View source for Critic of "Six Basic Theories of the Afterlife"

[[Awaretheory]] is a materialist theory of [[life after death]] and [[Immortality]] that is very different from the following six theories. It is not based on any [[supernatural concepts]] like [[god]]s or god, [[soul]]s, ghosts, spirits etc. [[Awaretheory]] is based on a very simple concept that produces, along with the rest of science and mathematics, a very complex and useful group of sciences dealing with the understanding of [[consciousness]] and [[ixperiencitness]]. [[Awaretheory]] puts the control and understanding of [[life after death]] in the hands of [[conscious beings]] not the whims of gods or the random creation of an [[indifferent universe]].

At the end of the article there is a list of six types of life after death.

All of these theories have been around for a thousand years or more and are speculation based on false or incomplete knowledge. These theories are described from a christian perspective which makes the last theory "resurrection", in a sense, seem preferable. It can be pointed out that [[awaretheory]] does not need a god for [[superimmortality]] to exist but it could have been created in some way by a god, gods, or even the combined effort of lessor conscious beings. Obviously, a god that created [[life after death]] and immortality the way that awaretheory shows is a much more intelligent and creative god than most religions give "him" or their god credit for. A theory with [[multiplicity of conscious existence and ixperiencitness]] is a much more interesting and complex theory than a [[simple singular theory of life after death]] that five of the theories propose. Although complex, being based on science, [[awaretheory]] is understandable and thus technologically useful. Conscious beings (humans) with enough scientific and technological knowledge can create [[life after death]] with the [[consciousness]] and abilities that are wanted and needed for the survival of conscious beings (humans and enhanced humans) through space and time. 

All six theories of the below mentioned theories of an [[afterlife]] are passive theories. This is because you have little to no self control over your future conscious existence after death. You are, depending on the theory, either never to experience conscious existence again, or you are some sort of incomplete partial conscious being or lessor animal, or you become a part of the whole without individuality, or your future depends on a dubious, poorly defined, fickle, but hopefully a [[conscious being]] making what are random decisions on your worth forever forward in time, based on your short difficult life on earth.

[[Awaretheory]] gives conscious beings extra reasons to be moral to other [[conscious beings]] (humans) and to take care of the earth and universe because this is where your [[lives after death]] are going to be created. Other conscious beings can be [[versions of you]] so when you treat them immorally you are treating conscious versions yourself immorally. If you hurt them you are hurting yourself. It is like taking a pill (or a decision) now that makes you suffer needlessly later --- a bad idea and a bad practice! But something that you are not aware of now but will be when you suffer the consequences of your bad choices. You are more than what you experience at this moment, which most people eventually realize. But most people do not realize that they are much more than a singular life time no matter how long that life time is.

Where religions require obedience to a set of rules for behavior, [[superimmortality]] requires the pursuit of real knowledge. Religions do not have to fear the ideas of [[awaretheory]] because awaretheory is not trying to destroy or eliminate [[awarepaths]] with religious experiences because this is part of our conscious heritage. But if religions, because of their antiscience dogmatism, leads mankind down the road to extinction it in no way helps the continued existence of all and or any of the different religious experiences that could have existed maybe infinitely into the future.

Science does not lead to finite length life and mortality like many religions profess and many materialists believe. If [[awaretheory]] is not right it does not mean that we can go back to these old theories it means that there is an even better theory than what is proposed in [[awaretheory]]. Most likely [[awaretheory]] is not wrong but incomplete, with many more and better scientific ideas to come in the future. 

There is and will be an ever increasing amount of [[empirical and rational evidence]] for [[superimmortality]]. In the many years that these six following theories have existed there have been very little if any real supporting evidence for them. That is why you have to believe them based on faith (or threat of punishment or death) because there really are no other scientific reasons to believe them.

<small>


::The Six Basic Theories of the Afterlife
::Taken from: Handbook of Christian Apologetics

::The human race has come up with six basic theories about what happens to us when we die.

::[[Materialism]]: Nothing survives. Death ends all of me. Seldom held before the eighteenth century, materialism is now a strong minority view in industrialized nations. It is the natural accompaniment of atheism. 

::[[Paganism]]: A vague, shadowy semiself or ghost survives and goes to the place of the dead, the dark, gloomy Underworld. This is the standard pagan belief. Traces of it can be found even in the Old Testament Jewish notion of sheol. The "ghost" that survives is less alive, less substantial, less real than the flesh and blood organism now living. It is something like a "ghost image" on a TV set: a pale copy of the lost original.

::[[Reincarnation]]: The individual soul survives and is reincarnated into another body. Reincarnation is usually connected with the next belief, pantheism, by the notion of karma: that after the soul has fulfilled its destiny, and learned its lessons and become sufficiently enlightened, it reverts to a divine status or is absorbed into (or realizes its timeless identity with) the divine All.

::[[Pantheism]]: Death changes nothing, for what survives death is the same as what was real before death: only the one, changeless, eternal, perfect, spiritual, divine, all-inclusive Reality, sometimes called by a name ("Brahman") and sometimes not (as in Buddhism). In this view—that of Eastern mysticism—all separateness, including time, is an illusion. Therefore, in this view, the very question of what happens after death is mistaken. The question is not solved but dissolved.

::[[Immortality]]: The individual soul survives death, but not the body. This soul eventually reaches its eternal destiny of heaven or hell, perhaps through intermediate stages, perhaps through reincarnation. But what survives is an individual, bodiless spirit. This is Platonism, often confused with Christianity.

::[[Resurrection]]: At death, the soul separates from the body and is reunited at the end of the world to its new, immortal, resurrected body by a divine miracle. This is the Christian view. This view, the supernatural resurrection of the body rather than the natural immortality of the soul alone, is the only version of life after death in Scripture. It is dimly prophesied and hoped for in the Old Testament, but clearly revealed in the New.

::Handbook of Christian Apologetics
::Copyright © 1994 by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli

</small>



[[Superimmortalism]] is a materialistic theory of conscious existence through time. It is very different from simple or historic materialism as described in the first of Six Basic Theories of the Afterlife from above. Simple materialism when applied to life after death has been around as long as any theory of immortality or life after death theory. Parts of book of Ecclesiastes in the bible seem to propose that life after death is not real. It appears that the first reaction to the death of any animal including humans is that death is permanent because once dead animals indulging humans do not come back to life. [[Superimmortalism]] is not only based on simple concept that bodies die but that matter through it complex structure and functioning can produce consciousness over and over again using the same matter or different matter in different places and times.