What happens after we die.
 

Now I maybe Catholic, but I am not at all trying to impose my beliefs on you, even though I get enough people trying to put down my beliefs. I honestly want to know what you all think about what happens after you die. Do you honestly believe that nothing happens? Can you picture nothing? Some say it's a permanent loss of consciousness, but even in unconsciousness, eventually your mind becomes aware that you are unconscious. It is difficult to explain, but it still persists an image of some sort. May it be blackness or even a dream. I'm not necessarily saying that heaven and hell are what comes afterward, but there has to be at least something there.

My belief is that of a man named David Icke. Now I must admit some of his ideologies are somewhat absurd, i.e. the more famous people have hidden faces when in private, but he has a very interesting theory on afterlife. He mentions that currently we are on one thought level, and after that thought level, we move to a higher thought level, but in which could most likely be related to, per say, a fourth dimension, that may be possible. Although it it not exactly a 4-dimensional world, it is as complicated to explain as one. One could assume we are changed into a completely different being, as our physical bodies do not matter. Icke has told that all living things have a different thought level, but still end up on the same path as all other living beings once they are here.

Now I realize there is much more to this than it seems, as I feel I have been restating myself, but in short, there is at least something. It doesn't make much sense to experience nothingness after death, in my opinion. If one cannot picture nothing, then there is no such thing as nothing. I mostly speak this towards the atheists out there saying "you just rot in the ground". Yeah, I bet you say that when a close relative of your dies. "he/she'll just rot in the ground."

Anyways I'm interested in hearing your guys's opinions on what you think happens after we die. Whether ir be a different thought pattern, a different world, or even heaven. Describe what you guys believe makes the most sense to you after your life has ended.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

A very long dream, or just black and nothingness. You just cease to be.

This thread should get interesting.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

See the metaphysics thread.

Odds are, once our brain ceases to function, so does out perspective and sentience. Therefore you basically wind up in the same state of existence that you were in before you were born. That is to say, nothing.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

Hmm well to me, I always wondered who created the concept of heaven and hell. I grew up as a Muslim but recently I've been thinking if some concepts of religion aren't really true, like the afterlife thing.

To start off, is there really a place of Xanadu after you are dead? And is there really a place of eternal suffering? Maybe, or maybe not. To be honest, animals never thought of this. As soon as their dead, that's it. The thoughts of such places are comforting and discomforting, but oh well. I've also tried to ask dead people about it but I haven't got a reply from of them.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

I'm pretty sure all these things decay after they die.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

+1 for this stance. It seems to make the most logical sense. Since there is no evidence for the idea of a soul and there is evidence that our brain is the receiver/observer and the control center of everything we see, hear, taste, remember or whatever.

No brain, therefore nothing.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

after we die, our atoms will be back in the natural cycle, and that's good enough for me.

if only they used corpses to feed the soil instead of putting them into coffins....

Re: What happens after we die.
 

They do that in a some cemeteries. All natural graves. I think for the burial they put you in a biodegradable coffin.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

well i was more like on dismembering the corpses and use them as fertilizers. people hold on too much on life, till the point they actually try to keep metaphorically alive even those who died.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

Well, once the coffin degrades then your body will eventually turn into fertilizer for the grass and bushes there.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

Imagine what it was like for the first 14,000,000,000 years of life... remember? The universe existed then, and you didn't, just like when you die! It'll be like that.

No one knows what'll happen, but if religion is a bunch of bullcrap, it's easy to comprehend what death will be like.

EDIT: ninja'd by Rubix, cockdamn it.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

It's sick to think that the components of our body have existed for billions of years. We've been through a lot :P

Such a long wait for the gift of life, eh?

Re: What happens after we die.
 

It happened to one of my cousins. He died like we was supposed to, before of after. No need to be a whiny pussy about what you cannot change.

So if you cannot picture something just because is doesn't fall into the range of your perception/abstraction, it doesn't exist? I'm dying to hear what is your mental perception of UV rays. Or a black hole. Or any other thing we do not have a direct experience of yet. I'd also be happy to listen how do you conceive god, since you guys always say it's unconceivable. By your thought pattern, it also doesn't exist.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

People like to make up happy stories of what happens to them when they die because they are to afraid to accept the awful reality.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

It doesn't make sense to think about what it's like to "perceive" nothing. To us, as observers, our time started the moment we were born. We had no awareness of ANYTHING before we were sentient. Likewise, things after we die will be the same. Without our physical faculties, we won't be perceiving.

