i completely agree with reincarntion because if you go to a spirtual paridise wouldn't you eventually want to do something else??

im writing to you from beyond the grave, believe me theres life after death. You die, and then you go to the internet.

on a more serious note : i believe in somthing after life, but i dont know what, i was going to type god knows what, but that seems a bit obvious. If there is a god anyway.

Okay. I'm a bit baffled. People walk around with theories and whatnot but to be host we don't know squat.

I myself am of the thought of physical reality, ergo no mind, no spirit and no god/s or whatever. How hard can it be to just wait and abstain ourselves from making outlandish claims like reincarnation or afterlife while we figure out the most basic stuff first?
To be honest, the universe is not "logical" per se, and works in its own little rules and quirks; yet people obsess themselves in having it explained in terms so that they can logically understand and make everyone else understand(aka lazy terms), just like C.S. Lewis did(that Narnia dude) when he negated the findings of quantum physics because they conflicted with his faith, unlike Einstein who suggested the workings of hidden variables because he didn't really dig the probabilistic overtones of the theory.

Today, as science goes forward, things complicate further and further, and it becomes hard to comprehend the world in which we live in, and yet people pop left and right with ready-made answers just like that, and honstly, it all seems pointless to me.

People go around their lives asking "why this, why that, why ME" not quite getting that there may well be no "why" at all, just simple "how's". Since "why" is a human construct to begin with, shouldn't we bother ourselves first with more pressing matters like for example: How do I do to better deal with other people without forcing myself on them? Just to begin with.

My own cup of tea is we LIVE, DIE, we ROT, that's it. We are a bunch of mass anyway and whatever's left of us when we kick that proverbial bucket will continue to be, just in a slightly different configuration.

As for the "near-death experiences", that's been tested and so far whe can't quite tell how they work but one thing's very certain: It's in your brain, and it's just a process like any other, just weirder. Give it some time and wait for an answer on how it works before coming with outlandish stuff.

Hopefully it won't even matter in another few decades-- my fingers are crossed that they'll unlock the secret of eternal life before I kick it.

Don't count on it. Science geared in that direction is considered nothing but a pipedream. But we can always hope.

EDIT: Actually what I meant was that it is still considered nothing but a pipedream. I don't know how it'll be in the future.

I will never die, so it's not important.

Seriously though, reincarnation just seems stupid to me; probably because who I am has changed drastically since I was a kid while most people seem to just be bigger, more mature versions of their younger forms. The reason that's important is that reincarnation seems to dwell on the soul, and it's passing to a new form; but my "soul" has changed enough in my lifetime that think of my younger self as a different person, "him" instead of "me". If there weren't even any shared experiences with this reincarnation, then there would be absolutely nothing in common between us and it would just be another creature, the true me would be dead.

Heaven wouldn't be able to function, as it would cease to be heaven. If you were always given what you wanted without any effort, it would lose its value, and simply become the norm. Personally, I think that when you die, and all your brain cells slowly decompose, your subconscious begins to open up and you relive all your life's memories in vivid detail. (Life flashes before eyes) If you were a good person, you will enjoy the review process, if you weren't, well the repetition isn't going to be fun, now is it?

Hell isn't pain or suffering revolving around your nerve endings, its repeating and truly understanding what affect you had on the world and those around you by every bad action you've ever taken. So generally, religion has it right, you SHOULD be a good person, but not necessarily to please that big bearded guy in the sky who watches you masturbate.

the only thing i've learned is that i have no idea... and anybody who claims to have an idea is usually full of shit.

(not that discussing ideas isn't fun. i wasn't making a disparaging comment about this thread.)

The only thing I know is that I hope that it's not like the church wants to convince us.
The idea living eternally seems more the visualisation of hell than that of heaven to me. Thus I am more comfortable with the reincarnation concept, that or living eternally with our memory deleted from time to time so it doesn't get boring.

Ricky1992:
Also, how the hell do i know or not know that your just figments of my mind and this universe is a complex dream and when it ends i'll wake up or move on to a different period of time or parralel universe?

René Descartes.

I personally hope that we get reincarnated, but I think realistically that death is the end.

I think the whole idea of an afterlife is just kind of a defence mechanism, whereby if all our attempts to stay alive fail, we still think everything's going to be just fine.

I think PS3fanboy (unfortunate choice of name, but ah well) made a good point about consciousness. We all know that chemicals and hormones affect our mind, and different parts of the brain do different things to the mind, but no-one seems to know what the mind actually is. It's incredibly complex and intricate, and it's wholly intangible.

