Who gets to the afterlife/where do they go

A

an~opinionated~man

Registered Member
some people may say that there is no afterlife, most others disagree and believe in some form of "heaven". just for friendly banter and chat i want to know how others feel... is there an afterlife? i am a Catholic, and believe stongly in Heaven, i would like to know what others believe in for common knowledge.
 
Everybody believes in different forms of afterlife...it depends on what religion you belong to or rather choose to belong to. I myself believe in the concept of heaven but i must say i am not working very hard to get there after i die. I guess i focus on the present rather than worry about what's going to happen to me the future. My mother however believes that heaven and hell is right on Earth and to much extent it makes sense if you think about it. I guess we'll wait and find out if there is such a existence beyond the present known reality.


Wait...i'll find right out now.....*looks for gun*:cool:
 
I myself do not subscribe to a belief in a life after this one. It is the most cockamamie story I have ever heard of.
It is an idealistic fairy tale told to children and those of low intelligence in order to keep them in line and subservient.
It has lost its power in our modern world, but people still use heaven as a scare tactic in order to turn children into zombies. It is so weak today that any person of average intelligence can see through the façade of lies and make a better rationalization on what happens after death
After death our bodies’ rot, which includes our brain which is what binds us to this mortal realm. The earth digests our flesh and we help to push up daisies.

Some people might call life useless if there is no continuation, in either an afterlife or reincarnation. It is mostly Christians who argue points like these, that without an afterlife, our lives here on earth are nothing. To those people I say bullocks; I live my life to enrich the planet. I live my life to better those that are around me, to make life simpler for people, to enrich a loved one's life with my accompaniment. I live my life to the best of my ability because it is my duty to my relations, my species, and me.

Humans should have no need for an afterlife; our creators (mother and father) give us life and with it we are able to make happiness. I have the power to do so much good in my life, and I plan on it, not because people tell me to do so, but because that is the only truth about humanity that we are able to settle upon:
We all want to live a happy life

Everybody wants happiness, we sometimes let things get in the way, but it all comes back to this main point. To achieve this goal one can be as Christ-like as they want to be, because Jesus was one of the best templates on how to live your life that the ancient world has ever produced. Love yourself, and treat others how you would like to be treated, pure genius.
I liked Jesus; his sermon on the mount was philosophical gold.
But getting back to the point I so disastrously leaped away from, Heaven is bunk, total nonsense.

We don't need to be scared into behaving well for promise of eternal paradise. The only paradise we will ever see is the one we create within our lifetime. For better or for worse, we are bound to our bodies, tied to the earth, and a part of our fellow man's life. I plan on living my life in service to mankind without the expectation of rewards or punishment in an afterlife, and I plan on living it well.

This is my long but honest opinion, I would be surprised if anyone could argue with my logic, but please feel free to do so.
If you agree with me, make yourself known.

ZERO MASS
 
Zero Mass-

I also agree that there is no heaven. Good points made in that post.

To those people I say bullocks; I live my life to enrich the planet. I live my life to better those that are around me, to make life simpler for people, to enrich a loved one's life with my accompaniment. I live my life to the best of my ability because it is my duty to my relations, my species, and me.
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I like your philosophy on life. That is exactly the best we can do as a species. I think its important to focus your attention on THIS world and not perform actions with the expectation that these acts will grant you access to an extremely exclusive club(heaven) We know that we exist on Earth, this is certain, so people should make the best of it and not dwell on imaginary lands of propostourous imagination.

After death our bodies’ rot, which includes our brain which is what binds us to this mortal realm. The earth digests our flesh and we help to push up daisies.
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Since consciousness is produced by the brain and the brain is run on electral signals, then once those signals die, and thus the brain dies then we will cease to experience consciousness. Brain death=no consciousness. Remember the time before you were born?, nope didnt think so, that is non-existance, better learn to live with it, or else you are only fooling yourself.(Not directed to you Zero Mass, just a general statement) Althought i must admit that self deception is a quality defense mechanism. What better way to impede on one's happiness and naivity then to realize one's fate?

