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I believe in God, but lots of people have been saying that there is no such thing as God. I'm worried about this because of my inevitable death in the distant or possibly not-so-distant future. If there is no God, then what happens with our souls after death? Does anyone have an explanation(other than "nothing")?

Poof! Nothingness. At least from what I get from some atheist friends of mine. Just plain and simple nothingness.

If there turned out to be no such being as god (I'm agnostic) then death would probably be something like this: Your mind would shut off, and your senses would come to a stop. I know you want a better explanation that "nothing", but that's what would happen. You'd experience lack of emotions, feelings, and any thoughts at all. Mindwise, the closest you could come to describing it would be nothingness.

Unfourtanatly they will have to realize that God has been there all along. I used to think there was no God until i went through periods in my life where there had to be something guiding me.

Your consciousness stays attached to your body, you slowly feel yourself decay and waste away while you can do nothing but be trapped in your own self. Slowly as time goes by, you just never stop feeling cold and lonely, nothing but yourself to keep you company. Once your nerves are finally gone, you finally stop feeling pain. Cold is still there though. Finally your bones devay away into dust. Then you are free to move about, somewhat like a shadow upon the world of men. Then you can climb in shit and spoop people lel.

I believe in a non-religious afterlife where your mind is transported to a copy of your body at any point in your life. It's basically Earth, but with more continents and, you know, inhabited by the dead.

lol what a thread.

nobody knows, which is too bad since we've pondered it for pretty much as long as we could think.

here re some cool theories.

recurrence: basically you live the same life over and over again. you make the same mistakes and make the right choices you always have. over and over again. the life you live now is not the first and will not be the last.

nothingness: easier said then explained. nothingness is a difficult concept because it's completely detached from what we experience now, which is being or 'thingness'.

reincarnation: you live a new life as a new person/animal/plant with no memory of anything you've done before. Your actions in your current life may or may not be a deciding factor in where you end up next time round.

living in a dream: basically you live in the same sort of ethereal dream state you are in every night except this time you don't come back.

you're not really 'alive': this one is if we don't have free will. humans are as we all know not really big blobs of person, but thousands of very tiny cells working together so you can make from one day to the next. everything you do, say, etc comes not from your own discretion but from your brain reacting to stimulus and reacting accordingly, a 'self' really has no input, just a biological machine going through the motions. so you die when all your cells finally die. you are dying constantly and regenerating.

each of these have their own ethical problems and implications for how to live a life in face of death. but who really cares since you are most likely going to be wrong.

I hope i reincarnate as a kym mod. :^)

If you believe then you have nothing to be afraid of. If you don't believe you literally have nothing to be afraid of. It would just be like before you were born, or when you sleep (there are in fact points when you aren't dreaming, you just don't remember them because there's nothing to remember). If you've had surgery you would have experienced "nothingness" when they put you under anesthesia, your brain is technically active but there are no thoughts and you don't feel anything.

Living in a dream? Come on now…

We won't know for sure until we're dead.

I believe that there is no way for a being to comprehend 'nothingness' so to speak, so there's just some kind of transcendence into some other consciousness after death. I've wrapped my head around that question for years and that's basically what I've ultimately come up with.

Whether you believe that's Heaven, Hell, Reincarnation, or some other shit is up to you, but I can't see how one could experience a cessation of existence without sensing something (which would indicate a kind consciousness, directly conflicting with the entire point of death as a permanent termination of conciousness). I think I might have heard this idea referred to as Quantum Immortality or something.

In any case, it helps me sleep at night.

Of course many people love to ponder, and that's great and all, but from a practical standpoint it's a pointless and time-wasting question. We can never answer it (ignoring some future insane, mind-blowing scientific breakthrough) because that answer exists outside of our sphere of observation.
Instead of your death, I would encourage you to focus on your life. What can you do to experience the maximum possible joy throughout it? How can you accomplish the ultimate human goals, aiding in our species' survival and securing your legacy- but in a way that's fun and fulfilling? These are the things that I find rolling around in my head on a daily basis. I've hopefully got a lot of years ahead of me, and I presume you do to. Our death beads? That's something we should probably try as hard as we can to forget about. Sure, one day it'll come.
Fuck that day.

