Life after death? Your views

[Hamilton]

We're food for worms guys. Food for worms.

Or, we're a short-lived bonfire.

 

[Mr Popkins]

If I could live forever, I'd jump at the chance, no question.

you say that now but your opinions change as you get older
alot of old people who lose their life paterners of 40 odd years or so have nothing worth living for and just give up.

ok so you might meet them again in the afterlife , but again the question is ,what age are you in the afterlife? say you die a baby ,do you grow up and learn? who brings you up?

if your disabled do you become able bodied?

as someone said above the reason we produce off-sping is to carry on our genes.

I cannot get my head around that we go to a another place

 

[CHAPPERS]

I'd like to believe in the afterlife, don't though.

 

[Braders]

this is well too deep for my liking!

 

[Marc]

one theory I had is that when you die or get killed your family, friend, the universe carries on with you being dead - but in your eyes you did'nt die and life continues as normal and you see other people die. Sort of a parralell universe type thing.

 

[chip]

Sure Yorkie, you are more than a collection of atoms but that is defined by the electro-chemical connections between collections of them - thought. I think that there are processes that pass on traits over and across generations and concepts like soul, afterlife etc. help us explain things that we don't understand, or often even have a vocabulary to describe.

My comment about enslavement has nothing to do with you making a choice or not but more to do with the way such concepts have been used for the past few thousand years to influence (for better and worse) homogenius groups of people.

Appologies for any offence I may have caused you though. At the end of the day theres no way I can prove me right and you wrong or vice-versa - there are too many unknowns.

 

[Mr C]

you say that now but your opinions change as you get older
alot of old people who lose their life paterners of 40 odd years or so have nothing worth living for and just give up.

ok so you might meet them again in the afterlife , but again the question is ,what age are you in the afterlife? say you die a baby ,do you grow up and learn? who brings you up?

if your disabled do you become able bodied?

as someone said above the reason we produce off-sping is to carry on our genes.

I cannot get my head around that we go to a another place

I'd only do it if I could stay at a good age (say now).

 

[Yorkie]

No chip I am not offended at all.

Like you say there are too many unknowns for you.

I have my faith and God has proved himself to me in many ways. That is my testimony and I won't foist it onto anyone else unless they ask me.

 

[JEM]

When you die you die

Simple really! End of.

 

[NMH]

If there was life after death, it wouldn't be death, now would it?

Death is the culmination of life where you are unbound by measured, limited time.
Anyone knows that Jeffrey !

 

[NMH]

Consider sleep, and dreams. You do not need the physical body to live in a form of (what seems exactly like) living reality.
Also, time does not have measure as it does in the waking world.
Dreams that seem like hours can take seconds, and ones that seem to be short can take hours (they use brain-mapping to know that a sleeping person is dreaming, then they wake them and get the ex-sleeper's review).

Sleep could well be a clue to death, and certainly deserves some thought imho .

 

[DTES]

Like Chip, I point out first that I mean no offence by my post, but feel I have to at least state my opinion.

I don't believe in an afterlife. In fact, I think the whole afterlife (mainly Heaven/Hell idea) is basically flawed, and doesn't explain itself, unless you believe solely in creation and refute the idea of evolution.

For example, what allows anything entry to an afterlife? Humans I presume, in this idea, all end up somewhere. What about other animals? Cats? Dogs? Ok, take it further. What about single bacteria? You can't have one without them all:

This may sound stupid, but evolution tells us we all developed from the same thing. And because evolution is a slow, continuous process (even today, everything is, slowly, evolving), you cannot simply draw a line to say "Here. Now we're evolved enough to have 'souls'". Defining when we became "human" isn't that simple.

So would someone religious here care to tell me exactly when we developed these "souls"? Is there a date in history - "1st human soul"?

The desire for an afterlife is, on a basic level, in built into humans though, I do understand the reason to believe. The basic principle in a human is to survive. At the end of the day, every single creature on this planet, acts like it does (take eating for example) to survive. The idea of an "end" simply acts against this basic "mindset", so the mind rejects it. No chance, it says, I'm here to stay, even if not necessarily right here.

Yorkie: (again, I mean no offence, just my opinion), I believe these differences in your children, even while still inside you, are simply explained, without religion. Not every baby was "identical", there would have been differences. Basic genetics tells us this. While inside, slight differences in chemical levels in the brain would make someone feel different. And of course we all have different personalities, we are all born with slightly different "instincts", so these will lead to different personalities from early on to later in life.

And now I'm late for a lecture, so I have to run.

 

[Yorkie]

Like Chip, I point out first that I mean no offence by my post, but feel I have to at least state my opinion.

I don't believe in an afterlife. In fact, I think the whole afterlife (mainly Heaven/Hell idea) is basically flawed, and doesn't explain itself, unless you believe solely in creation and refute the idea of evolution.

