Do You Believe In Life After Death? What Are Your Personal Feelings About It?

[THUMP 0]

There are aguments on the philosophical, scientific and religious sides of life after death and not one person can come to a definitive conclusion. Of course not! Nobody has ever REALLY come back from the dead to tell us what happened to him/her after they died. Every argument is speculation.Every religion has it's own teachings of death and the hereafter and I don't feel this is something that anyone should argue with. We are taught a specific belief and nobody should ever tell us we are wrong because it is our way and we are entitled to that way.Personally, I feel that after we die our soul comes back in the form of another person (by the way this is NOT what I was taught but how I've grown to think through my lifetime). We come back to make up for any wrongs we did in our previous life. It sounds ridiculous I know but this is the way I feel. There have been times when I've met a stranger and just looking in their eyes had the feeling that I knew them before and they actually had ways about them that made me feel I knew who it was. Strange, yes, I agree but that's the way it is!What are your feelings about life after death? Does your religious upbringing have anything to do with it?

[Liam_CF 0]

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

Nothing. Just nothing. We're organisms on this rock, flying around a star, trying to answer the question. We don't remember anything before birth, so why should we remember things after death? There was nothing before birth, no heaven or such, so why should there be after death.

Just an endless space, filled with nothing but darkness. Because there is nothing. No time, no space...nothing.

And nothing is not to be afraid of. I spent an infinite time before my birth not existing, so why should I fear and infinite time after my death?

[varalu 0]

ya man. I believe in "Life After Death". Not in the exact crude sense... but more in philosophical way.When people remember you for your deeds then it means you are still living among them.This again depends on what you do when you were living. If you have done something worth mentioning and have made yourself influential among people, and you created some difference or bought about some change in some lives... you will be remembered. This i believe is "Life after death."If you want me to give an apt answer for your question... i myself have many doubts regarding this... i get totally confused when i start thinking about life, death, its purpose, present, past, future... etc.So live this moment and enjoy life.

[ZaM0 0]

I can't explain it well - maybe. If there is a life after the death, all these parts of the humans (the souls) must to go to a place, but where is that place? And the people are created from other humans, and they are getting part of the genetic material both from the mother and from the father. So the souls are appearing every day! One part of the believing there is life after the death is that the soul gets from the previews live. But I don't know how this could happen - the new soul is just created, and how I said it gets genetical material from the father and the mother. So for me, that theory partically falls. Maybe the people are just old souls, which came from previews lives, and the new genetical material is getting over the old one. But it is unclear for me by now Also the other questions is, how so much "variants" of souls could get at one place, how large could be that place?

[Seidhrith 0]

I believe that there is life after death.It is not because of a religion... it is because of my thought.My thought being... what purpose do we have if there IS no life after death?Now, this brings up a whole new area on the purpose of our lives, which is a whole other discussion in itself. But sometimes i stop to think... if there is nolife after death, then why are we living in the first place. What is the use of livinghere? At least, the way i see it, if there IS life after death, it gives us something to look forward to (don't get me wrong... not that anyone is looking forward to death).Now, this also brings on thoughts of a judgmental system, where our action's onearth will be judged after this life, to filter where we go in the next life. This particularconcept gives purpose to life, and alleviates some of the fear of death. We instinctively fearwhat we do not know... but this concept allows us a little insight on what's to come, sonaturally we don;t fear it as much.And what about reincarnation? If this is the case, there is life after death... a sort ofcontinuous life. But again... what is the purpose of this continuous life then? Is it justto try to better one's self? A sort of self-restoration? The fact is... we may never know.

