# Is there afterlife?



## FakeLefty (Aug 19, 2013)

Well, there's only one way to find out.


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## nevermore (Oct 1, 2010)

I like to think there _is_ an afterlife, but that we are in it now - we were all tested on something in our past lives and just forgot what it was.

One thing I think we can say with conviction is that we all failed it miserably, because hey, here we are in hell...


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## DustOfShard (Nov 10, 2012)

Yeah, but nothing matters because everything matters.


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## MoKa (Jan 2, 2014)

SuperDevastation said:


> Everybody that had a NDE saw an afterlife (or 2) so yes.


Absolutely horrific statement. First, what exactly are you supposing occurs when a person dies? Are you asserting that there is a "soul", for which there is absolutely no reason to assume one exists? Secondly, you cannot simply state that "everybody" who has had a near-death experience encounters this fantasy you describe. You have no foundation to make such claims and you lack any evidence as to even one person experiencing this fairy-tale "afterlife" of yours. You haven't even provided an anecdote (not that it would help at all)! How barbaric and absurd of you to assert such utterly stupid generalizations with absolutely no basis in reality. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised since you are religious, and thus reject any appeal to reason or science. Do not inject your fantasy religious beliefs into the domain of intellectual inquiry, it only makes you and the rest of humanity look idiotic.


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## sylvan_dreamer (Mar 14, 2014)

I think it is plausible, if matter can support consciousness in our brains, why not outside our brains too? I'd only prefer a deeper understanding of the physical properties of consciousness, to really gauge whether consciousness could persist without the human body to support it. However, I don't think it is so unlikely, considering the rarity of intelligent life so far as we know. And, the only intelligent life we know in the galaxy has insisted on the possibility of afterlife for many thousands of years, perhaps there is evidence we are not aware of today, which was convincing to other people but not available for us to study directly. Or perhaps these ideas are all pure fantasy, I couldn't say for sure.


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## JTHearts (Aug 6, 2013)

I hope not, I don't really like myself and I don't want to continue being me after I die.


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## Mammon (Jul 12, 2012)

I can not help but find both possibilities plausible.

Also, if it is of any reassurance to anyone, whatever you are now that makes you self aware etc, there's a 100% guarantee that after you die ('stop existing'), some time, some day all the elements and whatever that are you will come together again to be once more the way they are right now. As is with everything and everyone. You can't really stop to exist actually. It may take a hundred years or it may take trillions upon trillions of years multiplied by whatever and 5 gazillion big bangs later, but eventually you will.

So... how many times did we already?


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## AHoFF (Mar 8, 2014)

There isnt and this whole topic is disprovem by several scientists teams who have proven that the brain does not possess capabilities to hinder reality and grant us passage to an afterlife yhat is just religious soliliquy


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## Dosto Yevsky (Feb 9, 2014)

Jesus please no. As if one life isn't too much already.


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## Lemxn (Aug 17, 2013)

I think about this being more spiritual and belief. We are souls inside a costume that we call skin, I don't think the soul can vanish, because then it reincarnated in other costume. But what does the soul and spirit in between? So, yes. I do believe in afterlife.


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## Lexicon Devil (Mar 14, 2014)

Yes there is an afterbirth.


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## Death Persuades (Feb 17, 2012)

What is the point of this? You already answered your own question and there is nothing science or technology related about it...


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## Bricolage (Jul 29, 2012)

FakeLefty said:


> Well, there's only one way to find out.


Everyone wants to go to heaven; nobody is in a hurry to get there.


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## Nyctophilia (Mar 13, 2014)

I personally think that the answer that should truly be asked for this is does the soul exist?

First we have to look at the nature of a soul, which is simply an immaterial manifestation of our consciousness. The existence of a soul is absolutely vital to if there's an afterlife or not for this very reason, the material cannot pass on into what could be considered spiritual. Because of this it if a soul does in fact exist it should only be expected that our physical bodies should have next to no significant impact on it. If there is no soul then it's safe to say we'll revert back into the state of nonexistence we were in before we were born (though that in itself is paradoxical but I can't think of any other way to put it).

However this isn't the case. There are plenty of neurological disorders that can completely twist and warp who we are. How is this possible if our consciousness exists in a way that transcends our material bodies? This alone makes it very hard, but not impossible, for me to believe in an afterlife. If anything I would call it highly unlikely, especially when you consider that if the soul does exist the brain can somehow affect it. I repeat, how is this possible? 

It's true there have been quite a few paranormal claims, however to my understanding measuring there is no worthwhile evidence to support the existence of the supernatural.

