# Humanities & Anthropology > Philosophy >  Afterlife: What Will Happen When We Die?

## Silverbackman

Read this article if you can before posting;

http://www.deism.org/frames.htm




> Afterlife Anyone?
> 
> Musing on different possibilities...
> 
> Question from "Universe in a Box": "If you considered it rational for there to be a 'God', you must also rationalize an afterlife of some sort. My main question is 'What afterlife to you personally find more rational than others and why?' "
> 
> Hello Universe,
> 
> The belief in God or lack thereof does not necessarily have anything to do with a belief in the hereafter. Some Deists do not believe in an afterlife. Some Atheists do. 
> ...




*Why I disagree with 1. The eternal afterlife paradigmm*

The eternal afterlife paradigm seems more like mythology to me as our conscious souls don't necessarily have memory or "personality". Memory and personality are products of the brain and without the brain they cannot exist. 

Our ancestors once thought that the mind is completely separate from the body. There definitely seems to be a difference and there maybe a slight difference but overall mind and body are extremely connected. Without the brain the mind cannot exist.

Plus as the article mentioned, the eternal afterlife paradigm places too much emphasize on our extremely finite and limited existence on this world while never explaining what happens before birth. Why does 60-100 years on this small planet at the edge of the milky way galaxy determine what happens to us for eternity after we die? It makes no sense!



*Why I disagree with 2. The limited existence paradigm*

It makes a bit more sense than the eternal afterlife paradigm but has some major flaws. First of all why would there be any reason to come into existence for such a limited amount of time and then go back into non-existence for eternity? It does what the eternal afterlife paradigm does: emphasize too much on our limited finite existence on this small planet at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy. Non-existence to 60-100 years (some even die at birth!) and then to nonexistence? What the heck?

Many atheists who argue this argument often state that there is nothing special to anything. Well by placing emphasize on this finite existence seems to place a lot of special value in this minor blink of an eye in the cosmic timescale.

However, as noted in the article there maybe no eternal "self" in the sense that our memory and personality may cease to exist when we die. So in a sense we do loose existence however one can argue that this existence may change selves but not cease to exist.



*Why 3. The reincarnation paradigm makes the most sense*

Our universe is a constant cycle of life and death on every level. Stars come into existence, live, and then die. When they die the matter is recycled into something new. Nothing lasts forever and at the same time nothing is ever destroyed.

Reincarnations explains why our finite existence better than the other two paradigms. It doesn't place emphasize on the 60-100 years of life on Earth which obviously is insignificant compared to the billions of years before and after our lives (which is most likely infinite).

I imagine that a reincarnation is a natural process consciousness goes through when we die. It may involve a fundamental elemental energy we may not know about that cannot be destroyed. Our self maybe described by this fundamental consciousness but it most likely has no personality for memory as these are the product of the body it inhabits for its limited existence.



*However*

How do we define death? There have been cases where people have legally died for a few days and came back to life. Furthermore the Cryonics field is improving rapidly and in time we may be able to find ways to bring cryopreserved people back to life. So where would be conscious be in all these situations.

Either a new conscious inhabits the revived body or the consciousness from before, knowing that it would come back later on, will just travel to when the physical body is revived. As the universe is nothing more than a 4-dimensional existence, the consciousness should be able to travel across the t-axis instantly as it can through the x, y, and z axis.

This is the only way we can live "eternally" I imagine.




What do you think?

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## Mitsuo

I put Other, because I believe in the after life and reincarnation. 

So, in my opinion, we are reincarnated until we are done with our growth. But I don't think we come back as trees or animals. But as Humans.

But who knows.

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## Silverbackman

> I put Other, because I believe in the after life and reincarnation. 
> So, in my opinion, we are reincarnated until we are done with our growth. But I don't think we come back as trees or animals. But as Humans.
> But who knows.


Why can't we come back as other sentient beings or at least sentient with consciousness (like most animals that have brains)?

