What happens after we die.

[ScylaX]

I don't mind the belief of this guy but he just keeps using pointless substantiations to justificate his postulates. Stop bullying logic, please. Logic is kind.

As to myself, I don't see why there would rationally be anything more to life once you die. I had that metaphysical doubt just yesterday, I started to perceive things just as how strange they were, considering normal the fact I'm seeing myself as an human instead of seeing my body, my race or the Earth as something totally bizarre and maybe disgusting.
Since there is no base for life, or for why I'm just born at this very date and not one century earlier or later, you can be really leaded to think the same as for death.
But since these would be pure baseless speculations, it's just safer to hold a rational belief, except if the simple fact of having a single life may be too unbearable for you. But you can still deducea a spiritual richness from atheist/agnostic points of views, the fact the majority of the people that hold this opinion in a spiritual cage doesn't deprive it from gaining your own spiritual faith into this (y'know, these things like "I have one single life so I have to fulfill it the way I can", these sort of fundamental rules you'd give to yourself to conduct your life)

[CobaltWire]

Tone of the topic is so depressing don't u guys think? If u really want to know what happens after u die, u go to ponyville where depending on the type of person u live as will depend on the type of pony u become... nah jk, would be cool though. xD

What happens when we seize to function is a common and normal thought for everyone, but very unhealthy if u dedicate ur whole life to trying to figure out, cause the only way you'll ever know is to... u know, die. Anything could happen, as well as nothing. The sky is NOT the limit in this case. Ive personally always found the Matrix theory to be one that I'm most interested in. U know, the one where we're all living in a super advanced program and everything we think is real is actually artificial. What if the world we're living in isn't the real deal? What if the world ur living in is actually something ur just thinking up? The world is only as real as your senses allows it to be.

For all I know, I could die tonight and wake up in the REAL world tomorrow.

[ScylaX]

@Cobaltwire tl;dr solipsism

You don't know anything by dying. You just stop knowing.
I mean it's somehow a really semi-rational statement there : the human species exist since thousand of years. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. It'd be really likely that, if a system that allowed you to know what there was after death, you'd know it, because you'd have already died once. That's it. Or maybe not, because we just have no proof.
But that's something that can go really far, speculations. The fact we don't know much things about it can lead to many many hypothesis because you're having the URGE to make sense. Or, somehow, to put your own sense - may it be logical or not.

[Hateandhatred]

Brb hanging myself and telling you what happens after I die.

^ Only logical way to know it when you figure stuff out by perceptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrosis

Pretty much it.

"The man was ash and will return to ash".

[ScylaX]

How can you know you still perceive things once you're dead ? What makes you perceive things is your brain, right ? If your brain dies, you don't perceive anything anymore.
So how can you know what there's after death ? Or even just what the fact of being dead is ?

[Hateandhatred]

Originally Posted by ScylaX

How can you know you still perceive things once you're dead ? What makes you perceive things is your brain, right ? If your brain dies, you don't perceive anything anymore.
So how can you know what there's after death ? Or even just what the fact of being dead is ?

Just quit using perceptions.

It's like pretending psychology is a science.

EDIT: O wait.

We basically have the same stance, looking at your previous posts. Sorry man.

[Spenner]

Perhaps it's something along the lines of experiencing a certain ego death, which one might find easy and comforting or stressful and full of fear and anxiety, depending how they're going about thinking it as it's happening. After the ego death, the degeneration is very very slow and without a sense of "self" the aspects of dying are no longer as noticeable or perceivable, as thoughts and electric signals ping pong around your head, the glands flexing and twitching and pouring out all that it can in an attempt to run to it's usual standard, until it realizes it doesn't have the hardware to continue pumping and the thought process ceases, some abstract sensations buzz about, and then by the time all action has ceased, you are no longer worried about past or present, because you don't have yourself to worry about. In fact you are dead by that point.

All I can think about happening AFTER that fact is probably nonsense, but I'm definitely not going to sit with my arms crossed and say "nothing happens" my entire life. What a waste. Maybe there is a plane on which we become part of a space that was unable to be perceived in our daily lives. Spontaneous electric signals floating in hyperspace, affecting strings that under the pressure of death resonate with a set of parallel strings in a multiverse. Likely not connected with any organic material, probably nothing would happen. But existence might not cease, just our perception, and self. Maybe what we actually perceive on a day to day basis is based on a 3rd party material we can't observe with the tools at hand.

Even electrons sense influence from forces around them, I guess consciousness is just a collective of many smaller nuanced feelings and measurements and reactions.

TL;DR: I'm NUTS, and I like how mysterious life is. I just like the idea of not being contained on this pixel in space for all of eternity.

