recall or remember things. The process of memory recall can and does end up being compromised to some extent in particular cases, but not all. Neural linguistic programming for instance helps people to circumnavigate neural network damage ~ such as for example learning to write with the non-disabled hand after strokes

That is because neural networks store information  in a distributed manner, but when the brain dies, that is all lost.

Lost from and by the body though decomposition, yes, of course.

Deepthought said:

You seem not to have considered the holographic theory where the cerebral brain processes memories rather than as storing them, remembering that people have lost considerable proportions of their cerebral anatomy, in part or whole, and have not lost the ability to recall or remember things. The process of memory recall can and does end up being compromised to some extent in particular cases, but not all. Neural linguistic programming for instance helps people to circumnavigate neural network damage ~ such as for example learning to write with the non-disabled hand after strokes

That is because neural networks store information  in a distributed manner, but when the brain dies, that is all lost.

ArchaeC said:

Yes you have made an interesting point, but does anybody fully comprehend infinity?

Finite bodies can only in part understand the nature of infinity, but that that which is embodied is gaining an increasing comprehension of which, but never a full one given what infinity describes.

A said:

"I" am the collection of physical structures, experiences, memories and beliefs that have accumulated in this body. If those things were gone I would be something else, not me.

You assume as such that you are a human 'body' and not a human 'being' ~ and given:

A said:

We have quite a good understanding of how the brain stores memories, and it does involve physical structures and processes.

This implies that after our bodies die, our memories die with it. So if our spirit did survive, it wouldn't remember who we were, who we loved, what mattered to us.

You seem not to have considered the holographic theory where the cerebral brain processes memories rather than as storing them, remembering that people have lost considerable proportions of their cerebral anatomy, in part or whole, and have not lost the ability to recall or remember things. The process of memory recall can and does end up being compromised to some extent in particular cases, but not all. Neural linguistic programming for instance helps people to circumnavigate neural network damage ~ such as for example learning to write with the non-disabled hand after strokes.

Many people spend their time imagining that they are “human” rather than actually a human ‘being’, and as such in respect of eternal life the framework of their imaginings becomes a hypothetical projection through absolute space, infinite dimensions and ~ as a result therefore ~ all finite evolutions; despite evolution being dependent on changing environments, of which the human body is one, and the physical level of material embodiments is another.

The traumatic disassociation of humans from their human ‘being’ leads of course to separation anxiety on account of being as such ‘unconscious’ (in the context of life having become a dream and a nightmare to whatever extent), whereas the conscious being can be awoken to by way of a continuing sense of serene contentment in accordance with the harmonic nature of the absolute being; and all its infinite becomings ~ involving a balanced amount of change.

Hence things like religion and philosophy, which facilitate various understandings and comprehensions of the changes we are and will be going through in life as being or not being an energetic continuum, involving at very least physical adaptation / evolution.

Obviously if we imagine only a physical state of existence where energy accumulates and dissipates ~ despite evidence such as lighting strikes and electrons getting released and transferred from atomic shells and other atoms, absolute endings are the speculative outcome.

If you also continue in the same manner to imagine you will always have the same physiological embodiment and the same psychological fears ~ that can be hypothetically maintained for as long as you are motivated or triggered to do so.

How long such motivations or reactions will persevere does of course depend upon how habituated we are by them, and what as such has been and could still be influencing that habituation.

Sure it would be their clones!

Yes that’s right! Sorry I didn’t express things well. I also think that some people believe in God out of habit, because it is what was taught by predecessors and school. Not all religions reject sound scientific teaching and some actively promote it.  I wanted to clarify that not all Christian denominations teach that hell is a certainty for people like Hitler. I have no intention of trying to convert anyone to Catholicism or any form of  Christianity, any other religion or atheism. I just can’t get my head round infinity even though it is a reality.

But that is dependent on you choosing the “correct” religion, which would rule out most of humanity even if there was a “correct” religion.

cf Pascal’s Wager

Yes you have made an interesting point, but does anybody fully comprehend infinity? Most of the world’s major religions think along the same lines about the afterlife. Perhaps some types of Buddhism might differ, and I wonder about how our human ancestors, such as Neanderthals, Denisovans as well as Homo Sapiens, first began considering where we came from and how the earth evolved. It is fascinating stuff but we will never know. The catechism of the Catholic Church does not definitively state that anyone will go to hell. It states that hell is a real place, but that our hope is that ‘all will be saved’. The belief is that after death, if we haven’t already repented and had our sins forgiven, we will be given the opportunity to say sorry and to go to heaven - that applies even to Hitler. It is a matter of hope and faith rather than proof. I don’t like to think of anyone suffering forever either and I just thought I’d put the record straight for people who might have a belief in God from a Catholic perspective. As a non believer now, I still appreciate how people derive meaning from faith in God. 

I think the religious obsession with "eternal" and "eternity" is based on a failure to truly comprehend infinity.

Eternal punishment.  So you burn for a billion years. Then a trillion more. But even then you're not even a quadrillionth of the way through your time in the fire.

What kind of crime could possibly deserve such a horrendous punishment? I wouldn't even do that to Hitler.

And yet we are told a "loving god" would do this to people for trifling misdemeanours?

I used to think about the afterlife a lot, and still do although it doesn’t hang over me as much as it used to. I once believed in God and was preoccupied with eternal punishment because I believed I was bad, although my understanding of theological teaching evolved as I got older and it stopped being a preoccupation. Now, I don’t believe in God, although I would like to as the reassurance was comforting. I think a lot about the state of ‘nothingness’ after death, about ‘how come I was born in this body rather than as an animal such as a rabbit’. Thinking about infinity takes up some time, imagining it going on and on and on, putting up an imaginary wall at the end of it, but something is beyond the wall …. Nobody has ever satisfactorily answered these questions. I find it helpful to imagine looking down on the earth and considering how minute and insignificant I am among all the created world and thinking about how all life, plants and animals die. New life is always being born and eventually, according to astronomers, the earth will eventually cease to exist. Somehow, knowing I came from non existence and will return to that non state, is consoling. 

I've always been of the opinion that we die when the biological machine we inhabit breathes it's last. Some people seem to find great comfort with the thought of the afterlife and that's fine. The concept of spirituality has always eluded me, I barely have a tangible connection with people I encounter on a daily basis, nevermind anything heavenly.

Live your life as it's the only one we know for certain we're going to get.