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Afterlife thoughts...

Do you believe in an afterlife? Even if you do not believe in the Jesus and Christianity role model perhaps there is still an afterlife. It might not be what we think of as an afterlife.

Who knows ? No one does for sure.

When we do know we will not be able to tell anyone.

SO....who believes in an afterlife even if they are agnostic? I'm pretty sure atheists do not. Again, I could be wrong.

Thoughts anyone?

The recording I posted was a real recording. I did hear the words "This is your mother." Many of you scoffed at it but i didn't rig that recording.

Did no one else give it a second thought?

I've been in search of this answer for a very long time. It's why I dabble with the ghost theory and the supernatural. I've never SEEN a ghost but again how do those words come out clearly to me. Are they what I thought I would hear, so I heard them?

JustLuAnn 7 Dec 21
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53 comments

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2

No, I don't believe. I fully reject the Abrahanic beliefs as just plain B.S. I remain an agnostic, as, yea, I don't, FULLY, know what comes next. If science finds consciousness is more than a bunch of firing neurons, then I might think something comes later, but it sure isn't some fairy tale.

afterlife is not by any means exclusively or even originally an abrahamic belief. it is older and more varied. however, i am with you in disbelieving in any of it.

g

8

To believe in an afterlife, you must believe in a soul or spirit... cause no part of the physical body survives... i don't believe in souls... The only thing that occurs after life, is death... death is the afterlife... Death is the end of life...

@K9Kohle789 when the power company produces electric, are they actually creating life forms? Also, I don't believe in energy lasting forever.. I believe it's used up and recycled just like plastic and other materials...

@K9Kohle789 I do believe our energy dissipates into something else after death.

8

For every dollar you give me, I'll contract to pay you back a million in the afterlife.
That's how sure we both are it's really all baloney.

8

I have zero belief in any afterlife.
When you're dead, you're dead.
That's all there is, there is no more.

Said this the other day:
There is no "waiting room" for those yet conceived.
There is no "after hours lounge" once you're dead.

I just don't see how that can be proven.

@JustLuAnn It can't. However, there is no credible verifiable evidence to prove there is an afterlife.
Unless and until there is, there's no reason to believe there "might" be.
Just like gods. Or ghosts. Or any other damned thing that there's is no proof of their existence.
I think people believe what they want to believe, whether they can prove it or not.

If you want to spend your time "investigating" that stuff, knock yourself out.

7

My favourite question 'Does it MAKE SENSE?'

Does it make sense that your consciousness - which during your life has required the support of one of the most complex, intricate things we know, the human brain - suddenly becomes capable of existing in the absense of that organ, through some unspecified and unexplained process?

Does it make sense that the vast amount of information that makes us 'who we are' continues even when the physical 'data storage device' that holds that information is rotting away in a 6 foot hole in the ground?

Sorry - no. It just doesn't make sense.

And yes, of course it is POSSIBLE that I am wrong, and both consciousness and memory/information storage miraculously continues in the absense of a brain - but there is no valid reason whatever to accept that concept as true, and many reasons to strongly suspect it is not.

So if something doesn't make sense, the 'default position' should be to doubt, unless new evidence suggests otherwise.

I agree with you word by word

7

Afterlife is a religious myth to scare people and keep them in line.

I have been atheist since age 13. I don't believe in invisible gods, heaven or hell.

6

There is no reason to conclude that our consciousness continues on after death. Without our organic/material brain, how could it even be us, as an individual consciousness, that continued on? We are our brains. Our brains are us. When our brains die, we no longer exist.

But, we do know that our atoms and energy continue on; and this is what allows other life to exist. This is the only afterlife I desire and I find it wonderful to know that the energy that came together to form me will be dispersed--becoming a part of many other life forms.

6

I'm going to post a quote be Sam Harris here. I could ramble on about why it makes no sense to believe in an afterlife, but I heard Sam say this in a debate a few years ago, and it sums up my thoughts succinctly.

