Death - Where do we go from there? Thread

Everybody is afraid of dying. Nobody is quite sure where and what happens to us when we die. Religions will tell you there's a heaven, hell, afterlife, or some wonderful place your soul go when you die.
When we look at this through a scientific perspective we know that our brains shutdown when we die, and when our brains shutdown there is nothing. Complete nothingness. Through eyes of science, you have no soul. There is only the mental and physical you.

My opinion on this is that when we die we are dead. There's no afterlife. It's like being unconcious or like being asleep. Once your dead you won't even know it. It's pretty scary but I decided that the afterlife is just a fib that people made up to explain what happens when somebody dies.

Your opinions on this? I respect everyones opinions, religious, scientific, other. Just be logical

I'm inclined to agree, though I admit I have no way of knowing.

It seems to me that the whole "You go somewhere nicer when you die" thing lets people get on with their lives without stressing about ceasing to exist.

If that's the case, then religion does serve a useful purpose in keeping a lot of people sane.

*me is a Christian...

As such yes, your brain does cease to function, the 'you' in this world stops existing. The 'you' however would go to a better place.

My spin on this is kind of based round by variation on Christianity, as in that God isn't a creator and more of a guide for everything (I went on about this in a creation thread somewhere), so what happens is our soul, our 'me', just hangs around somewhere whilst whatever happens afterwards goes on in the soul, kind of like dreaming.

A way to think about it is when you go to sleep, the 'you' stops existing. You have no awareness of self, but when you dream you seem to have a self. Science says it's just a memory of self existing in a subconscious state, you only remember something like 5% of your dreams, and after that when you remember your brain inserts a 'self' in place of the memory.

You can list REM details all day, but you still don't know how you dream.

You can go on about heaven all day, but you still don't know if it's real.

Either way, if you die and go to a better place or if you just stop, you can't affect the 'real world', so why worry. Whatever happens, you can't change it, so why bother trying.

"Fear not of death for death is only another rite of passage." -Neurowave
(neurorule #924 : using for as a conjunction makes you sound smarter)

Seriously though, I'm not afraid of death.

Accucially, not all religions believe in a afterlife. Take buddism for example. Really hard-core buddists believe that there is no reality, that there is no truth (kind like the matrix ). So what they do when they meditate is they slowly realize more and more what dosnt' exist (ie: That light isn't really bright, infact there is no light. I am not in this room, I do not exist, this room does not exist, This building does not exist. This city dosn't exist, and so on and so on.) and once they've eleminated everything they are left in this void of nothingness known as nirvana. (YES! That's nirvana, not a heven thing.). So these buddists have no belief in a god or afterlife, because they believe it dosen't exist, along with everything else.

one thing that ppl have been trying to figure out (as far as i can tell) is how the brain actually creates a personality
all it is is complex chemical and electrical factory
but, as said in the matrix by morpheus: What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste, and see, than real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

When I die, I die, end of story, why waste time thinking of what could happen? You could die in 2minutes and thats 2minutes youve wasted thinking that you could die

it is actually pretty easy to think u cease to exist when you factor in all the people (souls) there are out there. i do think that we dont cease to exist only because there are too many questions and "miracles" out there. i do believe that god is real but i dont think that it is that simple. i dont think he is ruler, or at least the only ruler. i think that he is competing somehow with a bunch of gods and heaven is only false motivation. i also believe that right and wrong are only concepts of man and they have no part in the big scheme. same thing with god and evil

Actually, when you die, you happen to be in a different time, different place, different newborn person.

i've been a good boy, i get to go to Heaven.

nice topic i agree man
that is the truest thing what do we do

as the wise man says "There are two certainties in life; taxes and death"

No you are not dead after you die.

You come back and start a new level. Just like a video game.

All the stuff you did in the life you died in? It is on a clipboard that the guys in charge look at.

So if you were bad in the past life? You are gonna have to pay in this life.

If you are good in this life, I mean really good, you get to skip the next level and go to the one past that.

So if you want to get ahead, don't do mean, bad, hurtful things. Otherwise you will have to live thru what you did to others the next time you are here.

Maybe if you were mean to women, you come back as a woman.

I will have to go with the first post you just stay down like you are uncosius just like whern a machine dies you don't get a new machine. We are like machines to we listen to the thinking proccessor/brain and it lets us do stuff. when it bies it doesn't get a new life. And if it did when people die temperaly by an electric shock which unfortunatly tested they don't go into another place then when they reawake they don't get suck out and in there same old body

that really dont make much sense, but oh well
thats what forums are for!

