Are we eternal? (Eternal Recurrence)

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

Time may run faster or slower in other Universes since the laws of physics would
be different. But as they can not be detected because of the boundary limitation
of light in this one then the point is somewhat academic. And so if you wanted to
access the so called ultimate timeline that would only be possible in this Universe

The concept of the Ultimate Timeline is not something you access, it's stuck to you, it's default, locked, you can't not-access it. If you were to go back in time and change some other dimension or timeline, or enter and destroy some other universe, that would be part of the Greater timeline, the Ultimate Timeline.

Now, I think this has derailed long enough. Please go back and look over my original question.

Yes I know. And you point it out so elegantly. If one is not aware of it, then one does not experience it. And therefore, it might as well not even exist. Therefore, we are still at square I, the problem of removing existence itself. Anything else, is just counting on the roll of the dice, hoping death will do your homework for you.
You see, sweetie?

[Lev Muishkin]

The "PAST" is not a place. The past is past. I find it puzzling why people don't get this. Events in time are unique. This idea is given us by Heraclitus, and never really been refuted.
Entropy is a fact of reality.

It seems true that going back in time, and altering the timeline, would still be part of the greater timeline, and that you could not go back on the ultimate timeline...

But perhaps...

.... the past is not a place.

[Lev Muishkin]

Belief in the possibility of time travel is the result of a misconception of reality due to the linguistic metaphor we use.

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

.... the past is not a place.

And a "place"...is? For it is only a memory, something you sense in your mind...

[Nibbana]

The grammar is perfect, except the second 'we' ought to have a capital. My apologies.
You have the essence of the meaning.

What makes me is a unique and complex structure of matter. Not the atoms that form the structure.
Romeo and Juliet is not the Latin alphabet, but the order in which the letters of that alphabet are gathered. If you separate the words and letters - you just get a pile of nonsense.

Humans have the same atoms as a dog, a banana or a cat: mostly C, O, H, N, a little P and P, some Na and a few traces of other things.

We are not eternal, just because are atoms persist after our death. Death is the disorganisation of matter.

No. We are eternal. It's against the law of conservation of energy if we are not.

Right, after death we are disorganized. Our forms of human change. But we still exist in the new forms of matter. New forms of energy. We as a matter or energy are immortal. Matter or energy never dies. It just changes its form.

New things are actually the new forms of old things. Old things are actually the new forms of new things.

For example, I bought a new chair. What is it? It's now the combination of old things, ie wood, nails, etc. After five years, that chair will change. It will be old, of course, new form.

You are being ridiculous. Information can be lost forever, this does not transgress the laws of nature.

It does not matter a dingo's kidney about matter and energy.
You chair is only comprised of atoms. It is the atoms that remain, not the chair. Burn the chair! You can't get it back, ever.
What makes you, you is the information, not the atoms which are the same as any chair.

Haha. You are ridiculous. I'm not information. I'm matter or energy. I have mass and volume. Information is just part of me.

Information may be lost, but not forever. It's still there in genes. It can be transmitted from generation to generation.

Yeah, I may not get the chair back. But the chair still remains. But it's not called chair. It just changes its form.

A sperm and an egg made me. Apparently, I'm not information. And I'm immortal because my sperm( I'm male and straight) will make another 'I' that is called a son or a daughter. I will be part of him or her. I will always be part of my great great great...
grandkids. I'm obviously eternal. Haha.

[Lev Muishkin]

Information may be lost, but not forever. It's still there in genes. It can be transmitted from generation to generation.

Yeah, I may not get the chair back. But the chair still remains. But it's not called chair. It just changes its form.

A sperm and an egg made me. Apparently, I'm not information. And I'm immortal because my sperm( I'm male and straight) will make another 'I' that is called a son or a daughter. I will be part of him or her. I will always be part of my great great great...
grandkids. I'm obviously eternal. Haha.

Why do you fear being put in a blander then? If you are not your unique organisation of matter then you would not fear falling under a road roller. But you do. Because you know you are nothing without your structure.
Your great greats are dead as door nails. You are living a childish myth born of your fear of death and the inevitable nothingness.
You child will forget you when they die. You will be not even dust and ashes.

