All true. So just refining my point?
Life after death
- Thread starter James R
- Start date
All true. So just refining my point?
That's fine.
Re
Re
kx000
Valued Senior Member
Death has no bearing on my life, I will live forever, in this body, or the next. I see death as a giant pool of souls, just swimming, waiting, for reincarnation. Some souls walk with Jesus, some are sent of Jesus, some burn for an eternity in the lake of fire, and some remain on Earth for whatever reason.
I voted "None of the above" as in there is no soul, no afterlife,
and it is past high time that people got over the wanton lust
to be alive forever, and began to face and accept the permanence of death.
As for all this Godly religious stuff, get over it. It is fundamentally
on a par with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, despite the fact
that great minds have defended it: Just goes to show great minds
can lust for everlasting life as much as anyone.
and it is past high time that people got over the wanton lust
to be alive forever, and began to face and accept the permanence of death.
As for all this Godly religious stuff, get over it. It is fundamentally
on a par with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, despite the fact
that great minds have defended it: Just goes to show great minds
can lust for everlasting life as much as anyone.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
I have no lust to live forever, unless I live forever with the woman of my dreams. I don't fear death, you say we have no soul as you are sure of that. I say yes, I do have a soul for no other reason than faith. Life is complicated, yet its perfect. My logical mind tells me it is far more likely this universe was created for a reason, as nothing happens for no reason, just as every cause has an effect, than one random event after one random led to a perfect ecosystem. I find it even more difficult to believe the human mind was created of nothing, as it is nothing. Its just there. Even though it doesn't exist its by far our most powerful tool.
I am no Catholic, Christian, Hindu, or whatever.. I laugh at religion. Religion is good for nothing more than learning good values. IT DOES NOT GET YOU CLOSER TO GOD. Only love gets you closer to God. Im not just talking being in love, I mean SPREADING genuine love. :m:
I am no Catholic, Christian, Hindu, or whatever.. I laugh at religion. Religion is good for nothing more than learning good values. IT DOES NOT GET YOU CLOSER TO GOD. Only love gets you closer to God. Im not just talking being in love, I mean SPREADING genuine love. :m:
kx000
Valued Senior Member
P.S. Everlasting life is a forgone conclusion.. its just not a garunte. Mind, Soul, Body,.. emotion its one in the same. So lone as we don't wreck this planet, this great planet that can support life, or our mind doesn't conquer its self we will live forever. Either we will live through our kin, or we will be reborn in some way. Or we will just wake up.
I can't speak for anyone else but personally I really don't want to be born again, no matter in which body.
There is too much pain and suffering in my life right now and I don't want to experience that sort of suffering again. Just let me die in peace and leave it at that... forever. Being born again means that I can also experience the same pain again and I don't want that anymore.
There is too much pain and suffering in my life right now and I don't want to experience that sort of suffering again. Just let me die in peace and leave it at that... forever. Being born again means that I can also experience the same pain again and I don't want that anymore.
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Concept of Islam About Life after Death
Muslims believe that the present life is a trial in preparation for the next realm of existence. When a Muslim dies, he or she is washed and wrapped in a clean, white cloth (usually by a family member) and buried after a special prayer, preferably the same day. Muslims consider this a final service that they can do for their relatives and an opportunity to remember that their own existence here on earth is brief.
Muslims believe that the present life is a trial in preparation for the next realm of existence. When a Muslim dies, he or she is washed and wrapped in a clean, white cloth (usually by a family member) and buried after a special prayer, preferably the same day. Muslims consider this a final service that they can do for their relatives and an opportunity to remember that their own existence here on earth is brief.
I think that after death you are exactly like you were before you were born - nothing. Try imagining what you were in the time of the dinosaurs - that would be it, I think.
Eternity stands before us. Eternity stands behind us. And in between, there is steampunk.
How pointless to live, but then to abruptly end, until I realised this bleak end is what is what I crawled out of. It is fortune, I suppose, just to be a blink in the middle.
"Life is strange", said Jeremy.
"Compared to what?", said the Spider.
I chose other. I have conceptual theory of consciousness that is good enough for me. We are composed of little pieces of matter. Each piece of matter has a consciousness, but this consciousness is directly proportionate to the complexity of the form to which it belongs. An ant has much simpler consciousness than a human. And a piece of space dust, much simpler than an ant.
I came as space dust, I go out as space dust. Each piece of dust will scatter and my consciousness will split relative to the dust. Will I live again? What are the chances? It took an eternity for this form to occur. I think odds are eternal then. I relive every possible choice in this life, as well as other life, given endless time and the fact matter is nor created nor destroyed.
Abstractly, I think I'm more correct than religion. I think religion touches many times of truth, but it's quite contradictory and confusing. I wouldn't consider my thoughts religious. It's an attempt to be accurate, with conservative assumption.
God is an idea only. But what a magnificent imaginative idea! Supernatural? Compared to what?
