Why so many people–including scientists–suddenly believe in an afterlife

reply to post by FlyersFan


Hmmm. So that would imply at least some portion of the afterlife resides none other than exactly where the first life took place, yes?

AfterInfinity
reply to post by FlyersFan

 

Hmmm. So that would imply at least some portion of the afterlife resides none other than exactly where the first life took place, yes?

Would that be beforelife?

And tell me this, does the fact that you can respawn in Minecraft mean that is real, you can respawn in life again?

BTW, to pass my time mindlessly, I play Minecraft and just learned how to find red dust....but then Creeper blows me up causing me to lose all my pickaxes. But I can build a pretty good house now, just figured out how to do the roof right. I then respawn back into my house and have to craft more pickaxes.

But that's what Tao is, isn't it? Learning from things to help explain something to your understanding? I am not sure, but in the old television show Kung Fu, he could only leave when he took the rock? So random things are not so random if we can explain something by them.

I know I say random things a lot and make references to things that probably make no sense, but if I can use it to give meaning, then there is relevance.

The philosophy behind Minecraft, you get blown up and can respawn. Maybe that's what reincarnation is? Respawning just to make more pickaxes while you continually improve your home?

wildtimes
reply to post by SasquatchHunter

 

because the only way to find out absolutely involves a one way trip.

But see? That's the thing. There are NDEs reported by people who had rigor setting in. Who had been dead for hours....even DAYS in morgue lockers.....

Once you start looking at the stories and sifting through the "hoaxed" ones and the genuine ones, it starts to become crystal clear. Hell, that may even have been what happened to Jesus!!

But yeah, utterly fascinating. You know? To be honest I don't think it will be much "fun" in the future when all these deep questions have been answered......I like being here NOW. Will I be back? Probably....but this is an awesome roller-coaster!

I understand what your saying, however we have technical definitions and currently scientific limitations as when permenant death has occurred.

Obviously if someone has been decapitated or burned to ashes they are dead with no chance of returning to speak about an afterlife.

People who have been brain dead etc its interesting were they truly dead? By technical and medical definitions yes. The entire concept of death is not evaluated.

If someone died medically, and came back to life. Did they really die physically cross that threshold of no return, and reanimate through the supernatural, or is our lack of knowledge in the biological process of what's really happening inside a medically dead person?

FlyersFan

SasquatchHunter
Who can say 100% there is an afterlife?
I don't think anyone can, because the only way to find out absolutely involves a one way trip.

I dunno about that. The number of spooks I've ran into tells me that there absolutely is an afterlife. Just today ... I was sitting here in the living room and someone was walking around in the bedroom upstairs that is over this room. Only thing ... I"m alone in the house except for the fish and a lame beagle who can't go upstairs. I think all the Halloween energy juiced up the spooks .. they were very active today.

Are there ghosts spirits, and other supernatural creatures? I haven't seen them. That doesn't mean they don't exist or I think you are lieng. I have encountered many things in my life. Why not ghosts? Why do other people see/hear them but I don't? Not being in tune with supernatural or some junk like that is just not an acceptable answer in 2013 I know people don't have "special powers", I would love to see a freakin ghost spirit etc.

reply to post by SasquatchHunter


I have read many stories about people who have showed literally every sign of being dead. No pulse, no brain activity, nothing. A veritable sack of meat waiting to be buried. And yet they inexplicably sit up in the middle of the morgue like "Huh?!" And they are alive. Fully alive.

So I don't know. I have no answers for you. But I do think it's pretty freakin' cool!

reply to post by AfterInfinity


I like you have read many stories and find it incredibly interesting.
How do we know they completely my died. We just don't know. Science doesn't know everything about biological mechanisms and functions yet.

Computers work because science knows exactly how every single part works and why it works, we just know that about the human body. While these people were declared dead medically there maybe some biological process at work we just don't understand yet, or these people have regained life through the supernatural, or they are lieng.

reply to post by SasquatchHunter


I guess we're assuming every doctor in the world is competent. And we know not all of them are.

reply to post by wildtimes


I get back to my familiar ground here on ATS. What do we do in life? We think and move. We don't make the sun shine, the Earth turn, our hears beat, our hair grow or the dogs bark. We think and move only.

