Our inevitable fate.

Firstly, I apoligize if this is the wrong forum, thought it might go in here so here goes!!

I'm going to ask you good people about the inevitable fate that we all carry, that being death.

What do you, as a person, believe happens when you die? Are you a Christian & hope you get into Heaven? Do you believe that that can last forever? Or maybe you're an Agnostic? What do you think happens when you die?

Does everyone here believe in a kind of afterlife? Whether that be roaming the world again as a ghost, or coming back as a different species?

I myself don't believe there can't be nothing after death. Just holding on to the hope that it's something good!

So anyway, I'm very interested to find out other peoples views are on this. Come one & all from every different religion/belief/background there is!

reply to post by b6x87


I've always seen it as there being 2 possibilities - not complicated

you die - and that's it - nothing

you never die - you just keep shifting

if you die - and there's nothing - it's so simple - makes you look at your life differently - whether it becomes more significant and valuable - or you come to the conclusion - it's all meaningless

of the 2 choices - I really believe we keep shifting

whatever our consciousness is - I personally don't see it disappearing

past that I have no real idea - so I try to stay open to the possibilities

here sth i already posted on another thread here:

something really helped me to be a little calmer about death and questioning the sense of all - it was an explanation in a book of Joseph Murphy. he said, that when you look at nature you will diagnose, that everything makes perfect sense: everything works perfectly together, develops and always becomes something better or new. that is the same with death. it makes perfect sense, because it is another development that leads to something better - otherwise death wouldnt even exist. nature doesnt do something senseless or something for disprofit.
i absolutely believe, that when we die we will transform to something better - it will be kind of like : "why were we so scared about that - it is so much better".
that thought of murphy seemed so logical to me and helped me a lot to deal with death and the feeling of insanity. for me every new development cant be senseless and also shows that nothing is infinite.

Nothing happens,you rot away,lack of oxygen to brain,die....no conscious,no thought...much like being asleep...the fact people think this is bad astounds me...makes everything 10X better imo... Never be afraid of nature,she gives you life and takes it away....she knows whats best more than you do!

Its a dark subject. lol

Death, the final frontier, to boldly go where everyone has gone before!

And so it goes.

Death, i have seen it..and of course everybody will.

I am afraid and I am not afraid.

I think i have it alllllll figured out yet its gone when I try to put it into a logical construct.

Hope comes to an impass with the death of a loved one.

The world you once knew intimate, is no longer.

Darkness seems to be the only hope,

when you sing this is the end.

Its not as late as it seems......

a old friend has come,

your Grand Father smiles, opens his arms...

all is not in vain,

the wheel turns

i start again.

wr Elias

If I remeber correctly, the tale goes that when Socrates was being executed for blasphemy (forced to drink poison hemlock) he was given until sundown to drink it. But instead he took it in the early afternoon. All his students wailed and said, "Why don't you wait? Aren't you afraid?"

To which he replied, "Death seems to hold one of two possibilities: the ascension to a higher level of conciousness or it will be like going to sleep. Either way I don't see any reason to fear it."

Thinking about this always makes me feel better.

This was all my awful paraphrasing but that is the gist. In case anyone does not remeber, he was prosecuted for blasphemy but it was basically because he was a local troublemaker and rabble rouser. He was charged with death and judged by a panel of about 70 people. He had the chance to offer his own idea for punishment. The death charge was actually meant as a nice gesture because the panel was likely to select whatever punishment he suggested as opposed to death. However, his suggestion was that the town hold a feast in his honor. The panel was insulted by his attitude and went with the death sentence. He could have escaped death, as his students put into motion many escape attempts and no one really wanted to enforce his sentence, but he refused to escape even when given the perfect opportunity saying that abiding by the city's laws had given him 70 good years and if they decided to take his life he would continue to abide. Truly a man that didn't fear death.

Is this a poll?

Okay, here's my vote.

Death = over. The worms get to eat. Thassit.

I think nobody knows for sure,and it's not a "cop out " to admit either. The inability to tolerate ambiguity is one of the hallmarks of stupidity. Some things are just mysteries and that's the way it is.

Nevertheless, if I had to guess, I'd say "nothing happens, you die and that's it." My reasons for saying this are that the physical brain seems so intimately linked to consciousness. You can cause all kinds of funky effects at a very fundamental level of a person's personality just by removing a bit of tissue here or injecting a chemical there. Look at advanced patients, for example, or people in comas or with large areas of their frontal lobes missing. These people are still "alive" yet they don't really have consciousness in any meaningful way (or have radically altered/diminished consiousnesses). given this, when the brain rots under 6 feet of dirt, why would you expect anything other than oblivion.

And to this, I'd also like to add that personally I HOPE there is no life or awareness after death. 80 years of this nonsense is more than anyone should have to bear! I've had a good run but when it's time to go I'm sure I'll be more than ready for an eternal rest.

The way I see it, consciousness is a form of energy. The law of conservation of energy states that this energy can never be destroyed, so death is not the end.

In reply to the last anonymous poster, I respectfully disagree. I believe that the brain acts only as a conduit for consciousness, not an originator of consciousness.

But that's what decides it all really I think. If the brain makes consciousness, then when the brain dies, consciousness ceases to exist. If the brain simply channels a consciousness that exists separate to its physical matter, then there is no reason that consciousness wouldn't continue even after the physical death of its present conduit.