For example, what allows anything entry to an afterlife? Humans I presume, in this idea, all end up somewhere. What about other animals? Cats? Dogs? Ok, take it further. What about single bacteria? You can't have one without them all:

This may sound stupid, but evolution tells us we all developed from the same thing. And because evolution is a slow, continuous process (even today, everything is, slowly, evolving), you cannot simply draw a line to say "Here. Now we're evolved enough to have 'souls'". Defining when we became "human" isn't that simple.

So would someone religious here care to tell me exactly when we developed these "souls"? Is there a date in history - "1st human soul"?

The desire for an afterlife is, on a basic level, in built into humans though, I do understand the reason to believe. The basic principle in a human is to survive. At the end of the day, every single creature on this planet, acts like it does (take eating for example) to survive. The idea of an "end" simply acts against this basic "mindset", so the mind rejects it. No chance, it says, I'm here to stay, even if not necessarily right here.

Yorkie: (again, I mean no offence, just my opinion), I believe these differences in your children, even while still inside you, are simply explained, without religion. Not every baby was "identical", there would have been differences. Basic genetics tells us this. While inside, slight differences in chemical levels in the brain would make someone feel different. And of course we all have different personalities, we are all born with slightly different "instincts", so these will lead to different personalities from early on to later in life.

And now I'm late for a lecture, so I have to run.

No offence taken at all

My belief is in creation not evolution. Evolution is only a theory and yet is taught as fact. I cannot prove creation to you but I have attended Creation seminars and there are various creatures throughout the planet who cannot have evolved because their survival wouldn't have been long enough to last one generation. The bombadier beetle for example.
Carbon dating is seriously flawed the further back in time you go (more than 500 years) and was shown to me by a friend of mine who is a qualified Industrial Chemist (who also has a degree in Maths and Computers)

So therefore it follows on that I believe that man (and woman) were created and that Adam & Eve were the first humans.

We not only have a soul but also a spirit. (tripartheid beings) Animals don't so that is why it is legal to have an animal put down at the vets but euthanasia is not legal for humans

 

[mk_bha]

read a book on this once.

it was on about (hard to explain) humans can get there heads around the past - the future and generally think about eternity. This proves that there is a soul inside you -- this cannot die.

we are in vessels etc

i have also been reading about the multi/parallel universe theory - that blows your head off.


ppl thats say "when you die you die" are narrow minded.

 

[DTES]

Yorkie, to ask a question, (not to pick a hole in your argument), is it that easy to seperate humans/animals so easily, just because of spirits/souls? Doesn't the number of similarites between us and other creatures, as in basic structure, esp. organs, and differing genetically by less that 2% make it harder to distinguish? Surely if we were more "special" we would have been "made" completely differently?

PS, Glad we can have a discussion like this without causing offence and degrading into arguments. I love NSC.

 

[NMH]

I'd like to imagine that animals go to their own form of 'afterlife experience', and that trying to base it upon a heaven/hell of our perception is futile and basically - none of our business. Animals probably don't get the options of sins that we do, or the culpability of decisions based on marriage, property, coveting, lying and deceiving.

I just hope that my dogs have a great time with me while we are here together, and that it's quality time well spent. I love these furry friends.

 

[bhaexpress]

I'd like to think that there's some other dimension that we move to but frankly there's nothing to suggest that there is aprt from ghost stories.

Still, I'm dying to find out ....

 

[Yorkie]

Hamphire the 2% difference and genetic structure still apply to the body. ie a series of chemicals fluids etc

The soul is your personality.

Humans are the only ones to also have a spirit.

This why I was trying to explain that the body is what dies.

We don't just live by instincts - hunger, sex, survival etc as animals do

Humans are compassionate & creative, they have consciences and want to live by a moral code of some sort.

 

[NMH]

Huh ? Humans are the only ones with a spirit ? Where do you get that from then? The way I see it, humans are just the most domesticated animal on earth, and if you spend enough time with an animal (that wants you around), you might gain a lot of respect for their spirit and their codes of conduct in this world.

That we still have on earth, humans that are relatively close to ferrel in nature, and pretty similar to 'early man' in their society and actions, we have been able to see some mankind as instinctual . Then of course, missionaries froth at the mouth to convert them and the modern civilisation to clothe and introduce them to medicine etc and mess that all up.

Basically, humans seem like nutcases when they practise tribal rituals and wear weird lip-protruding jewelry, and paint and slice themselves up. Animals can look comparitively sophisticated!

 

[Drips]

No Yorkie, its because there are a finite and abosolute number of atoms in the system we call the universe.

How do you know?
The universe is supposed to be infinite.
If the universe is infinite, it follows the amount/number of atoms within it are also infinite.

People on her have talked about atoms, brain-mapping & basic genetics amongst other things.
All this was little (if at all) known about 100 years ago.
Who knows what the next 100 may bring?
Science doesn’t stand still; the frontiers are always been pushed back.
We probably don’t know 0.000001% of what’s going on around us.
So how can anyone say with any authority, “when you die that’s it” ?
MMmm? Not sure lads.

The stories of outer body experiences and the “bright light at the end of the tunnel” tend to sway me towards believing in some kind of afterlife.

Well I’m hedging my bets just in case.