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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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."????

I believe in the afterlife defined as decomposition.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.