This whole thread:

Anyway, you can't destroy energy, the stuff that makes me me and you you is gonna keep on keepin' on long after we're both "dead".

a lot of people are big on nothingness itt. the biggest issue with nothingness is that it defeats the necessity of morality. if nothing, that is nothing happens after you die there is no real punishment. i know it's russian lit 101 to mention dostoevsky but i don't think he's wrong about "if there is no god, then all things are permitted". if mother theresa and genghis khan both end up in the same void, what's the point of doing anything good for anybody? there really isn't one.

if our lives are bookended by nothingness, then what happens in between is marginal and forgotten. it doesn't matter how you lived your life, because you don't remember it and you are not held responsible for it either. the amount of people you help or hurt doesn't matter because it's a net zero. you could say you do things for 'the good of the world' but how are you to know whether or not the world will continue to exist if you do not. sure, we can make an educated guess (norman rockwell is dead, but hey, i'm still here to enjoy his paintings). but we're never sure.

i don't tend to believe people when they say they wholly believe in nothingness, otherwise they'd be a huge nihilist and no fun to be around.

re: "you won't know until your dead"

you probably won't. unless in death you keep your knowledge of life so that you will be able to understand a difference. death is very possibly a question with an answer you will never know, despite the fact you experience it.

To deserve that reincarnation you need to commit some serious crimes against humanity

Anyway, on the topic of this thread….um…I'm not sure what is expected here.

There's nothing that can be done except speculation, but the most probable guess is infinite nothingness. There's really not much else to say

I try to stay as loyal to a strictly scientific view of the world as possible. Everything is a hypothesis; if there is no evidence to support a hypothesis, then I tend to have a hard time accepting it. That is why I am skeptical of the existence of souls, for instance, as there is no concrete evidence for them. This means that I also lack belief in any realm or state which a soul is meant to pass into after death, including concepts such as heaven, hell, and limbo. I'm not saying that such concepts are false for certain, simply that I see no reason to invest belief in them at the moment.

I also lack belief in the idea that consciousness survives after death. Emerging evidence from neuroscience suggests that consciousness is wholly the product of biological processes and interactions in the brain. If this is true, then consciousness will cease to exist upon death. Nothingness will be the sensation – the same sensation that you felt in the billions of years leading up to when you were created.

Is an afterlife possible? Of course. But until I see solid evidence for it, I will follow the lead of the null hypothesis and form my beliefs around what science currently has to offer.

[Insert quote from Nietzsche here.]

In my opinion, there is no such thing as a soul. Our experience of self is just an interesting side effect of the complexity of our brains.

I think the most scientific and logical explanation is nothingness; our consciousness is just a product of our mind and all the cells in our body. As much as our lives seem valuable to us, it's a petty thing and our consciousness will disappear as simple as that.

But at times when I become a bit too idealistic I also like to believe in past lives and such. I find it hard to believe that only now are we alive, here in the present that continues to push further into the future. How lucky are we compared to those people back then who didn't have the benefit of technology? What if we've been on this world back then, and we'll be in this world centuries from now.

P.S: I find it very interesting what quantum physicists have to say about life and death (and space and time.)

Our consciousness is nothing more than our brain.
If we die, our brains stop working, meaning it can't think anymore, and can't carry out any operations. I don't see much room for speculation. Our thoughts are nothing more than activities in the brain, so without energy for said activities, there are no thoughts, and no concsiousness.

I think it's a logical thing for humans to be afraid of death and to think of things like afterlife. People may be afraid of nothingness, thinking your mind is trapped in a limbo, but there's no mind left without a working brain, so there's nothing to be afraid of.

It's a romantic idea, living on after death, and the existence of souls, but your brain is all you are, so if it stops working, it's thoughts aren't magically transported into some kind of limbo dimension to live on.
Thoughts are very much a physical thing going on in your brain.

In short, as said, the same thing that happened before you were born.

