Life after death

[Rainbow Moonlight]

I think there might be life after death.

[Jovial Monk]

So you are saying death comes before life?

[mantra.]

Do you mean reincarnation Rainbow? It would be nice to believe that we have another chance of life after we die. If there is life after death - perhaps in the next life we are punished for the sins of our previous life and this would justify cruelty, murder and greed.

I don't know if reincarnation exists - but it's best to take precautions just in case. Do unto others.....

[TomB]

There is certainly life after death if PA is any indication, however it is a little on the un-dead side.

[cynik]

Of course there is life after death. Yesterday a whole bunch of Palestinians died, but I am still alive.

Disco! Life after death!

I think you mean to discuss the divine continuity of the soul, from out of the material pool and into the metaphysical realm of Tagathta Buddha, home to the fundamental essence of those small plastic clips used to seal ground coffee, when it comes in a bag.

All I have to say about that, is that nobody knows. Hence the old saying of the swiss jews, before they were eaten in the year without a summer:

"From where cometh the essence of life, that blinding inspiration of Moses, the song of the lord, and flight of the birds, and where goeth these energies, if not towards the same essential corner of God's paradise, that holdeth fast the mystery of the Swcarny Blep?"

("Swcarny Blep" is archaic Swiss for the small plastic clips that seal coffee bags)

[Auzgurl]

I think there might be life after death.

Yes I believe so too Rainbow..

I believe this for no other reason except to say that I "feel I have been here before .
Stories abound and many have recalled memories of past lives..but I do wonder if these are actually memories or just some quirk of the human mind that lead us to believe they are memories.
Not being a traditionally religious person..reincarnation makes much more sense that the actual scriptures we are asked to follow blindly without any form of "proof".

[TomB]

There is also the worms and other living organisms which live off of the dead. But for the deceased, nothing.

[mantra.]

There was a thread on Ozpolitics recently in regard to intelligence between different races and the subject of DNA memory was brought up. Researchers have proven (in rodents anyway) that we are born with memory from our ancestors as part of our DNA makeup.

This theory sounds plausible - it would explain why occasionally we have these strange memories of different times and places where we've had no previous exposure. I believe that sometimes we unconsciously recall these memories at various stages of our lives. The more superstitious of us believe it's reincarnation, others might call it intuition or esp - but this DNA theory would call it memory from a particular incident in the lives of an ancestor. Makes sense to me.

[TomB]

Researchers have proven (in rodents anyway) that we are born with memory from our ancestors as part of our DNA makeup.

I call BS on this. Got a reference?

[cynik]

Semantics, TomB.

After all, what is memory?

Is not the code of our DNA the memory of evolution itself?

But yeah, I second the BS call on the specific memory claim.

Total crap, surely?

I understand that the nervous system creates loops of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex, and that these electrical loops eventually train nerve cells to grow into a biological shape that can reproduce the electrical effect. When we wish to recall the memory, we stimulate the nerve shape trained by the experience, and it reproduces the effect.

So that is how experience goes from pure energy at the sense interface to biological structure within ourselves. (so they say)

But to convert the biological structure into DNA code that can reproduce the biological structure......... hang on a minute.

DNA may create the cerebral cortex, but it DOES NOT create the fine loops of nerve cells that constitute the building blocks of memory. Indeed, the whole point about these cells is that they respond to electrical stimulus from established nerve systems. That is how we learn.

So, in order for us to have the capacity to learn, we must ipso facto have empty space in which our nerve cells can develop. It is well known that human babies are born with very little actual cortex, and that they develop a huge amount of this nerve tissue in their first two years of life.

Now a fish is different. It's nervous system is very simple by comparision, and it is hatched pretty much fully formed. And fish don't change much, from generation to generation.

So we have two sorts of nervous system: the bit that grows and takes shape with stimulus during life (memory), and the sort that is hard wired into our DNA (instinct). I do not accept that any evidence exists to show that these two types of nerve structure inter-relate or swap data. If so, why then the clear dichotemy between animals with memory and animals will mere instinct?

And if living memory is required to stimulate change in instinctual tissues, how the fuck do plants evolve?

This argument that living memory effects the biology in DNA cheerfully throws a huge amount of natural selection and chromosome theory into the trash can of science. Indeed, can there be natural selection of genes if the individual actors can shape the outcome of their own DNA?

Would not natural selection compete with memory to shape the future genome?

No, I think memory is for the living, and natural selection for the dead. How else to explain the vast length of time with almost no change in simian evolution, followed by the explosion of culture once we developed language, and the means to pass our memories down through our descendants with the printed word?

I dub this the "Meme Heresy".

You can't take a meme with you, buddy.

No memes on the bus.