http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-2011-05-23
There were my rambling thoughts on the article:
I think personally, we are still too young as a species that is self aware to make observations like Sean Carroll has about life after death. The problem is the idea that life is life after death as we know it. The problem actually is what we consider life to be in the first place. For example, Sean Carroll states that we are made of atoms and are bound by the laws of physics, and he's right. But, the deeper question is, why is it that a rock and a brain can weigh the same amount yet a brain can build a ship and a rock is just a stagnant element? Both are made of the same atoms. But, one is considered organic, and the other isn't. So what exactly makes something alive, something an organic element? The problem is, science doesn't know yet. They are assuming clay crystals, from what I've read, but they are still far from understanding how atoms combine to form carbon and other elements to make amino acids and nucleic acids. That leap, from inorganic to organic, is like, how does the saying go, a tornado ripping through a junkyard where parts of a Boeing 747 airplane are randomly scattered about, and the tornado, in its destructive path, whips up the parts and the pieces perfectly fit together to form a complete Boeing 747 plane. The understanding is still so far from understanding that, well, we just don't know yet. I'm sure one day people, scientists, and thinkers will figure out how atoms form to build complex organic systems, but for now, they just don't know, there still is a great gap between the two systems, organic and inorganic. So my point is we still have a very long way to go before we understand how life begin, and what exactly it is, and then there is the complex understanding of how the brain works itself, and deeper still, consciousness and self-awareness. On the idea of what we are, I really like the idea of the Gaia Hypothesis, that all living things are a part of one single self sufficient complex system. But going back to understanding life after death, I think we as a species need to understand life first. But I do believe in some kind of life energy, a life force, and that even a "monocellular ancestor" like Mr. Carroll points out, has it. Isn't all DNA, all living creatures, monocellular included, all from the same gene pool? So if we have a soul, so do they. Weren't we once monocellular ourselves billions of years ago? And even going farther back, didn't we all come from that pure form of energy known as the big bang? But my idea of life after death has more to do with the fact that we do die, and it does end, and there is nothing wrong with that, I wouldn't know it anyways, but with the idea of the conservation of information, we can and will be resurrected in some way shape or form, and that we transcend in this manner, that us, living creatures, are working to keep things in order and grow in our complexity towards the future as the universe's entropy also increases in the future. Life after death is not the transcendence of body, but, of mind, that information that makes us what we are. I wouldn't want an afterlife where my grandmother is old forever, as she has been old to me my whole life. That's a complete universe in which i only live in, but maybe that exists somewhere too.
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