Allow me to disavow you of your notion of genes.

The genes you are born with and the same ones you die with. Your life makes no difference to their structure. "YOU" cannot change the information in your genes. Your sperm cells are only half of that, they loose their integrity when they recombine with a female.
You do not affect or change your genes in your lifetime. You are nothing but a carrier for that information. Everything that makes you you, is coded in the structure of your brain, all of which is utterly lost upon death; your learning , experiences and hopes and fears.
This is the same for us all whether or not we have children.

[Immanuel Can]

Let's take a slightly different angle on this question:

From where do we get the *idea* of eternity?

After all, empirically speaking, all we see on every side is things slowly decaying, dissolving and ceasing to exist. The whole world is that way. Everything is clearly on a linear track downhill. Scientists tell us that it is inevitable; not just us, but all our relatives, the whole species, the entire universe, and all energy in it is destined to one thing -- heat death. That means the state in which the universe contains nothing but a thin soup of equally-dispersed energy particles, and no new creative or generative action is even possible, forever. Dark, eternal, unrelenting night.

If this is so, then talking about being "eternal" through reincarnation, or through your future generations, or even through cycling multiverses is simple nonsense -- these are all speculations at best, and at worse they are mere parlour tricks to keep your mind from thinking about the truth.

But if that's so (and hard-nosed empiricism surely takes us there), then what is the empirical explanation for us having any "sense of eternity," or even being able to formulate the concept in the first place? We have just said that "real eternality" is impossible, from a scientific perspective: so we cannot have gotten the idea itself from the "empirical."

So why and how do we even know what "eternity" is?

[GreatandWiseTrixie]

That means the state in which the universe contains nothing but a thin soup of equally-dispersed energy particles, and no new creative or generative action is even possible, forever. Dark, eternal, unrelenting night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X3Rj2uLPgk
god i hope so

[Nibbana]

Information may be lost, but not forever. It's still there in genes. It can be transmitted from generation to generation.

Yeah, I may not get the chair back. But the chair still remains. But it's not called chair. It just changes its form.

A sperm and an egg made me. Apparently, I'm not information. And I'm immortal because my sperm( I'm male and straight) will make another 'I' that is called a son or a daughter. I will be part of him or her. I will always be part of my great great great...
grandkids. I'm obviously eternal. Haha.

Why do you fear being put in a blander then? If you are not your unique organisation of matter then you would not fear falling under a road roller. But you do. Because you know you are nothing without your structure.
Your great greats are dead as door nails. You are living a childish myth born of your fear of death and the inevitable nothingness.
You child will forget you when they die. You will be not even dust and ashes.

Allow me to disavow you of your notion of genes.

The genes you are born with and the same ones you die with. Your life makes no difference to their structure. "YOU" cannot change the information in your genes. Your sperm cells are only half of that, they loose their integrity when they recombine with a female.
You do not affect or change your genes in your lifetime. You are nothing but a carrier for that information. Everything that makes you you, is coded in the structure of your brain, all of which is utterly lost upon death; your learning , experiences and hopes and fears.
This is the same for us all whether or not we have children.

You're completely wrong. Information in genes can be changed. That's why we can see human mutations in the world.

We have fear of death because we are naturally programmed to survive. But that doesn't mean everyone is afraid of dying. That's because, as I said, information in genes can be changed.

Why some people committed suicide? They weren't scared of death? Yes,they were. But their emotions changed information in genes. Survival wasn't needed any more. So they killed themselves.

As matter or energy, we never die. And our information always exist in genes. But it can be changed by many things such as emotions or environment.

[surreptitious57]

I only operate within the limitations of what I actually know to be true with respect to how I perceive reality. And
one of the things I do know in relation to that is that that one day I shall die and that from that point on I shall no
longer experience consciousness so anything that happens to my physical state after that is therefore academic as
far as I am concerned. So by default is discussing the removal of existence since that is actually impossible. I work
with what is possible not with what is not and so for me it is no more than an interesting philosophical question as
I already said but not one grounded in reality. And argument from emotion does not make it any more valid either

[Dalek Prime]

A sperm and an egg made me. Apparently, I'm not information. And I'm immortal because my sperm( I'm male and straight) will make another 'I' that is called a son or a daughter. I will be part of him or her. I will always be part of my great great great...
grandkids. I'm obviously eternal. Haha.

