THE AFTERLIFE
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Part 4 - "Afterlife Ability: What do you remember?"
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When Hamlet uttered the words "To be or not to be, that is the question", he uttered quite a mouthful. What a question! what we are interested in here is "How would we even know if "we are" or "are not"?"

Since we used Part 1 to establish that there is a soul (that's a yes on the "to be" part), Part 2 to do away with the utility of religion in finding out the quality of the after life and Part 3 to assess what input we will have, we finally arrive at Part 4. Here we question how will we store information without the aid of the human body. If we are "to be", what spectrum of experience will we have access to for judging how good it is? Where will we get this information from?

Our major resource for storing and accessing information of this world is our brain. What happens when we are separated from this resource upon death? Logically, once we have this data storage device removed from our list of resources, then we will lose all data stored there. Perhaps there is more than one place we store information, such as the soul.

What kind of information is stored in the soul? Since the soul is metaphysical, then the information retained in the soul would be of the same ilk. Therefore the soul would not store specific information from this world. Such information is stored in the brain since it is of tis world and the soujl can use it as a removable storage devise tha tis no longer needed up death.

For example, when someone is born into this world, they come with a personality. Every parent attests to the fact that their child has shown some characteristics that are unique and have no relation to the environment. They will insist that the child is displaying their own personality. People genuinely do show thier persomnality, htier own way of doing things. Note: this is not a "Nature vs. Nurture" argument, so please shelve such thoughts for now.

Another example of innate personality are mentally handicapped people. These individuals do not have what we consider fully functional information systems. For whatever reason, their brain may not retain or process information efficiently. Yet these individuals still have a distinct personality. They can feel the full range of emotions and are capable of creation. If their personality is just as strong as that of people with fully functional information systems, then they must get the information they use to define their personality from somewhere

If individuals are therefore born with their own pre-existing personality, where does the information that creates this come from? The obvious answer would be from the individual's soul. Keep in mind that the soul does not bring with it any sort of information that is specific to this world. The new born must learn to use their body including everything such as regulating their digestive system to focusing their eyes to eventually learning to stop the clock on the VCR from flashing.

Leading us back around to the question of "What will I remember when I die?", the logic above would say that you will retain emotional or personal definition. Yet the information specific to this world will be lost. So Hamlet will "be". But I'd imagine that after his death, he would most likely forget about the specific ins and outs of everyday life in Elsinore Castle. you bet he'd still be angry at his usurping uncle's treachery.

In Part 5, "All Together Afterlife: What is the question again?" We'll tie all this together. Coming Soon!