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## Frank D. White

I made up my own idea. You never die. Let's say you get hit by a bus & killed. You come back to life just before the bus hits you, only this time it doesn't and you go on living, never knowing you died. Same if you die from cancer. You come back to life , before you you found out about the cancer, and go on living. SOOOO, when you do die, you never know you did, and life continues on for you.
I haven't figured out how to handle death from old age yet. Unless it becomes normal to never die, even when you hit several hundred years old.
The idea of sitting on a cloud, with angels wings, playing a harp seems unlikely to me? Guess it won't be too many years before I find out what death is like at my age.

Frank

 :Doubt:

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## Mitsuo

> Why can't we come back as other sentient beings or at least sentient with consciousness (like most animals that have brains)?



I am not saying that we can't. I have no idea what happens. That is my opinion. To me, the reason why we only incarnate as humans, is because we need to grow and learn as humans. Because, in the after life, I think we are of Human form. Why would we need to incarnated as something else, when we have to learn so much more than animals. EX:We go to school to learn, they don't. But anyway that's just my opinion. I don't know if you're trying to debate, but this shouldn't be a debate. Because how could anyone debate over something that has no inference? We can't, we have no proof.

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## Mars Man

A very interesting subject, indeed, and this is of course not the first time it has come up. I can't recall at the moment it the others had actually had the poll format, but they did ask, basically, ' what is your opinion.' (I lean in the direction of saying that the thread started by Tsuyoiko had actually been in the poll format, but just can't verify that at the moment.) 

I voted for other. 

This is something which should be discussed, I feel, yet, as Mitsuo Oda san pointed out, our aruguments are based on certain theories and to that degree can only be said to be acceptances of one group of theories or another--since there are so many underlying ones for each of the above given catagories to choose from. 

As far as consciousness, that is perhaps *the* determining matter in the identification of a particular individual brain. As I have, and am still reading and studying that area of neuroscience, I can see that some advances have been made in the last 15 years or so, but there is so much more to learn before we can even pretend to say we know what it is. 

As far as death, we must keep in mind that there is Clinical death and somatic death. I cannot swear on it, but bet that I may be correct in saying that a person cannot really be said to be 'legally dead' until the stage of somatic death has been acknowledged by doctors. No NDE (Near Death Experience) cases have come back from somatic death, because at the moment it is impossible. Even the case studies of Deep Freeze returns are based on the fact that the cells have not died, but have just ceased to function. 

I do not give credit to traditional reincarnation concepts. That information carrying particles relocate and reform, yes, to that degree reincarnation, but the reformation of a presently unified brain to the degree of consciousness that it contains, no. 

Nice link there too. It slightly reminded me of Theolosophy. Thanks for the interesting posts above too !! :Smiling:

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## nurizeko

This afterlife strip gave me a good laugh.

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## Kinsao

In a way, the idea of an eternal afterlife (or perhaps I should say "eternal life", considering I think if existence does not have an end, it does not have a beginning either, so the term "after"life is a bit misleading) is quite alike to the idea of reincarnation. The difference being, that reincarnation means that you get a physical body (or structure) to inhabit, with beliefs varying as to whether that would be human, animal or even plant. Both those beliefs hold the idea of an eternal and continuing existence in some form. 

I believe more in the eternal life idea than in reincarnation, because I think that after death our "existence" wouldn't necessarily be restricted to a structure/body. I think we will exist in a way that is different from anything we could possibly conceive of now, while we are still within our limited structure and reasoning from within it. 

If I'm wrong, I have nothing to lose!  :Poh: 

I want to die and find out what happens. I just don't want to go through a lot of pain when it happens.  :Sick:

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## Cambrius (The Red)

This is a very thought provoking topic. 

I believe that we come back as an entirely different consciousness, without any knowledge of who we were in our previous life / lives. Consciousness has no beginning and no end. It is eternal.

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## Smertrius

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Tu es poussière et tu retourneras poussière.

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## Twilight

I believe there are good thought out ideals in Christianity; solving problems with peace and non-violence, however we put a couple humans on the moon and amaxingly never crashed on a plave called heaven, makes me wonder if aliens really visited the earth. I'm sure they said "If all are good then humanity gets to join the aliens in the heavens" and watching the Earth to check on human development including wars and violence. After a person passes away I believe he/she starts out as a spirit and roams around until he/she is ready to move on to the next life.