Overall I think you made some good points, good job
 
"Where people go" in their afterlife is in the dirt. Did you not know that?
Now this isn't necasarily a bad thing, depends on your perspective I guess, I'm neither fearing it nor looking forward to it but I'm much closer to looking forward to it than fearing it.
Actually I hope to become part of a marine foodchain, seems like it would be more exciting then becoming part of the worm food chain but maybe not. Thats up to the individual. I guess you have a chance to fly in the worm foodchain but no more than in the ocean foodchain.
What am I talking about? Reality. I believe people that don't believe in any afterlife are nearly as deluded as people who believe in "heaven" ....nearly.
But my point is, where do you think you're going? Nothing disappears... NOTHING, and that includes everything you are.
Death is the end of another stage. The end of the most 'concious' stage, you aren't finished by a long shot though. You will circulate around the planet until it explodes and then you'll swirl around the universe.
You won't be able to do any of the things you do now, but those things won't seem important.
 
to all of you who have posted replies that heaven or any afterlife does not exist... how can you say that the only thing in life is to live and die... have you ever witnessed a miracle? i have. i have seen God work in ways that boggle my mind... i am 18 and had so many close shots at death that i have escaped from, and i have had family members recover almost instantly from diseases that threatened their lives. if there is no heaven is life just a series of coincidences? should we be the zombies that just wonder around knowing that there is no existance past the day we die?
to the person who stated that we do not know what happened while in our mothers womb... that is getting into abortion, and we can hit on that if you want, i am pro life. but if we have no existance until we are about 3, which is one of my earliest memories, then i say that that is a total crock of poo. reality doesnt come with existance, reality comes with interaction with other peoples lives. as a child you have no knowledge of your surrounding until you are tought, but who is to define reality and intelligence.
people die, where do they go? people of different cultures, and religions all have different ideas, but if there is no afterlife no matter where you believe you go, or what you do (circle the planet) then i feel sorry for you since there are people who are "ghost hunters" and people who have seen miracles... like statues crying blood, and other unexplainable phenomena... what do you say to that? i am trying to make this short per i have to get to my first class, but keep up the friendly banter, i like this
 
An opinionatedMan-

Since i think you were referring to one of my comments, i think I have to make it more clear because there was a blantant misinterpretation. Or perhaps I did not make my point clear.

to the person who stated that we do not know what happened while in our mothers womb...
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I believe you derived that statement from my following statement?

Remember the time before you were born?, nope didnt think so, that is non-existance
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Before you were born, as in before fertilization, before you were even a simple collection of cells. This is what I was trying to get at, not the time spent in the womb. To further clairify, go back 200 years, you were non existant at this point and any point before fetilization.
 
if there is no heaven is life just a series of coincidences?
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Give us some bona fide examples of miracles, and ill try to shed a little light on the situation

but if we have no existance until we are about 3, which is one of my earliest memories, then i say that that is a total crock of poo. reality doesnt come with existance, reality comes with interaction with other peoples lives.
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Reality- a. something that exists independently of ideas concerning it b. something that exists independently of all other things and from which all other things derive.

You were wrong to say reality comes to be with interaction. Reality comes with existence, but the interaction of humans allows for the concept of reality to be understood and elaborated upon.

as a child you have no knowledge of your surrounding until you are tought, but who is to define reality and intelligence.
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You are experiencing reality even if you do not know what to make of it. Knowledge of your surrondings leads one to understand and comprehend the reality we inhabit.

then i feel sorry for you since there are people who are "ghost hunters" and people who have seen miracles... like statues crying blood, and other unexplainable phenomena... what do you say to that?
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Being a Ghost hunter does not mean that there are ghosts. I can label myself a dragon hunter, does that mean dragons exist? Miracles can be explained by science, I can guarantee if a statue did bleed like you mentioned that any average professional scientist could find the reason this happened. The only way to sway someone with that "miracle" is to prove to them actual qualified people examined the statue and that there was no tampering done to the statue. But I can promise you that there has never been a real case of a statue bleeding. Statues do not contain a heart, veins, capillaries, arteries or any mechanism used in association with blood, if it bled, it was tampered with.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt on the unexplainable phenomena, I would say that if we do not have the current means to find a promising explanation for an event, that does not mean there isnt any. We as humans still have not reached the point where are understanding of the world is complete, actually we are far from it.

By you saying that unexplainable phenomena must be caused by God is like saying "Even though we might not have reached the capability to understand a particular event, I will not hesitate to attribute it to my notion of a Supreme being." You are pretending to understand unexplainable phenomena. You would probably be quite upset if a scientist gave you an unsatisfactory explanation of the particular event, especially if given with no evidence to support his claim. so why should you give a unsatisfactory explanation? You have a vague understanding of this complex world so maybe it would be better to say......hey you know what, I have no idea what occured. Think about the past.....it would begin to rain.....people would say how do you explain this? The answer was I have no idea, we cannot currently explain this, but some people would proclaim, there is no reasonable explanation..........God did it. See what they arent realizing is that just because it cant currently be explained does not mean it cant be explained.

