Perspectives on Death and the Afterlife Debate

Einstein believed all moments in time exist simultaneously, challenging our perception of death and reality.

### Perspectives on Death and Immortality: Insights from Notable Thinkers
* 🧠 Michelle Thaller explains Einstein's view that **time is a landscape where all points in time exist simultaneously**, suggesting that "**your husband, my friend, is just over the next hill**" and that we could **see our entire existence at once** with the right perspective.
* 💔 Sam Harris discusses the emotional toll of losing loved ones and critiques religious narratives that offer **comforting but potentially misleading stories** about death and the afterlife, arguing that "**we have to just witness the cost of that**."
* 💭 Michael Shermer emphasizes that while death is a universal truth, the concept of an **afterlife is a recent invention**, and he questions the validity of various religious beliefs regarding immortality, urging people to **appreciate the present instead**.
* 📖 Rob Bell highlights that biblical texts did not originally emphasize an afterlife; instead, "**eternal life**" referred to **living harmoniously in the present**, and he critiques the notion of hell as a **punitive afterlife** rather than a reflection of our **choices on Earth**.
* 🌍 Bill Nye asserts that the reality of death is undeniable, noting that our **finite lives drive us to make meaningful choices**, and he challenges the idea of immortality by questioning **what one would do differently if they knew they would live forever**.
* 🔬 Michio Kaku introduces the concept of **digital and genetic immortality**, explaining that advancements in technology may allow for the **digitization of human experiences and memories**, potentially enabling future generations to **interact with their ancestors as if they were still alive**.

MICHELLE THALLER: Einstein thought that the
beginning of the universe, the Big Bang, created all of space and all of time at once in a
big whole something. So every point in the past and every point
in the future are just as real as the point

of time you feel yourself in right now. Einstein believed that literally. One of his best friends died and he wrote
a letter to this person's wife, talking about how his friend still exists. Time is a landscape and if you had the right
perspective on the universe, you would see

all of it laid out in front of you. All past, present, and future as a whole thing. And he said, "Your husband, my friend, is
just over the next hill. He's still there. We can't see him where we are now, but we
are on this landscape with him and he still

exists just as much as he ever has." Einstein believed that you, right now, had
been dead for trillions of years, that you haven't been born yet, that everything that's
happened to you—if you could get the right

perspective on the universe—you could see
all at once. SAM HARRIS: Death is in some ways unacceptable. I mean, it's just an astonishing fact of our
being here that we die. But I think, worse than that, is that if we
live long enough we lose everyone we love

in this world. I mean, the people die and disappear and we're
left with this dark mystery. There's just the sheer not knowing what happened
to them. And into this void, religion comes rushing
with a very consoling story, saying nothing

happened to them; they're in a better place
and you're going to meet up with them after you die. You're going to get everything you want after
you die. Death is an illusion. There's no question that, if you could believe
it, that would pay emotional dividends.

I mean, there's no other story you can tell
somebody who's just lost her daughter to cancer, say, to make her feel good. It is consoling to believe that the daughter
was just taken up with Jesus and everyone's

going to be reunited in a few short years. There's no replacement for that. There doesn't need to be a replacement for
that. I think we have to be... We have to just witness the cost of that. I mean, there are many obvious costs of that
way of thinking.

One is we just don't teach people how to grieve. Religion is kind of the antithesis of
teaching your children how to grieve. You tell your child that your grandma's in
heaven and there's nothing to be sad about.

That's religion. It would be better to equip your child for
the reality of this life, which is, death is a fact and we don't know what happens after
death. And I'm not pretending to know that you get
a dial tone after death.

I don't know what happens after the physical
brain dies. I don't know what the relationship between
consciousness and the physical world is. I don't think anyone does know. Now, I think there are many reasons to be
doubtful of naive conceptions about the soul

and about this idea that you could just migrate
to a better place after death. But I simply don't know about what... I don't know what I believe about death. And I don't think it's necessary to know in
order to live as sanely and ethically and

happily as possible. MICHAEL SHERMER: There's hardly anything bigger
than offering immortality or the afterlife, because, so here's the problem. We are all aware that death is real because
we see it all around us.

100 billion people have lived before us. They're all gone. Not one of them has come back, not even Jesus
in my opinion, but that's a different video. And yet you cannot conceive of what it's like
to be dead.