Yes, it's difficult to comprehend that because as thinking beings it's pretty much impossible to imagine not thinking (though don't we manage pretty well when it's thought of as non permanent, like a period of unconciousness or a coma?), but there are lots of things that we can't comprehend that are nevertheless most likely true – multi-dimensional space, quantum physics, the unimaginable complexity of the brain, etc.) Our brains evolved as a tool to better our survival, not form a complete picture of the reality of existence, so it's pretty impressive that they can comprehend so much of how the universe works as it is.

@Captain Blubber:

a lot of people are big on nothingness itt. the biggest issue with nothingness is that it defeats the necessity of morality. if nothing, that is nothing happens after you die there is no real punishment. i know it’s russian lit 101 to mention dostoevsky but i don’t think he’s wrong about “if there is no god, then all things are permitted”. if mother theresa and genghis khan both end up in the same void, what’s the point of doing anything good for anybody? there really isn’t one.

I disagree. For one thing it's kinda irrelevant since the mechanics of our existence aren't based on whether we can make a convincing moral system out of them. If we die and there's nothing after that, that's what happens regardless of whether that's convenient to making us good or bad people.

Secondly, it's just wrong, since there are people all over the world who don't believe in an afterlife but still try to be good people (myself included). The reason for this is that there doesn't need to be an eternal reward or punishment after we die – being good to people creates a better world for us to live in our own lives, and since we only have one life, that's pretty damn important. And apart from that, we want to do good things for the sake of doing them – why does there need to be a selfish reason? Isn't that just bribery and blackmail at the end of the day?

Anyone if God might just a dick who sends everyone to hell for the lels? I mean why the fuck not? The current state of things seems much more evidence of an evil God than the Christian goody two shoes we like to imagine.

you can believe in a after-life and be a atheist, however the vast majority of atheists believe in eternal oblivion.
For if god isn't real, how do you know heaven and hell are?
Maybe there could be? we can't know until we pass. but currently science says otherwise.
What eternal oblivion is basically is: after death their is no afterlife; no heaven or hell; just emptiness; unconsciousness.
to begin; what we consider as death (last breath, heart stop) is only the beginning of the process.
The last breath, eyes rolling back in your head, is simply your brain loosing communication to the rest of your body.
Depending on how you die, your brain is still alive for 6-7 minutes; slowly dying from lack of oxygen and bloodflow. fun-fact: the tunnel of light people see is actually the neurons in their visual cortex dying off; the tunnel effect has been recorded in people having strokes as well.
After that, there is nothing; nothing at all; your existence; everything; is gone; rotting.
Because of this life-guards; or first responders try to revive the patient only in those crucial minutes; after which there is no revival.
Only 38 people have been recorded as having Lazarus syndrome; revival from those last minutes.
Even if their is hope; the odds make it impossible for anyone reading this to suffer from it.
You, your personality; everything that is you; is in your brain; is your consciousness; which is a product of sensory input.
For if you had no sensory input; how could you even be aware of your existence?
And if you were to die, how would you know you even toke your last breath?
You wouldn't, consciousness is dependent on our sensory input.
Death, or brain death is simply the cessation of your consciousness; major cell death following 30 minutes later.
Fortunately you would be knocked into unconsciousness, so you wouldn't be aware that you were dying to begin with.
Your consciousness can't survive without you, and it cant even exist without sensory input. you are your brain and only your brain in other words.
The idea of a soul probably came from people trying to explain human consciousness; and the belief in the afterlife probably came around to lessen the fear of death.
Maybe heaven was created by the human urge for escapism; something better than reality.
Some have argued that heaven and hell were created as motivation to follow said religion.
But the eternal oblivion belief shouldn't scare you in the long run; to me at least its a comforting closure even; a final answer to life and death.
For if their is no god, and no after life; the only thing holding you back; preventing you from living life the way you want, is yourself.
Take time to do stuff you always wanted to do; explore the world, climb the tallest mountains; or like in the tim mcgraw song "live like you were dying".
Fulfill your bucket list, be happy in everything you do; and die with no regrets.
Make the most of life, for if science holds true; there is no other life beyond our own.
We as a species should be happy that we are seemingly the only species to be aware of our final fate; the fate that all life will go through.
That nature gave us a gift, for she loved us so much; as to give us the truth rather than a convincing lie.
And we're the only species in the position to beat it, go beyond; be eternal.
And hopefully someday; death will be a relic of the past; a nightmare long since forgotten.
But for now; don't let the fear of death get in your way; enjoy life while you have it.
Many people lived and died thinking that they would live forever; that death was unknown to them.
And if their is a after life after all; that science is wrong (probably not the case) they would be craving to be alive again; even if it were for one day.

