We are a species, a member of a large variety of species, that are biologically committed to the greater articulation of the meaning and worth of life that comes of being bound to die. We are also psychologically committed to survive at (almost) any cost. Death is the realest term of the worth of life and what lives amongst us as the project of being recognized that worth is the most articulating term of that worth. But only real in this sense of loss and articulate in this sense of responsibility and recognition is life what we know it to be. Therefore, of course there is no afterlife. And, therefore, of course we are bound to speculate there is. The rest is impertinence.

BONES
Hi... Busy?
SPOCK
Uhura is busy. I am monitoring.
BONES
Umm. Well, just wanted to say --
nice to have your katra back in your
head, not mine.
(He smiles; Spock
stares)
I mean, I may have carried your
soul, but I sure couldn't fill your
shoes.
SPOCK
... My shoes...
BONES
Forget it...
(a new tack)
How 'bout covering a little
philosophical ground? Life, Death,
Life... Things of that nature?
SPOCK
I did not have time on Vulcan to
回顾哲学学科。
BONES
Spock, it's me, Bones! I mean our
经历是独一无二的。You really
have gone where no man has gone
before. Can't you tell me what it
felt like?
SPOCK
It would be impossible to discuss
the subject without a common frame
of reference.
BONES
You're joking...!
SPOCK
A joke is a story with a humorous
climax.
BONES
You mean I have to die to discuss
你对死亡的见解?
SPOCK
(re earpiece)
Pardon me, Doctor, I am hearing many
calls of distress.
骨头对此感到愤怒和沮丧。

Well, there's the old Kantian limitation about speculating about the afterlife. It is beyond the bound of possible experience, so it is nonsense to try to make claims about it. We can't know there is or isn't an afterlife.
Then again, science can point us towards an answer while staying within the bounds of possible experience. If that experience is created by a living brain, with electrical signals whirring around, and then that brain stops whirring, it would make sense that the experience would stop as well. Then, there would be nothingness. That's what I think. Can I know? I guess not.

Buddhism may widen this discussion. Its definition of a human being is-- "A temporary union of the five components." These are-- Form (all physical) Perception, Conception, Volition and Consciousness.
它确实假定了轮回;它不假设有灵魂。所谓的转世就是图案本身。这可以比作持续数周的象棋游戏。在每天结束的时候，这些碎片会被放回过夜的仓库。当相同的游戏继续时，它们会被放置在之前的模式中。虽然佛教徒主要不是信仰宗教，但他们通常相信永生——贯穿过去、现在和未来。
Karma is an ancient Indian word meaning, 'Action.' It means all the past causes created by thoughts, words & deeds. This idea is based on all our observations so far- that the principle of cause & effect extends infinitely throughout the universe.
要解释一种基于基督教的责任伦理是很困难的，因为基督教对罪的可转移性有很深的信仰。然而，责任是基于因果关系的自然结论。此外，它还能平息我们与生俱来的对出生、生活和死亡中明显存在的不平等的长期正义的渴望。抛开法庭的比喻，上帝的判断变成了因果关系——这就是宇宙自然运行的方式。
There is a formidable body of anecdotal evidence for reincarnation. Probably the best known and documented in the West is the Edgar Cayce material...

