Life after Death?

[mchammer75040]

A soul was something thought up by people in a time when brainprocesses weren't explainable by chemical and electrical processes.
And I wouldn't have a clue what role a "soul" would perform in your body, thinking is done with you brain, your body is controlled by your brain, your consciousness is controlled by your brain, your emotions are controlled by your brain. Face it, you are your brain.

And so I come to my conclusion: you'll lose all that stuff when the brain dies. So the period after your death is similar to the period before your birth. Can you remember that period? No, because your brainfunctions were non-existent.

The thought of an afterlife is nice and comforting, but there's no real reason to believe it's actually true imho.

Damnit ryan! I was wanting to catch someone in a trap when they say "its your personality..its your emotions" grr you beat me too it! But yea I agree with everything you say, there is no reason outside of religion to believe there is a 'spirit' or 'soul'. Everything that we are, like you just said, can be explained in one way or another..there is nowhere for a supposed soul to reside.

 

[jonnyapps]

life after death?

Our 'person' is related to our being, our spatial and temporal existence. We exist to ourselves as a being but also to others as a different being. I have a communication with my inner feelings experiences and emotions and, for example, only i could know and experience my own headache. However, i would take myself to a doctor to tell me about my own headache and how to deal with it. So as 'beings' we operate on different levels. The question of life after death depends on our 'being' existing eschatologically. For this to happen we have, in the next life, to have memories of ourselves or recognisable features to ourselves. This cannot be our body as our body changes over time. We do not define our being by our physical attributes. When i'm 80 years old and decrepit in a wheel chair i won't consider myself to literally be somebody else. Also quantum suggests now that matter can come into and out of existence at any time and science shows that over a period of a few years every single cell in our body replaces itself so we might say we're a completely different being spatially.
Bertrand Russell defines a person as: a series of experiences connected by memory and by certain similarities of the sort we call habit. memory though, is connected to the brain, which also decays at death. To continue in an afterlife, we must as i've already mentioned, exhibit habits and memories of our past life.

Imagine that memory in the brain is as water flowing through a river. The river has its habitually formed course (erosion etc.) and through this course the river flows. To suggest that memory continues after death would be the same as believing that the water would continue to flow the exact same route if an earthquake overnight turned the rivers valley into a mountain.

There are a couple of strains of argument here which aren't fully explained cos i don't want to prattle on but based on what i've said I do not believe in an afterlife. If you do want to know any more or any of the other strains of thought related to the topic (there are loads) then encourage me and i'll type type type.

 

[SilentKilla]

I think we are reborn, but ht edude who said if everyone is reborn how can the population keep growing, well, I dont know hehe

 

[jonnyapps]

I think we are reborn, but ht edude who said if everyone is reborn how can the population keep growing, well, I dont know hehe

buddhism? Less souls reaching Nirvana than being born? i.e. more souls entering the spatio-temporal realm than leaving it.

 

[lePobz]

Life after death would be infinite. If it exists I just hope my soul has amnesia. An infinity of the same old over and over would get pretty boring after ... well... a long time.

I personally think we go back to the place we were before we were concieved - i.e. nowhere. Or we could be reincarnated, but thats just too physically unplausable.

Suppose if we do end up losing that lil voice in our heads for infinity then we'd be better to make something of our existence whilst we have it, instead of discussing completely random topics on forums.

Or whatever's good for you, I don't care.

 

[craig]

you know, I did just resolve the whole situation by killing myself and rematerializing as a ghost. Is that not good enough for you?!?

That would be good enough for me. Please... proceed... again.

/me waits impatiently

 

[Zakat]

No! DOn't do it qck! Then who'll I'll be able to stalk Perhaps you craig?

 

[qckbeam]

That would be good enough for me. Please... proceed... again.

*craigweb2k waits impatiently

hmm, do I sense a bit of hostility here?

 

[Zakat]

/me strangles qckbeam with a USB wire

*Stops for a short moment*

I think so!

*Continues*

 

[BWMASTER]

(FACTS)
http://www.near-death.com/

15% of the population of US have had a near death experience.
Everey one of them experienced the same basic experience.

I suggest reading a few stories from that site, after you read a few it really starts to make sense.


(OPINION)(and facts that is in the stories on that website)
Pretty much from what I have seen on the site in numerous stories is:

heaven=being with god, unconditional love, meeting Jesus
(which is part of evreybody and evereybody its part to it, meaning God)

and

hell=staying on earth
If you have addictions(ie. very addicted to smoking) you will stay on earth after you die, craving it and never being able to get it.

 

[Dedalus]

heaven=being with god, unconditional love, meeting Jesus
(which is part of evreybody and evereybody its part to it, meaning God)

what about the people who aren't religious or are a different religion or people who don't want to meet jesus? is heaven a christians only exclusive club or something hell i'm not religious but i'd sure like to get into heaven or some form of it.

anyway, i don't think there's an afterlife as such. just that when you die you move onto the next 'level'. you just carry on with your existence but in a different form, doing different things in a different place, possibly unaware of your previous existences, or possibly an evolution of some kind.

does anyone here think that animal's get an afterlife? where do they go if at all? are they reincarnated as the same animal? what happens to them? personally i think 'the afterlife' is just a human invention. years of thinking and rationalising and following certain beliefs eventually spouted this idea. who knows whether it's right or wrong, but to me it just seems a bit too much like the invention of a human mind.