What needs to survive my life? My body? No. My brain? No. My memories? Possibly. If you consider being born again, it seem rare to remember the past. I would love to get all my past experience back again (Good and bad). Knowledge? If I can receive truth and have all knowledge at my disposal, the knowledge I gain here is of little use. Wisdom. Yes! My personality? Maybe, but this and other aspects are simply driven by society. What do I want to actually keep? For one, awareness. For another, my relationships to those I love. As I said earlier, wisdom is something I fell I have earned, yet does not belong to anyone else uniquely. Individuation from others? Yes. Part of what makes me what I am is the fact that there is something unique about me. Otherwise, there is no me. Getting back to 'we,' it would be nice to know others as they were known here in this life.

Have you seen the movie What Dreams May Come?

reply to post by EnochWasRight


How does that answer the question?

AfterInfinity
reply to post by EnochWasRight

 

How does that answer the question?

Why do so many people believe in an afterlife? She asked why people believe. You are looking for me to say why others believe. Am I not one of the others that believe? Why do I believe? Because it is evident. I do two things. I think and I move. Everything else is produced so I can do these two things. Who am I? Who are you? We are the others. Who produces the world around us?

I have already answered this question here on ATS. Again, familiar ground. Have you seen the movie? Why didn't you answer my question?

reply to post by EnochWasRight


So you feel you are meant to think and move forever? I would also argue with your assertion that everything around you operates with the intention of preserving your thought and movement. If you just sit there and do nothing, you will die. Nature will not intervene specifically to rescue you.

wildtimes
reply to post by SasquatchHunter

 

because the only way to find out absolutely involves a one way trip.

But see? That's the thing. There are NDEs reported by people who had rigor setting in. Who had been dead for hours....even DAYS in morgue lockers.....

Once you start looking at the stories and sifting through the "hoaxed" ones and the genuine ones, it starts to become crystal clear. Hell, that may even have been what happened to Jesus!!

But yeah, utterly fascinating. You know? To be honest I don't think it will be much "fun" in the future when all these deep questions have been answered......I like being here NOW. Will I be back? Probably....but this is an awesome roller-coaster!

I have studied this for years and have read a lot on the subject. There are MANY doctors out there that were at one time in their lives believers in a final death, then ceasing to exist.. yet there are now many doctors that has talked to so many resuscitated people with almost identical stories they feel the proof is overwhelming.
One book I read (I will have to research to find the name) was by a heart doctor and he said one thing he found with everyone that he 'brought back' was that they were no longer afraid of death where before they feared it.
Children too will mention relatives they saw that had passed before they were even born and pick them out in pictures, etc.
I am a Christian myself but it doesn't take a person of any faith to experience and believe that when we die we pass on to 'somewhere' else!
Doctors used to try to use scientific explanations such as chemicals causing hallucination, etc but the detail and as you mention some of these people had been dead and even in the morgue when they 'came back'!
There are other stories about people describing things going on in another part of the hospital during a NDE and they tell what people were wearing and talking about before being pulled either up towards a light or sucked back into the body.
Very good thread! Thanks.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by EnochWasRight

 

So you feel you are meant to think and move forever? I would also argue with your assertion that everything around you operates with the intention of preserving your thought and movement. If you just sit there and do nothing, you will die. Nature will not intervene specifically to rescue you.

You seem uncomfortable with the thought that there are those that don't believe in your idea of death, nothing before, nothing after but dust.
You can see things in the small box you live in (apparently) yet not expand your mind to realize you might not have all the answers and your new age ideas are wrong, maybe you are a little worried about death.
Being a fatalist seems like a lonely path to chose.

reply to post by EnochWasRight


OK what about cryogenics what are the implications if people can be revived. That means either we are just flesh and blood or if the supernatural exists the physical has control of the spiritual to pull you from the afterlife at anytime?

I don't know if cryogenics will ever revive a human, but it seems to work fine for sperm embryos and blood and that is something hard to ignore.

reply to post by SasquatchHunter


I will say this now, I really don't have the answers myself about ghosts, but having grown up in a haunted house, I will tell you this, something is real.

