What happens when we die?

In case if you was an active doomworld forum member then you can pick to start to leave in two different dimentions and can back time to time as an dark gothic guy and continue posting & modding.

Not sure. I'll report back once I'm dead.

@Murdoch has been chosen this month.

Who said I'd ever die?

I am an atheist, but I do believe in an afterlife. Why? Science.

"Matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed."

11 hours ago, ReX said:

Amen. This, I believe, would be the definition of "Hell". [And, of course, Episode 3 of The Ultimate DooM. Heh]

Ironically, the church my parents grew up in didn't believe in a heaven or hell per se, what they believed in was three resurrections. If you were a good little boy or girl you got to be revived during the First Resurrection and stand by God's side (not become one with him as I've seen in other religions). If you're a bad little boy or girl you'll get to the Second Resurrection where you'll need to prove to God that you're actually a good little boy or girl, if you succeed you'll get to stand by God's side, if not you're bamphed to the Third Resurrection with all the especially naughty boys and girls who didn't even make it to the Second. At that point you're just killed and stay dead forever while everyone else gets to sit in God's lap forever.

It's probably the least appealing version of the afterlife I've ever seen. What even is the point of the Third Resurrection? At the same time it triggers all of the bad feels I have towards immortality. I wasn't raised in the church so there's probably a lot of info I'm missing about it, but I very much doubt anything my Grampa (who, unlike my parents, still believes this) could possibly add would convince me that this would be ideal. The church collapsed in on itself during the 90s, and survives today as a ton of splinter factions all over the place.

2 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

"Matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed."

I was just going to say exactly this!

You are a collection of matter and energy that has some capacity to maintain its structure. Death is when the structure stops being maintained. However, all of the constituent parts are still present in the universe, and for at least some millions of years the majority of it will probably remain on Earth. Assuming you get buried the correct way your body will literally be consumed by the environment, which in a way means that "you" have become more than an individual could ever be - you are the tree and the soil and the worm. Nice!

Furthermore, I'd argue that even the less tangible parts of our lives - thoughts, feelings, actions, other people's memories of us and our impact on collective experience - are all represented in some way that is similarly not "gone." Perhaps our keen sense of individuality goes away, but to even be attached to the idea that "I am separate from the world" seems quite false. Would you have any understanding of self if you existed in a void? I doubt it. Your structure exists - but it exists in a network, a massive fluctuating field of other structures, all of them at least a little bit different from yours - some very different - but all sharing a general ability or "desire" to maintain their character as it were. Sounds like another law - an object at rest tends to stay at rest, and in motion tends to stay in motion. Is it so special that things we call "living" try to maintain their structure, when rocks do it all the time? But the rocks were just formed like that, by chance you say. Were you not "just formed" somehow by chance? We have trained ourselves to think of "living" as walking around and thinking about stuff and making decisions, so much that even plants get tossed aside as kind of living, I mean they just sit there and do they even have a brain? They just react to stimuli, whereas I....

Anyway before I get too off track, my point here is that I don't think of "my life" as some discrete number that can be put in a box and shuffled away to the basement to quietly non-function forever. When you really start trying to define who you are, you'll quickly run past the convenient definition of "this body named So-and-so." Your life involves so much more than pumping blood and eating food. Surely, you were constructed from the dust of the past and so shall the future be constructed from you. Word.

You go to Heaven and get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to dab on the living. 

This will sound nutty, but I have had many unexplainable paranormal experiences in my life

and some of them have given me proof of the afterlife.

Call me nuts if you must, but I know what I have seen and experienced. Some of the events were also experienced by friends and family.

When you die you become wormshit. Yeah sure, the atoms and molecules that make up your body don't go away. But you are far more than the mere sum of your constituent particles. What distinguishes you from any other assortment of chemicals is how they are arranged, your memories, personality, everything that makes you you is dependent on how those elements are arranged in relation to each other. If that arrangement is sufficiently disrupted, then you are no more.

With the passing of your physical body, all that is left of you is your legacy and impact on other people and the wider world around you. So make good on that if you don't want people to remember you as a shit.

That being said, I do think that biological immortality is far more achievable than travelling faster than light. Ageing is a disease, and we have gotten very good at medicine as a species.

Either nothing or your energy gets converted into something else like some plant or an animal. If the energy thing (which in this case reincarnation) is true then I wanna come back as a monke.

But if nothing happens after death then who cares because you won't even realize it. I hope something happens but we don't know, and science tells us that the afterlife is pretty much impossible, who knows maybe there is some big guy up there with a big golden frat house in the cosmos full of walking dead people.

All in all, don't think about what happens after too much (or else you'll get an existential crisis), and just think and live the moment and cherish the time we have here.

