What happens to people after they die?

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Other. If I was dead, I'd rather go to lego land, the mountains and then Hawaii. Not some Colorado skii resort.

You get to the pearly gates and St. Peter will only let you in if you can pass his Algebra test.

This is what I've been working out:

If we have a "soul" or a spark of life, then our brains are like its clothing.

It builds (with the help of the natural environment and biological processes) a personality, a body, and a set of memories around itself. But these things are expressions and creations of the soul, and are animated by it during life.

When the body is dead, and no longer able to shield the soul, the pressure of the world propels the soul into another dimension with less pressure, like an air bubble rising to the top of the ocean (except, well...the ocean isn't another dimension than the surface--lol).

The soul is eventually reincarnated and creates a new set of "clothing" and identity. I think it's still possible for the soul to re-create an old personality, depending on the laws of that dimension, or--I guess, be in many places at once. But that's really a bit too complicated for my lack of scientific knowledge.

Tear it apart if you want.

I believe that we all know instinctively what natural reality and the human condition is. The answers are built into our physical bodies. The only way we can be wrong about existence and the rules by which it operates is if we deliberately and subconsciously and/or consciously decide to create or accept falsehoods, and/or through confusion which is born out of semantic disharmony with others. Half of the challenge of understanding life and death, in a metaphysical or religious sense, is in receiving a persons summarization of it and being able to find the correlations with ones own innate knowledge after it has been through the process of being disassembled and reassembled via flawed language and interpretation between two or more parties. I suggest that a belief system, in many cases, is a personal construct which is administered primarily by a combination of the ego, the immediate conscious and the human memory, which, as a model can only be fallible and therefore too often inadequate. These models generate dis-correlations where there ought not to be any. Life and death is not a mystery to us because it is everywhere. It is happening around us and inside of us, both microscopically and macroscopically. I propose that the soul/spirit/god particles are physical matter like everything else, albeit very sparse in its quantumatomic composition and that this force is present in all animate and inanimate material. If you do not want to be manipulated then do not automatically take the opposite position to the manipulator. God is everywhere, regardless of what you want to call it.

I believe that we really cannot fully know what happens after death. It is easy to simply say that nothing happens, or that we go to heaven, or become reincarnated, but it seems harder nowadays to admit that we really don't, and possibly can't ever know with certainty. But that is simply my agnostic mind thinking. The only way we really know what happens is after we die, and even that might not answer all the questions. So saying one way or the other with definite reliability must mean that one has the evidence to back up their claim, and I am sure very few people here can back up their claims beyond "no one has disproven my hypothesis." So if you want a definite answer backed up with any sort of reliable evidence, you will probably never find out the truth. I would enjoy an afterlife because I fear death and it's alleged infinite darkness, but I cannot accept that neither an afterlife exists, nor that no afterlife exists.

But reincarnation confuses me, if your soul is reincarnated into another being, where exactly do the extra souls come from in an expanding population? and where would they go in a deflating population? Unless souls can merge together, this simply does not make sense to me. I can show my skepticism with all of the afterlife and non-afterlife beliefs, but I won't bore everyone here with my thoughts.

But I seem to be one of the only people who think this way.

Because everything about who we are - our personality and memories originates from the brain, then when the brain is dead so are the personality and memories. You have only got to see what happens to people who become partly brain-dead or brain-damaged through a stroke to see the profound changes it makes to their personality and memories. Whole brain death = end of personality and memories.

I think probably nothing, and actually find this rather comforting.

I quite liked Philip Pullman's idea towards the end of the Amber Spyglass of us all becoming some kind of general (but I think) non-sentient consciousness particle of some kind, not sure I believe in it though, but it is interesting to wonder what becomes of consciousness when if fades out of us at death.

If this life is the only version of this consciousness we've got, and I believe it is, it should encourage us to make the best of it, and also to be less accepting of social injustice to others. It is not as if people are going to get it any better next time, there is no next time...although there is the next generation who might get it better or worse than this one.

[To digress a little - also apparently it was the God-Damned Particle because - at the time - it was so God-Damned difficult to find which is why they eventually spent £9billion on the LHC; this is still less the London Olympics has cost and much more useful in the long term IMHO ]

Darkness forever or the big sleep, at least that's what logically seems true. There may be a higher power, and a better place after death, but I don't think you get there by reading a book, praying, going to church, and living life specifically as you're told in books, or by preachers. It would make sense to me if there is a higher power, and a better place after death, you would get there by treating all of this higher powers creations be it humans, animals, nature, ect... with respect and kindness.