"While you live, shine
Don't suffer anything at all;
Life exists only a short while
And time demands its toll."
~Seikilos

_I could perhaps like others have astonished you
with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose
to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest
manner and style; because my principal design
was to inform you, and not to amuse you.

@twee

i understand the idea of trying to be a good person in the face of zero reward/punishment and i try to live that way myself. whether or not it's from the social values that have been repeated to me over and over from western culture i'm not sure. it's just if our lives are completely forgotten by ourselves, there is no way to justify doing a good or bad thing. you could never be sure any of it happened. doing good things for "the future of the world" is a hail mary pass of faith in the existence of the world. and maybe it's cynical to say that if everything is impossible to justify people will do bad things. if i hold up a liquor store and spend 10 years in jail it is just as hard to justify as donating all my money to unicef or going to med school.

it's like being blackout drunk, if no one is there to remind you of what happened (friends, loved ones or the police) you can't be sure that something happened at all.

so maybe to shift my stance a bit, if there is nothing after death you can't justify any action, not just good ones.

I'm getting sick of having to make this same argument over and over again.

The "current state of things" is fucking fantastic. Just in the past millennium, humanity has faced plague wiping out massive swathes of population, increasingly bloody and devastating wars that spanned whole continents and beyond, and the spectre of total nuclear annihilation of humanity. Get over whatever minor issues you might have with the present, because they're nothing compared to the past.

As for something that's actually on topic, the brain ceasing to function doesn't disprove the existence of souls or the afterlife at all, because our brains are built to carry out animalistic, instinctual functions. From a purely scientific standpoint, things that don't serve any purpose towards the survival of the species, like complex emotions and the concept of "fun," should never have come into being, and yet they exist anyway. Things like sadness at the death of a loved one and excitement from watching a movie don't do jack shit to help us survive, but they exist anyway. If humanity followed the chain of evolution normally, we should for all intents and purposes be nothing but very intelligent animals, but we aren't. There's something there that shouldn't be, and never had any opportunity to come into existence. Thus, souls exist.

you could never be sure any of it happened. doing good things for “the future of the world” is a hail mary pass of faith in the existence of the world.

We have a lot more evidence of the world existing and things having happened than for an afterlife existing, surely? And if you're to assume the world doesn't actually exist and whatever effect you're having on it is an illusion, you then have to explain why it appears in such a way and is consistent with what you'd expect if it did exist.

On the other hand, if you're saying that after our deaths we won't be able to be sure the world had existed, well yes, because we won't be able to be sure of anything, because we'll be dead. I don't really see what that has to do with our decisions when we're alive and can experience the effects of what we do.

The “current state of things” is fucking fantastic.

Relative to the past it's fantastic, yes (although this is due to human ingenuity and compassion in the face of what we've been saddled with). Relative to how it could be it's still pretty awful.

Incidentally, IIRC there was actually a Catholic heresy in the middle ages that believed it was Satan that created the world and had trapped spirits in physical bodies to suffer – the only way to escape the endless cycle of reincarnation was to deny the physical and focus only on enlightenment.

From a purely scientific standpoint, things that don’t serve any purpose towards the survival of the species, like complex emotions and the concept of “fun,” should never have come into being, and yet they exist anyway. Things like sadness at the death of a loved one and excitement from watching a movie don’t do jack shit to help us survive, but they exist anyway.

Those most likely do serve functions, though? I'm no evolutionary biologist, but possible explanations off the top of my head: the concept of fun is a reward mechanism for doing things that are helpful for our survival. Sadness at the death of a loved one is a result of forming close bonds with other individuals, which as we're a social species is crucial to our survival. Excitement from watching a movie is our adrenaline and flight-or-fight mechanisms going off in response to an exciting situation, which again is beneficial to surviving. Just because the situations involved now aren't directly related to survival, doesn't mean the reason they happen isn't because they were at some point – evolution is full of things like this.

