What do you think there is after death?

[ELADA]

There are theories of heaven and hell, earthbound souls, reincarnation etc.

What do you expect to see?

[NataEames]

Nothing - i think if there is a soul (which is unexplainable but i know we all feel something like a soul), the soul dies with the body.

[hortonpilot]

Anyone read,
"The After-Death." Dr Cynthia Miller  ?

Horton

[NataEames]

i havent, what does it imply about life after death?

[hortonpilot]

Implies that societies that are unrelated and have no contact have the same ideas about the after life and the soul leaving the body.


Horton

[voodoo scientist]

Implies that societies that are unrelated and have no contact have the same ideas about the after life and the soul leaving the body.


Horton

This is true for many things. It seems we are predisposed to developing certain concepts in certain ways - an example is how most babies call their parents a variation of "mama" and "dada." It's possible to speculate on the universal experiences that cause this, in this case the development of vocal chords invariably producing the sounds "mama" and "dada" as the first real word sound, with the brain then attaching them to the two most frequently interacted with objects in the environment.

Most likely, cultures develop similar understandings of death because of experiences like the process of aging, near-death experiences and the intense grief involved in the loss of a loved one. These are all powerful shaping factors in how individual people develop their view of death, and it's quite plausible they could lead to the situation we have today.

[gone]

What societies are unrelated in this day and age?
There are similar words in the Sanskrit as there are in Latin, this suggest travel and interaction between cultures dating back to the dawn of time (well not literally but almost). Are american indians (apache) and new zealand moari not originally of oriental descent? not forgetting the intuits in the far north (eskimos') all of which are thought to have walked the pleteau when the land was joined, extreme examples there but people and cultures and ideas have always mixed.


There is nothing after death, I don't know that of course but I know people feel so superior that they can't possible imagine non existence.

[NataEames]

Screw them feeling superior, they are too damn scared to even imagine just vanishing.
A person would miss another if he/she left the country because they know they may not see them again but there is a chance that they will. That proves that people are scared of change but they still have hope that something will work out in the end.
A person would be very upset if another died, but they wouldn't be that broken if they thought that they "went on to a better place". That proves that most people are too scared of something just disappearing, that they edit their beliefs to not get scared.
Tell two people that they will die soon. Tell one of them that they will go to heaven and be reunited with their deceased relatives and loved ones and tell the other that when they die they die - the end - they disappear. Then see the difference in the reaction.

[ELADA]

Thats true, a human being's mind is not programmed to accept it when something is there one day and gone the next.

That is too scary to face for most people. Thats why people come up with stories of heaven to tell their kids and beliefs that they will be reincarnated and come back in another life to be a frickin rockstar!

[Enigma]

Since there can never be any objective evidence on the subject I'm withholding judgment. 

I'd like to think I will inhabit another conscious but since neuroscience has pretty much disproved dualism it's a distinct possibility that we just rot in the ground. 

[pert -5]

Since there can never be any objective evidence on the subject I'm withholding judgment. 

I'd like to think I will inhabit another conscious but since neuroscience has pretty much disproved dualism it's a distinct possibility that we just rot in the ground.

We just rot in the ground?  I like that, though the statement is wholly contingent upon what you define as "we."  It'd make a funny birthday card for sure! 

"There is only one Rock that the Hammer of Doubt can not break, and that is the Rock of Experience."
Try Gnana yoga, it's a real trip! 

[ELADA]

Thats it! I want to be cremated!

[NataEames]

lol i dont want to rot in the ground and be maggot food either! Yeech!

[JNathan87]

Same song, different tune. I think conscious existence is some type of eternal limbo that we have to live with for all eternity. You can't kill yourself and expect to completely escape this kind of web we presently find our selves in for the rest of eternity.  You can only make the existence you already live in better.  i think the lives were living now is life after a previous death of some kind. I don't really believe there's any true liberation from life. "You", whatever that really means, can't liberate yourself from this type of universe were in, no more than pi can liberate itself from a circle. That's where I disagree with Nirvana and heaven.

[NataEames]

great, now im gonna get depressed again! Even after i die, ill be stuck with this mind and memories? is there no escape?

[JNathan87]

I think the cliche, materialist view of death and sentience is misguided or incomplete. It assumes that were just molecules or atoms. I see the individual as being more like an inter-connected procession of emotional experiences than just being the machinery of the brain. I think the brain somehow diffracts/filters and partitions a dimension of reality that isn't understood too well. The interconnectedness has to do with the fact that, at a given moment, the brain re-projects information, stored in the physical machinery of the brain, that symbolically ties the individual with the past. If it wasn't for this symbolism of the past, the individual wouldn't be an individual, but a conscious moment or fragment, unconnected to the neurological symbolism that made up the individual in the past. which is the case with severe dementia.

