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Dreamtastic
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15 Jul 2020, 7:57 pm

Okay, so this has probably been the single most fascinating question to me throughout my life. What, if anything, happens after death?

I think I've heard just about every theory out there, but I'm not exactly sure. Here are the ones I have heard so far:

1. The "you go somewhere" theories, which include traditional places like heaven or hell as well as other places such as another dimension or plane of existence.

2. Standard reincarnation theories, both with a spirit/soul and without (though even teachers of the no-soul versions seemed to believe that there had to be something of the self that survived death for it not to be nonsense to speak of another life beginning after one ends). With some of these theories, you can only be reborn as a person, while with others, you can be reborn as any kind of living creature (be it on this planet or some other). I've even heard some versions where you can become nonliving things as well. With some of these theories, time continues in a forward linear fashion, so you can only be reborn in a time after your previous life. With others, you can be reborn into any time period, past or future.

3. More specialized reincarnation theories, most notably that we are all the same "person," and that at one time or another, we will live the life of every living thing that has ever existed.

4. You live your own life over and over again. I remember reading something online once about how it might actually be scientifically impossible to reach the point of death, and therefore your life would just reset back to the beginning before you actually "crossed over" the final moment of death.

5. You are all that exists, and when you die, so does the universe and everyone else.

6. And of course the favorite theory of today's times, absolutely nothing happens when we die. We just cease to exist, and it's eternal nothingness from there on out. The only difference between theory number 5 and this one is that even though it's just eternal nothingness for you, the universe lives on and so do other people, at least until the universe and/or humanity dies from scientific causes.

But even if I have heard every theory there is on what happens after death, I never really get tired of talking about it! So I'm curious, what are your thoughts on what happens when we die?



techstepgenr8tion
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15 Jul 2020, 9:56 pm

For people who ride out to the edge and come back - experiences differ enough to suggest that there might not be a coherent 'place'.

What's more interesting is the 'what', as in right now, because it's accessible to examination via mathematics and the like. I do think, out of all the various philosophers jumping on the panpsychism, dual-action monism, etc. train I find Donald Hoffman's outlook on it the most interesting.

Something else worth looking at when contemplating this is the no-hiding theorem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hiding_theorem


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15 Jul 2020, 10:58 pm

Many times our Aspie ancestors left us scraps of information hidden away as clues, like pieces of a puzzle. One of these is the story of Peter Pan. When I look at this story through my rose colored glasses, I see the story of a tribe of Aspies.

One of the attributes of Peter Pan was his fearlessness. As the tide came up in the Mermaids’ Lagoon, Peter and Wendy are trapped on Marooners’ Rock and will soon be drowned. Peter finds a way to free Wendy from impending doom but not himself. Peter then shudders for a brief moment at the thought of his death and then a thought flashes in his mind and he says, “To die will be an awfully big adventure”. Peter revealed fearlessness in the face of death and the capacity to turn every experience into a grand adventure. That is a pivotal traits of a Peter Pan Aspie – not desiring death but able to look death straight in the eye and not blink.


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16 Jul 2020, 8:25 am

My guess is Option 6.


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16 Jul 2020, 8:30 am

7. Your body gets disconnected and sent down the tubes to the DNA Extraction & Protein Recycling Center, while a reduced software image of your personality continues to inhabit the matrix.


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16 Jul 2020, 8:32 am

The idea that there is a certain special something that persists after we die and goes to another plane has never made any sense to me. I'm an atheist but I get the idea of a god, not the cartoonish bearded man in the sky but the deistic first mover, I find it unnecessary but not crazy. The idea of a soul though does not grok with me, this is the main reason why: You Are Two


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16 Jul 2020, 8:36 am

usagibryan wrote:
The idea that there is a certain special something that persists after we die and goes to another plane has never made any sense to me. I'm an atheist but I get the idea of a god, not the cartoonish bearded man in the sky but the deistic first mover, I find it unnecessary but not crazy.  The idea of a soul though does not grok with me...
Stating an argument from incredulity neither proves nor disproves the premise.


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usagibryan
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16 Jul 2020, 9:08 am

Fnord wrote:
usagibryan wrote:
The idea that there is a certain special something that persists after we die and goes to another plane has never made any sense to me. I'm an atheist but I get the idea of a god, not the cartoonish bearded man in the sky but the deistic first mover, I find it unnecessary but not crazy.  The idea of a soul though does not grok with me...
Stating an argument from incredulity neither proves nor disproves the premise.


I wasn't really trying to, I was just describing my intuition. I've had similar intuitions about things like free will (I don't believe in it) or the idea that there is some cosmic intentional force or plan (I don't believe in that either) since I was a kid, working out logical arguments for or against is another issue. I think the video I posted doesn't bode well for the idea of a soul though.

