what happens after we die?

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seriously, i'm wondering what do you think.

is there any kind of afterlife, and if so what does it look like? is there such a thing as a soul? do we all go to the same 'place'?

whether you're religious or not, this thread is for sharing your opinions about the absence or existence of heaven/hell/paradise/purgatory/reincarnation, and any and all other ideas or theories you may have about what happens after we die.

keep the conversation civil, folks. this should be interesting.

I'll get back to you

Good question but the problem is that nobody has been truely dead and has then returned to life. The problem with the people who have been clinically dead for a short while and then have been brought back to life is that the low oxygen conditions in their brains as the brains close down may be responsible for the visions and other experiences that some people report when they clinically die.

As far as i knowNOW all there is is now.. so it's never something i spend much time contemplating on.. as the future does not exist.. but considering the theory of infinite returns per the full scope of Infinity.. Karma might be a real thingy.. so i take everything i do with the weight of Infinity as Light as that may be too..:)

We are quite small in our perception of reality as human beings.. RELATively speaking/seeing/hearing/etc....

i for one do not want to come back as a grasshopper and get crushed under foot for several hundred lifetimes...

i for one do not know if this is possible considering the grand expanse of Infinity...

so i am NOT taking that chance.. WHATEVER IT COULD BE.. as truly the Golden Rule is not hard to follow for one who truly CARES TO both with reason and FEELING..:)

BUT WITHOUT FEELING.. some folks see no REASON to do it..

i FEEL alive.. i AM alive now.. and i live it as such.. that's all that counts to me.. but i'm never alone.. as i FEEL THE CONNECTEDNESS of All That Is.. animate and inanimate as such.. AND even the idea of inanimate is an illusion as well....as at core electrons do still move...EVEN among the smallest of inanimate existence as well..:)

So yeah.. i live like NOW IS FOREVER.

SEEMS LIKE A COOL WAY TO GO...

FOR ME...:)

You are either embalmed and buried or cremated, usually. Hopefully promptly.

As you are dying, it is possible that you will feel a sense of euphoria due to rapid anoxia-related cell death. In other words, it is the most amazing high you will ever have. It's like a mega-dose of ketamine administered straight to your frontal lobe, man. It's awesome.

Like, last time I had life-threatening pneumonia, it was kind of cool. There were all these psychedelic butterflies, and it was pretty neat.

Uh, the problem is that the really full-fledged, maximum version of the experience is something that can only happen once. Because, like, you are dead. Immobile.

Therefore, one thing that you don't have to worry about is some nightmare of pain of death played on some infinite loop. Naahhhhhh. You'll love it for like the nanosecond that you experience it. Just don't expect to be on the other side of the experience going "Yeah, it was like totally awesome, dude!" No coming back! No return trip!

Okay, as far as what happens afterward, pfffft. Dude, your brain has between 100 billion and 200 billion neurons, each of which can have up to tens of thousands of connections with other neurons. The basis of its organization is shaped by 4.5 billion years of evolution, and the actual details of its connections are shaped based on a lifetime of experience. The capacity of information that your brain can hold is 2.5 petabytes of information.

And that is not taking into account that many of our memories are abbreviated, incomplete remnants, the details of which we tend to fill out by deduction and inference, which makes for a powerful shorthand in spite of its limitations.

So we really don't even need all of that space to have a pretty astoundingly high capacity for storing knowledge, memories, feelings and ideas, far beyond the absolute storage capacity of our brains.

Now, when all of your brain cells literally blow up, giving you your giant ketamine trip into the starfields, WHAT THE HECK DO YOU THINK HAPPENS? It's like popping a hard disk into the microwave and saying, "So where did all of the information on the disk go?" It's scrambled like an egg! It's an omelette with cheddar! IT IS SAUSAGE!

But like I said, it's a pretty cool trip.

We are merely small blips of consciousness, popping in and out of existence, like virtual particles. As such, we don't really exist, but we do, and yet we don't, there we are, gone.

If I knew, I'd be God.

There is insufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis.

I don't know, but I'm certainly scared by the "nothing after death". How come atheists deal with that by the way?

By not thinking about it, I guess. Or just coming to accept it.

Some compare it to the time before you were born but I think it's scarier to stop existing than to have not yet started existing.

Question for those who believe in life after death - when did it evolve? Is there life after death for viruses? Bacteria? Single-celled eukaryotes? Sponges? Arthopods? Squid? Hagfish? Sharks? Cod? Frogs? Crocodiles? Horses? Mice? Monkeys? Gorillas? Chimpanzees?

You become worm food.

By the fact that believing otherwise won't change it.

I am really shocked cross-eyed by people who say "Why would you ever want to believe that?"

...

*facepalms*

What I WANT to believe is that my Lord and Master Ningishzida will make me an all-powerful underworld deity, so I can rule tyrannically over an army of helpless minions. What I want to believe is that a chthonic army of darkness will overwhelm the Earth with fire and brimstone, marching their followers to victory and triumph over the ignorant masses. If I actually thought there were valid reason to believe this stuff, then I would be making human sacrifices on a demonic altar. You do NOT want me to start being superstitious. I would be freaking dangerous, dude. If I could just believe anything that I wanted to, then wow, let's just not go there.

But there is a difference between what I would like to believe and positions that I actually think I have valid evidence for.

It's nothing to be scared of, though. It's a euphoric trip, and that's the last thing that you would ever have knowledge of. The world would go on without you, and hopefully you will have left a positive impact on the world. You deal with it by accepting that there is a world beyond yourself, and the mark that you leave on it is what is really important, not yourself or your personal fortunes.

You only need to be scared by it if you are so narcissistic that you could never accept the idea of a world that doesn't have you in it. You are not that important, unto yourself. There is an incomprehensibly large universe beyond you, and the most you can hope to do is make the little ripple you are capable of leaving in it something that you can feel reasonably proud of.

Once you have recognized the validity of the world beyond yourself, then the idea of you not being there stops being so scary. You start focusing on just being a good, relatively lawful person if you can.

Nobody knows.


Nobody knows.


Nobody knows.

What is scary about it? Was it scary before you were born?

No data exists regarding this issue.
I know of no epistemologic way forward on this issue.
Personally, I believe the question cannot be answered in the way you want it to be.

We can fully describe what occurs to the corpse and to EEG and so on, but that is not what you are after.

Your dead carcass loses five grams of weight, and nobody know where it goes.

If it is awareness in weight, it may be either a choice, consumed, or imprisoned.

Just a best guess.