为什么会让我想起电影《伴我同行》中两个青春期男孩就Mighty Mouse和Superman打斗的可能结果进行的激烈讨论?
Why do we limit assertions in philosophy? Reasoning is not a matter of finding evidence for what we want to believe, for there is always some reason we can find if we look uncritically for it. Reason is a matter of exhaustively searching for every reason not to believe. Only the completed search justifies belief, and only insofar as we can suppose no new countervailing evidence will appear. The main issue of philosophy then is not to find some sense of comfort in our right to hold onto our opinions, and to express them, even to urge others to adopt them, perhaps under penalty of censure. No, the main issue of philosophy is how we can be assured that our effort to exhaust sound reasons for changing our minds is not only not inhibited by one's own perspective, but by one's social environs as well. The world imposes beliefs upon us simply by offering terms that disincline us from an exhaustive examination.
我们现在正面临着因嘲笑别人的信仰而受到惩罚的威胁。我曾听到过一场辩论，把反对亵渎神明的法律与反对仇恨言论的法律相提并论。但这种比较公平吗?仇恨言论在一些场所是非法的，因为据说它会煽动暴力。很好。但是亵渎会引发什么呢?也许，一个更彻底的信仰检查?嘲笑信仰会激发知识吗?推理吗?
An accusation of a crime that the accused cannot disprove is not evidence of guilt. An assertion that cannot, at least in a sense less than exhaustive of reasons not to believe it, is not philosophy. The continual reappearance of misunderstanding on this point is evidence that philosophy is failing us. Or that religion is not ridiculed enough. The burden of proof is on the assertion, not on the critic of it, where the logic of it requires a reasoning more exhaustive than the context permits.
By the way, the conclusion to the above discussion, the one in the movie, is that Superman would win, because "Superman is real, and Mighty Mouse is just a cartoon."

Surely after death there is more life, it's just that some won't be here to be it. =

Assuming the life being referred to here is the experience of "I". I am alive, I am happy, I am hungry, I look good in this outfit. Since this 'I-ness" seems to be the fundamental characteristic of life then I guess the question is if that I-ness survives the death and dissolution of the body. What would be experiencing I-ness at that point or non-point as the case may be? Would there be a thing experiencing its own existence. Where would that thing be? Where is the hydrogen electron within its probability cloud? Strictly speaking the hydrogen electron is non-local, it has no location in time and space until it is dragged into existence by a collision in an accelerator. Before then it does not exist in the sense we consider to be existence. Yet the electron is almost perfectly predictable in its existence. Perhaps afterlife is more like that. The transition from point value time/space bound existence where things live and die to a non-local eternal state of I-ness where all states are preserved in probability that is collapsed into a distinct self through a "collision" with time. The I-ness is never lost, there is no "after" life there are only shifts in perspective of I-ness.

Michael,
你有一个非常奇怪的想法!
Crukstrom,
The act of being is anomaly. But, since symmetry is death, anomaly that does not mean to make itself a new paradigm of symmetry, (like the Will to Power or a solitary "authenticity" would be) is opportune of an anomalous response that, act and response, and only act and response, is more worthy of its time than a universe of or in symmetry. The worth is not what it is by extension. Only by extension do we suppose any such oxymoronic notion as an 'after-life'. Why the hell is it that philosophers are so much more inflexible in their thinking than physicsits are? Really! The thinking even the most respected philosophers I read is still in the eighteenth century! Ego? How can anything so in need of company be the basis, alone, of what is real about us?

"...for, everything being made for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end. Note that noses were made to wear spectacles, and so we have spectacles,'" Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 1.
Prof Swinburne wants there to be an afterlife and so he invents a "proof" that one exists. His proof though is hardly such.
他的证明假定每个身体都有且只有一个思想/身份，两个不同的身体必须有两个不同的思想/身份，而且思想/身份不会被摧毁或创造，至少不会被人类创造。所以，身体A中的个体A和身体B中的个体B经历了这个手术两个个体的大脑半球被交换并融合。现在，让我们先把经验形成突触、饮食和环境影响基因表达放在一边，为什么在A的身体中，由大脑定义的个体必须是个体A或个体B呢?为什么这个个体不能同时是个体A和个体B呢?为什么这个个体不能成为一个新的个体，C?
Furthermore, his argument, I won't call it a proof any longer, applies to any being that has a brain; and he extends this to justifying the existence of a soul, and with free will, "God" wanted us to choose. Thus we have that ants and spiders are moral beings with souls!
如果没有灵魂，如果如肯所说，“思想”只是在“硬件”大脑上运行的软件，那么这个弗兰肯斯坦式的身体，一半大脑来自个体a，一半大脑来自个体B，就是某个新的个体C;这两个人的大脑是不一样的，一个人拥有与“左A”相关的经验和知识，另一个人拥有与“左B”相关的经验和知识。