My personal theory is that, just as my body will rot and my atoms will rejoin with the earth around me, my mind will dissipitate and mingle with the cosmos at large. Very His Dark Materials, I know, but to me it just seems to make sense that way. More so than a beardy dude sending me to a fiery pit to be punished, despite the fact my soul has no nerve endings with which to feel pain (e-cookie to whoever gets the reference).

Larenxis:

Ricky1992:
Also, how the hell do i know or not know that your just figments of my mind and this universe is a complex dream and when it ends i'll wake up or move on to a different period of time or parralel universe?

René Descartes.

Apart from that doesn't solve the "Brain in a Jar" philosophy.

Look at it this way. Every 7 years, your personality alters. Every 10 years, your body has rebuilt itself. Even when my consciousness fades, my body will be still be active; decomposing.

As long as there's a chemical reaction, my life will go on. As will everyone else's.

As for the consciousness, that lives on in the memories of others. So whilst there is life, part of my consciousness will be there.

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:
I think PS3fanboy (unfortunate choice of name, but ah well) made a good point about consciousness. We all know that chemicals and hormones affect our mind, and different parts of the brain do different things to the mind, but no-one seems to know what the mind actually is. It's incredibly complex and intricate, and it's wholly intangible.

My personal theory is that, just as my body will rot and my atoms will rejoin with the earth around me, my mind will dissipitate and mingle with the cosmos at large. Very His Dark Materials, I know, but to me it just seems to make sense that way. More so than a beardy dude sending me to a fiery pit to be punished, despite the fact my soul has no nerve endings with which to feel pain (e-cookie to whoever gets the reference).

once i had a really bad trip on shrooms. it was bizarre, there was definitely a seperation between my "mind" and my "brain". there was one aspect of myself that was responding and reacting frantically, while there was a totally seperate part of me (that felt like myself) that was trying to calm down and rationalize the entire experience.

for example, my brain would experience spatial shifts in reality and panic (you seem like you are zooming around the room without walking), while my mind would try to logically determine the cause of the experience.

ultimately i believe i was walking in small distances and the perception delay would morph my visual perspective in the room catching up to where i physically was.... alot of a mushroom trip is just your senses fried out of sync and the hilarity that ensues when your brain re-calibrates to the new response times. a total stupid parlor trick on your own brain.

Thing is, if something wipes out all life on earth, where/when/who will we be reincarnated at/as?

I'm a Christian and i believe in heaven and hell, but people get this distorted description of both. Heaven as I've read in the bible isn't an eternal paradise where your every whim is immediately satisfied. that whould make it self-defeating, because indulging in many of our desires is sin or causes it(Note: I said many not all). Rather it leans more toward a place where our needs and desires are stripped away. While It sounds like it would be horrible losing all of those things. after some thought though, it seems to me more like just not needing those things anymore, but that is my conclusion and everyone must come to thier own conclusions.

While heaven wasn't described in great detail( at least in the new testament, i haven't finshed the old testament yet). Hell is talked about even less, and is usually described as a place where there will be great weeping and gnashing of teeth. So i can't cay anything too concrete on that.

Those are my views on the matter as of the moment of posting, As i'm re-reading the new-testament verses are taking on new meaning so I might learn more that changes these views.

Somethingironic:

Hell isn't pain or suffering revolving around your nerve endings, its repeating and truly understanding what affect you had on the world and those around you by every bad action you've ever taken. So generally, religion has it right, you SHOULD be a good person, but not necessarily to please that big bearded guy in the sky who watches you masturbate.

That is quite similar to what i have got from Inferno. The final level of hell is just a place where you are stripped of all free will and forced to be still for eternity with only your treacherous past to occupy you. But the idea of hell is also about not being able to have the happiness that sin/ wrong doing might have artificially given you.

Dante Alighieri:

The greatest pain is in times of sorrow to remember what it was to be happy.

The Potato Lord:
I'm a Christian and i believe in heaven and hell, but people get this distorted description of both. Heaven as I've read in the bible isn't an eternal paradise where your every whim is immediately satisfied. that whould make it self-defeating, because indulging in many of our desires is sin or causes it(Note: I said many not all). Rather it leans more toward a place where our needs and desires are stripped away. While It sounds like it would be horrible losing all of those things. after some thought though, it seems to me more like just not needing those things anymore, but that is my conclusion and everyone must come to thier own conclusions.

