The life after death or the eternal depresion?

a reply to: ZeroFurrbone

I pass through periods of serious depression and, as the years pass, have found myself locking horns with suicidal, intrusive thoughts. The last bout took me all the way to time and date. I'm okay now and enjoying life a great deal

It means my mind has been red-lining for periods of weeks and months on the subject of life, death and all that surrounds those states.

The likeliest outcome is that, to all intents and purposes, we just die and that's that. No consciousness and no visiting hierarchies of bureaucratic entities ticking the performance sheets. Flowers die, plankton dies and every other life form just dies so the balance of probability says we die too - like a TV that won't work. Sure, science also shows us that energy transforms rather than 'dies' and that doesn't necessarily apply to the energy that fuels our consciousness.

On the other hand, we're a very privileged species to be alive on this ball of ecosystems rolling around an M-class star. Our consciousness is currently unique in the known universe and we're only, so far, seeing gradations of sentience amongst our animal neighbours. We don't know enough right now about conciousness, for me, to be 100% certain that it does end. That little doubt is profoundly awesome when it comes to declining the experience of LIFE - consequences.

I found the tension at the boundaries between sand and sea to be symbolic of our existence. Humans and hominids have trod the beaches of Earth for hundreds of thousands of years and their footprints have been washed away and lost like the signs of their existence. The sun has shone down and the stars at night have flickered whilst their own planets have spun around them. There's such beauty at shorelines, isn't there? Life, sunrises, sunsets etc.

In that (synoptical) context, part of me hopes that there is a means whereby we do get to exist after this life. There is so much beauty in this world that to exist for some few decades across a background of billions of years is heart-rendingly poignant. However, like the poor mayfly's five-minute life, we have no choice if nothingness or more existence waits for us.

i would choose oblivion, finality. an end. if the choice was mine to make.

a reply to: ZeroFurrbone

To dissapear means you will be gone. For eternity. Imagine what will it be once you die to be like this forever and ever and ever.

Every night (if I'm not fighting a bout of sleeplessness) I disappear. Every morning I come back

If I didn't come back I wouldn't know

:-)

Either way - I'm good

It's taken me all the days of my life to keep reaching the same conclusion: while I'm here - and I'm awake, the only thing that matters to me is what matters to me. If that sounds self involved - it really is. But, as it turns out, what matters to me most is everyone else

I'll tell you what - the most peaceful feeling in the world (as far as I'm concerned) comes from the idea that I have the freedom to keep putting one foot in front of the other - towards a future. It's our nature to look forward

Someday I'll go to sleep - this doesn't bother me. What bothers me most is not being able to move forward while I'm awake

a reply to: Spiramirabilis

...some people perhaps 'need' a reason to believe there is an afterlife/soul.
I'm not one of them, I don't give a toss either way lol

a reply to: Cogito, Ergo Sum

Hi,
I had no idea that Journal SSE had papers on bigfoots and such. The homepage sites :

Peer-reviewed research on consciousness, physics,
alternative energy, healing, and more.

I would be interested to read some of these papers on crop circles, could you provide me with some? Thanks.

The other one 'The Journal of nervous and mental disease' description:

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease is the world's oldest independent scientific monthly in the field of human behavior. Articles cover theory, etiology, therapy, social impact of illness, and research methods. Devoted to clinical psychiatric research and studies in the social, behavioral, and neurological sciences, the journal's articles are useful to clinicians with patients suffering from mental health problems.

Indeed the papers states no proof or evidence of reincarnation, it provides cases where science itself doesn't have the answers for.
Although there were indeed many cases he studied that were 'fake' and could be explained due to family problems or illness.
Many cases involve kids and you could ask, did their parents had something to do with it? Some have their suspicion others he had no explanation.

The question is not if there is life after death, because there definitely is, (which is imo just recycling of the body) others live because something has died (but than you can ask what is life and the circle continuous)
The bigger question is what happens to the mind/soul/consciousness? To me it sounds rather weird that science states consciousness is just a byproduct of brain-activity, no? Crazy coincidence.

That said, i apologizes saying 'science proofs reincarnation is real' which it doesn't say specific but it does not contradicts it either, so saying it isn't real also is scientifically false i believe.

