 to hear the various views on one, the afterlife, because there seems to be the living indefinitely versus living forever. And if you live indefinitely, you know, how long is that? And what happens, what is there to forever, right? Because when I was a Catholic for a while, you know, it's like if you do bad things, you suffer in hell forever, right? And that doesn't seem to be something that you can really put in. Sure. Hi. Hello. Yeah, well, my first, you know, point is that I don't believe in forever at all. The word is completely misnomer. It's irrelevant. There's no way to prove it. So there's nothing forever for me at all. And regarding the afterlife, I believe it's emptiness, blankness, nothingness in terms of our consciousness. I'm a true believer in just it ends and it's over. However, as a transhumanist, I can, I do firmly believe that there is coming a time when we will ascend and evolve so far that we will have the power to bring back the experience of that person perhaps perfectly, perhaps so, you know, exactly as they are that we would not be able to know the difference. And I am looking forward to that moment in time. I'm not quite sure how to answer that. I guess I probably most go with a Buddhist model at this point, still figuring that out. So, well, not actually in that second. So that's more like the reincarnation until you reach the level where you get out of the cycle of suffering. That things are awesome. I don't know. I'm still learning about all of these. So, all right, I'll go with, I don't know. But that's what I'm leaning toward at this point. Thank you. Two comments on that. The first one is that one of my favorite philosophers happens to be Zoltan's favorite philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche. Frederick Nietzsche had this idea of eternal recurrence and he used this idea of eternal recurrence to avoid nihilism because so often when we talk about forever and immortality and heaven, it's very escapist and it takes us away from embracing life and being true to life, as Nietzsche would have put it. I share that sentiment. I fear that sometimes we put heaven too far away and make it too otherworldly and we're too passive and waiting for it. So the first comment then is that I think that the aspirations for life should be about life, not necessarily, you know, infinite, whatever that means because that's a tough thing to talk about. So that's my first comment. My second comment is that from a Mormon perspective, Mormons have a concept that we call eternal progression. And in eternal progression, each one of us has eternity to become more creative and more compassionate, experience more things, improve more relationships, and just generally improve the quality of our experience indefinitely. Forever, infinitely, I don't know what that means for sure, but it's a beautiful idea to me that I want to keep participating in right now indefinitely. Maybe there would have come a time when I wouldn't want to. I have no idea, but I do know that I want to be true to life. I disagree with the idea that death is required for meaning. I think change is required for meaning and death is a form of change, but it's not the only form of change. So let's progress, let's change, let's evolve, let's become something greater, more loving, more compassionate, more creative than we are today, and I think that's a beautiful idea to aspire to. No, so far as I'm concerned, and this is a Mormon transhumanist perspective, not necessarily a mainstream Mormon perspective, spirit is information, and information persists, and we may even be able to engage in something like quantum archeology in the distant future using massive amounts of computation to bring dead people back at that big database of names that were generated. Maybe we'll use that and bring us all back, and we'll have the opportunity to continue to progress again, enjoy relationships again, create again, and that motivates me a great deal. There's a passage in Scripture that says we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed. Seventh-day Adventists do not believe in a perpetual burning hell. The references to hell, Seventh-day Adventists regard as a cessation of existence in more of a euthanistic perspective, people who would be uncomfortable to keep living, people who would, they don't want to go anymore, they don't have a sense that they want to go on, then they are as they never were, they just don't exist anymore. Seventh-day Adventists believe after a very complicated eschatology that ultimately people who want to continue to exist occupy this earth, actually this earth, and that the earth would be improved, that whatever geological things that represent scars or whatever we've done to goof it up with our lack of concern for the environment, that it will get redone the way it was in an Edenic state, sort of a perfect park like setting with plenty of wilderness to go to. And indeed the idea that we will live in body form, although if we did die before this transition, the information that is us will be put back into a similar and improved version of our body, we would actually live in perpetuity. Question two and then possibly three. So this is an open question. In your belief system, in short, what do you believe the purpose of life is and in your answer, how would that relate to transhumanism or becoming a cyborg or anything to do with humans and advanced technology? Well for any of you who have read my novel, you know that this is one of the most challenging questions. I propose in the book because I take on a very controversial ideology with it. I think we are all on the path towards becoming as powerful as we can be and I call this the omnipotenter, one who contends for omnipotence or all power. And I believe that one entity will eventually reach that and become everything. And I think that we were all coded or as my philosophy teft goes, teleological egocentric functionalism, which is explained in detail in the book, we are designed to try to each one of us accomplish that. In fact that each one of us had