While heaven wasn't described in great detail( at least in the new testament, i haven't finshed the old testament yet). Hell is talked about even less, and is usually described as a place where there will be great weeping and gnashing of teeth. So i can't cay anything too concrete on that.

Those are my views on the matter as of the moment of posting, As i'm re-reading the new-testament verses are taking on new meaning so I might learn more that changes these views.

It's not so much that people get distorded visions, it's "why would they (the dimensions of heaven and hell) even be there in the first place?" for some, like my self.

Also, sins are a thing that rub me the wrong way. Why are basic human actions sins? If they're so bad, wouldn't God have just taken the abillity to do any of them away from us?

Why would he/she/it grant us different privilages depending on how we acted? How we acted only effects us (human beings), it has no bearing on God, if such a thing exists.

Duck Sandwich:
Has anyone ever seen the movie Waking Life? One interesting bit of information in the movie is that there's 5 minutes of brain activity after death, in which the brain creates its own stimuli (the mind has a tendency to do that when it's deprived of external stimuli). And when this happens, one's sense of time is completely out of whack, so 5 minutes of real time could feel like hours, years, or centuries.

So what this could mean is that if one believes in Heaven and Hell (subconsciously), it could very well be real for them when they die. What an eerie thought - that one may die, and go to Heaven, meet up with all their friends and family who've they've crossed paths with in life, only for none of it to be real.

But I suppose if you believed in it hard enough, you could become the Supreme Overlord of the (your own little imaginary) Universe when you die.

Haven't seen the movie, but it's an interesting idea. One of the more bizarre things we've learned from quantum mechanics (and repeatedly re-verified, since it seems so wrong) is that energy exists in all possible states until observed. It's eerily like G-d is creating the universe for us one atom at a time as we live, which I find a disturbing thought. (That experiment where a single electron is fired at a screen with two holes and creates an interference pattern unless someone detects WHICH slot it passes through, frankly freaks me out when I think about it. It and a lot of others seem to imply that consciousness determines the physical structure and behavior of the universe.) Given that fact, it's not hard to project that we could create a heaven or hell for ourselves. (Although a one-soul heaven wouldn't be much of a heaven, I'd think.)

Another old idea (I forget from whence it sprang) is that man is composed of three parts rather than two. Rather than soul and body, we are spirit, soul, and body (animals would be spirit and body.) Were that true, your soul could go to heaven and your spirit could be reincarnated. Or vice versa, I suppose. Your spirit, once separated from your soul, would be free to be reincarnated as anything with a spirit, similar to the Hindu belief. (Perhaps even as a plant.) I don't recall enough of the original material to remember what they believed went where, though.

For me you die, you rot, and are reanimated in the health of other animals. be it via animals eating you carcass, animals eating the vegetables that grow form the nutrients your dead body gives the earth or just because you're a nutter.

i dunno, but i figure that once you die you stop thinking. It's not like death will be boreing or entertaining; it wont be anything. Imagine being a rock, rocks are inanimate objects, which is exactly what you will become once you die.

when i die, imagonna be a ghost that carries around his screaming head by the hair and throws it at people. and it will be AWESOME

shatnershaman:
For me its your dead. Your corpse rots. Done.

Yep, that's what I think happens. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but so be it.

All I can think is that I really hope there is some afterlife (hopefully heaven) cause I sure as hell don't want everthing to go black and thats it.

If when you die your life "flashes before your eyes" how fast does it flash.
Because if it goes at the speed your real life did it could be like this.

You live, you are almost dead, your life starts to flash before your eyes as if you are living it again, in the flashback you're at your death bed, your life starts to flash before your eyes again, once again as if you're living it again, once again your at your death bed in a new flashback , your life starts to flash before your eyes as if you're living it again, etc, etc, etc...

If that's the way it is. I'd want to live a fun life.

(I'm a Christan so I believe in heaven and hell.
If somebody says dinosaur bones prove there was life before us and therefore no Adam and Eve well God put those in the ground to fool us)

j-e-f-f-e-r-s, your reference is Terry Pratchett's Eric.

Personally, I would be happy with anything, so long as I could indulge my passion for history. Or dissipating. But I dislike oblivion. And I'm entitled to- I choose how I like my death.