"There are very good reasons to think it’s not true. We know this from 150 years of neurology where you damage areas of the brain, and faculties are lost… You can cease to recognize faces, you can cease to know the names of animals but you still know the names of tools…

What we’re being asked to consider is that you damage one part of the brain, and something about the mind and subjectivity is lost, you damage another and yet more is lost, [but] you damage the whole thing at death, we can rise off the brain with all our faculties in tact, recognizing grandma and speaking English!"

6

Ghosts would have to literally be perpetual motion machines.
They don't eat. So where do they get the energy to do anything? -- even to be seen?
If they are solar powered, why do they they tend to hang out in dark places?😎

Sorry but I don't believe in ghosts the same way I don't believe in the supernatural in general. If something is real, it's natural. The further you have to stretch to support something's natural reality, the less likely it is to exist.
Ghosts -- and afterlife in general -- have so little objective evidence that they are quite a stretch.

6

There’s no “afterlife”
The proof is that we have zero evidence. There is not one single piece of evidence of anything super natural. We certainly have tried.

No there is not but there is also no evidence to believe there is not. The verdict is out till we die

@JustLuAnn
I disagree sometimes no proof is all the proof required. You can prove what something is by proving what it is not. We have plenty of that in this case.

@JustLuAnn Just because there is no evidence for something, that does not mean that it could exist. This is particularly the case when it goes against all the verifiable scientific laws we have. There is no evidence that there is not a giant teapot in the sky a million miles away. Does this mean that the verdict is still out there? Of course not.

5

Of course there is an afterlife, it is called death, happens to all of us and it is a fact of life that we will all eventually die. It is a natural part of the cycle of life, we are all born and we will all die. No exceptions to the rule. All religions, not just christians, sell to those arrogant enough to think that one deserves and is entitled to live forever or brainwashed enough to believe in such bullcrap, that an after life exists, and humans are arrogant enough and/or stupid enough to rationalize it somehow, despite evidence to the contrary. What evidence you say? When we die we are either maggot fodder or just ashes if cremated. Guaranteed 100%. There is no heaven or hell where you will either continue "living forever" or suffering eternally. The sooner you accept that fact, the sooner your life will become even more important, as we have just a brief time in this world to leave it better that we received it. In fact, it will somehow give you a sense of urgency to do so every day of your life. Unfortunately, it is the belief in an afterlife that will in many cases prevent you from doing just that. Why bother if you are arrogant enough or stupid enough to think you will "live forever."????

Not sure I could be quite that anal. Or should I say final. When I read about the frontiers of science. They’re researching both the infinitely huge as in multiverses and the infinitely small as in just disappeared. When the material disappears that’s not far from ..say, a thought, or consciousness, or... They’re researching consciousness, sub consciousness and everything to do with the mind. And They say we’re made of stardust. Literally, as some of the elements in our bodies could only come from the massive heat generated in a star. And so we are just part of everything. At the very least our raw materials will eventually become reincarnated in something else. I don’t think we’ll be able to look back in time any more than we can look ahead, but, who can really be positive about anything?

@Bn4fE5 Citation required

@LenHazell53 leave a dead animal out & observe what happens......

@Bilbobagins obviously not you. But the transition you make from astrophysics, which is very real and proved with equations as evidence, to say we are part of everything and that we will be reincarnated is your and yours only erroneous deduction of a provable scientific reality. Typical trick used by some, derive a falacy from something real.

4

I believe in the afterlife defined as decomposition.

4

I believe that every single atom in the universe has been here since the beginning. They are immortal, and they are all that remains of us after death. Consciousness after death is a belief of people who are unable or unwilling to conceive of a world which does not include them. I’m reminded of the old joke...what happens after you die? Lots of things, they just don’t involve you. Religions all seem to have in common the notion of a physical existence after death. It’s an idea so hard-wired into our species that even those without a belief in a deity conceive of eternal life in physical terms, and loved ones “reaching out” from beyond the grave. Personally, I’m satisfied with my atoms returning to the cosmos from which they came. That’s all the “eternity” I need.

4

The existence or none existence of an afterlife is of no real importance in itself. To be of any importance it would have to either be proved to affect this life in some way, or to be affected itself, by this life, in some way that could be demonstrated. An invisible or nearly invisible afterlife, with no evidence about its nature, like the invisible deist god, affects nothing.

