The afterlife

When we die we're dead. It's over. Even as a kid when the concept of living forever in heaven was discussed i didn't like it!

howamidifferent wrote: »

I believe that in the circle of life we feed and grow on vegetables, fruits, meat and fish. We take our nutrients from these foods. When we die, if buried we rot and return to the various minerals and nutrients we absorbed and give these back to the earth. The earth uses these nutrients and minerals to enrich other plant and animal life. So we live on in the sense that our constituent molecular structure is reused for new life. Not a new version of me but of life made from me.... And I'm cool with that.

Even better is you were born in a star, and you'll be a star again.

Yurt123 wrote: »

Does it ever scare anyone of ye when you really think about it though that when your dead that your gone for forever and ever and ever no matter what happens… freaky if you actually give it some real thought

Time is like a companion...

Joking aside, yes and no. But it makes me realise I have to do it now.

Reading so much mythology as a kid Valhala for me sounded cool but I am no warrior so I'd end up on that damn ship made of fingernails.

1. 'Life is a spark between two eternal darks.'

2. 'Life is a sigh between two secrets.'

3. 'La vie est brève. Un peu d'amour, un peu d'espoir, et puis, bonsoir.'

All true for me.

tac

SirBorbey, I would say that faith could be very important.
It seems that religions a long time ago had a solid purpose for humanity.
One purpose at least was to guide our existential insecurity, to an answer of some kind that allowed us to keep our nerve and to ground our morals for cultures to stand on and grow.
A brace for our spirit under the stress of knowledge and the bright light of materialist advancement("lucifer").

Unfortunately that light got a bit too bright and I think science tried to take more than it was owed too quickly; this might or might not be categorized as atheism...Science trying to step into the area of faith with a counter-position of nihilism. Reactive nihilism, I don't know if that is impressively helpful or impressively insane.
That is one reason I was and still might be a supporter of anarchism.
Any way to level of this capitalist and technical advancement to allow some groundingvia culture and spirituality.
The anarchist way has little need for faith or religion I think though(at least at a large organised scale).
But it is also weakened by the theory that it can not hold up well with organizing a world that is interconnected more and more now.

With all this in mind, I do think that faith is needed once more in some way.
Not to give people hope of another life. I am not sure that will provide them with the right motivation to fully realise and live this life.
Instead as a way to create a foundation for new culture. To stabilize the ignorant in society with a moral framework.

Everything may be just fine as it is. It might be we have to learn these things the hard way as a species.
sometimes I wonder though, if we will make it much further without destroying ourselves. Maybe it has already happened before. Maybe even on other planets "close by".

ps. Just remembered, Jordan Petersons lectures cover this stuff(Free on youtube) using Nietzsche and Jung's philosophies.
His basic idea is that religion was used a s away to organise large groups and nations who had different cultures, but needed to work together.
Religions formed as a way to find similarities in the foundational morals of these cultures and bring them all together under those same principles.
This is what i was trying to say earlier in a very terrible way ...

We need faith founded on common principles, as our species grows and becomes more interconnected.
However, these principles can no longer just come from an old book or solely from the new.
They must come from our cultures commonalities, whatever they may be in principle.
I sometimes think everything is as it should be. Simply because evolutionary wise, organisms seem to adjust in the correct way out of necessity.

Yurt123 wrote: »

Out of interest do many of ye think that when we die that that's the end of the road for us or that we're sent to heaven for eternity instead?

I myself do not tend to think in terms of "I think X is true" so much as I think in terms of "I think the majority of the evidence at this time points towards X".

Quite often the evidence is split between more than 1 conclusions however. You find situations where 60% points one way. 40% another and so on.

But the after life is one where we are on slightly firmer ground. While our knowledge of the workings and machinations of human sentience and consciousness is incomplete........ 100% of the data we DO have on it connects it to the brain while 0% of any data at this time suggests any potential disconnect between the two........... let alone any level of survival of the former following the biological death of the latter.

So I see zero evidence suggesting the existence of an after life and plenty of evidence showing the opposite. And when not some, not most, but ALL the evidence points one way and not the other........... I can do nothing but go with the former.

Yurt123 wrote: »

As much as I like the idea of eternal life I ain't buying it!

I can not honestly say myself that I like the idea of an eternal after life at all. Much less the specific after life espoused in religions local to me.

In general I think the idea of an eternal after life cheapens the value of our actual life here in the same way that you would cheapen gold if you flooded the market with 1 million tons of it tomorrow.

Having an eternal after life makes many actions and sacrifices in this life meaningless for example. Take the Christian Fables for example where their "god" character is said to have "given" his only son to us who in turn "sacrificed" himself/itself as a modern day version of a scapegoat for our sins.

Now the immorality of the concept of scapegoating aside......... the Nazarene in question is said to be sitting at the right hand side of his father in a state of eternal bliss and dominion. First and foremost this is hardly the result of a god having "given" us his son....... at best he LENT us his son for an non-existent fraction of eternity. And rather than having "sacrificed" his life for us he can be said at best to have traded up.

In this way the concept of an eternal life makes a mockery of anyone who actually has sacrificed themselves for a person, place or an ideal. And the "given a son" narrative is an outright mockery and insult to any parent who actually has suffered one of humanities greatest emotional turmoils............ that of outliving their own children.

That is just the eternal life in general however. But specific ones like the Christian narrative are even worse. Christopher Hitchens when he knew he was dying but it quite well. He said being told you are about to die is like being at the greatest party in the world, getting a tap on the shoulder, and being told you have to leave and the party will go on without you.

