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Theme Changer

 Topic: What about the afterlife?

 (Read 4259 times)
  • 1« Previous thread | Next thread »
  • What about the afterlife?
     OP - January 17, 2013, 12:29 AM
    Since most of us now have disposed ourselves of Islamic tales on the afterlife, where do you guys stand today? There are many irreligious takes on this topic. We have the accounts of near death experiences, but we have religious forces rigorously trying to connect these accounts with their religion. These accounts always seem to perfectly correlate with the heavenly descriptions from the monotheistic religions (I believe we had a thread on this).

    We also have the field of neuroscience, trying to investigate a possible distinction between the mind and the brain. Neuroscientist Sam Harris doesn't totally exclude this possibility. We also have the likes of Deepak Chopra heavily arguing for this, even though the latter should be read with utmost skepticism. The question in neuroscience is, can the mind exist independently from our physical brain, or is the mind a mere byproduct of the brain and the nervous system?

    Even though the general consensus in science seems to be the latter alternative, that the mind is a byproduct of the brain and not distinctive from it, hence the mind withering away with the brain after death, resulting in no more consciousness, hence no more of YOU, I think neuroscience could uncover more compelling answers. Or am I just wish thinking?

    What do you think?
    Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #1 - January 17, 2013, 12:48 AM
    Remember what it was like before you were born?

    Probably the same shit after you die.
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #2 - January 17, 2013, 01:37 AM
    I think it is wishful thinking. What you described would mean that once consciousness is "created" (like in the womb) it will never go away. That sounds weird. plus i think its pretty obvious the brain gives rise to consciousness, that no brain = no consciousness.

    Quote from: sethyboy0 on January 17, 2013, 12:48 AM
    Remember what it was like before you were born?

    Probably the same shit after you die.


    yup
    The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

    William Arthur Ward
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #3 - January 17, 2013, 02:03 AM
    Quote from: Minimow on January 17, 2013, 12:29 AM
    Sam Harris ... Deepak Chopra


    LOL LOL LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
    "That it is indeed the speech of an illustrious messenger" (The Koran 69:40)
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #4 - January 17, 2013, 07:36 AM
    Yeah I don't remember existing before I was born. So based on that, I can only assume that death will be the same. My brief life is just a light bulb being switched on and off.
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #5 - January 17, 2013, 07:41 AM
    Quote from: sethyboy0 on January 17, 2013, 12:48 AM
    Remember what it was like before you were born?

    Probably the same shit after you die.


    Win.   Afro
    Inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit.
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #6 - January 17, 2013, 11:51 AM
    Quote from: sethyboy0 on January 17, 2013, 12:48 AM
    Remember what it was like before you were born?

    Probably the same shit after you die.


    Yes, this is the safest and most reasonable stand on this topic.

    Quote from: Alex Lam Meem on January 17, 2013, 02:03 AM
    LOL LOL LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL


    LOL on Chopra maybe, but Sam Harris? Alright, sometimes the guy reminds me of Peter Singer, as he does not limit his scientific "philosophy" to the social standards of today and he might be an extremist in some ways (I will for instance not applaud his take on scientific morality, which is an utilitarian one or his take on free will/determinism etc), but he is after all a heavyweight in neuroscience and therefore a reasonable name to mention?
    Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #7 - January 17, 2013, 12:07 PM
    Quote from: Minimow on January 17, 2013, 11:51 AM


    LOL on Chopra maybe, but Sam Harris? Alright, sometimes the guy reminds me of Peter Singer, as he does not limit his scientific "philosophy" to the social standards of today and he might be an extremist in some ways (I will for instance not applaud his take on scientific morality, which is an utilitarian one or his take on free will/determinism etc), but he is after all a heavyweight in neuroscience and therefore a reasonable name to mention?


    Alright maybe.

    However... I would say that his rep in general is forever tainted with his immorality. You can't just lie like that to people not familiar with moral philosophy - not cool.
    "That it is indeed the speech of an illustrious messenger" (The Koran 69:40)
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #8 - January 17, 2013, 01:30 PM
    Quote from: sethyboy0 on January 17, 2013, 12:48 AM
    Remember what it was like before you were born?

    Probably the same shit after you die.


