Thoughts on the afterlife.

[BabyHeadCrab]

As I walked downstairs to fix myself some food, I paid special notice to the Yahrzeit candle my dad set out last night still burning and flickering beautifully. One year ago today my grandfather died, a great guy and (obviously) a Jew given the whole candle thing.

As I sat there contemplating his life and wishing he was still with my family I couldn't help but wonder if I actually believed in any sort of afterlife. Heaven? Nah, I can't really sit here and pretend to believe in such a place--but I can't help but hope that he's living on in some way.

How do you guys cope with the thought of afterlife?

 

[Darkside55]

How do you guys cope with the thought of afterlife?

I succumb to the fear that I will eventually cease to exist, that there will not even be a single thought remaining, no senses to even contemplate darkness, or silence.

And then I have to stop thinking about it before that thought becomes too much for me to handle.

 

[Sulkdodds]

I don't believe there is any, and I've sort of come to terms with that fact by a combination of willfull ignorance and simple familiarity. Certainly it was one of the most unpleasant days I can remember when my parents had to admit to me that they didn't believe anything happened at all after death. Just nothing. To no longer exist! That was completely terrifying, the idea that I'd just stop, and that it wouldn't even matter what my life looked like in retrospect because I would no longer be a frame in which it could be viewed. My dad explained that people who've had near death experiences tend to report an intense euphoria, a sense of belonging and joyful finality waiting for them at the end of that tunnel. And for the person who dies, that final and absolute moment would subjectively be everlasting. It would be the last flare in their brain and to the mind the last thing that ever happens. I can't say I found this very comforting.

For the next few years I would periodically remember what was coming, the nothing, and be unable to forget about it for weeks at a time. I wouldn't be able to lie in bed without thinking about it. Eventually I guess I'd rubbed up against it so often that I got used to it, because while the concept still incites in me an intellectual vertigo, the emotional horror it once inspired is (mostly) long gone.

TLDR; I make sure not to think about it.

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Maybe this is the afterlife.

OOOOOO

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

I suppose this would be the place to admit I'm an agnostic/pseudo-theist in part because the prospect of nothingness in terms of those I love and myself, after death, terrifies me.

Maybe this is the afterlife.

OOOOOO

You may be on to something thar.

I don't believe there is any, and I've sort of come to terms with that fact by a combination of willfull ignorance and simple familiarity. Certainly it was one of the most unpleasant days I can remember when my parents had to admit to me that they didn't believe anything happened at all after death. Just nothing. To no longer exist! That was completely terrifying, the idea that I'd just stop, and that it wouldn't even matter what my life looked like in retrospect because I would no longer be a frame in which it could be viewed. My dad explained that people who've had near death experiences tend to report an intense euphoria, a sense of belonging and joyful finality waiting for them at the end of that tunnel. And for the person who dies, that final and absolute moment would subjectively be everlasting. It would be the last flare in their brain and to the mind the last thing that ever happens. I can't say I found this very comforting.

For the next few years I would periodically remember what was coming, the nothing, and be unable to forget about it for weeks at a time. I wouldn't be able to lie in bed without thinking about it. Eventually I guess I'd rubbed up against it so often that I got used to it, because while the concept still incites in me an intellectual vertigo, the emotional horror it once inspired is (mostly) long gone.

TLDR; I make sure not to think about it.

I admire the fact that you can, in a way, come to terms with this concept of nothingness. I don't think I'll ever be fully comfortable with it.

 

[Raziaar]

The thought of what happens when I die, or more accurately what doesn't happen when I die, troubles me greatly.

I do not like the thought of not existing. It scares me. I don't give one damn about the fact that it won't bother me then since I won't exist, it bothers me now.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Maybe this is the afterlife.

OOOOOO

I for one would like to register my disappointment with almost every aspect of this afterlife!

 

[Darkside55]

ITT no one gets a good night sleep tonight thinking about INESCAPABLE NOTHINGNESS

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

ITT no one gets a good night sleep tonight thinking about INESCAPABLE NOTHINGNESS

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

This somehow seemed fitting.

 

[Eejit]

I try to tell myself that Valhalla awaits, but the doubt and fear linger sometimes.

 

[Sulkdodds]

As you reap a harvest of bloody heads from the pitiful overgrown fishing villages of England, you sometimes give pause to wonder: is it all worth it?