While hearing voices is a very common failing of the human brain, which is programed to seek patterns and to favour false positives over false negatives, plus being well able to generate perfectly life like hallucinations.

For interests sake, you may find it interesting to research Joshua Slocum, the round the world sailor. Who famously recorded, not only hearing voices but seeing and having a true conversation with a hallucinatory pilot who he found aboard, and actually at the wheel steering his boat, in the middle of the Atlantic. Though he never concluded that it was anything but a hallucination made by his brain.

4

You're correct that no-one knows, and there's no way to prove it unless and until someone actually dies and comes back with scientifically valid (repeatable, verifiable) proof, proof that isn't merely brain chemistry playing tricks on us and creating fantasies out of our own minds. The "90 Minutes in Heaven" experience is wishful thinking and confirmation bias at its worst; a man in a near-death state hallucinates what he has been programmed to expect after death. I doubt one would have to look far for Muslim accounts of visiting the garden of the afterlife, or other religions' accounts of similar experiences.

What might surprise me is if a person from a completely different religion reported encountering a Christian afterlife during a near-death experience.

In the absence of proof, however- by which, again, I mean verifiable evidence (as in, someone somehow records or repeats the same experiences more than once, and who would volunteer for that?), we default to assuming that there's no afterlife.

Most excellent and thoughtful response. Well stated.

4

Pure wishful thinking I'm afraid. Everyone loves a good ghost story but that's all they are. Stories.

4

My remains get to become a part of our sun when it becomes a red giant. So, beyond the big bang energy only changes form.

3

Cases of reincarnation have been persuasively reported. It's possible. I hope so!
But not absolutely convinced.
You say you've been searching for "the answer." So have lots of other people!!
You need to talk to theists and atheists...they're the only ones who have "the answer.!"
Agnostics will just rub their chin, scratch their ear, and stare blankly into the distance.

3

When you die your electrical brain waves cease. All that remains is your legacy and that is kept alive by the living. I'm okay with this, it's reality.

3

What does it matter.No one knows.
So live your life as you feel is the right way to live.

3

I was in a coma for four days. And I didn't see shit bro.........

3

I guess I see it as the last great adventure. As the lights go out on one world, what will come next? Assuming I'm not surprised by death - shot or mangled suddenly in machinery - I intend, with some excitement and trepidation, to observe the process as best I can. My guess is that a lot of the death experience is influenced by external circumstances at the time of death. If you have time, maybe you can adjust to something new. If you don't have time, maybe you can't and end up in a state of cosmic panic. George Harrison once said of John's murder, "I was so sorry he didn't have time to prepare himself for death."
My understanding is that there is a small but inexplicable weight loss at the point of death. Buddhist monk's can "see" the astral self departing. There is no more reason to assume it's all over at brain death than there is to assume it isn't.
Best wishes,
DM

There's no inexplicable weight loss.

The so-called "21 grams experiment" (which is sometimes claimed to show an "inexplicable weight loss" of that amount at the moment of death) has been comprehensively debunked - not only were the methods used deeply flawed, the sample size was just six subjects and the physician who conducted it, Duncan MacDougall, was highly selective in his reporting.

@Jnei thanks beat me to it, most people who cite this experiment have no idea what and when it actually was

2

I know what happens after you die; everything, but none of it includes you.

2

I think all it matters is this life we are living now. If there is an afterlife so be it and if not I and you will not be any the wiser.

Truth.

2

no. i do not believe in an afterlife. there is no verifiable evidence of one, and the science we know regarding consciousness and life and death do not support it.

