Discussion Do you believe in an afterlife

[6o66yx]

Since this website is mainly about suicide one might ask himself if there's an afterlife as most religions in the world proclaim.

What religion can't really answer is how an dead brain can experience an afterlife, maybe because they had no clue how the brain works back then when they founded their religions.

You can make up an concept of an afterlife while you have an brain which is still alive and functioning, but probably not anymore after no more electric impulses are being transferred between neurotransmitters whilst the brain itself will just rot away slowly.

What are your opinions on this?

 

[waterworks]

I don't know, but I feel in a very intuitive sense that something is waiting. This experience isn't knowledge in the way a fact is, but similar to a gut feeling, where something... subconscious? (I can't find a better word) is aware of something but I can't articulate or formulate it in my mind.

I'm going to die soon. So questions of whether or not there is something doesn't matter, I'm going to find out. In my time alive, I've learned so much and come to realize, I don't understand any of it. You speak of the brain as though it is definitive that it is the source of consciousness. But even neurophysiology can't explain how consciousness arises. There is an explanation for which parts of brain contribute whatever thing, but explaining how things work and what started it all are different.

I've searched for a while, though I haven't lived that long. I'm 26. But I feel like I've looked for an answer, but everything I've come across is just a fragment in a universe of knowledge. I've searched for supernatural, in philosophy, which lead to science, which lead to me having to basically learn what experts in countless fields have to say. There's just to much to learn, and I'm tired of trying to find a needle in a galaxy.

This is my opinion, for all it's worth.

 

[amnesia999]

When you die, your level of consciousness goes right back to where it was before you were born. In other words, to nothing.

That's what I think. I don't believe in past lives that some people say they can remember, nor do I believe that people have souls, which is how religions get around the "but your body is dead" problem. (Although I do wish that all the dogs I've owned had a soul that lives on.)

 

[b1cycle]

I have a weird thought about this. If there is nothing particularly special about the time I happen to exist, and there's nothing particularly special about the time that happens to be the present, I should expect to either be dead already or not born yet during the present. Say, if someone lives for 80 years, and the universe exists for a (minimum) of 14 billion years, that means you should expect the probability they are alive at any given 'present' is 80/14 billion = 1 in 175 million. Maybe this reasoning is dumb and I've had mixed reactions to this argument. But to me, if I should expect to be either dead or not born at any given point in time, but I exist right now, maybe this means I have always existed and always will exist in some sense.

This is just a weird idea I've had but I'm not 100% convinced by it since the argument is very weird. I think most likely the answer is I'm just a meat computer and there is no afterlife. But maybe there is idk.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

No, I don't believe in there being an afterlife.

 

[SpiderMolt]

Tbh, I want to believe in an afterlife cuz that sounds sorta nice, but I can't get myself to think like that :/

 

[Not A Fan]

The fact that so many different "descriptions" of the afterlife exist, compete with each other, and form no consensus, makes its seems similar to any other form of cultural invention. All claims about the afterlife are unfalsifiable so they don't fall under the domain of rational thought. So I think it's unlikely that there is anything waiting for us, even if there is something about the human brain -- our ability to see patterns and meaning even where they are absent -- that gives us that false impression.

I could be wrong, but I hope I'm not. If we are really immortal that means we can never CTB... living forever is a hell in itself.

 

[angryloli]

no, i wish i did, but i think this is it. this is all we got, then we dissappear forever

 

[ijustwishtodie]

No, I don't believe in an afterlife. The concept of an afterlife only exists because it's a human construct, not because it exists for real

 

[rozeske]

There really is no way to prove whether there is one or not but I have always believed in an afterlife and I don't see that changing now. Even though my current life has led me to have doubts and my typical views I've had toward it have changed for the better, I have no plan to stop believing in one now.

 

[timetodie24]

No I don't . I believe we're not really anything more than our brains. So once that shuts down we cease to exist. Which I find comforting as I really don't want to live on in any way or form

 

[leaftomb]

honestly i want to believe in an afterlife, i have doubts sometimes, but i don't think there's anything after death. once our brain shuts down it's just over yk? like before we were born, it's nothingness we can't even imagine while being conscious. honestly i kind of hope there is no consciousness at all after death, because both hell and pitch black and silence sound terrifying

 

[mythofsisyphus]

I think it depends what we mean by afterlife. In terms of a conscious experience, a life in which the subjective 'me' continues to exist but in a different realm/reality, sadly not. I think this would defy all our current scientific understanding of the world.

But for me at least, when I think about things deeply, I start to see that that this subjective 'me' is a really just an illusion of consciousness. Ultimately, we are a bunch of atoms, no different to the world around us. If we could somehow get an incredibly powerful microscope or something and observe the world at it's most fundamental level, you wouldn't really be able to distinguish between 'me' and the world around me. Is there a special boundary between the atoms of me and the atoms of the air surrounding me, the atoms of the people around me etc. No - the world is just a big chemical reaction unfolding, everything is connected. Our consciousness is merely a by-product of this. It makes us believe that WE exist as a separate being to the rest of the world, that there's something unique about ME. But it really is just an illusion.

I think this could be interpreted quite nihilistically, but I see something beautiful in it. When we die, yes the illusion of consciousness disappears, but our physical being - the atoms that make us, do not. They simply start a different pattern, they may enter the Earth and fuel plants, which may then be eaten by an animal, and then those atoms and chemicals form part of the animal which has it's own conscious experience etc. etc.