The concept of an afterlife is "soothing" to most because we don't want death to be so "final," but the truth is we won't know until we get there. Evidence would suggest that we simply stop perceiving, much like how we weren't perceiving before we were born.

The way I try to "envision" death, though: It's like when you're reading a book and fall asleep. You wake up and go, "Oh snap, I fell asleep?! Don't even remember doing that." As you fall asleep, your eyes stop observing, sounds start to phase out into nothingness, your sense of touch is somewhat detached. Consider what it's like in dreams -- you don't walk around feeling like you're lying in a bed. Your senses take a back seat to your subconscious.

Only sometimes, at least for me, I fall asleep and just wake up hours later with no dream occurrences. If you were to ask me what I was perceiving during such a rest, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I think death will "feel" a lot like that, only it's not something you wake up from. It's like going in for surgery. You find yourself just waking up at some point and everything's over. You don't even remember falling asleep -- it just "happened." When death finally hits us, at the very least, we won't be able to care anymore.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

You could essentially be reincarnated as a sunflower.


Tell me that wouldn't be awesome!!

Re: What happens after we die.
 

To the physiologically concerned side of me, this is very reassuring. When I think of death, it's a very sad vision. The thought of having 60 or so years left to perceive everything in the world that I will ever perceive is kinda sad, especially when the world is so idealistically minded to us when we are young (i.e. you can do ANYTHING if you put your mind to it !!!1!11). But when I think about it some more, the 1980s weren't all that bad for me! I just simply have no record of them or any of the other years before 1990.

It's strange to think about how the world is a big continuous flux of people in and out, with no discrete changes. There are almost no massive events that change life for everyone, just a lot of smooth, rounded trends toward a "better" or "worse" world.

My overall reasoning though is that our physical bodies don't really matter by any metrics. From a humanistic, naturalistic perspective, there will absolutely no meaningful physical record of our existence in the next eons, barring fossilization and crap. And there will be no record of our accomplishments, either. From a spiritual perspective, if the spiritual realm is real and meaningful in any way, then the body still does not matter; only one's spiritual commitment matters. And so if there is anything grand to live for, it cannot be based in one's physical relations with the world. Our worldly desires are just that: worldly desires, and nothing more.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

Look up Aubrey de Grey, Cynthia Kenyon, and Rob Freitas.

I've been researching them for a while.

Feel better with such prospects?

Re: What happens after we die.
 

ledwix: I agree -- in the future, we'll basically be gone. As time goes on, our influence starts to slowly null out in the same way out forefathers have basically vanished into the history of everything.

And so I've always wondered, what actually matters? I think "purpose" is only a human construct -- it is subjective, and therefore human in origin. Was there any purpose to the universe back when there was no life, no experience? Finding "meaning" in things is purely a result of an evolutionary construct. And so, to me, what "matters" is that I live a happy life, since emotion is what gives our sentience that extra boost. We're able to perceive utility.

It's just amazing to me that we basically have this eternally long, perspectiveless existence... and then for the tiniest of blips in time, we burst out from under the surface and experience a plethora of amazing things before falling back under into the same void from whence we came. It really makes everything feel so temporary for me. Everyone we meet is just another passerby that we happen to encounter during our brief little blip. There's just something bittersweet about it.

My response to it all is simply to seek happiness. I fear death only to the extent that it puts a time limit on my ability to perceive utility. The end result of that, though, is a heightened appreciation for simple things. Most of my favorite memories/moments of nostalgia revolve around simple things. I want my whole life to be like that. It'll come to an end, but at least I've made the most out of what I can, and that's what matters to me.

Re: What happens after we die.
 

Yeah, life is only a parenthesis. Actually, the concept of life itself is only an arbitrary deadline we created to divide what we perceived similar to us from what we perceived different from us. Another human concept that does not really make much sense when translated in absolute terms. If you look at universe it from another point of view, everything goes into the same cycle. "Life" is just a very complex assemblement of concurring phisical reactions that enter into a variety of concentric, more complex cycles. As rubix said, "purpose" or "meaning" are only relative concepts that we created during our evolution.

Going by this, i guess that the infinitely tiny moment of existance we call life can be anything, in the end it won't matter. That's why many people hold on to various irrational beliefs to find some answer to a question that doesn't have any answer, since it was a meaningless question to begin with.

Even though in the long run everything we humans do will just disappear, i guess it's okay to try and improve the way ourselves and the ones around experience this transition, because we are constituted in such a way that negative events, emotions and situations will hurt us, making our and other entities' experience worse.