There Is Probably An Afterlife

I apologize for taking so long to get this up. In the future I will have my opening arguments prepared beforehand. Science has proved to be extremely successful in its predictions about the natural world. And there seems to be a strong scientific case for the proposition that the consciousness of individuals is rooted in physical objects we call brains, because there are observable neural correlates between mental states and electro-chemical brain states (physical states), and it is therefore reasonable to conclude that mental states are generated by physical states of the brain, and that when our bodies die and our brains stop functioning, our consciousness is completely terminated along with it. However, I will argue that a crucial assumption that this notion rests on is unnecessary and problematic. But first I will point out that the claim that a person only lives once, even separate from any scientific claim, is inherently extremely improbable.1. The intrinsic improbability of contingent lifeLet's consider some consequences of the following statement: Every person that is alive at present, has never lived a previous life, and will never live another life; each person lives exactly one time. If this is true, then every living person is incomprehensibly lucky. Consider that the observable universe has existed for tens of billions of years, and that it is 93 billion light years in size, and that most of it presumably contains no conscious life (if we presuppose physicalism), and that the number of all possible human beings immensely outweighs the number of human beings who actually exist, and all the other non-living objects, or more numerous but less intelligent species that exist in the universe, and given all that, you exist as a conscious human being. Some people have attempted to calculate the possibility of any particular individual existing, and the result is that the odds approximate a 0% chance. More specifically, they are, according to one source, 1 in 10^2,685,000, a number so large that if we did not have mathematical notation, the piece of paper required to write it down would be too large to fit in the known universe. [1]If we are really skeptics, we should doubt that any of us are that lucky. Rather, it is much more likely that existing in general is not contingent, but absolutely necessary and eternal, and that we simply take various forms at different times.2. An argument against physicalismSo how do we reconcile the above information with the persuasive notion that consciousness is merely generated by the brain? We don't have to. That notion is simply false in my opinion, and there are good reasons to think so. As stated above, there are observed neural correlates of consciousness that are observed in neuroscience. But you may be familiar with the phrase, "correlation does not imply causation. ""Physicalism" is an essentially meaningless term. What do we really mean by "physical"? If we mean non-mental, we are being hopelessly vague. We are inventing a concept almost void of meaning. It is simply an incomprehensible negation of what could not be more familiar--mental experience. We might say the physical is all that is described by physics, but again, what is that? Physics only tells us about the relational structure and laws of the natural world. It says nothing about what the world is. What is it made of? Science has no answer. That is a question for philosophy. While science only informs us of this extrinsic structure of nature, there is clearly a qualitative, intrinsic substance. What is this substance? Maybe we'll never know? No, we have direct evidence of it: it is consciousness. The physicalist idea of some unthinkable non-mental substance is an unnecessary postulation. It is also incoherent. How does consciousness arise from a complete lack of it? The logic is that when you have a highly complex arrangement of non-mental properties, whatever those are, somehow consciousness simply emerges. This initially sounds reasonable, but if you look closely, there is actually no explanation or logical account of how this is possible. It is simply assumed that it happens. But this is akin to saying that something completely new (consciousness) can just appear in the world out of nothing. It is arguably an appeal to magic, which has absolutely no place in science. Until an explanation can be given for how this emergence is even possible, it should not be an accepted notion. Instead of saying that consciousness is generated by the "physical" brain, we should say that the entire universe is consciousness, and that our brains are simply a complex, dynamic bundle of this larger consciousness, in the way that a neural network is a more complex, dynamic bundle than a single neuron, but they are the same substance that makes up consciousness. Human beings are simply thoughts within a giant, eternal mind. So where does this leave us? Indeed, this may shock a modern, scientifically-inclined person, but we are forced to accept, in my opinion, that metaphysical idealism is true. I see no alternative.3. Argument from contingencyHuman beings are contingent creatures. It is possible for every person to not exist. But all contingent beings must originate from, and remain interconnected with, something which has necessary existence. If this were not true, then ultimately nothing could exist. Since all human beings are contingent beings, they must originate from, and remain inseparable from, a being with necessary existence. This is usually presented as an argument for God, but I think it works nicely in this context to establish that human consciousness has an inseparable necessary aspect to it, and that while our various incarnations might become disintegrated, our necessary aspect will always remain, and thus we have an afterlife. ConclusionI have argued that:1. The proposition that every person has one life is manifestly extremely improbable.2. The physicalist account of consciousness is highly flawed, because it is an unnecessary postulation (unparsimonious), it relies on the notion of strong emergence, which may not even be coherent or possible, and it is essentially meaningless. All that needs to be postulated is one substance, which is consciousness.3. All things which are contingent must originate in, and remain connected to, something that is necessary for its existence. Human consciousness is contingent, but must have a necessary, eternal aspect. Sources:[1] . http://io9.com...