g

2

From all appearances, as far as I can tell, consciousness is a product of brain function, and brain activity can be measured and seems to correspond to our experience (or lack thereof, e.g., non-dreaming sleep cycles). Some people have claimed to have out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences, but these are unreliable claims lacking reproducibility and predictive capability that are more simply explained by the sort of hallucination we are susceptible to when we're oxygen deprived, dreaming, under extreme stress, in chemically induced states, etc. I can't prove that my consciousness isn't somehow preserved after my corporeal demise; yes, there could be a God or godlike entity who preserves or recreates my mind; there might be a universal consciousness to which my mind returns; we could all be radio-tuning brains that pick up conscious signals like Deepak Choprah claims; we might be in a computer simulation and our mental processes are, upon death, moved to the Life 2.0 server. I have no reason to think any of these are likely or even plausible; I have no reason to believe the claims, and those making the claims have illustrated nothing to suggest to me that they have sufficient insights. What I'm highly confident of, though, is that one day this meat-sack of mine will finish dying, and the brain along with it, and the measurable brain activity will cease. It seems very likely that, at that time, consciousness will also cease and what I perceive as "me" will be no more. When I fall asleep at night, there are dreams (whether I remember them or not) but there are also periods of mental inactivity where there is no thought, no awareness, nothing I think of as conscious, and no recollection of later. That, as far as I can tell, is akin to what I'll "experience" in death.

Still. I"m hanging on to the hope there "might" be. It's a more pleasant alternative to me. Verdicts out.

What surprises me is that I fear death, but every night I welcome sleep and yet the process is subjectively identical except that in the one case I expect to wake up and in the other not. The only difference with a believer is that they expect to 'wake up' in either eventuality, on the basis of no evidence at all. I guess it's a way of tricking ourselves not to face an undesired reality.

@Gareth I fear it too. I fear it because of the nothing-less. It is hard to believe all this and then nothing.

@JustLuAnn @Gareth

I consider persistent consciousness/self to be a deception of time; even though from moment to moment I feel the same, over time I can see significant changes that take place. I'm no longer anything like I was 20 years ago. The tapestry of my life adds a thread to the front and loses a thread from the back. Eventually it's entirely new. So, all I really have is the present moment even though memories and anticipation reinforce my illusion of permanency of self. The fact is that the me right now is unaffected by whatever will befall me tomorrow. I have hopes and fears about tomorrow, of course, but the actuality of tomorrow doest impact me in this moment now. In a very real sense, every moment replaces me with another similar me, and in that sense I die infinite deaths throughout my life. My final moment is, in that way, no different from any other. It's all illusory. If I consider some thought experiments, like downloading my consciousness to a new body, is that really still me? What if I duplicate my consciousness into another body and the original still exists? What if my consciousness is replicated across all humans on earth? Are we not in a very short time all different people with different experiences? Once I come to the conclusion that I'm different with every passing second, no matter how slightly, its easier to see that an end-of-life death itself is a sort of illusion. All I ever have is a moment.

@resserts @Gareth It's true that all we ever have is the current moment. It is why these moments have become so very precious to me. I know there are things I want to do and places I want to see before I leave this planet Earth or become another form and dissolve into it.

I have been thinking so much on it these days that I have come back to my original conclusion. My conclusion being that we live on in the memories of others. Eventually with time those memories fade but for the moment we will still have those memories keeping us alive.

I know I think often of my father who died when I was 11 years old I think that this is where I came to my first conclusions on death and on religion for that matter. I feel my father might once have been a deeply religious man but when he met my mother things changed for him. His associations with the church became lacking and I feel this was due in part to my mother who would have none of it.

it was perhaps a month before he died that I remember he took me to the Episcopalian Church. I remember him singing some of the songs and thought wow he can't carry a tune but then neither could I. I think he was trying to get me involved and perhaps even knew that his time was short.

however once he passed there was no more church for me. Mother didn't believe in it and she said it was all a bunch of nonsense. I remember not so long ago she told the neighbor lady who was one of the biggest Baptist in town that there was only one thing wrong with the Baptist and she went on to say they didn't hold their heads under the water long enough.

on that note I think my note is getting a bit long and I will conclude this. However I would enjoy perhaps messaging you with more thoughts or similar ones on this if you would like.

@JustLuAnn Your mother sounds quite the character!
I think we all struggle with the idea of going out like a light and that being it, but all the evidence seems to suggest it's the case so we might as well try to deal with it. Since we're all in the same boat on the same stormy ocean you can call me any time you like.

@Gareth oh my gosh i bet your accent is British too. 🙂

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