[pointybirds 0]

That which we call a soul is merely the higher functions of our brains, brought about by electrochemical impulses shooting around our synapses. I don't support reductionism, and there's definitely a gestalt aspect to consciousness that can't (yet?) fully be explained by recourse to the sciences of chemistry and physics. However, without the active brain, we have nothing. Imagine if Shakespeare's plays (or Coldplay's songs, etc., whatever inflates your dinghy) were stored on hard drives round the world and nowhere else. They bring us indescribable thoughts and emotions. Now, a nasty virus wipes them all out. So all along, we were fundamentally dependent on microscopic, magnetically aligned grains for our art and culture; but by no means could we say they represented them at any "soulful" level.Decartes wrestled with all this and came up with the mind-body dualism. Since then, the idea of a ghost in the machine has come to seem a little quaint and old-fashioned, however we persist with an oxymoronic belief in life after death. Perhaps Decartes would have benefited from something like a spiritual OSI model to explain how the world might work at different levels.Why isn't it enough that this life is all we get? Does the thought of an eternity without existence fill us with dread? Do we think that we're unfairly treated in this life and hope for something better in the next, like all those earth-inheriting meek folk? You'd better enjoy it while you can; like a toilet roll, it gets faster as you get closer to the end ...

[truefusion 3]

Personally, I feel that after we die our soul comes back in the form of another person (by the way this is NOT what I was taught but how I've grown to think through my lifetime). We come back to make up for any wrongs we did in our previous life. It sounds ridiculous I know but this is the way I feel. There have been times when I've met a stranger and just looking in their eyes had the feeling that I knew them before and they actually had ways about them that made me feel I knew who it was. Strange, yes, I agree but that's the way it is!

If we are brought back to make up for past-life wrongs, then that means two things: 1. There is a force greater than us that is in control, and 2. this force has established absolute morality. For if morality (right or wrong) was relative, and because people tend to believe that all their ways are right (not wrong), then there would be no need to come back to life, for there would be nothing to make up for in the first place.

 

But to add on to this, what would happen if there is no planet Earth to go back to? What if everything that was destined to fade away has already faded away? How, then, would one be able to make up for past sins? And what if one creates more sins in this new lifetime? They may be bound to an endless cycle. And what happens if one bears no sin in their previous life, where to are they to go? Or what if one finishes paying for their past sins, where to then (assuming this is possible)? Have you gone this far in thought before?

 

One more thing, your post implies that the person would indeed remember their past sins, however, they can't even or barely remember an old face. How, then, would they be able to know of their past sins?

 

Nothing. Just nothing. We're organisms on this rock, flying around a star, trying to answer the question. We don't remember anything before birth, so why should we remember things after death? [1]There was nothing before birth, no heaven or such, so why should there be after death. [...] [2]I spent an infinite time before my birth not existing, so why should I fear and infinite time after my death?

[1]If there was nothing before your birth, then how were you born?

[2]If you can waste time being nothing, then how can you possibly be nothing in the first place? For if you have the ability to waste time, then you must therefore exist.

 

(don't get me wrong... not that anyone is looking forward to death).

On the contrary, many who are placed in hard times may seek death just so the pain may end. But the question may come up: if they sought an end, would they want things to start back up again? Does a new life bring no pain?

 

However, without the active brain, we have nothing.

But that's to say that you're only indulging yourself in the present and maybe also the past. It's the distant future where the activity of the brain may prove to be unnecessary.

 

What are your feelings about life after death? Does your religious upbringing have anything to do with it?

Although there are two ways to consider this, as varalu has mentioned, my feelings about life after death are quite real. I wouldn't necessarily say that my religious upbringing had as much to do with it as my questioning to things have. However, i have found my religion to be more realistic when it comes to life after death. When i look at things, i find it hard not to look at it this way.

[OneMinute 0]

I agree with Varalu in such that you have a new life when you begin to be an inspiration to many and not that you have another life where it's religious.

[zachoeser 0]

my father is a counceler. he believes in afterlife as does my mom. however i do not, i believe in the circle of life, live, die, decompose, nutritize the plants, and so on and so on. it makes way more sence and is realistic, unlike the big magical man in the sky...

[Liam_CF 0]

No, personally, I do not believe in life after death. It would be a wonderful thing but here is my view:We are just organisms living on this rock, floating around a burning ball of gas. We live, and die. It is that simple.

[camarorz28 0]

we might never know until we get there, but we must keep strong to our believe, why would we come here in the first place? what are we doing here sitting at home infront of the computer typing this for this message board? we have a purpose, we come for a purpose, and our lives really dont start until we day, i read this quote somewhere "death is only the begining" we are living in earth in this flesh but our soul? were is it going for our soul death of our flesh was just the beginning and for our souls the life just starts.