I have to read more on the ancient Egyptians as they were 'specialists' in death and the afterlife. Our knowledge regarding isn't any better than their believes. Maybe the 'Book of The Dead' isn't just a fairytail.

originally posted by: intergalactic fire
a reply to: Cogito, Ergo Sum
I would be interested to read some of these papers on crop circles, could you provide me with some? Thanks.

www.dcca.nl...

www.cicap.org...

It is a journal that looks at fringe claims and phenomena that fall outside of the mainstream and are not supported well enough to get published in real science journals.

Indeed the papers states no proof or evidence of reincarnation, it provides cases where science itself doesn't have the answers for.
Although there were indeed many cases he studied that were 'fake' and could be explained due to family problems or illness.
Many cases involve kids and you could ask, did their parents had something to do with it? Some have their suspicion others he had no explanation.

That someone (an MD) doesn't have an explanation, means no more than that though. This doesn't make reincarnation more likely, or mean that reincarnation will necessarily be the explanation.

The question is not if there is life after death, because there definitely is, (which is imo just recycling of the body) others live because something has died (but than you can ask what is life and the circle continuous)
The bigger question is what happens to the mind/soul/consciousness? To me it sounds rather weird that science states consciousness is just a byproduct of brain-activity, no? Crazy coincidence.

Have you looked at the neuroscience concerning this subject? There are some good blogs and articles around. There is no reason, nor any real evidence to suggest that consciousness is other than an emergent phenomena (of the brain). There is no "us" in the sense of something that directs mental processes. Quite the opposite it seems, the conscious part, the part with which we self identify is an illusion created by the brain that gets a lot of credit it doesn't deserve. It gets much worse for mind body dualists, experiments have been pointing to something for quite a while that many neuroscientists themselves are unwilling to accept (because it seems so counter intuitive and a certain amount of fear because it is so contrary to accepted beliefs).

It has even been postulated that the effect of "consciousness" might simply be epiphenomenal and something that arises naturally out of complexity.

The only ideas supporting consciousness of religious/new age type (that seems to have at least some genuine science as a basis) appears to be the Orch OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction) model of consciousness proposed by Hameroff and Penrose, which attempts to merge biological functions and quantum effects. Though not well accepted by science (it has been termed a "pixie dust" explanation) and Penrose himself agrees it has more than a few holes and assumptions. It allows (as a possibility) for consciousness to exist independently.

Afaik Penrose also sees the possibility for a type of "proto consciousness" to exist in matter. Though he seems unwilling to go into it too much, probably because he realises that it isn't based on any good science. Although neural systems are too large for quantum effects to be relevant, Hameroff claims that these effects are relevant to the microtubules within neurons themselves (at least as a plausible possibility). It was also claimed that nervous system conditions didn't allow for such effects (because of noise/decoherence) which need specially controlled laboratory conditions, such as close to absolute zero temperatures, to be created/ studied. Yet it now appears that quantum effects play a part in photosynthesis, there are also experiments indicating that the "compass" of certain migrating birds relies on quantum effects such as entangled electron pairs and so on.

Fascinating, but the consensus is what it is, for good reason (so far at least).

That said, i apologizes saying 'science proofs reincarnation is real' which it doesn't say specific but it does not contradicts it either, so saying it isn't real also is scientifically false i believe.

No problem at all. I only knew about the journal through looking into claims that Meldrum has published peer reviewed studies involving bigfoot in mainstream science literature. I found 0 such studies with the papers themselves basically pseudo science.

There really is quite a bit of science that (indirectly) contradicts the claims of reincarnation.

As to the op, I would choose non existence, oblivion, rather than any type of afterlife as popularised by religious and new age claims. I have some doubts that people who look forward to such a thing have thought about what this implies, thoroughly.

ps. not sure if you are interested, but some abstracts of papers re the Hameroff Penrose model.

www.sciencedirect.com...

search.proquest.com...

and some rebuttal of their ideas.

journals.aps.org...

Can't vouch for the journals and there are some good videos around that explain it all anyway, not many debunking videos though. If you are interested at all, that is. Whether feasible or not it at least does originate from a distinguished scientist who does have some understanding quantum physics (to the extent that anyone does lol), unlike most of the Deepak Chopra type of stuff.