The idea of an afterlife relies on the assumption that our life is something special, that it has a beginning and end, for something to follow after. But I don't view it like this - everything is just a constant state of flux and flow, and by some miracle or curse (depending how you look at it) this resulted in a passing period of time in which the illusion of 'me' existed. All that happens when we die is this illusion stops, but the flux and flow of the universe never stops.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

No way . There is no afterlife ever, no reincarnation

After Death is non-existence forever, i'm so glad.

Once this monstrous brain dies thats it,

82 % so far agree. Sasu much more aware than the general population

The silent majority

 

[andreamysk]

Curious that everyone is worried about the afterlife and almost no one thinks about the 'before-life'. The universe has an age of approximately 13.72 billion years, a period in which, except in the very recent period, we have not existed (even for those who believe in reincarnations, typically one does not go back more than a few centuries).

 

[FinalDestination]

I'd be bummed out if there was an afterlife lol. Honestly sounds tiring that there could more when I just want it to end. I find it comforting that there is nothing after death like that feels more peaceful

 

[6o66yx]

Curious that everyone is worried about the afterlife and almost no one thinks about the 'before-life'. The universe has an age of approximately 13.72 billion years, a period in which, except in the very recent period, we have not existed (even for those who believe in reincarnations, typically one does not go back more than a few centuries).

There is a theory that we just don't remember our past life's.

But yeah, apparently we are just bones, nerves and flesh, nothing spectacular and gone forever when it dies and becomes dust some day.

 

[andreamysk]

There is a theory that we just don't remember our past life's.

But yeah, apparently we are just bones, nerves and flesh, nothing spectacular and gone forever when it dies and becomes dust some day.

Well, most days I don't even remember what I had for breakfast - let alone my past lives (especially when I was a quark - or was I maybe a gluon, I don't remember... - apparently unconscious more or less 0.00000000001 seconds after the Big Bang - lol)

 

[Agon321]

I don't know if I believe it or not.

On the one hand, I would like something to exist after death. But on the other hand, there is a good chance that it would be a disappointing experience.

Scientifically, we have no reasonable evidence for the existence of an afterlife.
But maybe we don't notice many things. I don't know.

I certainly don't believe in any religions that rule on this planet. Each of these religions seems to make little sense to me.

Generally a difficult topic.
I believe there may be something on the other side, but I have no proof.
I just wish there was something exciting waiting for me.
If there is nothing after death, then the entire universe makes no fucking sense.

Either way, I'll find out in the next few months.

 

[divinemistress36]

Yes, i just dont believe its anything like the Bible says

 

[6o66yx]

Yes, i just dont believe its anything like the Bible says

Would you share in what you believe and why you believe what you believe? I find this kind of stuff interesting.

 

[Qua]

I honestly hope that we get reborn, but not to experience the same or really similiar shitty life, but to be happy, enjoy time spent on earth and have bright future ahade of us

 

[divinemistress36]

Well my friend had an nde and another friend is a psyhic medium and messages ive had from her from spirits from the otherside were things I could have only known so I believe we meet up with family and friends again in some other dimension. So I believe we are in a simulation and only suffering is here on Earth which is a learning hell type realm

 

[weightoffmychest]

I'd be bummed out if there was an afterlife lol. Honestly sounds tiring that there could more when I just want it to end. I find it comforting that there is nothing after death like that feels more peaceful

100% this. Hopefully nothing and just fade to black for eternity.

 

[let.me.let.go87]

I used to. But after multiple suicide attempts and actually dying three separate times, seeing absolutely nothing but utter darkness, so many times of being curled into the fetal position begging a god to help me that heard none of it? I don't believe in jack fucking shit

 

[ThisIsMe1357]

I am leaning to "No" because at this point in time, having all the current knowledge and understanding about life, all evidence points to there being nothing after death. By that I mean no consciousness. I once heard someone in a TV series compare it to a state from before we were born.

Like a watch or like a bicycle, once all the parts are no longer organized and connected in a specific way, those two items no longer work. And consciousness seems to work on the same principle. It only appears once everything in an organism is positioned in an exact and specific way.

Also, there seems to be no evidence of any afterlife, either. Of course, it can be real, but in that case someone still needs to show me evidence that it is, or I simply have to reach it myself to believe.

 

[6o66yx]

I used to. But after multiple suicide attempts and actually dying three separate times, seeing absolutely nothing but utter darkness, so many times of being curled into the fetal position begging a god to help me that heard none of it? I don't believe in jack fucking shit

Do you mean that you died but still was conscious and saw this utter darkness in some sort of afterlife?

 

[sometimesoon]

we live then we become compost

 

[let.me.let.go87]

Do you mean that you died but still was conscious and saw this utter darkness in some sort of afterlife?

One time I died for 1 minute and a I don't recall how many seconds the second time I died for four minutes the third time I died for two minutes. Every time I was brought back to life obviously but all I remember is blackness and nothingness. No God no warmth no family members. Just emptiness.

 

[riamu]

I hope for reincarnation - i'd love to be reincarnated as a housecat. But I find it difficult to truly believe in an afterlife, even if I want one