The brain is responsible for creating the illusion of person hood, but that doesn't explain consciousness. There's really no reason why we should be any more conscious than a computer or a wind up clock with the current model. There's no reason why we shouldn't just be unfeeling, pre-programmed, biological machines that react to external stimuli in a fashion predictable to our brain chemistry. Were more than that. Person-hood is a useful illusion that can be shattered very easily through the use of psychedelic drugs. If consciousness was related to self perceptions, then you'd think that people would black out during an intense mushroom trip. You don't black out, though, or cease to be when your memories, self construct, etc etc, all fade away. "You're" still there as a stream of some type of perception, and the the drug allows the brain to encode the knowledge of having lost access to this symbolism that forms the ego for future reference, unlike anesthetics and alcohol.

 I don't think mind necessarily creates matter. I think they just exist as some sort of mutual, duality. I think the basis of mind exists everywhere in the universe and that the physical brain just creates a focal point or a warping of that dimension to make it more partitioned and more complexly filtered than what it normally is.
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[JNathan87]

great, now im gonna get depressed again! Even after i die, ill be stuck with this mind and memories? is there no escape?

I don't think you'll be stuck with your personality and memories when you die, because those are just bi-products of the machinery of the brain, which all rots away anyway. I think if you have hang ups about your memories or self perception, its just best to realize that that's all ultimately illusory. We have our own destiny that we can make at any moment. Some are in less of a position to do so than others, but I think it can be done to varying degrees among everyone once they realize that, ultimately, nobody is manning the controls.

What I was saying was there's probably a cycle of death and rebirth that can't be escaped.  You're more likely to be reborn as a peasant than a king, so I'm not so quick to off myself to become the emperor of a planet. lol. I'd rather stay in a reality where semi-functional democracy exists and try to improve on it.

I think if rebirth does happened, which I think is more of a possibility than current science gives credit,

If there's a process that creates an entity known as "me", why can't that process be repeated in the future? Once you run occam's razor past it, it seems very unlikely that in sea of infinity that certain variables, no matter how unlikely they might be, wouldn't repeat again. Over the course of eternity, anything that's possible is possible no matter how unlikely. Unlikelihood just means that it would happen less often in relation to more probable things. Anything that's impossible is impossible no matter how likely it might be. I know I exist now, so I know that "Me" coming into existence is possible, has a set of tangible, specific conditions, and that those conditions can probably happen again. Its pretty straight forward.

[NataEames]

i dont wanna be a roach in my next life thats for sure! Do you believe people can find a way to remember past lives in that case?

[JNathan87]

i dont wanna be a roach in my next life thats for sure! Do you believe people can find a way to remember past lives in that case?

Nah, I don't think so.

[NataEames]

Nah i dont believe in reincarnation. there is never the same amount of souls on the planet. If there is more, then does that mean that a new soul is created? If there's less, some are odd one out? That doesnt make sense

[dendrites]

after death, I think the mind will go into a sleep state - but a more intense sleep state.

this is what the scriptures say anyway

its impossible to tell really and everything anyone says is all about speculation. I think its a matter or belief than and we can argue about it forever and still not come to a real conclusion

[NataEames]

I don't think the mind or the soul can live without the body.

And this is not a debate, this can't come to a conclusion. This is just people describing their thoughts and ideas.

[Enigma]

I don't think the mind or the soul can live without the body.

It can't.  Neuroscience has shown us that the mind arises from the brain.  They are not separate entities.  This concept can be compared to a computer.  The brain is like the physical computer: the motherboard, CPU, graphics card; the mind is the operating system: windows, OSX, linux...just as an operating system cannot function without a computer,  a mind can't function without a brain.

[SWM]

although neuroscience may tell us that the mind arises from the brain there may be a source from which the brain arises that neuroscience is unable to observe.

if there is something which causes the brain to appear to the senses, that cause of the appearance of the brain, may be something that our scientific oriented minds are unable to think about or observe. its quite amazing when you think about it, don't you think?

[Enigma]

I heard a theory somewhere that advanced human evolution is the universe's attempt to understand itself. 

[Outsider]

There are theories of heaven and hell, earthbound souls, reincarnation etc.

What do you expect to see?

Reincarnation.

[pert -5]

I heard a theory somewhere that advanced human evolution is the universe's attempt to understand itself. 

Let me ask you this Enigma, what are your thoughts or preferences in regards to this theory?

[Enigma]

The universe as a sentient being; I think it's a fascinating theory.  It may not necessarily be valid or testable but I have no doubt that our universe (or multiverse or metaverse) works in ways that our brains cannot even begin to comprehend. 

[Outsider]

The universe as a sentient being; I think it's a fascinating theory.  It may not necessarily be valid or testable but I have no doubt that our universe (or multiverse or metaverse) works in ways that our brains cannot even begin to comprehend. 

It can be easily proven that the universe is sentient from the fact that it contains sentience - if sentience may be defined as an attribute possessed by or contained within a thing, and we are sentient by virtue of the possession of or containment of sentience, then inevitably the universe is sentient by virtue of the possession or containment of sentience through us.

Unfortunately, this is a fairly trivial deduction which does not prove that the universe has some sort of collective or cosmic sentience greater than that of its individual constituents. I doubt it is safe to assume such cosmic sentience exists.

[pert -5]

I doubt it is safe to assume such cosmic sentience exists.

For now, I will quote what I said earlier:

"There is only one Rock that the Hammer of Doubt can not break, and that is the Rock of Experience."