To those who believe in an afterlife
 

What makes you believe death isn't the end?

Explain your reasoning for believing what you do.

If you believe in ghosts.. you believe in the after life...

and how do you knowghosts don't exist? :)

how about this question...

What makes you believe death is the end?

Explain your reasoning for believing what you do.

Here's an interesting article on some research done at the University of Arizona. The results are difficult to explain if we reject the notion of an afterlife. Of course, you could claim that the scientists are fudging the data, but one would have to wonder what the motive would be.

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/2893543/detail.html

One way to obtain conclusive proof is to kill a gfy board member who truly believes that they will "continue on" after they die and then have them make contact with you.

One way to ensure some sort of contact is made after death is to just kill them without discussing the plan. To help ensure some sort of contact is made you should be sure to humiliate or desecrate the dead body too. The most common way is to ?relieve? yourself all over the corpse. The "dead" spirit is then usually so pissed off that you killed them and humiliated them that they come back and haunt you. You will then have contact and you will also have your proof!

I've never seen anything to convince me otherwise.

Never had a supernatural experience. Never noticed anything other than the physical world in which we live. Never seen a ghost. Never been able to read minds, predict the future or have any ESP powers.

I figure death will be like before I wes born. Simple non-existance.

Your turn.

Don't burst my 72 virgins bubble....

what you say makes a lot of sense. but on the other hand there are many things I never believed, but came true. nothing is a certainty in a world governed by pure skepticism and doubt - it will always be this way until we ...know... the origin of our existance. and because of this, it is impossible to ever really know until you're there, which is why i choose to take the stance of agnosticism.

today i exist due to random chance, so do you. Tomorrow you might not, or neither might I (grammar nazis, fuck off)

The reason people believe in an afterlife is the same reason you believe there is none: faith. For in the absence of knowledge that is all anyone has to go on.

God says so in the Bible.

"Energy can not be created or destroyed, only transformed."

Albert Einstein

http://www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/ba007215/index.jpg

About 20 years ago Geraldo Reveria invesigated the afterlife. In the end he didn't come away with much information.

The psychic they hired wasn't able to establish a satisfactory connection with the film crew ABC killed off to investigate.

The only positive thing to come out of the event was the psychic spoke with Al Capone and it was conclusively confirmed that the vault had always been empty.

What does that have to do with consciousness?

I saw a ghost in my old house.

To understand the future, one must know the past.

I see dead naked people. :1orglaugh

That's a year old.
I saw a show recently where they explain the "afterlife" visions people have. It's their brain dying. As you die, and as your heart stops and the oxygen and blood flow stop, your brain suffocates and dies. What happens is you experience a dream, what's happening is your brain is beginning to black out.

Have you ever blacked out from lack of oxygen or blood flow to your brain? Ever stand up too fast and the room starts to darken from edges and you get tunnel vision, and all the while you just stare at the ground and your brain starts to 'breathe' again and suddenly you are aware of what almost happened and you feel a tad dizzy.

The same sort of thing happens when you die... or almost die. You experience a dream and your mind starts to 'flash your life.' In the dream you see people from the past, you see bright tunnels, and if you were to stay like that for too long you'd eventually die and the brain activity would cease and that's it.

What happens to near death people is that they experience this dream and are conviced they've been to 'the other side.' The fact is, they haven't been anywhere, they just experienced the death process. If they were to experience it any longer, the brain would fail to recover and they'd live in a permenant vegatative state.

So to answer your question... no, there is no afterlife. It's just something that people believe in to help them deal with death. "Oh it's ok we don't really die, we continue.. in an afterlife." Those people are sad and are just fooling themselves. Get over it, when you die... you die. Nothing more.

If I ever get to Australia we can smoke a couple of joints, possibly do some shrooms and talk about this in great length :winkwink:

Unless you get to Amsterdam for New Years Eve first.

