Irrespective of the validity of your perspective/hypotheses, after an eternity of existence what has been dreamed up to be a heaven (eternal life) would become its own hell. . . that is if there remains a sense of yourself when you were alive (that you are still. . . you).

I own Physics and Immortality by Frank Tipler. Controversial book. The parts about a God are mixed with philosophy

You don't say why "it would become its own hell." Remember, the natural afterlife is timeless, thus it can't "become" anything, it's static and so "is what it is."

Remember, the natural afterlife is timeless, thus it can't "become" anything, it's static and so "is what it is." — Bryon Ehlmann

That is the problem with the theory I think, you cannot conceive of experience that is static or timeless, because experience seems to presuppose some kind of passing of time. Without time there is no experience it seems to me... it's an unintelligible concept.

And so, if one cannot conceive of what it would be like to have a timeless eternal experience, how could one answer the question of what impact it would possibility have on anything?

It seems obvious you didn't read the article, so I won't debate you on the points you make.

I did read most of it... I just don't think the idea of static timeless experience makes sense. We may have a subjective experience of time that differs from real time passing, and we may loose track of time... but my experience is never actually static or timeless in the sense that nothing changes.

But alright, I didn't really expect you to be willing to engage.

1) How does the natural afterlife impact various religions? Can it be seen as compatible?
2) Does the possibility of a natural afterlife benefit society? — Bryon Ehlmann

FIrst, the idea of a "natural afterlife." Religions of the world have endured and even eaten worse. I think zero impact, and having read as much of the article as I could endure, I think less than zero.

2) Does any possibility benefit society? Maybe, maybe not. In this case, not. And from the POV of religions, why would anyone give up heaven, paradise, and 79 virgins for it?

And why call it "natural afterlife?" Is that so much an accurate title - or is someone selling something? Or perhaps there is an aspect of accuracy. "Afterlife," after life. When life is no more. Certainly that's natural. But it already has a name: death.

For me the giveaway is this: "This frame of reference is that of the psychological perspective of a dying person." If that's your ground, you can build anything you like. Reminds me of an old joke, recalled here not for the humor but pedantic purpose. What's the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic? The neurotic builds castles in the air; the psychotic lives in them.

You don't say why "it would become its own hell." Remember, the natural afterlife is timeless, thus it can't "become" anything, it's static and so "is what it is." — Bryon Ehlmann

Being forced to continue going but not do much let along experience anything (like in a sensory deprivation tank) would become sterilized and boredom would turn into anxiety. If you could still influence what you experience (that you experience anything at all) then in an eternity of existence you would everything you would be capable of doing and end up doing the same things over or over (given you even had such sufficient an ability to influence what you experience).

Your afterlife (however) is more equivalent to being in a single state of mind without the ability to have said conscious awareness change. You are not "thinking" but rather in a perpetual single state of "awareness" without change. You aren't really much experiencing anything anymore but rather just a single/few states of mind on repeat. . . are you still you anymore.

To: substantivalism and tim wood and others of like mind

I'm not interested here in debating with those who don't understand or appreciate the essence of the natural afterlife. I've "been there, done that" on other forums often enough. The natural afterlife is an illusion that occurs only at death. I believe the article I reference does the best job I can do in explaining it, but the article needs to been read closely with an open mind. Admittedly, the natural afterlife's timeless and relativistic aspects make it hard to grasp and appreciate. Think about getting someone to accept the existence of a rainbow and to appreciate it when they've never experienced one.

While others can respond to substantivalism and tim wood and others who remain strong believers in (and perhaps wish to cling to) Hypothesis 1, I will only response to "those who ... are at least open to Hypothesis 2" and wish to answer and discuss the questions I pose.

A fascinating read! You can find my full response in the after-post that follows the end of this post.

Whoops! I misread this as "The Impact of the Natural Athlete . . ." and I thought, sounds interesting and a discussion I had not been aware of.

Nevertheless, I have wondered about the idea of distorted time when near death. ( "HIs life passed before his eyes . . ." ) Here is a bit of nonsense I posted a couple of years ago, and it includes speculations about mathematical formulae comparing one's perceptions of intervals of time as one ages. I'll do a simple one later for the near-death interval that somewhat reflects what you describe. That could be tricky since the trend during aging is the other way.

