Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

It can't all be over after we die, right? The title says it all. You think heaven exists? Reincarnation maybe? Or do we simply become nonexistent? I don't know why, but I think reincarnation is a possibility.

Errrrrrrr, it can be. My assumption is that I'll die, rot away in a box in the ground, and the world will keep on spinning without me. That's why my life goal is to leave behind a billion dollar legacy. At least people will remember that I was here for awhile.

I feel like the assumption that something exists after life is why so many people fail to take advantage of what little life they have.

I think I'm dead after life and have for a while now.

Honestly, I literally have no idea. For all I know, if there's something after death, whatever it is may be something my current mind may not be able to handle, like multiple temporal dimensions, or more than 3 primary colors.

That's not to say I disbelieve that something exists-- after all, I easily admit I believe ghosts could exist. At the same time, I'm not inclined to say I believe it exists either.

This whole question is like asking me what my birthday present is when I've never even observed the box. I literally have no idea if it's empty or not, since there's no way for me to examine it. I've heard stories of people who said they peeked at their presents, but I have no idea if they are true or not, regardless of wether or not those people are actually telling the truth of the experiences they believed they have. I can speculate based on what I know about presents in general, but there's no absolute, full-proof guarantee that the pattern will continue, even if it would be extremely odd if it didn't.

I don't know what comes after death. All I know is that this phenomenon makes me feel immensely horrified and joyful at the same time.

After life is a question mark.

Well I do like mysteries.

Anything is possible. And all the possibilities terrify me

Well my theory is that we pick a new timeline to live in without any memories of our previous life. Said timelines could have wildly different laws of physics and whatnot…

The absence of consciousness.

Nothing.

I do believe there is some form of afterlife. Whether it is a paradise, hell, or just another normal world that we move on to, I don't know. I see it as a sort of neutral place, where we can meet our deceased loved ones and continue to observe the world as it moves on without us. I think more than anything in the afterlife I just want to be able to see what happens to the world as time goes on.

I like the idea of reincarnation, but I don't think it's something I can fully believe in or get behind.

Any "answer" which did not make the mistake of requiring reality as we can detect it to have demonstratively false attributes would be, by definition, an unfalsifiable hypothesis. It is ultimately a waste of time and energy to give any more significance to these than a simple fantasy.

I like to think our consciousness is projected to a new body, with no memories of our past life. Then that body dies, and we pass on to the next one. And the next one, and the next one, and the next one. And once the human race inevitably dies out, our consciousness transfers to our successors. If you want to put this in a far-from-serious way, the ride never ends.

My attitude with that is "I'll find out when I get there". I think it's a waste of time for me to dwell on the after life. I get why other people do it but it really doesn't do anything for me. Focus on the current life lol. I really have no idea what will happen because I honestly give it no thought.

Well your consciousness or at least your memories must be passed on after you die otherwise there is no point in calling it an "afterlife" if there is to be no connection between a human's death and the birth of an ethereal being. Now we know that consciousness and memories are material things because diseases like dementia exist where the deterioration of the brain causes memory loss. There have also been incidents where people have been impaled in the head and had personality changes and some gain eidetic memory. So you could say the human mind is the concealed box.

Everyone thinks that the afterlife is too abstract or too deep a topic to be argued for, but I don't. Even though the afterlife is not something that can be measured empirically it doesn't mean that you can't demonstrate that something is false (see Reductio ad absurdum). You probably know that the human body is a multicellular organism. That means that your body hosts billions of cells that function cooperative, but can also be isolated and live independently given the right environment. We shed dead skin cells each day and no one has a funeral, but when someone has a heart attack they are presumed dead because lack of blood to the brain. Why is that so different? Brain cells are practically the same as skin cells except for some anatomical differences (both have the same genome). What makes the brain do what it does is the vast electrical connections between different cells and when you die those connections soon fall apart, but that's the same phenomenon as pulling a plug from an electrical outlet. No one says that a spirit is born when I remove my cell phone charger from the wall; its absurd.

We will all come back as strong skeletons and fight for the rights of our skeleton brothers and sisters in the endless battle between skeleton armies.

True, but you're taking a scientific approach on a subject that is inherently unscientific. Logic dictates that even though it can be proven that souls or what not can be shown to not exist in a scientific way, but this doesn't mean it cannot exist in ways that are not covered by science.

If you really want to get philosophical you could argue that all of science is a model created to help us understand our world and, as such, is limited by our ability to understand and model our environment – thus certain parts of our environment will always be off limits to understanding through science. It is entirely possible that, because of the limitations of our ability to understand, that science is an incorrect model in some cases and cannot explain specific phenomenon.