that opportunity to do it right now. I bet many of us would choose to press a big giant red button and become as powerful as we could be. And I believe that life is essentially just the playing field for all of us trying to arrive at that spot. And the controversy arises from the fact that it's impossible that everyone will make. In fact I probably tend to believe as the book points out to great controversy, only one person will eventually arrive at that. But that's what I think the meaning of life is, is to achieve that ultimate state of power. Okay, so somewhat similar on this except that I think there is actually room for everyone to reach their potential. So I think reaching a state where you reach your own ultimate power and everyone else does is an ideal that we're aiming toward. The example, the Christian example of Jesus Christ glorified as a creative and compassionate being who invites us to become one in that creative and compassionate act is, so far as I'm concerned, what the purpose of life, one way of describing the purpose of life. We could also talk about it in more secular terms. That pursuing a radical flourishing in compassion and creation would be the purpose of life. I'm happy to talk about it in lots of ways. I'm a Mormon so I, you know, the one that goes back to my youth and my education, my upbringing is the Mormon expression of it. But what I see as purpose in life is the life itself. And it's going to be painful and hard and difficult and suffering sometimes. It is for every one of us. But I think that there's also an opportunity in those difficulties to learn how to maybe detach from our own egotism as some of my Buddhist friends have taught me. And maybe opportunities to console and heal each other and learn compassion as Christians often focus on. And it's worth doing. When those things happen in life, those are the things that make life worth doing. And I'm not in a hurry to end that. I'm actually in a hurry to make that even better and technology can help us make it better. Facebook connects me with people that I never would have been able to be friends with before. It also unfortunately connects people that like to send me hate mail. And so technology is not good or evil, it's just opportunity. And it can be risky, it can be terrible and it can be wonderful and we have to shape that and we're all involved in that. So the purpose for me is compassion and creation. There's a passage in John where Jesus said, I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. I believe that Seventh-day Adventists embrace that passage as a mission statement. In terms of looking at what our purpose would be in perpetuity, the model that is narrated really involves maximized freedom, the least constraint, freedom to be creative. Something that we regard as an explanation for how there could in fact be an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving entity. And then we see babies born with spina bifida, for instance. The real atheist-maker question, I think, Seventh-day Adventists have a real powerful narrative that involves a God who would not be willing to curtail the freedom of creatures. And so whatever it took to get to the point where bliss was voluntary and community was spontaneous, it would be worth it in a sort of balanced sheet method comparing the amount of positive sensation and joy and the like against suffering, which if the other was perpetuated forever, then any finite amount of suffering would be outweighed. Question here in the front. So for one panelist or many? This is for Robert. Can you just elaborate a little bit on the idea of death and resurrection in the tradition? Is it something you're saying that if a body dies, a person dies, they cease to exist? But because there is no ghost or spirit or mind or consciousness that's separate from all that, the machinery sort of makes it in some sense. So if you could perfectly record that and recreate it with technology or God could do it, that leaves open that kind of whole idea. There's no speculation I'm aware of in Seventh-day Adventist theology to discuss mechanism, just agency. And so by whatever means, which is assumed to be beyond our ability to conceive, that there would be infinite intelligence and infinite intelligence would also involve information, all information is permanent. And if there is a God that has infinite dimensionality, then that God exists at all points in time and dimensions we cannot conceive of, very, very compatible with just beyond string theory, I suppose. There's passages that confuse tenses of verb in Scripture like before Abraham was, I am. And the I am in Hebrew, even I've seen some commentators suggest that there's a confusion of tense to the point that it might best be translated when Moses asked for God's name. I am the always having been will-being. That there's a sense that this transcendence of time would mean omnipresence in all dimensions. So when we would be reconstituted, it would just be whoever created the thing in the first place just puts it back together. They know the formula. They know the specs. Send it to the theo printer, I guess. And then all that is that person's character and memories as they survive would be placed in that person. However, interestingly in speculating on the notion, people telling the narrative and there's something in Ellen G. White's writings to suggest that eons into eternity while we're free to remember things, we're still going to be biological entities and we may be finding ourselves saying while we're fellowshiping, do you recall much about that? Not so much anymore. It's just kind of faded by the glory. There's a passage in Scripture that says, at thy right hand are pleasures forevermore. There's another that says, I hath not seen nor ear heard the glories which shall be revealed in us. This is sort of exultancy and bliss in who we really are. Yeah, I guess the one I'm after is more sort of in the way, at least I think I'm hearing you say it. Theoretically, if we had the technology... Yeah, okay. We'll hold it for later. Yeah. I was