10 hours ago, MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai said:

Soul is not some fairytale thing but an important philosophical concept, and to understood it's history one needs to study ancient philosophers all the way ro modern ones. 

Even philosophers who had a more materialist worldview used soul as a metaphor, as a force which moves the body, but after that dies with the body (Democritus).

I didn't suggest that the soul is a fairytale thing. I simply pointed out that believing in something doesn't automatically make it so.

I agree that the soul, as a metaphysical concept, had been a powerful factor in shaping world events. Again, just because a concept has been influential, doesn't make it real. Likewise, despite brilliant philosophers postulating about the existence of the human soul, the notion has so far not gone beyond that: postulation.

Your position was that because a person believes in something, that thing is real. Maybe it becomes real for that person (which I acknowledged) but it does not become universally real.

4 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I am an atheist, but I do believe in an afterlife. Why? Science.

 

"Matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed."

I'll completely agree with @NoXion here. A person's body matter might, somehow, be transmuted into another body but the person that emerges will be entirely new. Therefore, the notion of the so-called "afterlife" in this case falls apart.

We turn into demons.

umm. like to play it safe. there is a logical pattern to this with a common result.

• if one could be resurrected by cryogenic technology, then that's fine. but if such technology still could not awaken the frozen dead, then one still has to consider if there is life after death.
• if there is no life after death, nor heaven and hell, that's fine because all living things die anyway. but if there is life after death and a heaven and hell, then one should lead a life of good.
• if there is no incarnation, then that's fine too. but if there is incarnation, then one should still should lead a life of good.
• if there is no god, then that's fine and everything just follow social local standards. but if gods do exist, one should still lead a life of good. since there may be many gods, perhaps one could just ask the truest most powerful god (a god should be able to listen from anywhere in the world) if the god can guide oneself to the true religion that the god truely acknowledges, and be steadfast in that religion till death. if no result, that is fine too since at least one had asked the god.

so as the common result, one just need to lead a life of good and ask god for guidance if the god truely exists, whatever the circumstances after death. i'm inclined towards the sciencey side of things, but i also believe there is a supreme entity too. reason is, if energy could not be destroyed and could only be converted into a different forms (law of conservation of energy), then energy cannot first come into existence from absolute nothingness, since that would break the law itself. the general consensus amongst scientists have concluded time is not a loop (thorne's and hawking's), eliminating the theory that energy have always existed. therefore, according to modern science standards, it is impossible for energy to suddenly exist from absolutely nothing. unless it was created from absolutely nothing by someone.

to summarize, i prefer to play it safe since the inevitable end for every living thing is death.

AS THE TITLE STATES MY FRIENDS

1 minute ago, THE IMP said:

The only right answer

Accept the truth and live with it. I have a compulsory military service at the following next 2 years after I finish the school. OK !?

Give me at least a couple of millennia though. 80-odd years is nowhere near enough.

2 hours ago, ReX said:

I'll completely agree with @NoXion here. A person's body matter might, somehow, be transmuted into another body but the person that emerges will be entirely new. Therefore, the notion of the so-called "afterlife" in this case falls apart.

A notion that cannot be proven cannot fall apart, as it is just that: a notion. Nobody knows the answer to this question, and nobody can claim they are correct. The term "afterlife" is an umbrella word that means different things to each person. In terms of my theory, even if I reemerge rearranged, I still reemerge in some way. How? How many times? What do I reemerge as? Nobody knows.

People bash evangelical Christians for posing their belief about the afterlife as the one and only truth, but in the end anyone who tries to tell you with any amount of certainty the "truth" about something that cannot be proven is just as bad (they just don't beg for your money). If something cannot be proven, the only things to discuss are personal beliefs. Should we look at science for evidence? Absolutely. But science cannot explain everything.

Another thing to consider is that this is a message board for a video game, most people here do not have a deep understanding of philosophy, science, religion, etc. The only thing to gain here is learning about each other's personal beliefs and opinions. Beliefs change. If I was posting here when I was fourteen, I probably would have said "life sucks nothing happens after you die end of story blah blah blah" because you go through that "I'm deep" stage when you're growing up. So everything here should be taken with a grain of salt.

Not directing this towards you or anyone in particular, just talking in general.

Also, the key to immortality lies within the illusiopit, don't tell anyone.

16 hours ago, Doomkid said:

All I know is, anyone who makes promises about the afterlife in exchange for cash is full of crap, no matter how roundabout their method is.

AMEN to that!