    Perhaps you're right. Doesn't make it easy though. I'm not sure if:    nonexistence---->existence = existence--->nonexistence  [I apologise if this doesn't make sense; though not much seems to lately]

    Does 'what it was like before I existed'='what it is like after I cease to exist'?

    Feels sort of like telling a mother who loses a child to cancer: hey, now just pretend it's like all those years before you gave birth to this child - you were fine, right? You were happy before your child existed; your child no longer exists thus you should be happy. Additionally you had, say, five good years with the child; five good years in addition to non existence.

    I sort of feel the same way about consciousness. You're now burdened with identity. Before I could not ask these questions; now I can. Before I did not know life, now I do. Once you know life & experience consciousness... it's kinda tragic to lose it.

    I'm not saying this makes the afterlife true. Everything just seems so futile. Maybe death is peaceful because you don't have to think about this stuff.

    Ok sorry if this post is depressing. Smile everyone.
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #9 - January 17, 2013, 01:34 PM
    Quote from: sethyboy0 on January 17, 2013, 12:48 AM
    Remember what it was like before you were born?

    Probably the same shit after you die.


    Mind blown.

      ohmy
    Quote from: ZooBear 

    • Surah Al-Fil: In an epic game of Angry Birds, Allah uses birds (that drop pebbles) to destroy an army riding elephants whose intentions were to destroy the Kaaba. No one has beaten the high score.

  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #10 - January 17, 2013, 02:38 PM
    Quote from: Jila on January 17, 2013, 01:34 PM
    Mind blown.

      ohmy


    Yeah that's my conclusion was as well. But I'm open to the idea of an alternate plane of existence, if it's a possible for life to exist, it could be possible for an afterlife where thoughts and memories are transferred. BUT I don't believe in what myth has created to want us to believe what it's like.
    ***~Church is where bad people go to hide~***
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #11 - January 17, 2013, 03:53 PM
    Right now, I believe in Valhalla. I mean an afterlife of endless beer sounds pretty great right?  dance
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #12 - January 17, 2013, 04:11 PM
    when your dead there's a reason you're called dead, it's because your fucking dead !

    also I find it odd, when so called believers in the afterlife are completely distraught and bawling for days/months/years when a loved one dies. If you believe in the afterlife you should be happy that's there soul has moved on to a better place because that's what you're really say you believe. That shows me they don't really sincere believe. If you did genuienly believe that when a loved one dies you should be ecstatic, you should be ringing people up telling them "hey guys, I got some great news today, my dad died !"
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #13 - January 17, 2013, 04:14 PM
    My vision of the afterlife somewhat resembles the restaurant scene from Being John Malkovich.
    Life is what happens to you while you're staring at your smartphone.

    Eternal Sunshine of the Religionless Mind
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #14 - January 17, 2013, 04:14 PM
    I absolutely loathe the idea of any sort of afterlife. This life is precious precisely because it will not last for ever. If you extend our existence infinitely, it immediately loses its value.  25 billion years after a supposed day of judgment is all done an over with, why on earth would I want to live another 25 billion, and another, and another?  wacko

    An afterlife in which I was incapable of feeling anything negative would be even more appalling. What is the point of food if you never experience hunger? What is the point of joy if you never experience sadness?  The yin is relative to the yang, and if you take one away, the other immediately becomes worthless.  
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #15 - January 17, 2013, 05:09 PM
    Quote
    An afterlife in which I was incapable of feeling anything negative would be even more appalling. What is the point of food if you never experience hunger? What is the point of joy if you never experience sadness?  The yin is relative to the yang, and if you take one away, the other immediately becomes worthless.


    I concur with this 100%. Brilliant post.

    The religious veiw of afterlife to me is just far to boring. For me IF there was an afterlife, I would want to have the opportunity for adventure. To feel like living, Go through the motion of being a Human in different situations. Experience things I have not during this life. This is what appeals to me more than say sitting in a garden all day with booze and women.
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #16 - January 17, 2013, 08:37 PM
    Quote from: sethyboy0 on January 17, 2013, 12:48 AM
    Remember what it was like before you were born?

    Probably the same shit after you die.