just curious. I had a question. Do you ever think, because this is what I often think, neuroscientists are kind of... They're kind of coming to the conclusion that religious brains are different than non-religious brains, like that they're actually wired differently and different parts of the brain activate differently in religious brains and fundamentalist brains and people that are sort of like in between like me like doubt her brain. So do you ever wonder if all of this is sort of predetermined? Like sort of neurologically, genetically predetermined and that we're all just sort of talking about how our own brain thinks about anything and there's actually no truth other than the way that your own brain perceives the truth? You understand what I'm talking about here? Because that's actually what I believe and that all of this discussion is... It's just predetermined, right. And we don't actually even have any kind of free will about changing our opinion. Go ahead. Well, I definitely believe in free will. I think the complications and the complexity of the mind and just experience from the past and just basically look at a string theory and some quantum mechanics. It allows for that to occur. But regarding religion, I tend to see it as something that is more built into the way we develop culturally and something through our past history. And we are slowly discarding pieces of religion as civilization evolves and matures and we're coming towards concepts that are not needing any of those kind of... I don't want to say straw puppets, but I'm going to sort of straw puppets in our mind the idiosyncrasies that we have just to get along and just the strong bond that we have from history. It's very difficult to imagine ourselves outside of all the things we've learned and unfortunately the way it works going... I discuss this at length in my book, it's called baggage theory which is that we just carry all this stuff again and again from ourselves and if we could start over, we would start over with whatever other baggage we carry. It's really a baggage culture and I think the goal moving forward with transhumanism and also with just looking at religious ideologies and stuff like that is to try to carry as little irrational baggage as possible that is in the benefit of the human race and hopefully the transhumanist race moving forward. I have a couple of thoughts on this. One is I remember there was a study about taxi drivers where they had a very enlarged portion of their brain from learning all the streets. Yep, a campus. Yeah, so it does seem like that can change over time depending on... I don't know if the religious part of your brain can get larger or smaller depending on what you're doing so that's one thought that comes to mind as far as that goes. Another thought that comes to mind is I had experiences of feeling like I found things like that when I was an atheist and it was interesting at the time to just like, oh, that part of my brain must be turned on, I guess. Isn't it interesting to observe? So it didn't actually affect me at all at that time. I think that's worth putting out there for what it's worth. I don't think that our conscious mind is merely epiphenomenal, that it's just kind of an experience that we have while our body and environment are determining everything. I actually think that our conscious mind can influence our anatomy and our environment, but I also don't think that it's purely in control. I think that our environment and our anatomy, there's intelligence built into my body. Somebody was talking about that earlier. There's mechanisms built into my body, built into my unconscious subconscious brain and mind that also inform my consciousness. So what I see us in is a really complex feedback loop between consciousness and what isn't part of my consciousness and between each other, the world, and is it an infinite feedback loop? Is it a closed deterministic system? I can't answer that question. I don't know if anybody can, but I think that it's not very practical to go around assuming that I can't influence the world to be more how I desire it to be and hopefully in a compassionate way. I think that the talk we heard earlier about where you focus matters because it influences the world, I think that's exactly right. I could be wrong, though, but I don't think it's very practical to assume I'm wrong. I think it's most practical. I'm a pragmatist. Another one of my favorite philosophers is William James. I think that we should act as if we can influence the world for the better and even if we're wrong, who cares? There's a certain Pascal's wager in what you said just in case. Maybe we should do that. I agree with what you said, Dolphin, about some of the frontier science as it is suggested. If you want to read more about it, I'd suggest Jeffrey Schwartz's book. He's a UCLA psychiatrist and dabbles in neurology speculation called Mind and Brain. That's worth it. Also, Kaku's book that just came out, I think, in January about the brain. He addresses some of that. You might zero in on the quantum Xeno effect as one area to pursue. I believe that that is a question that religionists have argued in terms of predestination and free will and that sort of thing violently and with death. But right now, we have the ability possibly to do things that make a difference because of that. In the past, we were left simply with, well, should we hold anybody accountable for their morals? In fact, the quantum Xeno effect overlays with some recent imaging study that shows that we might actually have just a deluge of potential ideas that are rifling through parts of our brain all at once and that when we lock something in, we don't really have a possibility, according to that brain imaging, which is parametric and assumes we only function with time zero. But it suggests we might have won't power. We might have the ability to say no to an nearly infinite number of things and then just sort of let the ones by that we can. Anyway, the delays in decision making imaging appear that's a possibility. Okay, great.