Now to the topic at hand,

Those who directly descended from Abraham, those of the Hebrews, of Israelites, of Judah who in turn named as Jews,  the writings contained do say that the person dies, in which soul goes to Sheol- is sometimes Hell in some translations.   But Sheol itself is just the common grave, and where the soul's thoughts cease, it stops,  or sleeping in death.  The ongoing thinking for those people that God had a promise somehow, like he did for Abraham as having many children like stars in the sky.  Prophecies in turn gave a promise later on, just when in the course of time was it going to happen.   
When the man Jesus came to the seen during the time,  the Jewish religions as I've been looking over who were Sadducees & Pharisee,  the former had abandoned the idea of resurrection.

The topic of afterlife whether we live or die, eternal paradise or damnation,  it's really not simply answered by one answer, as it follows who judges or follows what should I really be doing?

If I were to answer an Atheistic answer,  then it informs in a way that there are no punishments or Karma to selfish action.  You could cheat and kill someone and live pretty well and get away die peacefully in a rich house, no amount of words written will affect anything afterward.   The only thing stopping this is consequences by social norms and uphelding laws to treat these crimes.

I used to be an Atheist for about a few months,  but now fully I am a Christian of some variant- just not the ones who go outside and pull their pants down in hating God.

One greater aspect that keeps me from going cold turkey in the spiritual sense is:

-  Unit 371.  This is when the Japanese in WWII took Chinese (&Russians) to do chemical and biological experiments on them.   Not as covered as Nanking Massacre or any massacre known in history, but still, this was a warcrime that didn't get punished at all. This is depicted well in Men Behind the Sun 1(2&3 are ripoffs, 4 is about Nanking) that might make you want to go blackout drunk after seeing it.

-  That a gang of bad people will hold up a family, raping and torture the children in front of the parent's eyes to watch. You know this has happened at any point in time.

And I could list more.  Where's the Justice to for these people?   Where's the Justice for the animals that died by man-made disasters?

There is too much injustice around.  I can't sit in my own world confine that I work, sleep and play, as the rules of the game.  I know that I've been Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon,  so I know that the ruling powers are real  rather than just an abstract "fake" happening out there.

Ernst Jünger lived an Adventerous mindset of a life that seem to overcome whatever was thrown at him- where are those kinds of people?  I suppose that the mindset nowadays seems to be an empty void where nothing matters.   Where I might be a pessimist realistic glass half-whatever-Cheeseburger view,  I still always strive to be Romanticism view.

2 hours ago, THE IMP said:

Accept the truth and live with it. I have a compulsory military service at the following next 2 years after I finish the school. OK !?

Wow!! 

My Father was a firm believer that after you graduate High School you should serve a year in the military and a month in prison.

Personally I did neither but I can see where he was coming from.

   I was raised Roman Catholic and was an alter boy till the age of twelve but as I grew older the Church and Religion became too hard to swallow. I think when we die... well... we die.

   I did read somewhere a version or opinion of what Heaven would be like if it existed and I liked it.

" You will know all the answers to all the questions that mankind has ever pondered but the fact that you know them won't seem like a big deal, it will be like ' well of course ' "

5 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

In terms of my theory, even if I reemerge rearranged, I still reemerge in some way.

But that's the whole point: You, in the metaphysical sense, don't re-emerge. Your molecules could be rearranged to form a human being, but it won't be you. If this rearrangement has been occurring throughout human history, whereby a person's memories and personalities and intellect are transmuted into another human being who is then aware of being occupied wholly or in part by another human, wouldn't this have made the news? And, effectively, ended the argument about whether reincarnation is real or not. Hence, my observation that the notion of an "afterlife" is meaningless in the context of matter simply being transformed rather than being "destroyed". An "afterlife" implies consciousness; your point simply focused on matter.

6 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

If something cannot be proven, the only things to discuss are personal beliefs. Should we look at science for evidence? Absolutely. But science cannot explain everything.

Agreed.

14 minutes ago, ReX said:

whereby a person's memories and personalities and intellect are transmuted into another human being who is then aware...

lol I didn't mean it that literally, I ain't that crazy Rex. I'm aware we don't retain our memories from our possible past lives if we are all constantly being reincarnated. I was just saying that in SOME WAY I believe your being (soul, spirit, whatever, not just matter) is transformed/transfered/scattered, which, to me, could be considered an afterlife, even if we'll never be aware of it.

3 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I was just saying that in SOME WAY I believe your being (soul, spirit, whatever) is transformed/transfered/scattered, which, to me, could be considered an afterlife, even if we'll never be aware of it.

Yes, I'll grant you that for many, that is a perfectly acceptable definition of an afterlife.

Incidentally, I'm not closed to the idea of the human soul. At some point in the future we may get proof that human consciousness transcends life. I'm just not there yet.

