On 22 Dec 2014, at 21:14, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/22/2014 4:43 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 21 Dec 2014, at 20:06, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/20/2014 11:05 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Most legal systems punish murder more than any other crime, and
those that have the death penalty reserve it for the worst
offenders. Most criminals know that if they threaten a person
with death they are more likely to comply than with other
threats. Most religions, in the absence of any evidence, promise
an afterlife. I think this all supports the fact that it is a
common human trait to fear oblivion, even if as John says it's
just a matter of taste.
Stathis Papaioannou
It might be a common human trait to fear oblivion, but it is even
more irrational than belief in an afterlife.
Bruce
"I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for
billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not
suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."'(Mark Twain)
Would do accept to be tortured, here and now, with the promise of
1) 1000,000 $, 2) total amnesia of the torture?
But then I would have forgotten you owed me a $1,000,000.
"total amnesia" on the torture. Of course not of event preceding the
torture. I pay you in advance if you insist.
I guess you are joking.
But still, you forget to answer.
A quasi (comp) equivalent question is the following one. I pay you
1000,000 $ if you accept to be duplicated, and the copy will be
tortured to death. I let you introduce delays if it give you the
feeling it is less risky, but oif course if you said yes to step 4 you
know this is an illusion.
Should we made such transaction illegal?
If no, the Mark Twain argument is less convincing.
Note that Mark twain provides here an argument for after-life. If I
could come from nowhere, why would that not be possible again? is
it not the case all the time? Who are we, really?
Indeed. As far as I know Twain may have thought another life was
possible. He only satirized the Abrahamic idea of an after-life in
heaven or hell. But why would it be HIS after-life if he didn't
remember his prior life?
It is HIS after-life because he makes the SAME errors.
Bruno
Brent
"Now then in Earth these people cannot stand much church - an
hour and a quarter is the limit and they draw the line at once a
week. That is to say, Sunday. One day in seven; and even then
they do not look forward to it with longing. And so - consider
what their heaven provides for them: "church" that lasts forever,
and Sabbath that has not end! They quickly weary of this brief
hebdomadal Sabbath here, yet they long for that eternal one;
they dream of it, they talk about it, they think they think they
are going to enjoy it - with all their simple hearts they think
they think they are going to be happy in it!
It is because they do not think at all; they only think they
think.
--- Mark Twain, Letters from Earth
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