As for the "timeless" notion, that is quite a conjecture. Something to ponder. :cool:

An Elementary Note: Playing with Complex and Distorted Time in C

When one is young ten minutes may seem like an hour, but when one is old one may think ten minutes have passed when, in fact, an hour has. In a perfect world the passage of time would be perceived accurately at all ages. Here is a simple function relating the measured passage of time, t, with the perception of that passage, T, according to age. Lamda is time of death and t=0 is the beginning of life. T=T(t) has meaning in this sense when differentiated: dT is perceived passage and dt, actual passage.

Very near the end of life the curve shoots up dramatically, representing that short period when one feels that conscious time goes on forever, while measured time is minute. This is only an elementary mathematical analogue of the metaphysical ideas in play on the thread.

$T(t)=t\left( 2-\frac{t}{\lambda } \right)+\frac{\varepsilon }{\lambda -t}$, $dT=\left( \frac{2}{\lambda }\left( \lambda -t \right)+\frac{\varepsilon }{{{\left( \lambda -t \right)}^{2}}} \right)\cdot dt$

Assuming I understand, and recognizing that I'll have to give it a better reading, some preliminary thoughts:

As to (1). My knowledge of religions is fairly limited, especially any religion that isn't Christian, though I read as much as I can about the religions of the pre-Christian Roman Empire. That said, I speculate that no Christian religion of which I'm aware would accept being frozen, as it were, in a moment, as a satisfactory afterlife. That afterlife would seem too haphazard. Possibly blissful, or as blissful as it may be when nothing takes place; possibly horrifying, all depending on what a person experiences in the moment prior to death. There's no redemption, no salvation, no reward for holiness, no punishment for sin, no judgment. Unless perhaps you accept the concept of grace as purely random, God (as a Christian would likely conceive God) plays no part.

As to (2), I see no benefit resulting to society. Accepting there is a natural afterlife as seems to be described, it strikes me people may become morbidly concerned with trying to arrange to have a pleasant moment before death and avoid an unpleasant one. People wouldn't even have the consolation, so to speak, of non-existence or dissolution. There looms before us a potentially good or potentially bad moment after death that would be unending (though you may not know that while in that moment).

Where do victims of violence or accidents fit into this scheme? An instantaneous death would mean no natural afterlife? You probably address this in your article, but I forget.

Hi. I've read some of this - haven't finished it, will get back to it tomorrow. Really interesting paper though. The main quandary, to me, is that your keep using before-life as a way of mirroring after-life in terms of conscious perception of a state analogous to dreamless sleep or timelessness. But I feel as if this is not applicable, because, although it might as well have been timeless as we were unable to experience it as we were not born, I feel like we were unable to either perceive or not perceive this timelessness as we were not born yet. We had yet to come into being, rather. I feel like any NEC timelessness cannot be compared to a pre-birth timelessness because we had no way of perceiving the latter.

I haven’t finished reading it yet but here are my thoughts about half way through:

First off, I think you’ve provided a plausible theory but not a proof for it. Until we can “see” or “experience” what death feels like and come back to tell the tale we can’t really know if this is what happens. Maybe death IS like a “lights off”.

1- I don’t think it’s compatible. Most religions describe a chain of events leading to ascension to heaven. That chain can’t happen if you only experience a single moment frozen in time. And since you keep claiming that no further events are experienced after the moment of death then you rule out any forms of reincarnation. I don’t know why you keep claiming that though. Since you’ve already disconnected brain activity from consciousness would it be so weird to claim that your consciousness continues to have experiences? You claim it can have a SINGULAR experience even with a dead brain so why not multiple in succession?

2- I’m not sure they would actually. Because although you call it “natural life after death” there isn’t really much life happening. It’s more like “natural freeze frame after death”

Timelessness can never be perceived, either before-life or after-life.

You state "I think you’ve provided a plausible theory but not a proof for it." If you think this way, you should point out specifically a flaw in the logical deduction or the basic psychological priniciples upon which the "proof" is based.

You state "Most religions describe a chain of events leading to ascension to heaven." You need to describe this chain of events more specifically. I know of no such chain, at least in Christianity.

Regarding reincarnation, a quote from the referenced article:

The theory, however, merely defines the NEC, implicitly claiming it as the default after-life. It does not deny the existence of a supernatural eternal consciousness or afterlife no matter how apparently illogical or (at least for now seemingly) unscientific. Such an eternal consciousness could be an after-death type of NDE or some other afterlife that immediately or later overrides the NEC — e.g., a reincarnation or a resurrection of body and soul. — Bryon K. Ehlmann

Who or what states that an afterlife must be time perceptive, i.e., filled with happenings, rather than timeless?