No one really knows what happens after we die even if there is a afterlife 

9 hours ago, ReX said:

Yes, I'll grant you that for many, that is a perfectly acceptable definition of an afterlife.

 

Incidentally, I'm not closed to the idea of the human soul. At some point in the future we may get proof that human consciousness transcends life. I'm just not there yet.

Well, the brain works on electrical impulses, which is a form of energy. Energy can't be destroyed. So... maybe.

It is a very crazy topic and the simple truth is no one knows, and no one is likely going to sway someone with a differing opinion.

Reincarnation is an interesting notion. The part of me that wants to be objective says there's insufficient hard evidence. It's all anecdotal. But when I have my Dad's then partner telling me her daughter was once weirdly obsessed with a suburb of one of New Zealand's cities for absolutely no reason and pointed to it precisely on a map when she had never been there before (and was so young she probably barely understood what a map even was), or my friend telling me her daughter seemed to have memories of the sinking of the Titanic as a young child and saying things like "you weren't my Mum then", or my best friend growing up having an irrational fear of wolves to the point of having nightmares about them even though there are no wolves in New Zealand and he had never encountered one... well... you have to admit it's odd. I should add my friend was a pretty tough SOB even back then, a hunter who loves the outdoors. I concede in this case maybe he saw a scary movie featuring wolves as a kid but as he had no other hangups about anything, no other phobias, it's a bit of a logical stretch. An ongoing fear that lasted well into his teenage years just doesn't match with his psychological makeup.

None of these people had reason to lie to me, and they never sort publicity or attention of any kind for these peculiarities. So what's the explanation? Kids can have vivid imaginations, obviously. But when they are giving specific details that can actually be correlated with documented evidence it becomes a lot harder to dismiss as simple childish fantasy. Have they tapped into some kind of collective unconscious? If so, why do so many of these cases seem to only focus on one person's memories? Why not a jumbled stream of different lives? Skeptics claim some people do it for attention but really what little attention does it get them? Maybe a brief appearance on TV or in a book if they are lucky. Some online attention in a forum somewhere. So that as an excuse to lie falls a bit flat. Do I "believe" in reincarnation? No, but it's only because the evidence is insufficient to convince me fully. But I would be lying to say that it did not intrigue me.

I think part of the problem is our idea of any kind of existence is very finite. Everything has it's season, a beginning and an end. Unless you were brought up religious, the idea of some kind of intelligence or force that has always been and will always be is pretty difficult to wrap one's head around. Why did he/she/it create us? What was the point? Is there a point? Were they simply bored and wanted to see what would happen? I am 100% pro science, but science is just a means of understanding the world. It's based purely on what we have been able to see, measure and analyse. Does something automatically not exist if we cannot yet subject it to these things? Of course not. Science is not a religion or doctrine. It's an ongoing process. Were you to travel back in time a century and describe some of what science has uncovered to scientists living at that time, they would likely think you mad.

Regardless of what we believe, I think we should treat this existence we have as our one shot, and give it our all. Some may question what's the point if there is nothing more? There was a great passage in Angel (the TV show): "If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... , then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today."

12 hours ago, ReX said:

Incidentally, I'm not closed to the idea of the human soul. At some point in the future we may get proof that human consciousness transcends life. I'm just not there yet.

2 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Well, the brain works on electrical impulses, which is a form of energy. Energy can't be destroyed. So... maybe.

There's a fun idea for you, fellas: We become floating electronic brainwave-ghosts and explore the cosmos, unbound from a weak fleshy vessel.

3 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

 

 

There's a fun idea for you, fellas: We become floating electronic brainwave-ghosts and explore the cosmos, unbound from a weak fleshy vessel.

You could say that we become the universe, that's what that line of thinking leads me to 

Continue the theme @Murdoch started. I know a guy who once see a dream where he felt like a cat and looked like a cat sitting under a chair. In another dream he was chased by a bear that he had never encountered in his life. He was seriously scared. A woman that have some german roots. Once she had a weird dream. Her acquaintances at this moment noted that in a dream she spoke in an unknown language. One of the... "subjects" that appeared there was later identified as one of the ancient german gods. Picture in total represented something like a meeting of a small tribe that communicated with this guy.

Also I've heard a story, about people I know indirectly, that have seen the same scary dream - they saw each other in a falling elevator.

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I fear that there will be nothing in the end, but there's no proof of that. I hope we live on after.

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There's a fun idea for you, fellas: We become floating electronic brainwave-ghosts and explore the cosmos, unbound from a weak fleshy vessel.

@ReeseJamPiece, @Biodegradable, you know what they said:

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You are an immortal ghost controlling a piece of meat worn on bones made of stardust. How can you be afraid of something? Or someone?