I'll also suggest a counter-point – there are many instances where people have had some kind of brain injury, and after which their personality changes drastically. If the brain did nothing but instinctual functions and the "soul" takes care of the rest of it, why does the brain changing have such a large effect on these things?

I'm a heavy believer of the Endless Dream explanation. If not that then I believe in dying and then immediately reincarnating into the next life. Either one works for me…

To reword Mark Twain:

"I'm okay with dying. I didn't exist for billions of years before I was born so it's no different not existing in the future."

There is no other way of explaining it than "nothing". That's as simple as I can put it. If you're not okay with nothing, that's fine, but that's how I see it and ow many do. Just poof, dead. Think what you want from this.

It's like an infinite sleep for me. Louis CK, break it down.

I can tell you what I hope as an atheist.
I do hope there is some after life where people can be happy. A personal world where the person can be happy and things exist that might never exist in the real world. Its something that makes death not quite as intimidating and looming. and even if its a false hope I think its okay to hope for something. Since really we can never know if there is an afterlife.

I however am strongly apposed to religious views of the afterlife because often times they just allow people to be punished and for some people they don't have a choice. Like a person born with a metal illness that ends up turning them into a serial killer will be punished forever for that, for something they cannot control and I think that is horrible.
"cured cancer and saved an innumerable amount of people, but you didn't believe in gawd, time to burn forever!"

In reality its probably just nothingness. You would have no mind to comprehend that you just stop being alive.

0.9999…=1 wrote:

We can never answer it (ignoring some future insane, mind-blowing scientific breakthrough) because that answer exists outside of our sphere of observation.

So you say that the only answers in life are in the observable? Tell me, where have you observed this principle?

To say that we shouldn't make assumptions without evidence is itself an assumption based on no evidence.

BRB blowing your mind.

Relative to the past it’s fantastic, yes (although this is due to human ingenuity and compassion in the face of what we’ve been saddled with). Relative to how it could be it’s still pretty awful.

I won't say the world's perfect, as nothing can ever be perfect. I won't even say it's all that good. But it's doing okay, it's improved, and it will (hopefully) always be improving. Utopia can't be reached, but we'll damn well get as close to it as we can.

Those most likely do serve functions, though? I’m no evolutionary biologist, but possible explanations off the top of my head: the concept of fun is a reward mechanism for doing things that are helpful for our survival. Sadness at the death of a loved one is a result of forming close bonds with other individuals, which as we’re a social species is crucial to our survival. Excitement from watching a movie is our adrenaline and flight-or-fight mechanisms going off in response to an exciting situation, which again is beneficial to surviving. Just because the situations involved now aren’t directly related to survival, doesn’t mean the reason they happen isn’t because they were at some point – evolution is full of things like this.

I’ll also suggest a counter-point – there are many instances where people have had some kind of brain injury, and after which their personality changes drastically. If the brain did nothing but instinctual functions and the “soul” takes care of the rest of it, why does the brain changing have such a large effect on these things?

My stance on this is pretty hard to explain, so I apologize in advance if this doesn't make any sense.

The issue with fun and emotions is that they often appear in ways that wouldn't make any sense from an evolutionary standpoint. For example, a lot of people find danger or being afraid thrilling, and go out of their way to experience these things by watching horror movies or riding roller coasters. In this case, the sensation of fun not only serves no purpose towards survival, it actually creates what would be a liability for a wild human, as he might deliberately expose himself to unnecessary danger for a rush of adrenaline. The same applies to many emotions; sadness might kill a wild human's motivation to take care of themselves and their family, anger might lead them to seek revenge and put themselves at needless risk, etc.

As for the brain damage thing, my sense is that the brain serves as a facilitator for the soul, and what effects the mind effects the soul in turn. There is little about us humans that is innate; personality is shaped by experiences in life rather than just showing up out of nowhere. As the brain stores the memories and impressions of those experiences, it's logical that damage to the brain could indirectly affect the soul, as those experiences and their perceptions could be altered.