"Some1_Call_911 wrote: I respect everyones opinions, religious, scientific, other. Just be logical

That is a hippocracy. Religion and logic are arch-enemies.

I am interested in this topic, and I'm glad you brought it up. Everyone here has differing opinions, but the most of you lot feel that when we die, that's end game.

@ Neurowave - Buddhism is not as simple as saying "nothing exists". Buddhists feel that in meditation, if they can tune out all of the distractions and idle thoughts in this world, and focus on self, that they can attain true peace. Buddhism is all about the Five Precepts and the Eightfold Path, which basically is all part of the path to Enlightenment: every Buddhists eventual goal. Saying nothing exists is like a cynical atheism mixed with scientology.

I don't believe in God as the ruler of being, and I don't belong to any religious denomination. I think that their is a higher force at work beyond our perception, but I don't feel that it relates to our behavior in this life. I see religion as a universal law syndicate...and bare with me here. Religion basically keeps everyone in line for the most part. "Do good, go to the most beautiful and serene utopia imaginable. Do bad, you get f*cked and become the b*tch of a giant red demon named Lucifer. But be careful, someone is watching you at all times." Invade the privacy of a man's mind and you have him conquered. I know I sound cynical and probably morbid to some of you who are very religious, but I guess I'm just trying to say that I don't follow any of that.

I figure when someone dies their spiritual conscience or soul or whatnot goes to wherever it is that they would like to be for eternity. Like your own personal hideaway for the rest of time. It's not anything that can be documented, but I guess it's just something to look forward to and to give me a reason not to think there's no point to life. Sorta like my own religion. *sigh* What a hippocracy.

- Edited By 40ozFreak On Tue 24th, Dec 2002 @ 1:32:54am

in ancient egypt, the pharoh dudes utlized religion as a means of mass control, quite literally. From some the hieroglyphics left behind, the rulers essentially had profession priets, who would do things that dealt with sleight of hand and other smoke and mirror stuff used in modern day magic, and they would invoke the, for the lack of a better phrase, "fear of god" in the people. If you look at the egyptian pantheon of gods and godesses, they have an unusually high proportion of gods of death and decay, and night and judgement, and thing like that.

my .0002 cents on the whole dying thing is that when you are dead, your dead, becuase once your brain is dead, there is nothing left for you to think with, leaving you with a sort of everything going black, and never waking up...the sort of drifting in an endless sleep kind of thing

i know people woh are brain dead!
but they are like kinda living
well sorta

their brain still functions, just not fully...

well
the people yesterday, they didnt have anything that functioned
jsut their AK

- Edited By NavySEAL On Fri 27th, Dec 2002 @ 12:45:21pm

and that probably not that well...

:paranoid:

Yeah, those damn AKs...always jamming up on ya. I prefer an H&K MP5..

- Edited By 40ozFreak On Sun 29th, Dec 2002 @ 11:31:00pm

m4 masterkey rulez the day, but back to the subject at hand...

Reincarnation.

If you take a step back and think about it, we are all made from some other dead organism, whether its human or not. The food I eat today, was once a person whos remains were soaked up by flowers and plants; that will be turned into new cells in my brain, my arm, my heart, that are part of me. So really, there is no "you", its millions of pasts, crammed into one body, run by one mind. So maybe it's many "things" that run our mind, our body, and make our consience/subconsience decisions.

- Edited By albino.african On Tue 31st, Dec 2002 @ 10:42:30pm

but do we take in those organisms thoughts and memories when we eat them?

PsychoFarmer wrote: in ancient egypt, the pharoh dudes utlized religion as a means of mass control, quite literally. From some the hieroglyphics left behind, the rulers essentially had profession priets, who would do things that dealt with sleight of hand and other smoke and mirror stuff used in modern day magic, and they would invoke the, for the lack of a better phrase, "fear of god" in the people. If you look at the egyptian pantheon of gods and godesses, they have an unusually high proportion of gods of death and decay, and night and judgement, and thing like that.

my .0002 cents on the whole dying thing is that when you are dead, your dead, becuase once your brain is dead, there is nothing left for you to think with, leaving you with a sort of everything going black, and never waking up...the sort of drifting in an endless sleep kind of thing

There's a simple answer to this question: You don't drift into endless sleep, you simply don't exist anymore. It is, of course, beyond human comprehension to imagine this, because no matter what, you feel something. When your dead, you don't feel like your sleeping, you simply don't feel. Maybe on death you just blink out and soon are either chatting with angels or being stepped on by imps