    I believe that our brains and nervous system develop into what we call consciousness, for example it's pretty hard to remember what you did and how you felt when you were only two years old so even though you do not remember your early childhood does not mean that you did not experience it, it existed as a developing part of you're central nervous system and when your body dies that consciousness that housed it ceases to exist afterwards.
    The afterlife is a carrot that religions use to control the masses.
    Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
    ―Erica Jong
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #17 - January 17, 2013, 11:22 PM
    Quote from: serpentofeden on January 17, 2013, 04:11 PM
    "hey guys, I got some great news today, my dad died !"


     Cheesy

    Shit that's depressing though. Easier to think the magical sky god will take care of your loved ones.

    Quote from: ZooBear 

    • Surah Al-Fil: In an epic game of Angry Birds, Allah uses birds (that drop pebbles) to destroy an army riding elephants whose intentions were to destroy the Kaaba. No one has beaten the high score.

  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #18 - January 18, 2013, 01:49 AM
    I'm going to actually post something a little more serious now.

    Your emotions, your automatic (breathing, heartbeat, finger wrinkling) and controlled (farting, calling people dickheads, masturbating etc.) motor functions, and your entire ability to sense the world around you are all a part of your brain.

    When you die, your brain stops functioning entirely. Even if it wanted to, it isn't getting any oxygen to do so. When the single-celled organisms making up your body die, that's pretty much it. Game over.

    Another thing to note is that everything you know and all of your memories physically exist inside of your brain. That's why associating new things with things you already know helps you remember them faster - you build connections between different parts of your brain.

    When you die and your body is buried, it eventually decays and goes back into the earth it came from. No matter what you choose to have happen to you after you die, the atoms that made up your body still exist and are on the earth (except for space launch burial).

    Even if your body is perfectly preserved, it will eventually be swallowed up with the rest of the earth into our Sun. If your body leaves the solar system, it will eventually be caught in some black hole, supernova, or some other form of cosmic phenomena that will destroy it. Once inside some cosmic entity, the atoms that made you become part of it, and could even be changed entirely through nuclear fusion or conversion to energy. What all this means is that any kind of afterlife that relies on your body staying intact cannot last forever, as your body will not.

    As for the concept of a soul:

    Everything you experience comes into your brain through sensory organs. With the brain shut down, you cannot experience life any longer. All of your memories and the wiring in your brain that made you act the way you do are now just dead brain cells in a dead body.

    Seeing as the afterlife is in what seems like an entirely new reality, and your brain cannot generate this reality due to it being dead, your soul must also exist out of our current models of reality and space time. Nothing from your body can go anywhere because for something in you to disappear would either violate the law of conservation of energy or the law of conservation of matter. Because the supposed soul exists outside of reality, and it is impossible (as far as we know) to observe it, anything said about souls and where they go is pure speculation, relying on the assumption that the soul even exists. Your consciousness is merely just your brain thinking thoughts and reacting to sensory input, which doesn't happen when you are dead.
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #19 - March 12, 2015, 01:31 PM
    A couple made a deal that whoever died first would come back and inform the other if there is an afterlife.
    The husband was the first to die. True to his word, he made the first contact:

    "Marion ... Marion "

    "Is that you, Bob?"

    "Yes, I've come back like we agreed."

    "That's wonderful! What's it like?"

    "Well, I get up in the morning, I have sex. I have
    breakfast and then it's off to the golf course. I have
    sex again, bathe in the warm sun and then have sex a couple
    of more times. Then I have lunch (you'd be proud - lots
    of greens). Another romp around the golf course, then pretty
    much have sex the rest of the afternoon. After supper,
    it's back to the golf course again. Then it's more
    sex until late at night. I catch some much needed sleep and
    then the next day it starts all over again"

    "Oh, Bob, are you in Heaven?"

    "No...I'm a rabbit in Shropshire."
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #20 - March 12, 2015, 05:19 PM
    Quote from: Hassan on March 12, 2015, 01:31 PM
    A couple made a deal that whoever died first would come back and inform the other if there is an afterlife.
    The husband was the first to die. True to his word, he made the first contact:

    "Marion ... Marion "

    "Is that you, Bob?"

    "Yes, I've come back like we agreed."

    "That's wonderful! What's it like?"