This idea isn't really limited to spiritual discussions, either – this issue could be argued, for example, for the issues surrounding quantum mechanics and gravity and how difficult it is to reconcile the two – it may be entirely possible that these two phenomenon cannot be explained by humans because of the limitations of our ability to understand. So it is a legitimate limitation of our ability to understand as human beings.

Of course, we won't know due to the fact that we can't really be aware of our limitations to understand; just rather we will try to approach that limit but never achieve it. (Interesting, kind of like the limit of a function…)

So yes, scientifically you can prove something like that but technically science is a model that humans use and, as such, is limited by our own ability to understand the universe.

Of COURSE that being said, science is definitely useful and practical so I'm not saying science is useless, I'm just saying that it's limited by the very fact that we ourselves are limited in our ability to comprehend the world and shouldn't be regarded as "the inner workings of the universe", but rather the human understanding of the inner workings of the universe.

This isn't to mention that your definition of a soul is pretty closed. The concept of a soul can theoretically be explained through scientific means without having to rely on measures of mass or what not. For example, a soul could simply be explained by the organized form of energy that passes through a system, which is released when the system collapses, such as when a creature dies. This also means that souls could exist in non-living things as well. Because this energy is essentially "directed" within these systems by mechanical means (usually through chemical or heat-based means), they are limited by the capabilities of the system. When the system is disrupted to the point that it cannot be restored, that energy is released. Two examples of this occuring are when someone dies (the energy is released through decomposition and heat) or when a star reaches the end of its life (the energy is released through the extremely strong nuclear fusion that is occuring). Both examples are irreversible damage to a system and thus cannot be restored.

As of now, I'd have to answer the question of is there an afterlife with a very definite "probably not". There really is no way that we'd really be able to tell that there is one or isnt bit it doesn't seem very likely.

However, if there is an afterlife, I personally would hope that it would look a lot like Zion, Joshua Tree, or Yosemite.

When I die, there will be people after me with life. So yes, the afterlife is real.

I don't think there is an afterlife, but if there is I highly doubt it's "heaven" or some kind of perfect place to live. Not only does perfection get boring after a while, I really don't think that a paradise is anything other than an abstract concept. I think we either get reincarnated or become ghosts.

I'm not trying to say this to be edgy, just that I think that some place being "perfect" is just an absurd idea. I think there's too many possibilities for a place to be truly without flaw.

I believe something happens after death, due in part because I want something to happen. I generally defer to the heaven and hell dynamic because of my catholic upbringing but I'm open to all interpretations.

I'm scared to death of there being nothing though, the unconcious nothingness of nonexistence is the worst hell I could possibly imagine.

Also kind of like how lisa talked about not believing in an after-life makes her enjoy life more, it's made me value life more. The more I go through life the more precious it becomes to me and it's made me really pacifist. Like the idea that when someone dies they're basically obliterated makes death that much more powerful to me.

I don't believe there's anything after death, or atleast not very likely. I believe consciousness is something that happens in one's brain or "control center". Without it it's nothing.

Absolute nothingness. I will stop existing and nobody will remember what I once were.

Well, the only way to have an answer for that will be once we get there.

I'd go with reincarnation or something alike as the most probable for as we can observe that in our universe nothing can ever be destroyed or created, so the soul/spirit (if such things even exist) are likely to follow the same rule.
I also like to think that we in our entirety are nothing but a toddler of a god, or some creature of bigger intelect and/or complexibility than we can imagine(which I guess some would call a god) and that we are simply evolving our consciousness little by little with each reincarnation and gaining knowledge, one day to become as wise as who or what created us all.

Is life an object?

I would love it if ghosts were what what we became after death.

I would be just falling asleep, exept without dreams or waking up.

If there is something after death, it's probably pretty good. Otherwise, I'll just wind up back where I started. As nothing.

But I think Reincarnation will happen, even if supernatural forces are not at work as the universe is made up of a finite amount of matter.

I expected a lot more discussion and argument in a serious debate forum rather than people just stating their opinions in an uncertain ways as if they are trying to avoid a fight. I'm disappointed in this forum.

True, but you’re taking a scientific approach on a subject that is inherently unscientific. Logic dictates that even though it can be proven that souls or what not can be shown to not exist in a scientific way, but this doesn’t mean it cannot exist in ways that are not covered by science.

I don't know how to respond to this. The point of my entire post was that you can argue against the afterlife using a specific kind of argument. You're basically saying "Yeah, but the afterlife is outside of logic so you're wrong and I don't need to explain why that's true." The only thing I can say is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What is your inference that lead you to believe that the afterlife is outside of logic? Because I am almost certain that it's circular reasoning i.e science can't verify the afterlife because it is outside of logic. Why is the afterlife outside of logic? Because science can't study it.