What Does The After Life Mean To You? Everyone has a different interpretation of the afterlife and what it means to them. So I ask you What Does The After Life Mean To You? If anything this certainly makes a philosophical debate.
As an atheist I almost feel I have to strongly state nothing happens to us once we die, but I can't help thinking of alternatives. For example, it's possible that after we die we become reincarnated as another creature (whether it be human or animal) and the process of life repeats itself, yet we will never have the memories of our former selves. I've always thought that interesting because if you formerly inhabited the body of Charles Dickens, there'd be no way of knowing. Also, since we have such a minimalistic understanding of the universe, we could in fact end up in another galaxy - living as something we call 'alien' after we die. Or, life itself could be a long process to reaching a final destination - living through one body after the next until you reach the nexus of the universe. The possibilities are endless, and because of the way our minds work we simply have to list intriguing alternatives to rotting in the ground.
I really don't know. Because I've never been there. But since I believe in resurrection, my belief is that if I'm a good person in this world, I'll get the reward for it in the next, and vice versa. Logic being, that complete justice of any kind is impossible in this world, and so, there must be justice somewhere, and that's afterlife.
I think the only thing we can say for sure about the afterlife is that every single theory anyone's ever put forth on the matter is wrong. It will be like nothing we can possibly comprehend with our physical brains, seeing as we don't get to take our physical brains with us. I'm pretty sure it's better for people who lived good lives than for those who lived bad ones, though.
I think the only thing we can say for sure about the afterlife is that every single theory anyone's ever put forth on the matter is wrong. It will be like nothing we can possibly comprehend with our physical brains, seeing as we don't get to take our physical brains with us. I'm pretty sure it's better for people who lived good lives than for those who lived bad ones, though.
My question is what is a good person and what is a bad person. we all hope that good people get rewarded and bad people get punished. But who says you are good and george is bad? What I want in the after life is my family, my friends, and a body free of the pain I have had my entire life. Most of that I have here. But a lot of people think I am a bad person. Why because I like hunting and shooting and I allowed my children to handle guns. I don't go to church and my children don't either. I didn't respect my father and mother and now I don't speak to my brother and sisters. I don't think of myself as a bad person but the powers that be might.
When speculating about morality as pertains to spirituality, I like to look at the teachings shared by all major religions. A lot of those teachings sprouted up independently of one another, so they had to come from somewhere.
nothing in particular, as there's no real proof that there is one... personally, i don't need there to be one, so don't even think about it, other than as a matter of curiosity...
I look forward to death. Not in a morbid, suicidal way, or anything like that. I enjoy life, and I don't know if I'll ever have another, so I don't want to take it for granted. But at the same time, death is something that I don't think any of us understand fully. It's an intriguing door that I look forward to opening. If nothing is on the other side, and this life is where my consciousness begins and ends, then I will never know. If not, then I can only speculate of what will happen. I don't follow any particular religion, and none of my beliefs are set in stone. I feel like Religion and Science, at best, have the same goal in mind. It's hard to express myself fully on this subject, as I have so much to say, and it can be hard to connect the tracks of my train of thought to yours. As is the case with pretty much anyone, I expect. Nevertheless, I just ate, I'm feeling content, I have no plans, so I will attempt. My speculating thus far has led me to a few ideas. I think all life can pretty much be classified into two main categories: Art and Science. Intuition and Logic. I'm not particular. Respectively, they're all the same. Human consciousness is shared between these two titans. But, it is in no way a duality. It is this way, I speculate, because of some ordeals in ancient Greece involving Plato, Aristotle, and some other guys. Because of that whole ordeal, our culture uses Science instead of Art to search for the "truth". Logic over Intuition, ya know. Is that good or bad? I don't know. But, let's say some alien civilization uses Art instead of Science to search for answers. Who has a more valid truth? I don't know. They seem pretty illogical answers to us, of course, but maybe not to them. To them, their Science might be our Art, our Art might be their Science. And even if this alien race used