What happens after death?

[Graustein]

I personally like to believe that Terry Pratchett is right.

 

[Davey Woo]

we die. we rot away.

Pretty much this I think.

cheers for slightly depressing truths!

:O

Huzzah!!! =/

 

[CrystalShadow]

Is my identity truly tied to my brain? You can dismiss this easily enough, as you seem to have done, but what does it mean to begin with?
You claim to have a plausible basis for saying 'it all just ends when the brain stops working'.
But what is it that ends here exactly?
Physical existence? No. The body still exists, and barring major decomposition, still mostly looks like you, and is in many cases still mostly functional. (as demonstrated by organ transplants)

The ripples and squiggles and blobs that can be detected with an MRI; when that ends, I'm not certain but have good reason to believe that there is no more experience.

Could well be true... But there's still no obvious correlation between those things and your 'experience'. You aren't nessesarily 'present' even IF you have verifiable brain activity.

We can only know what another person experiences by what they tell us.
And the dead don't speak.

 

[CrystalShadow]

The worst thing that I could think about to happen, is that you're still conscious.. Imagine being buried, but not being able to move. All the time trying to scream "I don't wanna go into a hole!"

*shudders*

Couldn't be as bad as being cremated...

 

[Seanchaidh]

Is my identity truly tied to my brain? You can dismiss this easily enough, as you seem to have done, but what does it mean to begin with?
You claim to have a plausible basis for saying 'it all just ends when the brain stops working'.
But what is it that ends here exactly?
Physical existence? No. The body still exists, and barring major decomposition, still mostly looks like you, and is in many cases still mostly functional. (as demonstrated by organ transplants)

The ripples and squiggles and blobs that can be detected with an MRI; when that ends, I'm not certain but have good reason to believe that there is no more experience.

Could well be true... But there's still no obvious correlation between those things and your 'experience'. You aren't nessesarily 'present' even IF you have verifiable brain activity.

We can only know what another person experiences by what they tell us.
And the dead don't speak.

But it certainly doesn't look like there's anything going on there, now does it?

 

[RobCoxxy]

Decomp.

 

[Xvito]

What will happen after death? Will we go to heaven? Will we born agian? I want to hear what you think.

Nothing happens after you've died. There is no proof that anything does happen, so why would it?

This is, for example, how we know that the Big Bang occurred. It has left traces. The after-life hasn't.

--Xvito, keeping it excellent.

 

[RazielDethAngel]

Well your body rots and continue to stay dead (until the zombies rise of course). Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 Dollars.

 

[Clirck]

1 hour of afterlife disco fever and then a respawn, Fallout 3 style.

 

[TheSunshineHobo]

We go to the old age home in the sky.

 

[antipunt]

If you -really- think about it, it sometimes gets real creepy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori

When you really reflect upon it (for example, pretend you are going to die. Like... -really-, going to die). If you are successful, it's absolutely horrifying. You are about to enter a black abyss...-forever-. It's a frightening thought. Most of us ignore it completely.

Being agnostic, there are only a few ways I've concocted to avoid a frightening death.

1) Dying at a moment of which I strong believe in (protecting someone/ fighting something/dying in the arms of a loved one)
2) Killing myself at an emotional peak

I'm not emo. Just introspective =] (heh)

 

[Lord Beautiful]

Decomposition.

EDIT:

Decomp.

Damnit. I would say that I've been ninja'd, but this thread been around a while, apparently.

 

[Flying-Emu]

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." - Mark Twain

... I love this quote more than I've ever loved a human baby.

 

[Sigel]

No one knows what happens to us after we die, and anyone who claims to know what happens after death is a delusional fool and a liar. Any man or woman who claims to have secret knowledge of the after life is talking out of their ass, this goes for religous people and those fools who believe in fung shue (I spelt that wrong I think) spiritual energy, ghosts, that kind of bollocks. If anyone has even the slightest inkling of what happens after death Id say the scientists would know...Id rather not know what happens after we die, I wanna be suprised.

Very nicely summed up. I applaud."clapping"

 

[Billy Stalin]

Heaven is has a stripper factory and beer volcanoes as far as the eye can see.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Is my identity truly tied to my brain? You can dismiss this easily enough, as you seem to have done, but what does it mean to begin with?
You claim to have a plausible basis for saying 'it all just ends when the brain stops working'.
But what is it that ends here exactly?
Physical existence? No. The body still exists, and barring major decomposition, still mostly looks like you, and is in many cases still mostly functional. (as demonstrated by organ transplants)

The ripples and squiggles and blobs that can be detected with an MRI; when that ends, I'm not certain but have good reason to believe that there is no more experience.

Could well be true... But there's still no obvious correlation between those things and your 'experience'. You aren't nessesarily 'present' even IF you have verifiable brain activity.

We can only know what another person experiences by what they tell us.
And the dead don't speak.

But it certainly doesn't look like there's anything going on there, now does it?

Nope. But there's still the problem of statistical correlation.

A common issue in the abuse of statistics is to presume correlation implies causation.

In other words, just because two things happen at the same time, it doesn't mean that one causes the other.

I cannot concieve of a method of scientifically verifying subjective reality, which leaves us with the problem that measuring brain activity doesn't actually mean what's measured has any correlation to what the person experiences.

Can I think of scientific experiments that would come close to answering this?
Actually, yes, I can. (eg... Intentionally messing with someone's brain activity, and seeing if this produces a predictable behaviour from them. - But that would require a quantum leap in our level of knowledge of the human brain.)
But there will always remain a degree of uncertainty.

What will happen after death? Will we go to heaven? Will we born agian? I want to hear what you think.

Nothing happens after you've died. There is no proof that anything does happen, so why would it?

This is, for example, how we know that the Big Bang occurred. It has left traces. The after-life hasn't.

--Xvito, keeping it excellent.

This line of reasoning, while plausible is also flawed.
It can for instance, be used to argue that the future is non-existent.

Granted, at the end of the day these are all exercises in playing with logic. - The question of death has been one that we have been concerned with for most of our existence.

It's obvious why, because it represents a scary, unknown event, and one which is impossible to avoid.

Everyone wants to know what happens primarily because it will eventually happen to everyone.

Certain religious beliefs don't even relate to what really happens when you die, but encourage you to 'let go', or to identify with your 'higher self'.
You could take the 'higher self' to literally mean some form of non-physical existence, but you could equally argue that it's a euphemism for thinking about the universe as a whole rather than your own limited identity.

This could start a whole argument in and of itself, but when looked at closely, Buddism comes very close to the seemingly contradictory notion of an athiest religion.

Discounting issues to do with re-incarnation, buddhists talk about reaching enlightenment, and 'nirvana'.
What is 'nirvana'? - It is a state of being in which you are one with everything. But by definition, all seperate identity ceases to exist in such a state.
Thus, you could equally argue that anyone who has reached 'nirvana' no longer actually exist at all.

(it is also interesting to note that at least one buddhist leader has stated that if anything discovered by science conflicts with buddhist teachings, then buddhism is wrong.
Consider what that implies...)

 

[Hollock]

we go to this place with rock crabs, boats, and people in canoes with little lanterns

 

[SsilverR]

nothing ... endless black .... remember what it was like before you were born?? didn't think so .. that's what death is like

 

[kemosabi4]

Maybe when you die, your soul sinks through the ground, out the other side of the earth, and then you become Chinese. That is if your American. If you're from the U.K., you end up roughly in Iran...I think.

 

[Shock and Awe]

Well, heaven or hell I suppose, but my view of hell is non-existence.