As I read it, he believed that we must have an afterlife (the soul survives death) because otherwise, all of the knowledge we accumulated in our lifetime would be lost and that would be a waste and irrational.<p>I don't agree. Knowledge is passed down through generations; it doesn't need to be preserved in a single human. Even stars are born and die, so it seems much more reasonable to me that a system has evolved where knowledge is passed through generations instead of the human soul surviving death to preserve knowledge (an afterlife).
I think Godel might be lying to his mother. A white lie.<p>To be able to prove incompleteness with such deep formality and technicality then suddenly assert the existence of an after life some very broad, general, qualitative surface level reasoning is inconsistent reasoning coming from such a formidable mind.<p>The logic behind why there is no after life is quite clear. All human behavior and existence is tied to physical interactions between atoms. This is as far as we know. When your brain is damaged or part of it is removed, part of your thought and personality is damaged/removed as well. This is observed through stroke patients and hundreds of other people who've had brain injuries. Consciousness is tied to matter, it is, as far as we know a physical phenomena.<p>Chemicals, imbalances and other physical things you ingest or inject effect your consciousness as well. It is a physical thing, not a spiritual thing independent of the physical being as some people would like to believe.<p>The concept of an after life is clearly not tied in any way to any physical phenomena we know of, thus in all probability, it's likely made up. We don't even have an explanation for what happens to the soul during a hemispherectomy where one half of the brain is removed. Does one half of your soul go to the after life? We don't know because hemispherectomies were invented AFTER we made up the concept of an after life.<p>I'm not a smart dude. I'm an idiot. If I can arrive to this most likely conclusion from this simplistic logic, then for sure Godel can as well. I think he's lying, but I could be wrong.<p>Many geniuses can be inconsistent with their rationality. Certain topics that they don't think too deeply about could have faulty logic simply because they choose not to think deeper. But for this simplistic stuff, my guess it that Godel was lying. He's just stating the answer he thinks his mother would like to hear.
Fine read.<p>>All this might lead one to infer that Gödel believed in reincarnation. But that would be overhasty, at least according to certain standard conceptions of it.