Well, most of modern society has decided that once you've satisfied your basic needs, hedonism is the answer. Travel, good food, good times with friends, etc. That's what most people are living like and what the culture creates. No need to find hidden portals.
Tell me if you started from scratch right now you'd be worrying about this 2deep4u shenanigans instead of doing cool shit again?
By the way, I really respect your work and think you've done great things and enjoy reading your rambles a lot.
The silly part to me is his claim that everyone (including atheists) thinks that the Bible is the best answer.
Unfortunately, every single person in the world is an individual. Every person faces the same problem.
> The fact that we exist today as sentient creatures able to contemplate their own mortality is entirely due to the fact that those who came before us died.
Indeed that is the case. But what does it matter to those people who came before us? They are dead. They lost the game of life. They didn't escape the simulation, or go to heaven, or any of that. They are decomposing in the ground.
Just like everyone else is going to lose eventually.... unless we fix it.
All evidence points that this is true so far. What is wrong with that? It doesn't mean life doesn't matter. This passage from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g
This is unfortunately an axiomatic philosophical disagreement.
For those with my viewpoint, of nothing mattering to you, once you are dead and gone, this is basically unfalsifiable, as are most axiomatic disagreements.
And the quotes and arguments that you link in that video, basically just come off as a nice sounding cope, made by people who are distracting themselves from the horror of the reality of our situation. It is an emotional play, and humans are great at tricking themselves with emotions.
I don't really blame people for that though. My perspective really is pretty terrifying. It makes sense why people would hide from it. And the only way that recognizing it helps me, is that I am informed about fringe technologies, like cryonics, that currently are pretty unlikely to work.
On the other hand I view concerns about the afterlife to actually be somewhat depressing. So much time and energy from the limited time we actually have being spent on some fantasy that is completely unverifiable, and so much of it motivated by fear (of hell, emptiness, a vengeful god, etc).
To state my view point simply: The unknown is scary, concerning oneself with an afterlife (or singularity, life extension, etc) is a coping mechanism to avoid processing that fear, whereas admitting that our existence is finite is an acceptance that there are things we can’t know, can’t prepare for, and that we shouldn’t waste our time on.
That kind of discussion always reminds me of a very short poem by Stephen Crane
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
the second law of thermodynamics has never invoked any sort of feelings of impending spiritual doom, but more importantly even if it did that's hardly a reason to start retreating into fantasies, we're not owed a non-doomed universe, and not even a non-doomed individual life. And on a personal note I' rather take the embrace of the indifferent cold universe over jolly people reading scripture to me for all eternity because the latter sounds more like hell to me than the former but that's subjective I guess.
Here is a basic summary though.
The atheist world, of no life after death, is scary. We have not invented immortality. And even if we do, well there is an even scarier thing called entropy, that will end the universe anyway. There is no escape from death, as far as we know, and this is a problem that faces every human being in the world.
Now what? What do we do now?
Do you just lay down and accept that? Do you just sit down and die when your time comes?
Or do you fight?
George seems to have chosen the fight route. And to do that, well, our options are pretty limited. It involves looking into things that likely are pretty fantastical.
Things like "are we living in a simulation, and is there a way to break out of the simulation, to a universe where entropy doesn't exist". Or, alternatively "does the bible talk about any magic, hidden portals".
And no, this doesn't involve just praying to a sky fairy, and hoping things work out in the end.
Yes, these solutions sound pretty fantastical. But what other options do we have? Because if the current atheist world is the real one, then we are doomed. We are in the death world. Game over. Thats it. The most important problem, ever, is unsolvable. And we are all going to die, and nothing other than this fact matters.