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## LeBrok

> After a person passes away I believe he/she starts out as a spirit and roams around until he/she is ready to move on to the next life.


Unless someone love to travel, there is not much fun in roaming for few thousand years. It's like wasting cosmic calories.

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## LeBrok

> Unless someone love to travel, there is not much fun in floating for few thousand or million years. It's like wasting cosmic calories.


If sole doesn't eat, where does it get energy for flying and roaming from?

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## Twilight

Energy/Electricity is in us all, without it we cannot survive. We can't plug and unplug ourselves but live within us as electrolytes. Here is a quote from Albert Einstein; http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4455...it-can-only-be. The spirit could be reborn if he/she choses to be.

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## LeBrok

> Energy/Electricity is in us all, without it we cannot survive. We can't plug and unplug ourselves but live within us as electrolytes.


Electricity/energy in us is from chemical reactions of food we consume and oxygen we breath and burn in our cells. We are like rechargeable batteries. I don't think it is the case in spirits. 
Yes, we can unplug ourselves, if we stop eating or breathing we die shortly, because the energy is gone.
Unless spirits are perpetuum mobile, they need energy from something.

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## Twilight

Heat and electricity, before Thomas Edison and Testla the spirits usually got their energy from heat and now that heat can come into electricity also. Point taken though, my sources is kind of a spin off from Chinook beliefs; the belief I was partly raised by through my step dad while my Mom is Catholic

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## C-in-fl-usa

We return to the elements that are the origins of the universe. All water came from extraterrestrial impacts. We're also carbon units sprinkled with other elements found on Earth.

An afterlife is nothing more than a response to fear of death. Heaven, an afterlife... just a relief from the certain. Man invented God just as he developed dogs from wolves. It was useful. Only man could conceive of death, thus he needed a place to go. A god to answer the unanswerable and take care of people in primitive times because ignorance and the world was frightening. An afterlife is an escape from fear of death.

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## gyms

https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/201...udy-published/

*Consciousness after clinical death: “Whether it fades away afterwards, we do not know”**The results revealed that 40% of those who survived a cardiac arrest were aware during the time that they were clinically dead and before their hearts were restarted.* Dr. Parnia, in the interview stated: “The evidence thus far suggests that in the first few minutes after death, consciousness is not annihilated. Whether it fades away afterwards, we do not know, but right after death, consciousness is not lost. We know the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating. But in this case conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes into the period when the heart wasn’t beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after the heart has stopped. This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions, occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been successfully restarted. but not an experience corresponding with ‘real’ events when the heart isn’t beating. Furthermore, the detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events”.

Is There A Soul? Beyond Belief - ABC - Dr. Sam Parnia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1JarYYWDfQ

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## gyms

Eben Alexander: A Neurosurgeon's Journey through the Afterlife

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbkgj5J91hE

*EVIDENCE that the SOUL Exists: Pam Reynolds' NEAR DEATH Experience*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4EztGUHnbs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO8UVebuA0g

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## Dinarid

I am agnostic, but spiritual, and very hopeful of God and life after death. I choose to identify more with Christians than other agnostics because they share the same hope I do, and I find this healthy. As far as evidence, I am very glad that we are closer and closer to proving the existence of life after death and hope and pray that some time soon, we will have a breakthrough to prove it beyond doubt (or at least _almost_ beyond doubt).

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## Yetos

I will pass infront of Aiakos and Radamanthes

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## Athiudisc

I believe any number of things are possible when our bodies die. Some may go to a heaven, some may go to a hell, some may reincarnate, some may reincarnate after a time elsewhere, some may discorporate and pass on their traits to multiple people, some may become ghosts, some may just wink out of existence. I would tend to think that what one expects, even if only subconsciously, may play a role, along with (for those of us who are religious theists) our relationships to various gods/spirits.

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## Oasis

in order to know about the afterlife, we need to receive divine revelation. there is no other way to know about it. all opinions, suppositions etc. will be waste of time.

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