You shouldnt jump to conclusions based on ignorance of a subject. "Science cannot explain this rain to me so it must be God, yep im sure it is...." Science then progressed and explained rain. So do you think there is a possibility you are just attributing certain phenomena to God on the basis of ignorance??? I think so. The idea that God did it, does not win by default.
 
The afterlife was invented by people a very long time ago because humans had developed a consciousness when they first appeared. Consciousness is what made them start thinking about themselves and their future and come up with revolutionizing inventions. Very soon humans started to notice that some of them live to a certain age and something happens to them that immobilizes them and they bloat and start to stink, in other words, they die. So the early civilization started thinking about what really happens to their consciousness after death. Since man has always trusted his logic, they logically concluded that consciousness and life cannot cannot just halt, so they came up with some fancy theories about god and the spiritual world, aka, the afterlife. Entire civilizations were built on the fundamental concepts of the afterlife and gods, and worshipping them to be rewarded during the lifetime and the afterlife.
But unfortunately, our logic is something that nature equipped us to deal with the obstacles of everyday life. It is not desiged to handle extreme situations and that is just where it can make very rough mistakes.

So just to sum up what I said, the afterlife is the creation of our logical mind as a result of the conscious self awareness we all have.
What is the difference between me and a single-cell organism? I'm made out of lots of single cell organisms. I doubt single-cell organisms go to heaven. Maybe it's because they don't worship gods... but they also don't have any self awareness. That's a scientific fact. So could it be that only self awared and conscious oranisms go to heaven? It's kind of logically incorrect...
But logic is not always right....

So... perhaps we'll never know until we die. Good news for curious people.
 
you do have some very good points, i did make some falacies blatently clear and i should have been more cautious of my wording. i concede to some of your points. i am in between classes now, so i dont have much time to type. if you look for miracles in majagoria (sp check), there have been a number of accounts of miracles. i cannot expand on this now, i will research tonight. science is not 100% correct all of the time. people do make mistakes, and by trying an experiment over and over again you can never assign the same types of environment and factors involved. by saying that things can be proved or disproved by science, then how do you attribute the creation of life? some people believe that there everything evolved, some people say that there was creation. at some point creation had to happen, and what created the first particle? we dont know. there is nothing on earth that can just be evolved from nothing, and by saying that science is the answer, that is as ignorant as saying that strong belief in God and attributing unknown to us to him. there must be something to create something. whos to say that we are the first form of life in the universe, or that our knowledge of the past is accurate? the simple fact is that people can not now know about the creation or meaning of life, that people must accept that we are just simple beings. we may never know in this life, or think we do, and have no way to prove it. and i like to believe that when i die that i am not just worm food, i like to think that i will be with past relatives and friends. that is a fallacy by saying that we both dont know, since it just places people at a stand still.

to the person with the statement about before we were born, i would like to say that i am sorry i missinterpreted your statement. i want to tell you that there is no way to know about things before we are born. we can only tell what we know as our brains are firing. but it is as fallacious as me saying that since you cant prove that we dont exist, we definitely did, or by you saying that since we dont remember, we never existed. these statements are just wrong. we must all try to find our own meaning of life and live to what we believe in. as people would like to think that we should conform to beliefs of others, i am not trying to do that, i am simply trying to gain knowledge about other people's ideas. keep them coming, but remember to keep it friendly, im not in here to argue, just to be exposed to more than what i was told growing up. there is a lot of ideas and information circulating, i would like to have a broader horizon.
 
Originally posted by an~opinionated~man
at some point creation had to happen, and what created the first particle?
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We're used to things that begin and end somewhere. When our logical mind is streched to the limit, such as the begining of time or what happens beyound the speed of light, a mistake will probably be made. You cannot say that infinity doesn't exist because it's logical this way. The logic is not what created our universe.
 
I definitely believe in the afterlife but not religion or hell which was probably just created by religion to put fear in people. One problem with religion is that it creates oversimplified concepts of the afterlife which really won't help anyone out when they die.
 
Originally posted by BloodSuckingGerbile
We're used to things that begin and end somewhere. When our logical mind is streched to the limit, such as the begining of time or what happens beyound the speed of light, a mistake will probably be made. You cannot say that infinity doesn't exist because it's logical this way. The logic is not what created our universe.
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Good points.
Some people just can't accept the fact that the simple human brain can't possibly fathom some idea's because we are familiar with a beginning and a before. Like the case of our lives. It is very hard to truely picture the beginning of everything or before that(it is for me anyway) but that in no way suggests it couldn't have been.
We are just evolved microbes, you shouldn't expect so much from us or assume we are smarter than the universe. The universe is probably constantly doing things we can't possibly understand, we aren't gods.
 
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