[fido123]

Originally Posted by Spenner

All I can think about happening AFTER that fact is probably nonsense, but I'm definitely not going to sit with my arms crossed and say "nothing happens" my entire life.

So your opinion is derived off wishful thinking and not off fact or rational at all?

[bmah]

Well I'm guessing it's more of the fact that Spenner wants some comfort in knowing that something happens. I would too. Most of us can acknowledge that in reality the only thing that'll happen is degradation, but that's not a comforting thought - and most of us want to make sense of it, however irrational our theories are.

[Emithith]

Originally Posted by ScylaX

if a system that allowed you to know what there was after death, you'd know it, because you'd have already died once.

After you die you don't know anything, because your brain dies with you, so how could you know if you died? It's impossible.
Likely nothing happens and you just pop out of existence and don't know anything anymore, and you don't even know you're dead. It's a pretty depressing thought if you think about it, but really, we know as much about afterlife as pre-life in a sense.
(what I mean, is before you're even born)

[Spenner]

Originally Posted by fido123

So your opinion is derived off wishful thinking and not off fact or rational at all?

Not at all. Based off what I know that IS factual, and taking it a step further beyond what we can guess. And what bmah said. I'm not going to sit and pout in disbelief of anything. My idealization of death is based on scientific concepts, as we best currently know them. Until we can pinpoint one path and collapse one idea then there are many concepts I've found both comforting and not absolutely irrational. I call it nonsense because currently it does not have any way of being proven. I never stick to one idea, either. I tend to critique my own understanding and shed a new idea every so often.

[Hateandhatred]

Originally Posted by Spenner

Not at all. Based off what I know that IS factual, and taking it a step further beyond what we can guess. And what bmah said. I'm not going to sit and pout in disbelief of anything. My idealization of death is based on scientific concepts, as we best currently know them. Until we can pinpoint one path and collapse one idea then there are many concepts I've found both comforting and not absolutely irrational. I call it nonsense because currently it does not have any way of being proven. I never stick to one idea, either. I tend to critique my own understanding and shed a new idea every so often.

This makes me want to start a new thread. Brb.

[ScylaX]

Originally Posted by Emithith

After you die you don't know anything, because your brain dies with you, so how could you know if you died? It's impossible.
Likely nothing happens and you just pop out of existence and don't know anything anymore, and you don't even know you're dead. It's a pretty depressing thought if you think about it, but really, we know as much about afterlife as pre-life in a sense.
(what I mean, is before you're even born)

Thanks for reading the other things I wrote, it definitely helped you to not repeat things I've already said and thus, you could tell me things I didn't thought about.
Now, if you correctly read through the messages i posted since the last page, you'd know I was talking of an hypothesis and this is by all means not my main premise, it's an auxiliary postulate that isn't meant to be true or false.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Spenner

Not at all. Based off what I know that IS factual, and taking it a step further beyond what we can guess. And what bmah said. I'm not going to sit and pout in disbelief of anything. My idealization of death is based on scientific concepts, as we best currently know them. Until we can pinpoint one path and collapse one idea then there are many concepts I've found both comforting and not absolutely irrational. I call it nonsense because currently it does not have any way of being proven. I never stick to one idea, either. I tend to critique my own understanding and shed a new idea every so often.

Well, unfortunately, if you're going to base things off what is factual, then all signs point to the conclusion that nothing happens after we die. Anything else is wishful thinking.

I'm not sure how you can claim to be basing your position off science as we best understand it, when science (as we best understand it) is pretty overwhelming in its conclusion with respect to death.

Death has no way of being proven first-hand obviously because you can't relay information after you're dead for good. But the evidence surrounding every possible function and attribute of death that we DO know about (with respect to the biological functions and physics involved) is consistent and clear. In order for an afterlife to exist, MAMMOTH explanations would be required. And I'm talking so mammoth that I can't even relay it in words -- fractions of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent, here. High-sigma confidence levels.

Life after death = life before birth. Sorry.

[Spenner]

I get what you mean though. Suggestion leans heavily toward there being nothing, which makes absolute sense, and I take that information with respect; and that if there WAS something to happen after, there would be no way of returning that information to be measured in any way. So it's extremely unlikely. There's a threshold with which we can CONFIRM but then after the fact we can only make assumptions based on what we know.

So taking that into account, and I respect that, I still have my own idealizing of death as something like the reverse psychological process of being born I guess. We don't exactly know for sure what it's like to consciously experience the details of growing from a fetus and into a functional thinking human, but I can only assume that there is a degeneration that is similar to the reverse of growing. Certain areas of the brain shutting down at different times, making for a strange and possibly psychedelic phase, until like I said before, it's a process of losing a sense of self and no longer worrying about death.