I however am strongly apposed to religious views of the afterlife because often times they just allow people to be punished and for some people they don’t have a choice. Like a person born with a metal illness that ends up turning them into a serial killer will be punished forever for that, for something they cannot control and I think that is horrible.
“cured cancer and saved an innumerable amount of people, but you didn’t believe in gawd, time to burn forever!”

IMO the concept of a fire & brimstone Hell where the sinful are tortured forever is a misconception perpetuated by popular culture, in regards to Christianity at least. While eternal torment is mentioned, it's the fate of Satan and associates specifically, and the rest of the unsaved undergo "second death." The wording of this, and the recurrence in the Bible of the assertion that Jesus gives followers "eternal life," leads me to believe that those who do not enter Heaven simply cease to exist rather than going to Hell.

And that's only the literal interpretation. Maybe the Book of Revelation where this is described is allegorical, or the result of John having a fever dream, and none of it is a literal representation of things. It's all up to interpretation.

You know what? You're absolutely right. I could just be a brain inside of a jar, with my entire perception of reality fed to me through a series of wires. In that case, I might as well just shove my imaginary thumb up my imaginary ass.
That, as well as most possibilities posed about what happens after we die, is an unfalsifiable hypothesis. They serve no pragmatic purpose.
Before engaging in scientific inquiry, you absolutely must make a set of base assumptions, among them that there is a true reality, we can reliably observe it, and can use those observations to form predictive models. And based on my two eyes that I assume exist and are reliable, it seems that humanity has gotten a lot of shit done with that method.

there have been times where i went to sleep and didn't dream. Like i would go to sleep, and what seemed like a second later i was awake and the night had passed. I assume it would be like that. Only there is no waking up.

For something even stranger, I once heard an interesting theory that human beings had evolved their own heaven. That the bio-electric signals that make up ones conciseness can actually leave the body and exist as electronic signals that exists through the earths magnetosphere that can only be found on a certain frequency (which is the premise for the movie white noise).

Heavy question. Personally I like the theory that humans are all the same being, constantly reincarnated trough time and space to become one with the universe trough shared experiences. Its pretty out there imo, but still fun.

Regardless, I pay lip service to most serious religions and a couple of parody religions. You know, just in case. Except for scientology, because come on

@Snickerway

a lot of people find danger or being afraid thrilling, and go out of their way to experience these things by watching horror movies or riding roller coasters

There has been a lot of research done on many (apparent) "dead ends" in human emotion. To put it simply, scientists have a very comprehensive evolutionary explanation as to why human beings seek thrills in the form of horror movies, roller coasters et cetera.

The Atlantic – Why Do Some Brains Enjoy Fear?

"One of the main hormones released during scary and thrilling activities is dopamine, and it turns out some individuals may get more of a kick from this dopamine response than others do"

Triggering the fight or flight response results in increased heartbeat, awareness, and so on. Naturally, there are many people who enjoy this physical state over one of idleness.

"Lots of people also enjoy scary situations because it leaves them with a sense of confidence after it’s over."

In other words, playing off our primal tribal instincts to display ourselves as stronger, more powerful, more resilient than our peers. Speaking of which, WebMD states something similar

"There's a motivation males have in our culture to master threatening situations," Sparks says. "It goes back to the initiation rites of our tribal ancestors, where the entrance to manhood was associated with hardship. We've lost that in modern society, and we may have found ways to replace it in our entertainment preferences."

There are many, many more explanations as far as evolutionary biologists are concerned.

There’s something there that shouldn’t be, and never had any opportunity to come into existence. Thus, souls exist.

I don't follow your logic, unfortunately. Let's – falsely – assume for a minute that attraction to cheap thrills has no evolutionary evidence at the moment. This simply means that science has not yet discovered an answer. It is irrational to leap straight to a positive conclusion from your hypothesis ("souls exist") when the only evidence present is the fact that there is no evidence (The God of the Gaps).

You will become a tree.

Bios Urn Biodegradable Urn with Seed