Under the Christian Narrative however he felt it was like being told you can NEVER leave the party, and what is more (in threatening undertones) while you are there the host positively INSISTS you have a good time.

So not only do I see ZERO reason to think there is, or suspect there to be, any after life.......... I see plenty of reasons to be quite glad of the fact too. The transience, rarity and delicacy of life defines its worth and value. And I am happy with the state of affairs.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Yurt123 wrote: »

Out of interest do many of ye think that when we die that that's the end of the road for us or that we're sent to heaven for eternity instead?

I myself do not tend to think in terms of "I think X is true" so much as I think in terms of "I think the majority of the evidence at this time points towards X".

Quite often the evidence is split between more than 1 conclusions however. You find situations where 60% points one way. 40% another and so on.

But the after life is one where we are on slightly firmer ground. While our knowledge of the workings and machinations of human sentience and consciousness is incomplete........ 100% of the data we DO have on it connects it to the brain while 0% of any data at this time suggests any potential disconnect between the two........... let alone any level of survival of the former following the biological death of the latter.

So I see zero evidence suggesting the existence of an after life and plenty of evidence showing the opposite. And when not some, not most, but ALL the evidence points one way and not the other........... I can do nothing but go with the former.

Yurt123 wrote: »

As much as I like the idea of eternal life I ain't buying it!

I can not honestly say myself that I like the idea of an eternal after life at all. Much less the specific after life espoused in religions local to me.

In general I think the idea of an eternal after life cheapens the value of our actual life here in the same way that you would cheapen gold if you flooded the market with 1 million tons of it tomorrow.

Having an eternal after life makes many actions and sacrifices in this life meaningless for example. Take the Christian Fables for example where their "god" character is said to have "given" his only son to us who in turn "sacrificed" himself/itself as a modern day version of a scapegoat for our sins.

Now the immorality of the concept of scapegoating aside......... the Nazarene in question is said to be sitting at the right hand side of his father in a state of eternal bliss and dominion. First and foremost this is hardly the result of a god having "given" us his son....... at best he LENT us his son for an non-existent fraction of eternity. And rather than having "sacrificed" his life for us he can be said at best to have traded up.

In this way the concept of an eternal life makes a mockery of anyone who actually has sacrificed themselves for a person, place or an ideal. And the "given a son" narrative is an outright mockery and insult to any parent who actually has suffered one of humanities greatest emotional turmoils............ that of outliving their own children.

That is just the eternal life in general however. But specific ones like the Christian narrative are even worse. Christopher Hitchens when he knew he was dying but it quite well. He said being told you are about to die is like being at the greatest party in the world, getting a tap on the shoulder, and being told you have to leave and the party will go on without you.

Under the Christian Narrative however he felt it was like being told you can NEVER leave the party, and what is more (in threatening undertones) while you are there the host positively INSISTS you have a good time.

So not only do I see ZERO reason to think there is, or suspect there to be, any after life.......... I see plenty of reasons to be quite glad of the fact too. The transience, rarity and delicacy of life defines its worth and value. And I am happy with the state of affairs.

You're in need of a good aul NDE.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Pat D. Almighty wrote: »

You're in need of a good aul NDE.

That is something of a non-reply, no idea what you are talking about here. We are talking about the after life on this thread. NDE is the experience of coming NEAR death (the clue is in the name) so it is hardly applicable.

NDE is as much an experience of the after life as me walking up to a plane in Dublin City Airport and then walking away from it is an experience of a sun holiday in morocco.

That said though, the attempts to link NDE to evidence for an after life have been as desperate as they have been flawed. No aspect of NDE supports any claims of the after life. And pretty much every aspect of NDE can be repeated in controlled situations.

For example one of the most oft cited/references aspect of NDE is OBE, the feeling of being outside ones own body.

Firstly this can be evoked in healthy people, let alone people dying on a table. We can do this in many ways, like drugs or physical stimulation (such as rotary force used to train astronauts). In fact most people reading this post can evoke it themselves at home in simple ways. There is a simple table top way to make you feel like your hand is apart from your own body. And with practice this can be extended to the entire body.

Secondly however it has been tested in controlled studies by peoples biased strongly TOWARDS finding evidence for the after life. Such as Dr. Sam Parnia.

What Parnia and others have done is notice the areas that the majority of OBE reports in hospitals claim to occupy. Such as floating above their own body. They then randomly placed unmissable and highly in-congruent objects in positions only observable by people IN those claimed positions.

Not only did they not get significant results of people reporting having noticed such objects, they got ABSOLUTELY NO positive hits of people reporting seeing those objects. Not. One.

Now I am sure one could claim that people finding themselves outside their body might be a bit distracted so we could expect them to miss such objects, even if they were garishly in-congruent with the environment. But to have absolutely ZERO results of any kind? One has to be forgiven for harboring doubts the people actually are occupying the position they claim to have experienced occupying.

So really your one-liner non-comment does not appear to be applicable or relevant in any way, as well as being quite assumptive about what I have or have not actually experienced in my life. But by all means expound upon it if you think there is some relevance there being missed.

Ah sure when you have one, you'll get over yourself.

Black Swan wrote: »

Pat D. Almighty wrote: »

...you'll get over yourself.

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Thank you

As an atheist. I always imagined that we are no different than the dead fly on the window sill. But it's also very hard to imagine a love one being like that.
I knew the day would come where I would have to put more thought into it.
"Matter is neither created or destroyed" we live on, through the molecule level. Turning into flowers, others anaimals etc.
But the true after life is the same as every other animal on this planet. Through our kids. Procreation. Basic function of all animals.