This will be my seventh New Years Eve there (and possibly my last for a while) and the pot and mushrooms are legal and on sale. :winkwink:

i subscribe to that einsteinish explanation on energy that's why i believe in the afterlife

Not true and a pathetic attempt by Science to explain what happens after you die.

If you are really interested in the big picture of what happens when you die, why are we here etc etc, don't rely on blind faith in science or blind faith in religion but search for the answers yourself and you will start to figure it out sooner or later.

I believe we survive death as I know from personal experience that we are more than our physical bodies and therefore when the body dies we continue. In the same way as if our car engine dies, we continue. No big deal :)

Unless I am retarded, that made no fucking sense at all. What the fuck does a car engine have to do with death?

1) Superterrorizer is not retarded
2) It wasn't a pathetic attempt, it was a successful attempt. As your brain dies you black out. It's that simple.
AND 3) You proved my point, stupid. You are so afraid of death you have actually convinced yourself that you will survive it. The only thing you CONTINUE to do, is rot.

There is no reason to fear death.

Yes, the book is old, but the data are compelling. The only real criticism comes from organizations (e.g., CSICOP) and persons (e.g., Ray Hyman) who are known for their overly negative bias against paranormal claims.

First, not everyone has these experiences. Second, among those who have had them, there is no correlation between those who have the dream and those who believed in an afterlife prior to the experience. There are many people who had no belief in an afterlife and were convinced otherwise after undergoing the experience. What explains this?

One thing I find quite interesting is the fact that many people who have gone through this type of event experience feelings of peace. Scientists tell us that the brain seems to KNOW when it's dying and releases chemicals which cause these peaceful feelings to occur. But why would the brain do this? And what is it attempting to calm?

If we are the product of evolution and consciousness is merely a function of the brain, I would expect the opposite type of feelings to occur. The brain should be triggering terror and fear, not calmness and acceptance of inevitable death.

On the other hand, if, as many philosophers have reasoned, there is a distinction between the MIND (i.e., consciousness) and the BRAIN, and the MIND is able to survive the body, it would make perfect sense that the brain is simply calming the mind, preparing it to leave the body once physical death occurs.

This is your opinion and you are certainly entitled to it. The truth, however, is that I do not conclusively know the answer to that question, and neither do you.

Whew, now I can scratch that off the list of possible reasons why my glasses are so thick and attached to my head with an elastic band.

when I had gastroendoscopy i floated out of my body.
If i was able to see the monitor when the camera went into my mouth, then saw it all from a distance in the corner.

There's an old and very famous psychic in Bulgaria, one of my uncles went to visit, as soon as he sat down, he handed her a cube of sugar (that's what she wanted from you). She started talking, told him why he's there, what his siblings died of, what they look like and many other things which is impossible for her to know because she was in her 70s, was blind, and thousands of people visited her each year.

The commy government made her the only state sanctioned psychic and they personally appointed a scientist to study her for years and years.

In the late 90s a famous gangster got killed in Bulgaria. His antorage called up another woman, friend of my mom, my mom witnessed the whole thing. They called her and asked her if she could tell them where he hid his golden jewelry because not even his wife knew where he put. She told them, actually guided them throughout the house, into the room and I believe she only erred in saying behind which side of the bed the safe was.

Then there's another lady my mom took me to. Long story short, she was able to see a big man holding me in his arms and me being scared. When I was little I was nearly kidnaped one day and even though I was young I still remember it vividly. Nobody knew but me.

So if there's no afterlife, how's it possible for the above to happen?

Unfortunately, this topic is problematic because people either want to believe in life after death or they don't want to believe. There is enough bias to go around on both sides. I urge you to read the literature on this topic with an open mind. In many cases, there is quite compelling data.

Here's an interesting article on a study which preported to show that people could have near death experiences when their brains were not receiving oxygen (i.e., they were clinically dead).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/986177.stm

I am also aware of cases where people have reacted to potentially dangerous stimuli in situations where their senses could not possibly detect them (e.g., the so-called eye in the back of your head effect).

psychedelic drugs ;]

That explanation convinced you? lol who's calling who stupid now?
You "black out" every time you lose consiousness, whether from fainting, anaesthesia even sleep. Is your brain dying when this happens? Of course not.