Finally, and please don't take offense to this as I mean absolutely none, while the article shared in the OP was interesting I wouldn't take it with anymore than a grain of salt. Just about all of it was baseless speculation. 

Also NDEs are not proof whatsoever unless there has been an instance of it where the brain ceased to function, which to my understanding has yet to have occurred. When approached from this point of view NDEs, if anything, only make the afterlife seem that much more implausible unless I'm wrong that is.


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## Bear987 (May 13, 2012)

I stumbled upon a New York Times article today, which reads that Susan Sontag in her book _IIllness as Metaphor_, reflects on our fairy-tale attitude toward death as a societal disease.

How come do we human beings object to dying? How come apoptosis* hasn't got a stronger hold on us? 

*Disintegration of cells into membrane-bound particles that are then eliminated by phagocytosis or by shedding.


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## Bricolage (Jul 29, 2012)

Bear987 said:


> I stumbled upon a New York Times article today, which reads that Susan Sontag in her book _IIllness as Metaphor_, reflects on our fairy-tale attitude toward death as a societal disease.
> 
> How come do we human beings object to dying? How come apoptosis* hasn't got a stronger hold on us?
> 
> *Disintegration of cells into membrane-bound particles that are then eliminated by phagocytosis or by shedding.


I heard Sontag ghostwrote a Larry the Cable Guy book.


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## Bear987 (May 13, 2012)

Bricolage said:


> I heard Sontag ghostwrote a Larry the Cable Guy book.


I actually do not know anything more about Sontag than what was said about her in that NYT article I referred to.


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## eydimork (Mar 19, 2014)

After life comes death, like after start comes end. If you want beauty, you can think of it this way: That when we die, we break down into smaller parts, that we are consumed by the soil, the plants, the animals, and eventually by other people. Parts of us will always live on, physically, unnoticeably, we will just not be conscious anymore. If you want to take on an even wiser and more godlike approach to it all, you could say that there is no 'you', nor 'me', that we all belong to one big organism, that our entire planet is one big organism, our entire galaxy is one big organism, our entire universe is one big organism, and that we are connected to anything that may be beyond our universe. We will, in a sense, never die. We are, in a sense, immortal. No matter what we do.


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## Bahburah (Jul 25, 2013)

I believe that we reincarnate as a new human with a new life and new lessons to learn, once you have learned all you need to know from earth and become enlightened is when you descend onto living in non physical reality that some call the afterlife.


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## gingercat (Mar 25, 2014)

I lean toward a rather materialistic approach (the "there-is-nothing-but-matter" kind, not the "cars-make-you-happy" kind).
To my mind, there are no aspects of human life that could not be explained with the help of neurosciences, biology, chemistry etc. And essentially every process seems to have derived from the archaic _survival instinct_ (sorry, I lack a better word, maybe I should say _need for self-preservation_) that every form of life has (and that over time, as humans faced less actually life-threatening situations, for us turned into a _need to live with as many needs satisfied as possible_).
In fact, matter itself is incredibly impressive (e.g. intelligent steel and that kinda stuff that I would love to know more about) and I don't see the necessity of an even higher power, like a metaphysical soul. Actually, not only does it seem to be superfluous but also rather unlikely.



Icy Imaizumi said:


> There are plenty of neurological disorders that can completely twist and warp who we are. How is this possible if our consciousness exists in a way that transcends our material bodies?


I completely agree with this, neurologic disorders are a good example of the impact that pure matter has on our selves and our lives (Oliver Sacks and other neuropsychologists actually studied and portrayed many interesting cases).
The only way that the concept of a soul makes sense to me is as it being a purely _imaginative, human-made concept_ that is used as a _motivation to develop ethics_ (which on the long run have the goal to help every human live in the best way possible -> extended survival instinct). However, I find matter-based life impressive enough to consider it worth protecting even without the threat of hell or "damnation of my soul" in the back of my mind.

By the way, if you do find an aspect of human life that cannot be explained with the help of logic and science and thus does not match my theory, please tell me, I'm open to new input and if your argument makes sense, I'll be happy to reconsider my opinion. I personally just haven't found such an aspect yet.

Ooops this ended up being about souls rather than the afterlife... But if you define afterlife as the existance of a soul even after our physical death, this should still be relevant. If you define afterlife differently, I'm sorry for straying from the topic.

And we mustn't forget that while this thread is interesting and this issue is fun to discuss, in the end we can't help but take things the way they come. Who knows, maybe we missed something and the religious people somehow were right after all.
To me, afterlife (whatever it may look like) is like a hidden track on an album. I don't expect it, I don't necessarily need it but i won't complain if it exists.


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