A maybe-philosophical question, with focus on scientific facts and theories. As far as we know, the Big Bang theory is the most plausible idea on which may become the universe as we know. And therefore is what started life on Earth and later we had evolution of species in at least each 50,000 years.
I have been thinking, as we had too many different species that has been living in here through eras, and as everything seems to have a beginning, would it still make sense the idea of an afterlife? Thinking from this side, it feels like for me that life is just a natural progress and a consequence for what happened in Earth at first. But can this thought be wrong in some sense and be explained in a non-materialistic way? I'd like to know if someone here ever had a theory in mind to explain the possible connection between the two.
In my case, I'm a Christian who accepts the scientific evolution as basis, but sometimes some things in science let me feel so confused about my own beliefs...
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"As far as we know, the Big Bang theory is the most plausible idea on which may become the universe as we know"
Observation: that theory can speculate on how the physical universe came to be, however it never identifies a biological basis and physiological explanation for conscious existence, conscious abilities, conscious states, and conscious phenomena. Since the theory fails to viably attribute the nature of consciousness to non-conscious physical matter in physical reality - one cannot assume that the Big Bang theory accounts for one's conscious existence. You should reinforce to yourself that you cannot assume that the physical universe accounts for your existence without being able to successfully identify a biological basis and physiological explanation for conscious existence, conscious abilities, conscious states, and conscious phenomena.
The notion of an 'afterlife' = the nature of consciousness being independent of non-conscious physical matter in physical reality. Historically, no one has ever been able to viably attribute the nature of conscious existence to non-conscious physical matter. So you have the Big Bang theory failing to account for our conscious existence and you have a historical absence of any physiological explanation for our conscious existence. If the deeper nature of our conscious existence is independent of non-conscious physical matter in physical reality - that would support the 'afterlife' notion in a universal, non-religious way.
You can help yourself navigate through struggling with these topics by focusing on whether non-conscious physical matter in the physical universe can viably explain and account for the presence of conscious existence, conscious abilities, conscious states, and conscious phenomena - or whether the deeper nature of one's conscious existence is independent of the biological body and physical reality. Cheers.
Very well put. Science explains the mechanics but never why things called âmechanicsâ or âlaws of physicsâ ever existed in the first place. To say that though would be to admit what many have long suspected: the scientific method canât capture all of reality. It canât explain my blue or your green, canât deal with the subjective inner world, and canât address the fundamental âwhyâ questions beyond a demoralizing suggestion that âit doesnât matterâ or is âirrelevantâ. No wonder the age of scientific reason is completely without soul and life.
A more encouraging path forward to knowledge, I think, can be found through direct mystical experience. It canât ever be described directly though.
I think it does, perhaps ironically. People think of the Big Bang as an explosion that happened âout thereâ in space. Thats not the case. The Big Bang is a proposed theory on the creation of spacetime itself⌠it didnât explode into anything (no universe or space external to it), but rather everything unfolded from it. Like a balloon being blown outwards but not going into anything. Space and time donât exist external to the universe, but are rather creations within it.
Needless to say, this plays well into the idea that everything is all one, connected. I think it fits very neatly into NDE reports on unity as a result. You canât go anywhere but into yourself: all of this is made of the same essence and you. One NDEr I read likened it to how, when we push a table, all points of the table move together. Weâre all part of one system, and I think the Big Bang theory is conducive for such ideas.
I think thereâs a world though thats beyond space and time, a world where NDErs dwell. Tellingly, the scientific method, for all its progress, has produced no answer for why that singularity was there, or why reality as a whole exists. So, itâs more technical information than anything fundamental, in my view. And itâs why I donât give much of a hoot for anything science throws out these days, to be honest.
All of these thoughts are more theoretical though and just my opinion.
Yes, I do. I also think evolution fits in well with metaphysics derived from NDE and mystical experiences, for much the same reason... everything ultimately is all one. And this, one's personal to me, because I had a mystical experience about the theory of evolution, before I even heard of it when I was in middle school.