Fnord wrote:
7. Your body gets disconnected and sent down the tubes to the DNA Extraction & Protein Recycling Center, while a reduced software image of your personality continues to inhabit the matrix.


Is this the version of the Matrix where our brains are used for processing power or the dumbed down version where we are power sources?


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16 Jul 2020, 9:17 am

usagibryan wrote:
Fnord wrote:
7. Your body gets disconnected and sent down the tubes to the DNA Extraction & Protein Recycling Center, while a reduced software image of your personality continues to inhabit the matrix.
Is this the version of the Matrix where our brains are used for processing power or the dumbed down version where we are power sources?
I don't know about the others, but being unit 3 of 4, quaternary adjunct of subprocess 00-Alpha does have its perks.


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techstepgenr8tion
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16 Jul 2020, 10:03 am

usagibryan wrote:
I wasn't really trying to, I was just describing my intuition. I've had similar intuitions about things like free will (I don't believe in it) or the idea that there is some cosmic intentional force or plan (I don't believe in that either) since I was a kid, working out logical arguments for or against is another issue. I think the video I posted doesn't bode well for the idea of a soul though.

I share your intuition on free will. The one way arrow of time sort of makes who or whatever we are right at this moment something like x samples in a linear algebra function. Much more complex in our decision making for sure, that's a given, but there's no reason to believe that we had the ability to have known better or fewer options at time point x, or had different neurochemical potentials, or any of that. Even if quantum indeterminacy would be true it would just be something like a multiplication of the number of those paths, not a freedom to get off of them.


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16 Jul 2020, 11:04 am

Why do people more often wonder what's happening after death but not what happened before birth or "consciousness"? I would be much interested in being able to trace back the moment I first felt a concept of "I" since my body came into existence. What did the birth of the ego feel like? Nothing memorable apparently.

The thing that you think is "you", your "mind", your "soul", the "ego" is only an illusion & I don't think it's able to continue when the brain is dead and unable to sustain that mental creation.

For me personally it makes sense to believe that since my brain created the illusion "me" and I believe I exist, then other illusions I have are as (un)real as "I". I think that's why I can believe in ghosts too, and even that they can shape my experience and present me fresh information, in not a less convincing fashion than other psychological creations can such as are offered by e.g. marketers, culture, the presentation someone elses' ego is giving me about themself & my interpretation of it, fashion, history... They're not more nor less unreal than my ego is. But the brain that enables all this is an organ & dies eventually & with it will die my "I", so I don't believe I'll end up in afterlife, because afterlife is already here if it's anywhere.
Once dead, the body decomposes & breaks down into smaller components. The atoms it's made of don't get destroyed and will remain on this planet even after the illusion "I" has vanished.



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16 Jul 2020, 11:06 am

jimmy m wrote:
Many times our Aspie ancestors left us scraps of information hidden away as clues, like pieces of a puzzle. One of these is the story of Peter Pan. When I look at this story through my rose colored glasses, I see the story of a tribe of Aspies.

One of the attributes of Peter Pan was his fearlessness. As the tide came up in the Mermaids’ Lagoon, Peter and Wendy are trapped on Marooners’ Rock and will soon be drowned. Peter finds a way to free Wendy from impending doom but not himself. Peter then shudders for a brief moment at the thought of his death and then a thought flashes in his mind and he says, “To die will be an awfully big adventure”. Peter revealed fearlessness in the face of death and the capacity to turn every experience into a grand adventure. That is a pivotal traits of a Peter Pan Aspie – not desiring death but able to look death straight in the eye and not blink.