 

[mchammer75040]

does anyone here think that animal's get an afterlife? where do they go if at all? are they reincarnated as the same animal? what happens to them? personally i think 'the afterlife' is just a human invention. years of thinking and rationalising and following certain beliefs eventually spouted this idea. who knows whether it's right or wrong, but to me it just seems a bit too much like the invention of a human mind.

If they do I sure send alot of cockroaches to heaven i suppose . But yea I believe its just a human concept as well, a response of having to die one day.

 

[clarky003]

it all sounds too cliche, remember were human, and we are really not programmed to even begin to contemplate the truth, 'death wouldnt that be a weird feeling'. thats redundant, if your dead u cant feel right, unless you are engrained into the fabric of existence through your electrical pathways, in a sense that could explain what ghosts are, and it explains why if a person looses and arm or hand, sometimes they still think its there, cause they can feel it still, electrically, afterall thats what 'feeling consists of'

 

[Letters]

But I've been to the Underworld! Look, I even took a pichah of Cerberus as he tried to follow me through the gate to Hades!

 

[Max35]

I remember reading something on Roman history, about a group of 'enlightened' Christians who believed in reincarnation were completely eliminated by the Roman army. This was about the same time I think when the priests edited the Bible in order to get the support of the Roman Emperor. Anyway, in my personal opinion I think there is an afterlife, but I can see why others view it as a foolish concept.

 

[Pauly]

But I've been to the Underworld! Look, I even took a pichah of Cerberus as he tried to follow me through the gate to Hades!

LOL!!! omg its ATI!! ahhhh ..or is that nvidia.i forgot..lol

 

[Zakat]

ROFL @ Going to heaven after you die!

I'm sorry, but, I'm not christian and I believe more in science than people SAYING what they saw when they almost died.

and with science, I think the most likely thing is that we simply stop existing, hard to explain, but we simply stop, all of us is gone, we don't exist after death.

Personally, I think there's a chance that you are reborn, but, in that case, you don't know crap about your previous life or existance.

 

[jonnyapps]

the 15% near death experience thing = science suggests such an experience is more than likely to be the last final synaptic flairs as the brain shuts down - an uber dream in a way.

Ghosts thing: H H Price suggested that we could die but live on in our own thoughts essentially building ourselves a new world around our past lives experiences. In this way our behaviour in our life denotes whether our dreamworld = heaven or hell.
Against this David Hume argued that humans are social beings and without stimulus and interaction we are not 'human'.
My counterargument is that when i dream now i dream of interaction and even if i dream only of myself i am still human.

Secondly, if Price's theory is right then why could we not suggest that this world is already such a place to me? I.e. follow the Cartesian form ' i think therefore i am'

 

[PvtRyan]

Near death experiences are indeed just mere brainanomalies.
The tunnel effect is caused by the lack of oxygen, all cells in your brain are starting to 'fire' at once giving the appearance of a bright tunnel. And your brain is starting desperately to control the stress of the situation by emitting endorphins , the same substances that make you feel love and joy, making you feel warm and loved at the other side of the tunnel.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Life and Death, two different meanings, but could there be a more Unified Term

LOL!!!
There will be a time when science and religioun will merge, making us more enlightened in the path of both.

 

[Zakat]

DEATH eVADER; no there won't.

and it's spelled religion.

 

[PvtRyan]

Life and Death, two different meanings, but could there be a more Unified Term

LOL!!!
There will be a time when science and religioun will merge, making us more enlightened in the path of both.

Science and religion merging? Odd, since they're contradictionary.
Religion is believing, and science is proving and has nothing to do with believing.

 

[Pauly]

we wont remember each other!!?? a smily can not express human emotion

 

[Zakat]

Pauly, Hey! Don't steal comments from mrB!*Stabs with a fork*

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Science this magical thing...

People always talk about believing in science. But what is there to believe? Scientist X who says the earth is 1 billion years old and has "proof" or scientist Y who says the earth is 10 billion years old and has "proof". Science is not something you can compare to religion, they are not on the same track. Science and religion work together when you want them to, but they arent the same.

Science is great, because its what we call learning about the universe, but because of "science" i believe no less in God and Heaven than i always have.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

What I meant was that science has something to learn from religion. Mind-Over-Matter so to speak. Pagans for example was using alchemy, ideas that influence scientists and engineers today. Religious Organisations also did a lot of astronomy, which scientists do today.

 

[Zakat]

Um.. astronomy? You did know the first guy that ever statedn within christianity that the Earth was orbiting the sun was arrested and forced to say that he doesn't believe what he said?

I.e. christian priests wouldn't accept that Earth isn't the CENTER of the UNIVERSE.