[KansukeKojima 0]

i believe in the circle of life, live, die, decompose, nutritize the plants, and so on and so on. it makes way more sence and is realistic, unlike the big magical man in the sky...

Of course it makes more sense to you... you call God the 'big magical man in the sky'... it seems you do not take Him seriously...
Edit:

I agree with you camarorz28... the must be a purpose to life... otherwise... well... whats the point?
We'd just be random organisms with random functions randomly fulfilling random animalistc desires (which of course, some of us do...unfortuneatly)... doesn't seem right...

We all have a conscience... a pre-determined moralistic sense of things... that doesn't come from no where.... if it did, it would be considered a learned behavior, but we are born with it.... and it can be seen in young children who have yet to understand what it is...

One final rant...
To me, existance feels so paper thin.... whats keeping us here? Whats keeping us going... the thoughts I feel... feel so thin and frail... they could pass and never come back at any moment... there must be something to keep it there, alive... and some other word that I can feel don't know.... we can choose to do anything, but what directs that choice? Whats stopping me from walking up to someone and wringing their neck? the existence of the mind and thoughts feel so thin to me, that they could not exist on their own...
Edited November 27, 2007 by KansukeKojima (see edit history)

[Revan 0]

Nothing. Just nothing. We're organisms on this rock, flying around a star, trying to answer the question. We don't remember anything before birth, so why should we remember things after death? There was nothing before birth, no heaven or such, so why should there be after death.
Just an endless space, filled with nothing but darkness. Because there is nothing. No time, no space...nothing.

And nothing is not to be afraid of. I spent an infinite time before my birth not existing, so why should I fear and infinite time after my death?

I really like that argument. It's exactly true, and it's difficult to think of it like that but it makes perfect sense. I don't believe in life after death just because there is no evidence to suggest it's true. I'm typically a logical person, and something must be spelled out logically for me to believe it, and to say that there is an afterlife just because not existing is unfathomable, that is simply illogical. Just because we fear not existing, it is impossible for us not to? again good one Liam, I really like that.

[maximus_decimus 0]

There's nothing simple about that.

The main problem is that we don't have any scientific way to detect consciousness.
We don't know it's necessary or suficient causes, we don't know its neural correlates, even if we knew them we couldn't consider them the mental event per se, if fact we don't even have a good solid consensus about what consciousness is. A few decades back it wasn't even proper to use such word in a scinetific journal or debate.

I sugest reading the following chapter of a most interesting book by Alan Wallace. The whole book worths reading.

http://www.alanwallace.org/ChoosingReality23.pdf

I believe it sheds some light about the probelms science faces when dealing with consciousness and the biased trends sometimes adopted when approachig this sery interesting issue.

[anwiii 17]

personal feelings about believing in life after death? well there IS and that is a FACT! i have experienced and seen too much to believe otherwise. alot of people have seen and experienced what i have but for those that haven't.....well......you have a lot to learn about life because there is a whole other exisitance out there. you can see it sometimes, you can hear it sometimes, and sometimes you can even smell it.

someone mentioned that we come back to make up for any wrongs. this is absolutely TRUE! but in fact, it's more than just making up for wrongs, also reliving past mistakes until you learn from the experience. now some people believe in god, some goddess, etc....but it's that higher power that DOES dictate what is right and wrong and morality and values etc....

we can choose how we want to live, but if we learn nothing, we come back and relive the same crappy experiences until we do and ready to move on to other levels. there are people out there considered "old souls". what this means is that there are people out there that have been reincarniated many times. they have experienced much and it's these people that are more in tune with "life" and it's meaning than other people

it's a sad world when there are people out there believing that when we die, we are fertilizer for the grass to grow taller and that's it because there is so much more to life than that. it's sad to see people question or play devil's advocate on such a deep and important issue that needs strict guidance by those who know better.

i'm not saying i am an expert or know it all, but i do know there is life after death and i do know there is reincarnation. aside from what i KNOW as FACT, let me tell you what i believe in other areas that i don't know as fact.