Because if I asked you, "Picture yourself
dead, what do you see?" Most people say, "Well, I see myself there
at the funeral and the coffin and my loved ones are hopefully grieving and there..." No, you wouldn't see that, you wouldn't see
anything because to see anything you have

to be conscious. To conceive of anything, you have to be a
sentient being, you have to be conscious. And if you're dead, you don't have any of
that. Really, death is just nothing. And the whole idea of the afterlife is fairly
new.

I mean, the ancient Hebrews, their idea of
the afterlife was nothing. You're just nothing. You're just gone, that's it. There's no place to go with angels and flowers
and whatever. It's just nothing.

All that was added on centuries later. And probably for socio-political reasons, you know. Offer the peasants something nice so that they'll keep building our pyramids or whatever. So again, we can't conceive of what it's like to be dead and yet we see it all around us,

so this creates something of a paradox that we have to resolve in our minds. Most people resolve it by thinking, "Well, I'm not actually going to die. I'm just not going to do it. I'm going to live forever.

Or I'm going to accept Jesus or whatever and I'm going to heaven." Okay, yeah, but what if you're wrong? It's not a Pascal's wager where you can say, "Well, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain," because which religion and their version of the afterlife is the right one?

Which one are you going to pick? And while the Christians, "We're the right ones." Yeah, well, there's a billion Muslims who disagree with you. They don't accept Jesus as a savior. They don't think he was even the Messiah, the Son of God.

Okay, so now what? And they believe just as strongly as you do. So what if your God is the wrong one? Your version is the wrong theory and they have the right one? You wasted your whole life investing in this idea and you turned out to be wrong.

Why not jettison the whole idea entirely and appreciate the here and now, because that's all we have, whatever is in the hereafter. ROB BELL: If you look at, well, the Bible, which for many people in the Western world

was sort of the guiding... in the Old Testament,
there isn't really any sort of view of the afterlife. The closest you get is a word for pit, a word
for 'abyss', which basically means you die and you're not here.

So this idea that the whole thing is about
when you die is not really the way that lots of people have thought about it. And that the phrase "eternal life" was a very
first-century Jewish way of talking about living in harmony with the divine right now.

So eternal life wasn't a kind of life that
happens when you die. Eternal life was understood to be a certain
quality of life that you're experiencing right now, where you're in right relationship with
the earth, with the environment, with each

other, with yourself. That was considered eternal life. One of the things I found most interesting
is that Jesus used the word hell, but when he used the word hell, he was referring to
an actual place in the city of Jerusalem in

the first century. The word he used was the word Gehenna and
Gehenna means the Valley of Hinnom. And the Valley of Hinnom was the South Valley
on the south wall of the city of Jerusalem. That's where people toss their trash.

So he's pretty much the only person who used
it. And when he used this word, he was referring
to a real place where this trash was burning. So essentially, he was saying, you as a human
being, you have this power to make choices

about whether you will move towards others
in grace and compassion and kindness, or you will move towards people in violence and degradation. And when you do that, when you mistreat others,
when you are indifferent to their suffering, you're essentially creating a Gehenna on Earth.

And so you're creating a hell on Earth. The idea that has animated a lot of religion
for a lot of people, that there is some divine being somewhere who if you don't say or do
or pray or believe the right thing is going

to send you to hell. Life is difficult enough without believing
that the deepest, strongest forces of the universe are against you and are going to
torture you forever. BILL NYE: Everybody is going to die. I have never met anyone who is not going to
die.

I've never met anyone who is of a certain
age who's not already dead. It sucks! Now here's the evidence for why I don't believe
in an afterlife. It would be a fine thing if you could... If I could have the capabilities, athletically,
that I had when I was say 23, with the life

experience and intellect that I have right
now, that'd be fantastic. And then live forever? I say, bring it on. But my beloved grandmother who was brilliant
didn't have that happen. She faded away, losing her faculties as she
went.

People my age have a lot of grandparents and
parents who are not as sharp, certainly not as athletically capable or physically capable
as they were when they were younger. And so watching ourselves die is to me, overwhelming
evidence that there is no life after death.

There's certainly no—it doesn't seem to
be any reason to think that when you die, you go back to your optimum age at your optimum
athletic ability in your optimum intellectual sharpness. And if it turns out that that's true, then
you do die and have all this intellectual

sharpness and athletic ability, cool, bring
it on. That'll be great, but what would you do differently? What would you do differently if you knew
for sure that you were going to be immortal when you died somehow? Would you start committing crimes?