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What do I believe? . . . .First I have absolutely no PROOF (just a GUT feeling in my big TOE -(puns intended)! . . . . IMO, there exists this 'little' quantum or subquantal (undetectible) kernel that exists somewhere within our being (consciousness?) that is our individual soul, or spirit. This little doo-dad is connected at a quantum or subquantal level to similar little doo-dads ones throughout the rest of the universe. I also believe that God is nonphysical and kind of the observer (manager?) of all our little doo-dads. Being nonphysical, God 'created' (evolved?, is evolving?) "us" to experience and 'see' his creation through OUR physical and intellectual senses.- thereby He can witness His own creation(s) through His creations (i.e., us). I believe that God may exist as a quantum of subquantal entity, and His 'normal' domain is within dark energy, which is omnipresent and omniprecient within our material universe. Dark energy may be the 'fabric' or 'matrix' (or pre-universe) from which, and into which, our material (observable) universe is 'expanding'
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I just saw this poll and the results are surprising to me. Much higher belief in life after death that I imagined.
Wlminex, I find your doo-dad idea a bit vague, lol, but then it does seem that there is a human proclivity that causes us to seek understanding of this. It boils down to applying our abilities of reasoning and logic that are as different by individual as our finger prints.
We either got our proclivity to seek understanding of life and after-life from natural evolution or they were planted in our DNA and thus in our minds by this God you mention.
I deal with the issue by believing that the universe could not have come from nothing and so it has always existed. If it has always existed, I invoke the perfect cosmological principle that says (from Wiki) "the universe is homogenous and isotropic in space and time. In this view the universe looks the same everywhere (on the large scale), the same as it always has and always will."
This means that we are not unique and that similar beings have always existed who have always contemplated the issue.
As you can tell, I don't invoke the "God did it" explanation for the existence of the universe because invoking the supernatural is not part of the scientific method. But in an eternal universe where the natural laws are invariant and have always been in effect everywhere, there can be a concept of intent that is natural to the universe and that has always been part of the invariant natural law.
If that is the case, then us being here contemplating life after death could be part of that eternal intent. Not an active intervention by an active God, but just the way it is and has always been; natural.
elte
Valued Senior Member
I don't have enough information to believe, I suppose.
I haven't ever seen convincing evidence for belief in afterlife, though I haven't ruled it out.
I'm still religious, which could be due much to my upbringing. I believe God's existence is possible.
QW: . . . yes . . . the 'little doo dads' are vague to me also . . . . so is the speculation regarding existence of God, etc. (my entire post) . . . but each individual starts reasoning somehow, and their thinking evolves, based on initial input, input from others, life observations and experiences, etc., and we all attempt to put everything into a cogent structure that "makes sense" and is a rational reduction/deduction that personally satisfies our individual and human-group 'proclivities'. All is likely some ego-protection mechanism. Perhaps we just don't like the idea of of existing . . . then nonexisting . . . and we try to rationalize some 'life purpose' for existing . . . otherwise 'all is for naught'. Good to hear from you again.
I would add that the presumption, regardless of how tentative, that the person continues to live after the death of the body, is an idea acquired through Natural Selection.
After eons of preference for snippets of DNA that would accumulate into the the genome we carry today, there evolved, among the elaborate network of traits, the will to survive, manifest in the rational mind.
The exact means by which a human being acquires the rational aspect of the will to survive is complex and interlaced with physiological and social causes. Clearly learning is one of the important requisites to understanding survival on a rational level.
The perfected individual, that is, after sufficient learning and physical and experiential development, will eventually converge on the rationale behind the desire to survive. At this point, reason is sufficient to conceptualize death and recognize that the finality of death poses a bind against the previously acquired will to live.
Through an iterative process, over years the wonder, the idea of death moves into a deeper awareness and may form a basis for concentrated ideation, whether through mild daydreams, meditation, or focused problems, such as whether to have a will or to make funeral arrangements.
The antagonism between the competing notions of struggling to live versus the inevitability of death will periodically reawaken the primordial urge to take evasive action to preclude the threat of extinction.
The solution to the bind, then, is to allow for the idea of death of the body, but to search for an idea that preserves an eternal mind. The solution is viable to the extent that it does not conflict with ideas that establish boundaries around the physical laws of nature, which are largely inapplicable to the immaterial nature of the mind. This may be difficult, and indeed endless.
Only by conceding certain physical laws does it become possible to imagine continuity of the being after death. In primitive culture, where availability of science is scarce or nonexistent, the determination that there is life after death is relatively easy to reach.
For the rest of us, it requires a denial of fundamental principles that we have come to understand will ultimately override every human idea.
For the above reasons, I conclude that all conceptualizations of eternal life are owed to the initial source, Natural Selection, in the manner that humans have arrived at this particular genetic configuration which codes for all the antecedent traits and behaviors that cause the idea to unfold as described.