Nothing can really budge my desire to think that there's something we can't perceive beyond the void, or if there isn't then on the journey to losing our sense of self we might be deluded into thinking such. I mean I'm sure it would feel quite like you've become part of something abstract and beautiful at that time, with the pineal gland stressed to be releasing DMT or whatever other brain processes come into effect.

And keeping that in mind, that even if it DOESN'T exist, being convinced of it at the time of death would be forever fulfilling. I'd rather go into it with an open mind and desire to see something beyond the blackness, and I might be able to with the aid of the delusional brain functioning. Even if it actually doesn't exist, in that moment in time it'll be as real as it needs to be while everything else melts away.

Instead of thinking just scientifically I like to think MORE about the psychological process. Because even if it is inevitably a black void, the individual experience likely won't ever be JUST that. Flashbacks and memories and less active parts of the brain becoming more obvious as the higher functioning parts slow down, I'd think that at some point your brain will be dumbed down to the point where you'll be convinced of the remaining questions and trains of thoughts as facts, and will go into death with them. If in the back and front of your mind you believe there is absolutely nothing, the childlike mindframe of yours at the state will probably be quicker to jump on THAT and convince you for good that it is indeed blackness.

Sorry for the ranty style there but I like thinking about the psychological process one might have at that time. And based on that last little part, I'd rather cherish possibility for something great so my final moments are full of intense joy and bliss instead of fear and hopelessness. I guess this is what religion is good for.

[Reincarnate]

You already know what it's like, though.

Every night when you go to sleep, you go from a state of consciousness to being asleep (sometimes a dreamless sleep).

Have you ever had surgery? You fall asleep without realizing it, then wake up later having not felt any time pass.

You also know what life was like before you were born (nothing).

Death is much easier to intuit when you think of it this way.

[Spenner]

Death is much less specific than those, though. When falling asleep there aren't the same intense stresses and brain activities that would be going on during the time of death; usually it's relaxing and there are thoughts influenced not in the same way that they would be when you know you aren't going to wake up the next day. Drugs intended to knock you out are a lot more specific when it acts on certain receptors-- simply going fuzzy and then ceasing is actually sounding more realistic with a quick type of death. Every time I've had surgery there is a moment of intense but brief anxiety and some psychedelic imagery before falling into a big pit. But when you die you aren't injected with the same things that would make for the same experience.

Life before death was (as far as we can tell) nothing, and that's the end result, but the process of getting there can at least suggest to us something other than that. I guess I'll stop on this topic though-- this is what happens AFTER you die, not what happens during :P though I find the psychological process far more interesting for the time being while we can't further our understanding of what might happen after everything has ceased. Even believing nothingness is wishful thinking, but more likely of course.

[Reincarnate]

No, it's really not.

Tell that to the coma patients who were vegetables for multiple years before waking up. Pretty much a long, dreamless sleep. You can flick consciousness on and off with no continuous spectrum in between. In other words, you can experience nothing. It's just not terribly exciting because it's, well, nothing.

My point is that you aren't approaching this from science. You're approaching it from wishful thinking that isn't rooted in anything factual.

To counter on that, believing in nothingness is NOT "wishful thinking." It's by far the more likely outcome (and by most likely I am saying practically 100%) given what we understand about neuroscience, biology, and physics.

All you're doing is looking at death and saying it's different because it's death, instead of looking at what components are actually involved in providing conscious thought and why deactivation of those components is the same thing that happens in a variety of other scenarios we already experience and understand.

[Spenner]

I'm not denying that you can't experience the same nothing, but the process beforehand is going to be different. I'm not sure how that is automatically seen as fictional just because your mind is going to have different influences psychologically. Dreams will be different and reactions to the same movie will be different with different surrounding conditions at play, death has different conditions than sleeping, even if in the end the same areas are affected. Drugs will typically affect consistent areas in the brain but does that mean with your thinking that the experience will be consistent? Perhaps I've misinterpreted something though.

Sorry if I'm a bit out of the loop, everything I'm sharing is based off self analysis and comparing experiences. I don't have any kind of scientific background >_> a lot of these ideas were also inspired by depersonalization I've undergone, I have a disorder that makes it happen quite often. My perception might be wrapped around some concept that really it shouldn't be wrapped around that I'm unaware of.

Whatever the case, I'd rather be happy and delusional than depressed and aware. If in the end the inevitable is the same.

[albaneenesk8r]

was declared dead twice in my life so far but was revived. I saw nothing when it happened felt nothing heard nothing. just woke up feeling like death.