Would you jump off a cliff so that you can
hurry to your immortality optimal state? I just don't think so. Instead, the finite length of our life is
what drives us. It's what makes us go. And it's what makes you try to accomplish
things or decide to have kids or not have

kids or decide to live in another country,
on another continent or not or decide how to invest your money or what you're going
to do with your resources. All of this is driven by the limited length
of life we have. So furthermore, if evolution is, in fact,
how the world works—and it absolutely seems

to be, from my point of view—one of the
fundamental things about evolution that is so troubling is this whole idea of survival
of the fittest. That's really a 19th-century usage, a British
usage of that expression: fittest.

It doesn't mean that you're able to do the
most weightlifting or run the fastest 1500 meters or something. It means you fit in the best. And the troubling, troubling consequence of
this is you don't have to be perfect or a

super person. You just have to be good enough from an evolutionary
standpoint. You just have to be good enough to pass your
genes on. After that, evolution, if it were an entity,
doesn't really care about you, man.

You had your kids, your genes are passed on
and you expire. You lose your faculties as you run out of
steam and that's just how it is. Evolution, certain diseases catch up with
you. Certain autoimmune problems show up, certain
viruses and bacteria, parasites get you.

Nature doesn't care. You were good enough. And so I encourage you to live your life as
best you can every day. And as far as putting my brain in an electronic
receptacle for all time, it sounds great, but I will evaluate it on a case-by-case basis.

Do you want to be stuck in an Apple product
the rest of your life or do you want to be stuck in a Microsoft product? It's a tough call. I'm sure books will be written, we'll see. MICHIO KAKU: Digital and genetic immortality
are within reach.

Already in Silicon Valley, there are companies,
which for a price, will digitize everything known about you: your credit card transactions,
your emails, Instagrams, everything known about you can be digitized. And we have something called the Connectome
Project which will map the pathways of the

entire human brain, all your memories, all
your quirks, personalities, everything digitized, and we'll put it on a disc and for the most
part, we'll put it in a library. Today, you go to the library and you take
a book out about Winston Churchill.

In the future, you'll go to the library and
talk to Winston Churchill because all his speeches, his mannerisms, his memories, his
letters have been digitized. I would love to talk to Einstein. I would love to talk to him, even if it's
a computer program that has digitized everything

known about him: his work, his writings, his
speeches, everything, and a holographic image so that I can talk to him. And one day we might be digitized as well. We'll be able to talk to our great, great,
great, great, great-grandkids.

And they'll be able to talk to their great,
great, great, great-ancestors as well because we become immortal.

Is there life after death? | Sam Harris, Bill Nye, Michio Kaku, & more | Big Think

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Einstein believed the Big Bang created all space and time at once, with past, present, and future equally real.

He visualized time as a landscape, with all points in time existing simultaneously.

He believed a deceased friend still existed, just beyond our current perception.

Einstein believed we've already lived and died countless times, all existing simultaneously.

The consoling role of religion in the face of death

Death is difficult to accept, especially the loss of loved ones.

Religion offers comfort by suggesting loved ones are in a better place and reunion is possible after death.

This belief provides emotional comfort, especially in times of grief.

While consoling, this belief hinders the process of grieving and accepting reality.

Religion prevents teaching children how to cope with grief and death.

The reality and inconceivability of death

Death is a universal reality, yet we can't imagine what it's like to be dead.

No one has returned from death to describe the experience.

Consciousness is required for perception, making it impossible to picture oneself as dead.

The concept of an afterlife is relatively recent, not present in early beliefs.

Ancient Hebrews viewed death as simply nothingness.

Alternative interpretations of religious concepts

The Old Testament doesn't explicitly describe an afterlife; death is simply cessation of existence.

"Eternal life" was understood as living harmoniously with the divine in the present.

Jesus's use of "hell" referred to a literal place in Jerusalem, the Valley of Hinnom.

The concept of hell represents choices leading to harm and suffering.

Creating a hell on Earth is possible through mistreatment and indifference to suffering.

Evidence against an afterlife and the value of finite life

Universal death is undeniable evidence against an afterlife.

The deterioration of physical and mental capabilities with age supports the lack of an afterlife.

Observing the aging process provides overwhelming evidence against an afterlife.

There's no evidence of returning to an optimal state after death.

The finite nature of life motivates achievements and life choices.

The potential for digital and genetic immortality

Companies are digitizing personal data, creating digital representations of individuals.

The Connectome Project aims to map the human brain, potentially digitizing memories and personality.

Future libraries might allow interaction with digitized historical figures.

The possibility of digitizing individuals to enable communication across generations is discussed.

Digital immortality could allow communication with future and past generations.