Well, when you die, you're brain rots, and so does your conscious mind. For a person to continue their existence, there would have to be a transfer of the mind. For this to happen, there would have to be a God. I don't believe in God, so I don't believe in any afterlife.

Why would there have to be a God? Couldn't it just be some method of nature that we don't understand yet? I don't see why there needs to be a God for consciousness to survive death.

Originally posted by TheStev
Why would there have to be a God? Couldn't it just be some method of nature that we don't understand yet? I don't see why there needs to be a God for consciousness to survive death.

But there isnt...conscious is created in the brain,its a survival tool and result of evolution just like anything else in our psychology etc..fight or flight blah blah.So when the brain dies,all electrical activity ceases hence no afterlife...well no conscious one anyway,an afterlife in the sense of your energy being reused by earth and her inhabitants is completely understandable..

Originally posted by TheStev
The way I see it, consciousness is a form of energy. The law of conservation of energy states that this energy can never be destroyed, so death is not the end.

This doesn't make much sense to me. The raw energy that courses through your brain will still exist in the universe, but that doesn't mean it necessarily exists in the form of consciousness.

Consciousnessness, in my opinion, is not JUST a form of energy. It's a kind of STRUCTURED energy. And there is no law of conservation of structure: quite the contrary...structures of all sorts tend to collapse, which is the universal tendency towards entropy (second law of thermodynamics).

I think the clearest evidence that consciousness disappears upon death is the fact that consciousness is so fragile even in life. A little bit of organic brain damage can totally warp or even obliterate your personality. Look at the tragedy of Alzheimers disease for example. Or people in comas, or with organic frontal lobe damage. Many of them have ceased to be aware or conscious at all...even while still alive.

I think people hype up conscious far too much,sure its a mystery as to how it came about in evolutionary terms...although its pretty obvious why its such a good thing to have....conscious is no differnet than any other part of the brain..it has a role and fulfills that role,IN the brain...it is nowhere else...its not some magical thing that is sepeeated from all other neruology in the brain..

At the same time, however, there have been people with only a fraction of the usual brain mass who have lived normal lives.

The fact is, we just don't understand how the brain generates/conducts consciousness. So Lethil, while you may believe that, you simply cannot prove it. So don't say 'Is', say 'I believe is'. It's all well and good to say that the brain generates consciousness, but we simply can't prove that it does.

But to clarify, the energy of consciousness I'm referring to is not simply the electrical signals travelling through the brain. I'm talking about the human energies which have yet to be documented and proven scientifically.

EDIT: Also, the title of this thread is redundant. Fate is inevitable, that's why it's fate.

[edit on 8-8-2008 by TheStev]

Originally posted by TheStev
At the same time, however, there have been people with only a fraction of the usual brain mass who have lived normal lives.

The fact is, we just don't understand how the brain generates/conducts consciousness. So Lethil, while you may believe that, you simply cannot prove it. So don't say 'Is', say 'I believe is'. It's all well and good to say that the brain generates consciousness, but we simply can't prove that it does.

But to clarify, the energy of consciousness I'm referring to is not simply the electrical signals travelling through the brain. I'm talking about the human energies which have yet to be documented and proven scientifically.

EDIT: Also, the title of this thread is redundant. Fate is inevitable, that's why it's fate.

[edit on 8-8-2008 by TheStev]

What? Energy of consciousness? its the exact same energy that does anything else in your brain...speaking...memory...coordination etc There is no disputing that...what people are puzzled about is how it came into existence through evolutionary terms...99% of neurologists will tell you that conscious resides within the brain...when brain dies,conscious ceases to exist.Of course you could start grasping at straws and say we dont know everything yet blah blah but that just a cop out...all evidence points to conscious residing in the brain...brain die...conscious gone.

Atheists will repent once they get old, unattractive, and have nothing but death to look forward to.

Be careful of dying in fear... you never know where your thoughts might take you.

Originally posted by dunwichwitch
Atheists will repent once they get old, unattractive, and have nothing but death to look forward to.

Be careful of dying in fear... you never know where your thoughts might take you.

I will die in rejoice for having the opportunity to take part in the greatest cycle of the universe, life and death.

Death!
Is 2 inevitable fact in our human life, death and birth.
I don’t know about you but I find so much likeness in these 2 .
If we could remember every thing that went down when in our mother before we born maybe then we could have an explanation why we so scare of death.
When we comfortably lived inside of our mother, all sort of needs where fulfill before the desire aroused. The bliss was at this supreme manifestation. And then something happen, great disturbances was causing a change in this world, all what made this haven was changing to a dramatic alteration of this paradise. Then the fabric of this paradise became tense and heavy, our universe was tightening all its structure to push us to a deep oblivion which was so foreign to our senses. The contractions where so powerful that nothing could resist this force. And then as we drifted in the black hole all our sensations transformed in to feelings for a new world. As we emerge in to this alien world, one thing come to mind we have gone through a death and rebirth.

Kacou.

Seems like no one here has a grasp on what consciousness is. Consciousness is no different then self awareness, it is in fact the exact same thing, look it up. Ignorance of the two terms is what leads people to think of the two as separate entities from each other.

That said, there is no logical reason to expect that our ability to be self aware is so special that it will exist after death. We have no evidence, observational or otherwise that there is something more 'mystical' to our universe. The brain is a biological computer and the mechanics behind how it works are poorly understood. No knowing however does not equal the possibility of an afterlife. Yes, it sounds nice to know that we go somewhere, that physical death is not an absolute end, but there is nothing to indicate that this is so.