Justification of two assumptions of the proponents of the afterlife

[Juan]

There are two assumptions that the proponents of afterlife generally accept: the afterlife as fact for all human beings and the afterlife as eternal life, but I've never seen an attempt to justify these assumptions. For this I have written this post if you are interested:

http://forum.mind-energy.net/skeptiko-podcast/5007-justification-two-assumptions-proponents-afterlife.html

[Matt Rouge]

It really is an interesting question. Robert Sheckley wrote a novel (that was turned into the awful movie "Freejack") called "Immortality Inc.," in which *not* everyone is guaranteed life after death. Rich people pay poor people for their ability to live immortality. Rich people will also pay to continue on in poor people's bodies in exchange for the ability to live immortally.

I think the best way to explain the universality of the afterlife for all is by understanding (in my view) that the "soul" is the information content of the person. Information (fundamentally) can never be destroyed; thus, we live on in our information. Since every person has information, we all live on. As I have said before, "information" is not quite the right word. "Fact of the matter," etc.

This solves a lot of problems. Do animals go to the Afterlife? They do insofar as their information content permits that.

As for the second assumption--the Afterlife lasting forever--I think that is a philosophical issue. If the Afterlife exists outside of time, then it would last forever. Every indication is that this is the case.

[Juan]

Hello Matt, thanks for your answers.

On the idea that information is indestructible, I have not got clear, because if I write a message on paper and then the paper burned to ashes I not destroyed that information? Maybe your emplees the term "information" in another sense, but I do not know.

And on the idea that the afterlife is eternal because it exists outside of time, I do not quite understand, because if we are out of time, then we could not suffer any change, but no change there is no consciousness.

[Matt Rouge]

Juan,

I am talking about the notion of the Akashic records. This is information that requires no medium (medium as in paper, hard drive, photograph, brain cells, etc.) to exist.

For example, doesn't the past remain "true" even if we can access no record of it? For instance, I play chess all the time online. Let's take a game I played 5 years ago. I don't remember it at all, and there may be no record of it anywhere. But isn't it the case that I played certain moves and not others? If we believe that the past is "real" and not just a fiction that we find convenient to maintain, then I think we have to believe that it still "exists" in some form.

As the for the relationship between time and eternity, it is indeed puzzling. I think it is helpful to think of time as an artificial construct for our particular physical universe. Other environments may operate under different principles.

[Juan]

Then we need to find out if there is such information that does not require a medium.

And on the time, I'm can very attached to the constructions of this particular physical universe, but I cannot imagine being conscious without time.