You are not you then. You are your forebear. Just another iteration of something before you, as will be your kids, by your account. So, either you are you, and mortal, or you are a distant immortal forbear. Which is it?

(My pardon if this has been covered)

[thedoc]

A sperm and an egg made me. Apparently, I'm not information. And I'm immortal because my sperm( I'm male and straight) will make another 'I' that is called a son or a daughter. I will be part of him or her. I will always be part of my great great great...
grandkids. I'm obviously eternal. Haha.

You are not you then. You are your forebear. Just another iteration of something before you, as will be your kids, by your account. So, either you are you, and mortal, or you are a distant immortal forbear. Which is it?

(My pardon if this has been covered)

The elements of your body have been around since the beginning, the Big Bang, and will continue for a very long time. In the beginning there was mostly Hydrogen and a little Helium, but over time some of that has been combine and converted into heavier elements, and here you are now, and your elements will continue to exist for a very long time. Yes, you, or your parts, are going to be around forever, eternity is another matter altogether. Temporal existence is not eternal, but it can last forever.

[Dalek Prime]

A sperm and an egg made me. Apparently, I'm not information. And I'm immortal because my sperm( I'm male and straight) will make another 'I' that is called a son or a daughter. I will be part of him or her. I will always be part of my great great great...
grandkids. I'm obviously eternal. Haha.

You are not you then. You are your forebear. Just another iteration of something before you, as will be your kids, by your account. So, either you are you, and mortal, or you are a distant immortal forbear. Which is it?

(My pardon if this has been covered)

The elements of your body have been around since the beginning, the Big Bang, and will continue for a very long time. In the beginning there was mostly Hydrogen and a little Helium, but over time some of that has been combine and converted into heavier elements, and here you are now, and your elements will continue to exist for a very long time. Yes, you, or your parts, are going to be around forever, eternity is another matter altogether. Temporal existence is not eternal, but it can last forever.

I'm familiar with big bang nucleosynthesis, and later stellar nucleosynthesis. I'm also familiar with conservation of matter and energy. I agree that these elements have been around, and will always be, give or take. But that's not what I was talking about. I was referring specifically to this fellow saying about his sperm making another him. And I said it wasn't him. Please read it again.

The concept of immortality through procreation is silly. Yes, the elemental building blocks are "forever". Hence the saying "we are stardust". But I am not my father. And my father is not his father. Even genetically. Every generation dilutes, like a half-life.

[thedoc]

You are not you then. You are your forebear. Just another iteration of something before you, as will be your kids, by your account. So, either you are you, and mortal, or you are a distant immortal forbear. Which is it?

(My pardon if this has been covered)

The elements of your body have been around since the beginning, the Big Bang, and will continue for a very long time. In the beginning there was mostly Hydrogen and a little Helium, but over time some of that has been combine and converted into heavier elements, and here you are now, and your elements will continue to exist for a very long time. Yes, you, or your parts, are going to be around forever, eternity is another matter altogether. Temporal existence is not eternal, but it can last forever.

I'm familiar with big bang nucleosynthesis, and later stellar nucleosynthesis. I'm also familiar with conservation of matter and energy. I agree that these elements have been around, and will always be, give or take. But that's not what I was talking about. I was referring specifically to this fellow saying about his sperm making another him. And I said it wasn't him. Please read it again.

The concept of immortality through procreation is silly. Yes, the elemental building blocks are "forever". Hence the saying "we are stardust". But I am not my father. And my father is not his father. Even genetically. Every generation dilutes, like a half-life.

I read it correctly, I was just being a bit picky. You are correct each person is an individual, but also each person has some elements of their predecessors within them. So in a small way Nibbana is correct, and you are correct that you are not your father or grandfather exactly, only a little bit.

[Dalek Prime]

I think I can agree with that, Doctor Picky.