Eighteenth century categories!
人(意识、理性、情感、道德能动性)是与范畴或外延规律相一致的不可分辨的特征。它不是单子。时间是反向投资者。这只不过是不同而已。对称因素之间的扩展或辨别根本无法解释它的存在。正是这种固执地坚持将连续性作为辨别的标准，使我们不断地寻找对称性和延伸性，而变化才是真实的。但如果变化是真实的，那么如果只有对称和外延为我们提供了表达它的术语，又用什么来表达它呢?最简单的，但也是最无理的回答是这种表达的整个语言都在不断地经受讽刺的讽刺，不断地产生新的方法和方法，使变化具有先入为主的意义，而这种先入为主的意义只有在改变变化的行为亵渎了变化的时候才有意义。来吧，让我们在这里迎接新世纪!让我们看看一些值得更开明的未来的想法!

Just an idea:
Time is another measure of human construct much like space, a meter, a light year, or an inch, dividing then and now and what is to be, of a singular indivisible Universe in hopes of grasping or managing a Nature truly free of such uncertain control. Life without time or measure, outside the box is freedom, try it and see. Take time out of your life if you can and just be the light of freedom you see! MLK: "darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that" =

Henotikon,
Space is extension, and so quantifiable. Time is the qualifier. No enunerator can measure it. It is the lost enumerator that is the measure of time. That immeasurable loss cannot be comprehended by extension, however expansive you imagine it. We do not imagine or fabricate anything so real as lost time. It is measured by profaning and satirizing all that extension you will go one about. That's freedom. What you call freedom is casuistry.
“盒子之外”这个比喻的诀窍在于，走到那里，我们总是会回到盒子里，而仅仅是对盒子的补充。恐怕是更多的诡辩。

Who does the question about the afterlife impact? We as humans understand that we will die one day, and we desperately try to postpone what?s inevitable by picturing what is unimaginable. This is a palliative measure we implement to better live our lives, because really the question about the afterlife is about the living, not the dead. What this question and one?s own personal answer or approach to it addresses is really how one chooses to live and whom one chooses to be. It is an existential question disguised as a mysterious character: the afterlife. The distinct philosophical quests for an answer will impact who a person is and the way a person lives, but different quests really serve the same purpose: palliation of the pain related to being finite. We are born, we live and we die, period. The personal quest about your own after life is what will condition your decisions, what will make you courageous or cowardly, humble or pretentious, self sufficient or dependent, religious or secular. It will also end right at the moment your life ends. What really matters is the path one chooses to assume and how much palliation one has achieved. Maybe we should rephrase the question or be more concerned about ?How well am I living my life before I die??

I think the point is rather who gains from the belief. Pain stimulates many responses, some reasonable some defying reason. But the afterlife narrative is not just a personal view, it is part of an edifice of power attempting to prevent us from using our minds rationally. What do the promoters of this obstruction of reasoning gain from it? You see, once the edifice is in place, and it is very hard to efface, the world readily gets divided between those who suppose they deserve a good spot and those who will only suffer it. The other side of this coin, the only one that really counts, is that it also divides this world between those who deserve what others produce and those who face such suffering "later" that the only worth they can ever experience in their miserable existence is the "reward" of being put into service of those who are "deserving" in that sense. I don't know any palliative for that. But appealing to reason, in this instance, is preaching to the choir, which can get a bit fidgety. In other words, if there is some sense in which unreason acquires power from its audience, is there some sense in which reason confers it upon them? As, for instance, thwarting the division of the world between saints and worldlings that faith tends to lead to?

I agree with the woman who called: I was extremely disappointed when you limited the discussion to western religions and concepts without even acknowledging how much you were EXCLUDING without easternconcepts. Very immature, and unworthy of anyone or anything connected to Stanford. Not sure if you can rise above that and and allow me to take your show seriously.But I'll stay tuned and hope for the best!