we are here to learn and grow and abtain a stronger soul and spirit while we are here. it's inside us all and this is fact. we die 3 ways. we can die naturally....which means we have nothing more to offer or learn from in this lifetime and it's our time to go. after we pass, we are able to either be reborn, or guide the living as what some will call spirit guides. we can die in an accident which means sometimes our spirit will linger in the afterlife until we accept our own death and move on to be reborn. we can also die commiting suicide which means we didn't learn a DANG THING in this lifetime to take our own life. we will relive our own suicide over and over in the afterlife until we learn from it and are strong enough and able to be reborn. now those are my beliefs alone. they have no factual basis for it but my beliefs come from everything i have already experienced in this life as well as a very intuitive nature inside my own self. i believe in my intuitiveness and how it has guided me so far in this lifetime.

now let me get back to more facts that are less substantiated. since we are here to learn, and we ARE judged while we are living AND in the afterlife, the more we learn, the more we experienc. we are NEVER put on this earth to experience more than we can handle. this is fact. we have to use our brains, and most importantly our minds in what our purpose is and what is meant for us to expeirience, learn, and grow from. we will make mistakes, but this is how we learn and grow and move on to other higher experiences. the more we experience, the stronger we are to experience more difficult tasks each lifetime. we grow from this.

people are meant to learn little things like smiling and learning from other peoples reaction, to bigger things like experiencing rape and forgiving and possibly creating awareness....turning a cruel and disgusting act in to something positive. god forbid you don't learn to forgive or turn that negative in to a positive because you will catch yourself reliving your experience until you learn and grow from it. life is supposed to be balanced.

now all this may seem irrelevant to the after life, but it's not. it's all connected. life is what we make it and death is a mirror of our life. we don't die. our bodied die. our host for our soul and spirit dies. the flesh becomes fertilizer but our spirit and soul lives on and continues to live on as it's meant to be

and because i know this to be true about learning experiences, i also know the world will never be perfect or a utopia. there will always be problems, there will always be pain. but with the problems and pain, there are the happy, fun,and exciting times. on a depper level, there is nature all around us that is NOT bad and most people are too busy to take 10 minutes out of each day just to enjoy the birds that sing to the dropping of the leaves in autom. it's all around us and ever changing

now i was at a cemetary recently. i was with my wife and her daughter that took me there. they are strong believers in the afterlife and while we were walking through, i don't think the daughter experienced much, but my wife said she heard a baby crying and also felt a child touching her hand trying to hold it. what i sensed was very positive energy. a calming feeling. somewhat exciting feeling because i felt there was lots of energy there that was somewhat sacred. i walked around with my camera. i took random pictures where i felt i needed to take a picture. i didn't see anything until i developed my pictures off my digital camera.
this experience at the cemetary was very enlightening to me that verifies what i already knew. life after death. the pictures are on my myspace. i think i posted 6-7 of 'm. spirits and energy all through out the cemetary. i never caught such good pictures before. whenver i take pictures, sometimes i'll catch some orbs or something. orbs are white balls of light that show up on camera. sometimes they are visiable to the eye as well. these are spirits. just like the ghostly image i caught of a person standing next to his head stone at the cemetary.

life after death? i feel sorry for anyone who says no. and doubly sorry for anyone who doesn't believe we are on this earth to LEARN and allow our soul and spirit to grow. here is the link to the pictures.... https://myspace.com/browser

although the spirit by the head stone was a good one, that's not the one that leaves my curious. it's the last picture i took which had a white misty ring around a tree. above the mist, you can barely make out something that looks like someone that belongs on a totum pole. something sacred appeared and i don't know exactly what it is. only thing i can come up with is something sacred protecting the cemetary. i've never seen any picture like it, and i took it. a little bit freaky to me because i don't understand it fully yet(but i will in time) also, that last picture on myspace is also the last picture i was able to take before my camera went completely dead. that was strange too knowing what i took right when the camera went dead.

so anyway, i wanted to share a tiny bit of my experience with you and to show one reason why i believe in life after death and the purpose behind it. those pictures were taken with a flash, and i set the camera to a very low shutter speed with an iso setting of 400 on my digital camera. they were taken in missouri, usa about 4 months ago

welp, that's it for now. if you didn't enjoy my long winded post, i hope you take the time to go to my myspace and take a look at those pictures. i'm sure you will at least enjoy those