The Potato Lord:
I'm a Christian and i believe in heaven and hell, but people get this distorted description of both. Heaven as I've read in the bible isn't an eternal paradise where your every whim is immediately satisfied.

it isn't? zzzzzz. then why would anybody want to go there?

just kidding.

i understand what you are saying but it literally makes no sense. we are stripped of our wants and desires? desires and fears are the incentives and penalties that motivate everything around us. without those things there is no impetus for anything to occur.

i'm sure you are imagining some heightened state of being devoid of these debased physical things.. but i think that perspective is contemptuous of humanity and it still fails at describing what heaven is.

so you say that people are confused about what heaven and hell are, but your proposed notion is all more confusing since it asks us to pretend to have a superior concious as apposed to the debased human one that we carry now. when it was this same debased humanity that created guns, the internet, cars, microwaves, hot pockets and everything else that makes up our modern existence.

PS3fanboy:
If somebody says dinosaur bones prove there was life before us and therefore no Adam and Eve well God put those in the ground to fool us)

Why would your God that loves you so much want to fool you?

When religion is gone from the world it will be a happy day.

PS3fanboy:

(I'm a Christan so I believe in heaven and hell.
If somebody says dinosaur bones prove there was life before us and therefore no Adam and Eve well God put those in the ground to fool us)

No, it was, of course, The Flying Spagetti Monster!

Anyways, isn't that a bit odd, theologically speaking. God isn't suppose to stick stuff in the ground "just to fool us", just like he isn't supposed to make entire species extinct.

Nugoo:

TheKnifeJuggler:
Matter can not be created or destroyed, only have it's state changed.

Not actually true. If matter comes into contact with anti-matter, they annihilate each other and convert into energy.

But where does that energy go? Isn't it transferred into other forms of energy?

Mr Wednesday:

PS3fanboy:

(I'm a Christan so I believe in heaven and hell.
If somebody says dinosaur bones prove there was life before us and therefore no Adam and Eve well God put those in the ground to fool us)

No, it was, of course, The Flying Spagetti Monster!

Anyways, isn't that a bit odd, theologically speaking. God isn't suppose to stick stuff in the ground "just to fool us", just like he isn't supposed to make entire species extinct.

Here's another one:
If god put a tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden, WHY didn't he want them to eat from it? Why didn't he destroy it?

1. @ TheKnifeJuggler Matter can be created, during fusion in a star, and destroyed in a nuclear explosion or a black hole

2. After death, the part of you that makes you alive, your "soul" if you will leaves your body and is dissipated into every atom in the universe so what makes you up will become one with everything so your consciousness will never go away, it will become one with everything

3. I really am curious to know, I am often pondering it

Shivari:

PS3fanboy:
If somebody says dinosaur bones prove there was life before us and therefore no Adam and Eve well God put those in the ground to fool us)

Why would your God that loves you so much want to fool you?

When religion is gone from the world it will be a happy day.

Ment to say he COULD have put those in the ground to fool us.

PS3fanboy:

Shivari:

PS3fanboy:
If somebody says dinosaur bones prove there was life before us and therefore no Adam and Eve well God put those in the ground to fool us)

Why would your God that loves you so much want to fool you?

When religion is gone from the world it will be a happy day.

Ment to say he COULD have put those in the ground to fool us.

I'm afraid an imaginary friend can't do stuff like that. Sorry. =(

Nugoo:

TheKnifeJuggler:
Matter can not be created or destroyed, only have it's state changed.

Not actually true. If matter comes into contact with anti-matter, they annihilate each other and convert into energy.

As far as we know, mass cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change form. Matter can become energy, and energy can become matter, but always according to e=m2. So, when a matter-antimatter reaction occurs, the mass of the matter (and antimatter) is converted to energy of equal mass, which propogates outward in verious forms (heat, light, a kinetic shockwave, sound waves, etc), and gets spread out thinner and thinner throughout the cosmos, but never looses anything in quantity. If you ever found a way to capture all the energy that was released in the reaction, and condense it back together into matter, you would have the same amount of mass as the original amount of material used.

Wow what a way to get your first post to introduce yourself lol.

Personally as an agnostic I dont know what to believe and because of that and like everyone else here, I am very confused about it. There is just to many possiblities, no sorry theories on the matter that it can be too much to comprehend at times, although I find that its my personal belief that 'heaven' is what you make it to be.

shatnershaman:
For me its your dead. Your corpse rots. Done.

Absolutey agree. I also like the way you described it, very succinct and I think apt for a conversation about life and death of humans in that in the multiple aeons of time the Earth and the Universe have experienced the timespan that the human race has taken up makes us mere blips who are almost entirely insignificant in history (I'm an atheist and a realist BTW).