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

You won't get into Valhalla if you're afraid!

 

[Eejit]

The Gods themselves fear Ragnarok and their own ends!

 

[YROC]

Eh, my grandma was a christian and she's no longer alive, so I hope something happened with that whole deal.

I don't believe in anything so I think about the "nothingness" alot. I also like to think about how the world will be when i'm gone. The things that I won't get to see, enjoy, hear about, etc.

Example: Think about gamers who die right before a new game/console is released. They'll never get to experience it and that sucks alot. That's what I think about. What if, when I die, doctors release a new fancy medicine that allows you to live for an extended period of time, but i'll be too busy being dead. D;

Oh gawd, the nothingness approaches.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Better have 72 Bill Murrays waiting for me in the afterlife.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Better have 72 Bill Murrays waiting for me in the afterlife.

This is a common error in translation. It's actually 72 werthers' originals.

 

[Murray]

No problem here, as I'm a religious nut.

 

[Dodo]

Meh... it doesnt trouble me too much. I feel like if been alive for a good 21 years already, but at the same time ive been nothing for atleast 13 billion years, and that never felt bad.
I think you need to know that you are going to be nothing to enjoy the fact that you are something while it lasts.
It could be what fuels life to live for no reason. Knowing that it is something that will disappear.
There is no god, no heaven, no reason, no answer and there's nothing that makes true sence. I love life aswell as death.

-dodo

 

[Shift]

I don't think about it because I am currently in the stage known as life so I will continue to focus on that and handle the death part whenever that happens. I'm agnostic in basically I haven't the slightest idea of what happens when you die, but I will go full out to make it one hell of a life before I do eventually find out.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

This reminds me of a quote I want on my tombstone: "Here lies an atheist: All dressed up but nowhere to go."

 

[Hobostomp]

I believe in an afterlife, not heaven or hell, but an afterlife. That whole "not being able to destroy energy" thing has me convinced. Plus other things which I won't disclose.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

It's a dead man's party. Who could ask for more? Everybody is coming leave your body and soul at the door.

 

[Eejit]

I believe in an afterlife, not heaven or hell, but an afterlife. That whole "not being able to destroy energy" thing has me convinced. Plus other things which I won't disclose.

Yeah the first law of thermodynamics definitely proves the existence of an afterlife :dozey:

 

[Sulkdodds]

Your energy goes into the environment and is eaten by things. Which is some consolation anyway, and the reason I wouldn't like to be cremated.

See also:

After the tumult and the blood
Had died, had dried,
Silence unmade its history:
A group of mounds; on them
A group of oaks. They spread
Their broad unmindful glories
Over the unheard rumour of those dead
And rustle there, rooted on ruin.
All nature's knowledge
Is to stay unknowing -
Ours, to confess confusion:
Dreamt-out by her,
Our years are apparitions in their coming-going.
Her random seed
Spread to their fruitless feat, she then
Regathers them
Into that peace all history must feed.

 

[The Monkey]

The thought of non-existence scares me less than the thought of eternal existence.

 

[Rizzo]

TT makes me sad.

 

[Hobostomp]

Yeah the first law of thermodynamics definitely proves the existence of an afterlife :dozey:

Mock me if you want, but when I'm 80 I'll be a lot less scared of death than you will.

 

[Eejit]

You won't live to 80 unless you move away from the coast.

 

[Hobostomp]

Why is that?

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Leaping sharks.

 

[Remus]

Your energy goes into the environment and is eaten by things. Which is some consolation anyway, and the reason I wouldn't like to be cremated.

Actually I for one want my body to be cremated. The thought of it being eaten by various things really disgusts me.

I'm one of the few people that finds the thought of "nothingness" rather comforting. As someone else mentioned, I think of it this way, I've been nothing for billions of years before being born and it was fine.

In the unlikely event that there is an afterlife I'll be sure to tell the almighty what I think of him/her/it...

 

[Sulkdodds]

I'm one of the few people that finds the thought of "nothingness" rather comforting. As someone else mentioned, I think of it this way, I've been nothing for billions of years before being born and it was fine.

But it's like love. Things may have been fine before it existed, but afterwards everything is different. Values are shocked into a new configuration and it's impossible to try and pretend it's all the same.