We weren't haunted by those misty white floaty things that look like Casper, we were haunted by something so real and dangerous that one could see the physical and mental changes not only in people, but in the very atmosphere.

I have seen grown ups live in the house, go through a complete mental change and then later when they moved out, reverted to what they were before. The house was built by my great-grandfather, the child of Hungarian/German immigrants. My mother was born there and spent her life there, except for a few years we lived away from it when I was a child, and then many years later she moved to North Carolina and is there now.

I want to tell this, my grandfather was a skeptic, he never believed things were happening all around him. He refused to believe when people were telling him of their experiences in his house, but one night when he was a young man, he openly challenged Satan to appear, if Satan were real. Satan appeared.

If I told you everything that happened there, it would take pages and pages and pages. There is not enough space or time to tell you all. But the effects were not only against grown ups, it was against children as well. We have reason to believe my great-grandfather killed some children, but he died long before my mother was born so she didn't know, and it certainly was not talked about.

But to give a little backstory to my great-great grandfather. He was born in Bavaria in 1818, the same year as the Hep Hep Riots against the Jews in Bavaria. During these riots, many Jews were forced to flee Bavaria and the Bavarian Imperial Army had to be called to quench the violence. I do not have any more records of his family in Bavaria, but then later in Hungary.

As these riots were so violent, children were killed. Then years later, my great-grandfather built the house that I lived in. He had died in 1932. But there was supernatural violence against children, that all of my siblings are now dealing with in their own way. It didn't come from our parents, it came from something supernatural. I believe that my great-great grandparents, one of them was Askenazi, and this shows up in my DNA. I have found too many sources leading in that direction.

But since I can't share all of what happened to us and to people who visited the house, I will just say this, I think there was a Dybbuk attached to it somehow.

I can't say that there is no such thing as ghosts and spirits, because I have experienced it myself, along with a lot of other witnesses. Skeptics might say this is mass hallucination or imagination from listening to it. But the people that were experiencing these things, I did not know them, because they were much older and did not live near me. So I only learned about their experiences after I was older and talked to them. But all of my siblings have had their own experiences, but we seemed to be able to deal with it differently.

reply to post by WarminIndy


I would love to read the full story sometime. These things fascinate me!

Cuervo

Bassago
reply to post by wildtimes

 

Personally I don't believe there is any more after death than there was before birth

Which means what? Do you really believe there was nothing before your last physical birth?

I think it's time for you to visit a decent hypnotherapist to put this in a different perspective for you.

That is correct. For now I don't believe there was a "me" before I was born. I have nothing to indicate there was and within the confines of speaking to other people they seem to agree, for the most part. I'm not saying it absolutely untrue, just that I have nothing yet to even remotely persuade me.

As far as hypnotherapy I'll have to pass. I would never let someone get that far behind my mental defenses though there are unrelated things to this thread I would like to know.

reply to post by WarminIndy


This is an great story very spooky you should definitely pen that you already have pages of material. I'm already wanting to know what happened when Satan appeared to your grandfather, and why your great grandfather murdered children.

My problem isn't that I think other people are dishonest or all people who have these encounters have mental health issues or anything like that, the issue I have is why I can't see these things.

The NDE is an interesting phenomenon, nothing more.

It's a comfort blanket for people who already believe in life after death, but it's not the smoking gun that will convince dyed-in-the-wool sceptics.

'Near death' means 'still alive'. Ah, there's the rub.

I find out of body experiences (OOBEs) more interesting, because they seem to indicate that consciousness is not local; therefore, if consciousness is not confined to the brain, it may be independent of it.

My own belief in an afterlife is based on the fact that I am alive now.

Is this a one-off event in the infinity of the universe/universes out there? I find that hard to believe.

So yes, I believe the process will be repeated...perhaps many times.

That's not based on wishful thinking, by the way; all my future lives could be unpleasant ones (heck knows, I'm not exactly having a ball now).

reply to post by SasquatchHunter


Try spending a relaxing week at Poveglia Island. One afternoon is usually enough, but it sounds like you're a tough one lol