I have also "convinced" myself that the sky is blue. I don't know it's blue, just because I see it every day with my eyes, I must have "convinced" myself. :winkwink:

Au contraire, a knowledge, not a belief, that you survive death removes all fear of death.

He's right, but sadly all that we're transformed into is dispersed particles of lifeless matter blowing in the wind just as we were prior to being born.

Oh I missed this one

I think of the physical body as a vehicle that we use while here. So the analogy I was making was that if your car "died" (engine blew up whatevever) then you would be basically unaffected apart from having to find a new mode of transport. So the same when your body dies, you would just have to get used to functioning in a different state of consciousness.

How do you know this for sure?

Exactly and thats what people fail to understand. Why? Because they think with a brain and simply forget that that same brain dies when your dead. Energy without a brain is nothing. You WONT have conscious without a brain. You dont turn into a ghost...you wont be able to think. Nothing, nothing of it all.

Millions of people saying theyre expirienced esp, seen ghosts, communicate with the dead, millions and millions of people...daily! And not 1 single piece of evidence of this all. Not ONE... :1orglaugh

Keep living in your sad world people...its no different then hoping there is a god. Fear fear and some more fear.

So much fear of death in this thread. All these people wanting their cake and eating it too.

The fear is palpable.

Enjoy life people... thats all you can do. Death is the end.

:1orglaugh

I believe this because:

And is it really all that bad? It wasn't bad before you were born was it? You felt no pain, no discomfort.

I think death is a similar 'feeling' as going under surgery. Have you ever been on the operating table? I had my tonsils taken out and remember the experience well. Once they put you under, you have no sensations. They could have cut me into a million pieces, it would have made no difference to me. I wouldn't have felt any of it, I simply would never have come out of that state.

Yet I was still alive, but without sensations. I was still alive, but unconscious. I was in a state of utter 'darkness' for lack of a better term. Death is even more deplete than that. It's no sensations without life. When you put those two together you have nothing but matter.

If you argue that something happens after death, you migh as well argue that a rock has feelings. It's lifeless matter just like a dead body.

One more point about my experience in surgery. When I finally awoke and gained consciousness I felt like I had been asleep but with no memory of what had happened during the time I was operated on. I had been in there for some time but that 'time' didn't exist for me so it was as if only 1 second of less of my life was in the operating room.

I think that death is the same. If you died today and were brought back to life a million years from now, it would be as if a second had passed, because time is irrelevant to you when you're dead. Not bad at all when you think about it and considering that's how we're most likely going to spend eternity.

Humans need a way to cope with death. The idea that we continue to exist after death accomplishes this.

"Death is only the beginning. " :1orglaugh

We are all dead, and simply 'remembering' our lives.

LONG THREAD AHEAD be warned

It depends what you accept as evidence. You would be quite surprised what you accept as real with far less proof that what you require for the above.

It's deja vu all over again lol :thumbsup

How do you know it was simple non-existance before you were born? Do you remember anything that happened around you when you were 6 months old? Then why would you think you'd remember anything 7 months prior to that? :upsidedow

Life after death exists. Just ask 2pac or notorious big

He probably thinks that because their can be no recollection of what it was like before he was born.

I don't remember what I ate 1 week ago, but if you had asked me a week ago, I would have been able to tell you what I was putting in my mouth. Memory is one thing, non-existence is another.

For those that think they become some spirit or spiritual energy after death let me ask you. Were you a spirit before you were born too? If not, where and what were you?

Life has infinite possibilities so why not death.

you know biggie has an album "life after death" :)

no! there is an afterlife, or you get reborned, my mind is to great to just,.. die..

shed no tears for me, my glory lives forever