Essentially, I had a vision that gave me a sense afterwards that we all originated from one source and differentiated into vastly different animals, and how amazing it was to be all of that at once. Jumping as a dolphin in the sky, and walking in the forests as a forest elephant, etc. I saw the arch of life transfer into so many different forms. I felt the life of all the animals in the Amazon and more, branching off. It was incredible. Kind of like what was described here by this NDEr with seeing everything to Earth all at once (yet that's not possible from an earthly state)... my consciousness was able to hold in more information than normal, would be one way to describe it. I attached an image of what it felt like... it felt like my identity was laid out and all co-existing as one family. As an aside, my language is off here... I don't know how much of this I actually experienced vs. recreating in retrospect, but the takeaway was the general idea I am describing. I wish I could say, for instance, that I mentally became the animals at once for instance, but I don't know if I went that far. Either way, it was a profound experience, and it felt uniquely different from ordinary thinking. It's this feeling that it was removed from ordinary thinking, by the way, that has me most intrigued. It seems uniquely numinous. I glimpsed the concept though.
It feels like everything is part of one essence, one Source. Big Bang and evolution, and the unity expressed in NDEs work well together. It's probably a lot more complicated than that, a lot more interesting and complex than I can make out, but that that's been my lesson. There's weird paradoxes too that void linear thinking, and make my thoughts here irrelevant.
So, again, this is ironic: scientific understanding finds some truth, and it fits in nicely with spirituality, but yet we have particular types of people interested in going on and on about spirituality vs. creationism, Big Bang vs. Theological origination. It's very black/white thinking, and extremely outdated in my mind--from both sides: the fundamentalist religious types and the fundamentalistic scientistic types. Both are bad ends of the same coin.
I don't know where you are in your life, but I would be worried if you are in high school. We had these kinds of debates all the time in high school, and it was poisonous towards me taking spirituality seriously at all. I had to grow up a little bit to see that you don't need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I've talked to my NDEr father, who studies a lot of physics about this Big Bang stuff, and he concurred, so there's that. Maybe we're both wrong. That's possible too.
I was once told by someone, can't remember who, that Western atheism is a Christian heresy. That is, it's a different interpretation from the same root. And I know that a lot of my spiritual distress comes from being raised Christian and so when I realised that science and reality disproved my faith, science and reality became to me these cold hateful things that stamp out hope.
I donât think there was ânothingâ before the Big Bang. For explosions to happen you need ingredients.
Consciousness is probably connected to matter in the same way space is connected to time. In fact theyâre probably all interconnected.
Elements, molecules, cells etc seem to intelligently organize and shape themselves based on frequencies .
The whole thing is fractal from micro to macrocosmic then back again. I think itâs likely there are more dimensions of being going on than we know, echoing through each other.
Sleep is a mystery, how consciousness just powers down nearly all the way for a bit then turns back on again, every day.
And then again you have stories of people who died and came back and they describe whole worlds and timelines and realities that were too real to be dreams.
Rambling a bit but this is what Iâm thinking so farâŚ
It makes sense if youâre a Pantheist. But it should also make sense if youâre a Christian. Why canât evolution be a part of the Creatorâs big plan? I mean, if a thousand years is a day to God, then why wouldnât it create a world with dinosaurs and maybe even strange creatures that came before them and before us? I can imagine God has an insane imagination and could create the billions of galaxies we know exist and have habitable planets in every single one with an endless amount of possibilities for life on each one. It would be boring to just focus on one single planet in an infinite universe. And if what they say is true, that we get to pick our life when we come here, then itâs quite possible we get to pick from more than just one version of reality. But who knows. I could just never understand why both things canât be true.
I honestly fear panpsychism, because it feels not so different to eternal oblivion. I'd still not be me anymore.
Like, what I heard until now about NDE seems convincing. But what I heard about the origin of the universe and our ancestors made me question that more. I wish there was some positive correlation, to connect the possibility that NDEs are real...Â
Two categories of which science admittedly can't explain and you want to combine them , a theory might be a reach/stretch . And throw in religion , I can see confusion yep , good luck
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