i Only Feel One Age Eternally Now Seeing
Living Breathing Dancing Singing Floating on
Terrestrial Land Where Folks Often Mistake The
Dancing of my 246 Pound Body As an Ice Skater
Spiraling Spinning Moving Torsion Repose Then
Spinning Again
Never Tiring
Only Getting
Stronger
More
Vital as i continue
to Dance And Even
Sing Like 'The Milky Way' Now For Real
in Golden Spirals of PHI 1.618 Nautilus
Ratio Patterns Now i've Already Faced
Death Once, Twice, And Thrice;
All It Teaches me Is Grow 'Peter
Pan Wings' Never
Look Back
Life
in Flight
of 'Autotelic' FloW iS ETeRNaLLY
NoW Forever And all That Counts
For It's True if One Never Fears Life
One Only Breathes at Greatest Ease
See 'Those Symbols in the BackGround'
That's Not Even Close to the Number of Tinker
Bell's and Wendy's Who Have Flown By my Side
A Few Stick Closer And Keep Me in Flight Every Breath Now
A Secret to Living Is Humbly Accepting Death Having Complete
Faith In Life Creating Life As Such A Great Gift in Present That Life Truly Is
Only Living And Death is Only Part of Life
No Different
Than Sleep
Vitalizing New Breath
There is No 'Time' For After
Life When Living iS ETernally
Now Loving Life As Gift The
Present Worth Dying For Always Now
A Celebration of Life Now is Certain Defeat of Dying Living...
This is My SiGNaTuRE PoSE Below That Naturally Comes Now
After 13,404 Miles of Public Dance in 82 Months As It's true
The Curve of my Left Elbow To Hip Creates A PHI Ocean Wave
Impossible For Waves To Drown For They Are Ocean Change
Reality Breathes Buildings Fall Trees Grow Where Will We Go
No Matter All CuLTuRaL Clothes Tools We Create A Dance
And Song Naked Still Breathes Within Naturally At Best
Loving In Golden PHI Spiraling Ways Moving Spinning Torsion
Repose Spinning Spiraling Again We Are Nature (God) Breath
LovinG iT ALL DarK Thru LiGHT NoW Consuming The Rest (God) With Least Harm
in Just
my Opinion
God Yes Meek
Continuing
to iNHeRiT
My Home This EartH
No Wrong Planet For me..
LoVE iN Giving Sharing With
Balance of Grace Is Foundation
Of All Will And Strength For Meek Is NOT Weak.
This Is What Happens When We Really Live Just
in my MultiUniVerse View of God (ALL) Now... FoR REaL
i Have No Aspirations to BE A 'Dead Legend' the Other Way (HEaVeN) is ReAlly Living Now.

Anyway, Celebrating 7 Years of Heaven Within For Real on July 19th, If One Does Not Believe One's Best Years
Are Still Ahead of One as i continue to Seek And Find Now at 60 Years-Old That will Be One's Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

i suggest 'The Other Way' Now And Then And Now And Then Now Again for it's True Now is All That Truly Exists
Out of Time, Out of Space, Out of Distance, And Even Out of Matter Now For WHere am i but on this Page for 'Your View'.

Image


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16 Jul 2020, 1:34 pm

The worm goes in, the worm goes out. The worm plays pinochle on your snout.

Seriously, I'd like to believe in an afterlife, but there doesn't seem to be any real evidence for consciousness, at least as we know it, without matter.

There have times when I've suffered deep emtional pain from loss of loved ones that I really tried.


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Dreamtastic
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16 Jul 2020, 8:53 pm

jimmy m wrote:
One of the attributes of Peter Pan was his fearlessness. As the tide came up in the Mermaids’ Lagoon, Peter and Wendy are trapped on Marooners’ Rock and will soon be drowned. Peter finds a way to free Wendy from impending doom but not himself. Peter then shudders for a brief moment at the thought of his death and then a thought flashes in his mind and he says, “To die will be an awfully big adventure”. Peter revealed fearlessness in the face of death and the capacity to turn every experience into a grand adventure. That is a pivotal traits of a Peter Pan Aspie – not desiring death but able to look death straight in the eye and not blink.


This is pretty much how I look at death, with a couple of exceptions - I'm not quite as fearless :lol: , and there have been times when I have wanted to die just to see what happens. :lol: But seriously, I do look at it as an adventure, and I am looking forward to finding out what, if anything, comes next. :)

As for where I stand on this question, I have to say first and foremost that I'm really not sure. And what's more, I don't think that anyone can really be sure, no matter what we believe, until we actually die. But of course, if it's eternal nothingness, then presumably we will never know!

Logically speaking, I of course know that eternal nothingness is probably the most likely. But if it turns out that there is something beyond materialism going on, then I would probably lean toward option 3. I do lean toward believing that the personal self probably does not survive death.

But even from a materialist perspective, where I would stray from most folks is not agreeing that cessation of the self necessarily means eternal nothingness. To think that it does is too painfully close to option 5 for me, and I don't think too many folks take that very seriously. After all, if the right material conditions came about to bring about one life (you), then why couldn't that happen again with another life after you die? It just wouldn't be you, of course. And who is to say that your life now is the first time that it has happened?



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17 Jul 2020, 8:08 am

If you are looking for information about what the bible has to day about life after death there is a free booklet "What Happens When We Die"

PDF = http://christianpioneer.com/ebooks/whwwd%20v1.pdf
Web Pages (for cell phones) = http://christianpioneer.com/cphone%20eb ... 20main.htm



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17 Jul 2020, 11:11 am

Option 6

And that is why life is so precious and the fact you only get 1 shot and you then disappear should help to make the good times great



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