It struck me as odd to read a character in one of the Neverwinter Nights expansions say that having one's soul destroyed and ceasing to exist was the worst fate possible, especially in the context of you being in one of the setting's hells where people suffer eternally.

Rastafarianism has no afterlife, Jehovah's Witnesses have cessation of consciousness for unbelievers instead of hell, and the afterlife in many ancient cultures seems to have been a rather gloomy place. For the Sumerians your body carried on in the condition it was when you died (so being burned to death was a particularly tragic fate) and the more living relatives you had the better, as they kept you fed with offerings.

If you haven't done so, I'd recommend picking up a book on philosophy of mind, since the nature of consciousness is a big and interesting field within it, and a prime example of how philosophy should be informed by the sciences on various topics. It's also one where the baggage of western culture and Christianity in particular can be seen with people's assumptions, such as mind-body dualism and the belief that animals are simply automata that at best mimic emotional responses, contrasted with notions such as ahimsa from Hinduism.

Admittedly the idea of any afterlife bothers me on an inherent level. Existing for all time in any state sounds horrid to me.

Especially Heaven as described in Revelations. It strikes me a bit like, the Twilight Zone episode, 'It's a Good Life'. About the, monstrous boy with godlike powers. Where everyone had to praise and worship him no matter what horrible things he did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHCvsuhuKaQ&feature=relmfu

Have a dose of Poe's Law in action, complete with semi-explicit voicing of the sort of fallacies people slip into made explicit. Because apparently perfect justice involves no notion of proportionality in punishment, and punishment not being part of reform/purification.

Orthodox Christianity doesn't seem to have a hell per se, and it's the individual's disposition that determines whether the experience is pleasant or not. Meanwhile the Qur'an is comically graphic about the tortures awaiting sinners, and inconsistent about whether it's eternal or not. I note that in a lot of fantasy fiction souls aren't even eternal or immutable: you can even trap one in a beer bottle with the right magic, which rather cheapens the whole notion.

the Shadowrun rpg setting relates a "soul" to how much of your body is left. the more cyberware an individual has, the less it "feels the own self", and thus loses what makes them human. to turn it around, the more machine you become, the more machine you act. until they'd need serious magic to keep your conciousness, your "essence" inside your skull.

Which was, partly what I was referring to. It does make sense from a fictional, gameplay balance perspective, but I'm honestly skeptical of the idea from a realistic one.

some say that the amount of conciousness leaving a body after it's demise is measurable, but the question is still what it is composed of. electrons? maybe. but can you measure them in grams? surely not.

in the end, conciousness (or, "soul") is an entirely subjective thing. I say I have a soul; you say it doesn't exist. now, who's right?

at this point the discussion becomes metaphysical or something. after all, everyone has another truth. :)

Actually, I say that, until there's definitive proof that such a thing exists/influences reality, I have no reason to include the idea in my conception of reality. Reality and truth are not subjective, really. Only the perception thereof.

yep, that was what I meant. :)

Since you mention SupCom's Cybrans, I do want to throw in TA's Core, as this subject was never particularly addressed for them, and people have gone on to interpret it in various ways (the Arm too, really, since they went the way of mass-cloning). I do wonder how much of this comes from Chris Taylor himself.

Now that I think about it: The Nanosuit 2.0 of Crysis (but then again, Crysis and consistency... eheh) and its resurrection of Prophet as some sort of cyborg Jesus...

And speaking of cyborg Jesus, there's always Robocop.

Whatever you do, don't drive your truck into a vat of toxic waste.

I'm with the more scientific route, if you could call it that. My thought is, we're made of matter, we're based on matter, we should be able to convert from one form of matter (organic) to another equivalent form (advanced digital/cybernetic/etc etc) and mentally & emotionally remain the same. When I hear of 'souls' it just makes me think of when people say 'follow your heart'

My thoughts exactly.