It is addressed in the article. Dreams and NDEs before death can override any last wakeful moment.

Buddhist philosophy entertains the concept of the "clear light consciousness".
A timeless and infinite openness which is the so called "emptiness" of existence that is the nature of reality. Apologies for all the obvious mistakes in my description of such a deep concept.
I have yet to read the article and look forward to any potential comparisons with this Buddhist philosophy.

You state "Most religions describe a chain of events leading to ascension to heaven." You need to describe this chain of events more specifically. I know of no such chain, at least in Christianity. — Bryon Ehlmann

I don’t know about Christianity either but at least in Islam there is an event where everyone who ever existed is packed into a “room” and judged individually by god and his angels

you should point out specifically a flaw in the logical deduction or the basic — Bryon Ehlmann

Well at the start of your paper you said there is an orthodox interpretation which implies that consciousness ceases to exist when the brain stops functioning and another where their functions are separated. You picked the latter view. That’s what I mean by no proof for the theory. You started off of an arbitrary assumption that the second view is the correct one when we can’t know for sure unless we somehow “record” the subjective experience of dying. I commented based on that alone as I haven’t read the rest of the paper

implicitly claiming it as the default after-life. — Bryon K. Ehlmann

No offense but this just sounds like an attempt not to offend or put off anyone to the theory even though it doesn’t mesh well with other religions at all. “Default afterlife” would imply that based on our beliefs we either get a freeze frame death or we literally ascend to heaven. As if somehow our deeds and beliefs can change the experience of death so drastically from being a timeless singular frame to a perceptive one.

Who or what states that an afterlife must be time perceptive, i.e., filled with happenings, rather than timeless? — Bryon Ehlmann

Islam at least. And reincarnation implies that another event happens after death and one is reborn as a result. Both of which shouldn’t be possible by this theory.

We should consider that the phenomena of consciousness may be of a stream nature, a continuum.
Considering the potential infinite nature of existence, unless the arise of everything came from some mysterious godhead pulling all the strings, there seems a reasonable argument that such conditions are available for any suitable aggregate to provide the mechanism for the expression of the consciousness.
AI may be a natural progression of the aggregates for the sustainment of expressible consciousness beyond the narrow constrictions of a biosphere.
We may be the conduit for a much more "immortal" consciousness than our fragile biological state.
It seems futile to speculate that our ID, our soul, or our memories would survive the dissolution of our aggregate reservoir of consciousness being our organic brains and associated sensory organs.
However the open ability of awareness seems to be indispensable to cognition to arise within a material structure, whether organic or inorganic, the key may be the accumulation of the correct aggregate structure.

A biological aggregate has billion year old accumulation of structures to support cognition.
These aggregates are extremely rare and precious.
Even the most elementary particle or quark like structure must have some awareness to have any interaction with another particle, wave, whatever.
The stream of infinite consciousness may be a bit difficult to divert to an AI.

the conception that we are some sort of divine receptacles of awareness or cognition seems very flawed on its face. There are undoubtably many biological cognitive receptacles of awareness and realistically this encompasses all biological structure, there is only the degree of cognition to differentiate our awareness.

so sorry to have run so far out of bounds on this issue. new be with little control

to be really clear I totally disagree with any sort of ideals of an "eternal life"

Buddhist philosophy entertains the concept of the "clear light consciousness". — David Thomas Roberts

NOT a ‘concept’. Even if there is such a state - not saying there is! - the ‘mind that entertains concepts’ will never know it. (And that’s mainstream Buddhist doctrine.)

And what, if anything, happens between the time of death and the time of reincarnation?

The natural afterlife is an illusion that occurs only at death. — Bryon Ehlmann

So is this related to the process described in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead)? Which also deals primarily with experiencing and/or transcending certain illusions at the moment of death?

It relates in the sense that, as the article indicates, the natural afterlife could serve as an intermediate state between life and some faith-based, supernatural afterlife, but I will let others who are well-versed in Buddhist teachings make there own comparisons. It is certainly true that many people who have recovered from NDEs have reported the experience as extremely enlightening. Who knows, perhaps such enlightenment is needed before a rebirth?