hm, yea, think like General Patton, like you were great in the past or something :P
Actually, for fun, I like to think I was a Hungarian Countess in the past, or a great musician. Maybe it's little things like that what make life worth living.
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Nah, more like, what makes up your consciousness? A certain combination of receptors that match your pattern. Secondly, when we're unconscious, time passes by "infinitely" fast, to at SOME point, our brain will be reborn. It might take trillions of years, but that doesn't matter, since time does not exist to your "deactivated" consciousness. So in theory, the reincarnation would happen the second you die. Get my point?
he can't mean literally OUR conscious, including memories. Your never going to get another being born with your exact configuration of electrons, mainly because natural selection is still occurring in some ways, we are evolving and getting more neurons. I guess it's like a dinosaurs conscience is never re-born in a human, their brain configuration is gone, the brain configuration of a human 2000 years ago is gone.
anyway if if a creature had a configuration of neurons the same as you, it means nothing. Just as identical twins or 7 cloned dogs do not share brain waves or something.
Do you remember your former life? Surely if reincarnation were possible a good number of us would remember a life of another human before us( again like i said this human would have to have existed pretty recently, a few thousand years is going to change the brain of a creature a little)
people do
just no one believes them
think of it this way - why did people start believing in the after life? did they make it up? no I don't think so. for as long as we know it people have been 'communicating' with 'spirits' or visiting other worlds in near death experiences or astral projections
its the same with reincarnation. people 'remember' past lives
you can say they are all hallucinations, but these ideas didn't spring up from no where, but from those subjective experiences of people. this person has experience A therefore they make a claim about A.
I'm not suggesting that our memories will be retained or anything, I'm just saying our consciousness will be reborn at some time. It's just a matter of time, and since time passes by infinitely fast when we're non-existant, it would be like "I'm dyiiinggg-*dead*-googaa mommy?"
However, I can't really do anything to convince you (Patrick) that our consciousness will be 'reactivated', and it probably won't, though I think my theory is perfectly true, if our consciousness is defined by the exact combination and position of receptors and neurons in our brain.
What?
An atheists point of view...
I wouldn't want to make my family miserable by dying... That does sound conceded but they would be very unhappy... I live so that my family doesn't suffer a loss...
Nothing happens when you die, so live it up...
The second reason is probably better...
To most people this will sound weird, but this is an analogy and NOT LITERAL. I'm going to quote the bible not as some literal truth that you should follow, but as something that I have found to be true in my life and I know the lives of many others.
Jesus said that the person who tries to preserve his life will lose it, but the person who loses his life for him (God/Jesus) will find it (matt 10:19, if you want to look it up or anything).
Life is meaningless without God. What I think hes saying is that we have to give our for him, completely surrender and sacrifice our lives. Not literally.
I've found that everything that I have tried to do in my own power has failed miserably, and its something that I'm even struggling with even now.
But the times that I have given my life over to God, I have purpose, I have fulfillment. I have a life. He can do more with it than I ever could.
To me, that means dying in many ways. Dying to my own selfish needs, dying to things that God doesn't want me to do, dying to myself so that I can live.
I have given up trying to make life work on my own. When I try, all it comes down to is hedonism. Selfishness. I want to make something of my life.
I want to die for him so I might be able to have a chance at life.
I'm sorry if this doesn't help.
That's kind of like what i was mentioning in my "reincarnation" thread, or what i was meaning. One light goes out, another opens so to speak. You wont be you, but you'll be some other person. You will see what that person see's and something completly different. Although a human? maybe maybe not..maybe you wont even be on this world for all we know. The whole "reincarnation would happen right when you die" so to speak could be true, while it's not "right away" and can be millions of years there will be no difference because once lights go out, lights come back on. Like when i was having major surgery, i got put under the knife or whatever it's called and it seemed like 1 second later but it was many many hours later. No dream, just "close eyes" and "opene eyes", not even blackness. it was like nothingness from when i was down to when i woke up. If you can be born once, you can be born twice, and so ona nd so fourth. It's not hard to believe or you might aswell ignore the fact we are born once. While it's not "us" anymore, it will be someone else's view you see.
Look around you, look at all other life on this earth, and you will realize, that all life lives to evolve. I also believe this is the same with humans. As below, so above. As above, so below.
We live to be as happy as possible. But that raises the question, what makes you happy? And to me, the things that truly make me happy always seem to lead back to evolution. My great love for girls and family will result in me marrying and having kids, passing on my genes. My great love for self-improvement will result in me changing alot through my life, and these changes, will also be reflected in my genes. My great love for food and cooking will provide the energy I need. My great love for people and friends allows me to learn alot from them, and speeding up my personal evolution
You are trying too hard to fit a model that someone else invented, which clearly doesn't suit you. You're almost asking for a brainwashing or something. I say take your time. You don't need an answer immediately. You have a lifetime, after all. Look within yourself and find what you think makes most sense, and that makes you happiest. You don't need to be a christian to have a reason to live (no offense to anyone)
Convert's Corner @ RichardDawkins.net
Testimonials from people who have left their religion, and why they are so much happier. Have a read, you might see someone you identify with that can articulate your feelings better than you currently can.
Athiesm gives you a reason to live. This life is all you've got. Don't waste it, you need to make the best of it.
I'm a christian and I think God has a certain purpose for me, and you. He wants to use me in some way to do something good. When Jesus told the story about a man who gave his servants money, and one of them invested it to get more for the man, and one of them buried it in the ground to keep it safe but didn't earn any more, I believe Jesus was saying that God gave me my life for the same reason that that man gave his servants some money to invest. That is always a reason for me to live.