节目以一个问题结束，即如果唯物主义是正确的，死后生命是否可能存在。理查德·史文朋简要地提到了一种可能性。但还有更多。我最近出版了一本书，解释了其中的许多可能性。它的标题是死亡，复活，和运输光束:介绍五种基督教观点的死后生命，并通过Wipf和股票出版。你可以在出版商的网站和亚马逊网站上找到它。这是我所知道的唯一一本从哲学上解释和评估基督教关于死后生命如何可能的主要观点的新书。对于那些不相信灵魂存在但仍然希望有来世的唯物主义者来说，这是一个很好的资源。

I asked permission to flog my books before doing so, and, though I received a welcome to join the talk, never got that permission, and so have not mentioned my work. Fourty-two bucks seems a bit steep for a self-recommended book. At that price, considering my budget, it would have to be essential reading, not just interesting, and somehow I suspect it isn't even that. My thought, then, is that we keep the discussion to table stakes, as it were, and not mysteriously refer to material available elsewhere (unless we can be expected to be familiar with it). So, if you want us to consider your views, give us the gist here and see what comes of it. Put up or shut up, and don't drag in resources that might merely support a bluff.

"But believing in afterlife is not a matter of evidence. It’s a matter faith." -- From the lead article

事实上，这是一个重要的证据，而且是相当大量的证据，其中大部分被绝大多数西方知识分子完全忽视或(充其量)轻蔑地不屑一顾。我就是其中之一，拥有英国文学博士学位和兼职在线教员职位。然而，与大多数西方知识分子不同，我开始相信来生和轮回的过程。像许多人一样，我在大学和研究生院失去了童年的信仰，并快乐地生活在现在所谓的物理主义无神论中。然后我的订阅就用完了。但这从来不是没有证据支持的纯粹的信仰，也不只是因为它看起来像是一件很酷的事情。我曾与我认为你可以称之为大师的人一起学习(虽然不是严格意义上的印度教大师)，但总的来说，这些老师基本上只是向我展示了如何冥想，以及如何从事其他有益于身心健康的实践。在这个社区里，很少有人真的试图把任何一种“宗教之旅”强加给任何人，至少我没有经历过。这都是关于练习和找到你自己的方式。我不想让你对这些细节感到厌烦，所有这些让我(因为我的背景)对整个主题进行了大量的阅读。 There is indeed much, very much to read, including in a philosophical (and evidentiary) vein that supports the idea of an afterlife. Provided, of course, that you (unlike many intellectuals) don't simply dismiss the whole idea out of hand with some biting, sarcastic comment. Sarcasm is not evidence either. Keep an open mind and read read read. The literature is literally voluminous and I think you will find some -- even a good deal -- of it "evidentiary"....

撇开其他信仰不谈，我唯一难以驳斥基督教信仰的是使徒的描述、他们的事工和他们的信仰，他们中的大多数人以痛苦的方式为捍卫这些信仰献出了自己的生命。但是，除了福音书之外，为什么证据如此贫乏，而《新约》中描述的事件没有得到更广泛的报道呢?我们读到，在基督被钉上十字架的那一天，坟墓被打开，早已死去的人在活人中间行走。这一定会让目击者大吃一惊。账户在哪里?即使在那个年代，人们的口口相传似乎也会像野火一样传播这样的消息。死亡似乎完美地证明了大自然对人类的冷漠，而不是某种超自然的惩罚。它静静地坐在角落里，当我们受苦时，无论好坏。圣经给我们的选择有限。要么你相信这个，要么你不相信。 Actually It seems pointless now and then to continue searching for an answer that may not be there, but I do. It is a vitally important question. If I could prove conclusively there is nothing beyond the grave, who would profit by knowing that? Surely it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best, to deprive yourself of the comforting illusion of everlasting life, and ultimate justice. There is a kind of magic in childhood, if you're lucky, there was in mine, before these troubling questions arose. Oh, to be a child again, and never think of death, and then to become an adult and believe that it really does not exist.