    "Well, I get up in the morning, I have sex. I have
    breakfast and then it's off to the golf course. I have
    sex again, bathe in the warm sun and then have sex a couple
    of more times. Then I have lunch (you'd be proud - lots
    of greens). Another romp around the golf course, then pretty
    much have sex the rest of the afternoon. After supper,
    it's back to the golf course again. Then it's more
    sex until late at night. I catch some much needed sleep and
    then the next day it starts all over again"

    "Oh, Bob, are you in Heaven?"

    "No...I'm a rabbit in Shropshire."

    what a story....  ended up in a rabbit  ..Helloooooo  Agnostic Muslim  lol.,    " habibi" lol.. No..nooo "habibti"

          
    "Ya habibi" ..yes.. "Ya habibi" is a better word..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwdVD1gGDvA

    Let me see what is my after life?     well I see lot of carbon.. carbon dioxide .. and bit of  Iron from hemes of biology.. that is my after life...
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #21 - March 12, 2015, 06:23 PM
    Quote from: Barioth on January 18, 2013, 01:49 AM
    I'm going to actually post something a little more serious now.

    Your emotions, your automatic (breathing, heartbeat, finger wrinkling) and controlled (farting, calling people dickheads, masturbating etc.) motor functions, and your entire ability to sense the world around you are all a part of your brain.

    When you die, your brain stops functioning entirely. Even if it wanted to, it isn't getting any oxygen to do so. When the single-celled organisms making up your body die, that's pretty much it. Game over.

    Because the supposed soul exists outside of reality, and it is impossible (as far as we know) to observe it, anything said about souls and where they go is pure speculation, relying on the assumption that the soul even exists. Your consciousness is merely just your brain thinking thoughts and reacting to sensory input, which doesn't happen when you are dead.



    I'm a bit confused as to what your conclusion is, is it that you doubt the survival of the soul very much, but you agree no one can say definitively until they die?
    Ha Ha.
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #22 - March 13, 2015, 04:34 AM
    My experience with my great grandmother makes me think that the concept of a soul seems ridiculous. She had dementia and as her cognitive faculties faded, she couldn't recognize even her closest family. She had always been a peaceful woman, but her dementia made her scared and confused leading to her acting out in some very violent ways. Those who believe in a soul, would have to believe that the mere shell of a woman that was left at the end of her life really was the same person. Unfortunately, there was almost nothing about her that resembled her old self as her mind continued to wind down.
    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #23 - March 13, 2015, 06:24 AM
    Remember how before-life was? That's probably a pretty good idea of whats to come
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #24 - March 13, 2015, 11:42 AM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDcZkrl-eoY


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPOfurmrjxo
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • What about the afterlife?
     Reply #25 - March 14, 2015, 02:14 AM
    In terms of living on after you die, I think it's your legacy that lives on, whether that's a good one or a shitty one, and if it's a particularly exceptional legacy (again, whether it's for what good you've done or for being extremely shitty as a person), it will become a legend, and will last even longer. And some legends even go further to become a myth or a martyr or a religion and then they exist as long as the culture that spawned the myth exists.

    But as for your own consciousness existing after death? No, I don't think so. The link between the brain and the stuff housed in the brain is becoming much less mystical these days. The recent success of implanting memories into a living mouse (http://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-implant-false-memories-sleeping-mice) and other breakthroughs in understanding what parts of the brain handle various tasks, and our ability to quantify, measure, predict, etc brain activity, means that the amount we don't know about how the brain works is shrinking.

    For example, you have all probably seen the videos of people controlling either objects on a screen or even prosthetic limbs with their minds. What you may not have seen, because it troubles a lot of people, is research into determining what a person is thinking:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-x7guPIjJI

    or what a person is going to do in the future (can't find the video right now, but here's the scientific journal article that reported it: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/full/nn.2112.html)

    Even dreams can be understood, analyzed, and predicted.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8MZ1twv0cU

    So it's becoming more and more like a "god of the gaps" argument to say that something mystical is controlling our actions and thoughts, when we can see the actual neurons responsible for each and every tiny thing. Once we have complete, individualized brain maps that can show what it is that every single neuron is responsible for (obviously we'll probably never do this for the entire population; but that's not necessary, what's necessary is to do enough people to show that the process works in general), and that nothing we experience happens outside of the brain, it will be less and less of an acceptable position for people to say that stuff is happening outside of our brains.
    Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
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