 

[Tyguy]

if you are nothing before you are born and you're nothing afterwards, what is to prevent you from popping into existence again...in any form of life.

 

[Sulkdodds]

What? This: "you" is a historical phenomenon, more effect than cause, and 'historical' refers not only to the great span of time which has formed your species but to the minute waverings of chance, choice and consequence that determine your existence. Succinctly, everything that you are was.

Nothing else can ever be "you" in anything more than a vague and magical sense.

 

[Tyguy]

but the conditions before and after life are the same. the same conditions that were in place in order for me to be born are apparent after death. You can't dismiss the possibility that a "new" you will exist in the future. Obviously "you" is a misnomer as even if this did happen it would be a different entity.

Then what if instead of being something on earth you end up being a single celled organism in some distant galaxy...not saying this is what I believe but it's an interesting prospect.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Well, no, they aren't the same conditions because you're a result of incidents in your life or incidents in your upbringing which are a result of other such incidents or of large-scale cultural reasons which are a result of other earlier cultural reasons or of shifting economic and practical reasons and in the end I am not sure there are any identical objects in the entire universe, nor any that never change.

The conditions, which is to say the totality of everything that might have an effect on the formation of your self, could never be identical. And so for there ever to be a future you would need a magical, spiritual concept of the self.

 

[Krynn72]

When you dead, you dead. So try not die.


Thats what I says.

 

[jet_porkins]

Christian.

What a depressing thread.

 

[Laivasse]

Although as an agnostic I allow for the possibility of a higher intelligence having been involved in our creation, I find it very hard to believe that such a creature would bother maintaining an afterlife for us. There are just so many problems with the idea. Why believe that 'The Almighty' busies itself maintaining a dimension of the dead, when there is no sign of its interference in the world of the living? Are humans the only creatures allowed entry to this afterlife? If so, why? If not, how the hell could that work? Is your dead spouse waiting for you there? If so, and if you remarry can you then look forward to threesomes and foursomes in the afterlife? Do humans cease to be allowed entry into the afterlife should a higher form of life evolve, with an intellectual capacity and level of sentience that dwarfs ours? Does it all work by reincarnation instead? If so, where do all the new 'souls' come from (if anything, the first law of thermodynamics is a huge stumbling block for those who try to rationalise reincarnation...)? And isn't it just a bit fishy that everyone just happens to be a reincarnation of ****ing Napoleon?

It's a nebulous idea with no evidential basis in the first place, clearly conceived out of fear of mortality. The more you prod it, the more ludicrous a fairytale you have to dream up for it to work at all. I have no beef with those who choose to believe in an afterlife, however, as long as it doesn't have an adverse effect on the way they treat me in this one. The more we understand how life works, the less we're sure what it should mean. Despite the fact that I despise self-deception, I also believe most people need their irrational coping mechanisms.

Myself, I'm deeply distressed by what appears to be a fundamental absence of deeper purpose to life. It's hard to believe that life is meaningful when there is nothing beyond death, and when years of happiness, strong convictions, love and toil can end in nothingness, remembered by no one. Sometimes death isn't even required for that to happen. Rotting in the ground doesn't bother me, returning to oblivion doesn't necessarily bother me, it's just the idea that everything I do might mean nothing to anyone... that can be demoralising if you dwell on it. But how can we not?

The best you can do, it seems to me, is to find a person whose life and character you appreciate strongly, whose whole being you feel you understand, and do your best to let them know you through and through, in the hope that they will feel the same way about you. You then share your life so it becomes less of a scream into the void. They become the observer to your 'tree that falls in the forest', and you theirs. By doing so you create happiness, you define your life and you help your loved one define theirs. Should you also happen to create something that outlives you, all the better, but I don't believe that to be crucial - nothing lasts forever, after all.

On a grander scale, I think we do have a slim hope for immortality in the shape of technology. Once we reverse engineer the brain, find out exactly what it is that makes a person a person, and then later work out a means of representing all that information, it could/should open the way towards the digital transposition of entire personalities. Essentially we may become able to manufacture our own afterlife, but by the time we are capable of doing that, it would probably be one of the least exciting things we'd be capable of.

 

[MJ12]

I don't know if there is an afterlife, and it is not important to know.