Re: Question for religious parents

"dragonlady" <mehouck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:mehouck-2A7092.13222002032006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <geJNf.315$ia3.10@fed1read08>, "Circe" <guavaln@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"dragonlady" <mehouck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:mehouck-C6E182.13162102032006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Well, at least if there IS an afterlife, we'll know there is one after
we die, and what it's like.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe there is an "afterlife" of sorts but it's an
afterlife in which one's conception of self is entirely lost. So we'd all
be
in the afterlife, but unable to grasp that fact.

Good point.

But if there is an afterlife in which one's conception of "self" is
lost, are we really there at all?

Well, you know, I'm thinking of Emerson's Oversoul or some such concept.

I don't have any sense of myself before I was born (well, really, before I
was a few years old, but you know what I mean!), so I don't expect to have
any sense of myself after I die, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be
some part of me that's in some sense immortal and that existed both before I
came into being as myself and will exist after I stop being myself through
death. I don't necessarily BELIEVE that; I just don't disbelieve it.

I pretty much DO disbelieve in a *personal* afterlife because I don't
believe it's possible to have a concept of self without the hardware on
which to operate a brain. If I wake up after I'm dead and find I can still
think, I'll be pleasantly surprised, though! It wouldn't upset me to
discover I was wrong <g>.
--
Be well, Barbara


.

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