Science, like us, to wander this cosmic maze, would their Science be the same as our Science? Would they decide on the same path as us? Could 2+2=4 make sense to us, but 2+2=5 make sense to them? While I could get three rocks, and put another in the pile to have four, I could also use Calculus to prove three rocks plus one more does not equal four. Make sense? Not at all. But our Science uses it, and apparently it makes sense to someone. So, if we could have an alien race with a logic that allowed 2+2=5, then we could have an alien race that allowed a logic of 2+2=6. It's endless. We could all be wandering this cosmic maze together, and we could all be going totally different directions, thinking we are so much more right than anyone else, when really we have no clue. A thousand classrooms on a thousand planets, and a thousand different "Sciences" being taught within them. Who's right? We have all these scientists, artists, philosophers that we consider great.. We fall in love with them and their ideas. They put out all these great works, and the world, the whole of human consciousness, hangs on their every word. They get recorded in our history books, their ideas to influence humanity until the end of it's reign. Children sit in silent classrooms, memorizing and reciting each and every one of their laws and theorems, so that they hopefully may gain knowledge from those genius people, and have a greater understanding of reality because of it. Then those great men and women go insane. Nietzsche, Hoyle, Pirsig.. They start to harbor weird ideas, or do weird things that make no logical sense and have no rational basis whatsoever for why they're thinking, or doing them. So we throw them in a mental asylum. The people we clung to, the masters of the field, we now say we know more than. We lock them away, we do not allow them to ever influence our way of thinking again, and we only hope we can one day get them back to the "right way" of thinking. Our way of thinking. Tell me, though. Do either you or I fully understand the mathematics of the Big Bang Theory? No, we do not. But we believe in it. Do we understand what makes Picasso's abstract art so great? No, we do not. But we love it. We do not understand why they go insane, either, and while we readily accept their scientific theories and their masterpieces in art, we will not accept their new way of thinking. Why is this? How often are new ways of thinking readily accepted? What is that old proverb..? "If you carry the truth, have a foot in the stirrup." When Copernicus told the "thinkers" of his day that we orbit around something greater than ourselves, that we weren't in the center of the universe, was it readily accepted? Of course not. And was Galileo accepted when he was forced by the Catholic Church to say his ideas were wrong, or otherwise face execution? Of course not. New ways of thinking are not readily accepted. Insecurity, perhaps, causes us to get defensive. We do not want to think that all we ever thought was totally wrong. If we are dead set going in one direction, though, and never willing to look to our sides.. Does this mean we could have passed what we were looking for long ago, and are straying farther and farther from it? So, when these great men go insane, and go into this "new way of thinking", do we accept it? Of course not, otherwise we wouldn't label them as insane! Does an insane person know he is insane? Not usually. To the insane man, he is living in a world of his own logic, laws, and ideas, and they make perfect sense to him. Would it be logical to say that everything we see in the night sky is actually inside the Earth, and we are all living on the inner crust? It would not be logical. I don't believe it. I made that theory up just then. But think about it like this.. When we thought the Earth was flat, it seemed extremely illogical to think that the Earth was actually round, with a whole bunch of people just hanging there on the other side. With what we knew, it was extremely illogical. Common sense told us that the world was obviously flat. But then we found out it was round, and common sense wasn't all that reliable anymore. In fact, it was borderline insane. Today, seeing the world as flat is borderline insane. If me or you were born two thousand years ago.. we would see the world as flat. If we were born two thousand years from now.. we might see it as, I don't know, square or something. We have no earthly idea. We change. A scientific law's lifespan is not that long. Does this mean that we could, in fact, all be insane.. living in our own world of logic, theorems and laws, that we've all just made up? The brain does try to create patterns where none actually exist, after all. And these great people, that we once considered the masters of understanding this universe, go insane and are considered back at rock bottom, with less of an understanding than even us. We try to tell them they are wrong by using the laws they themselves created. But, is that logical, that they would just make a leap like that? No. Did it seem logical to the ancient Mesopotamians that the Earth was round? No. But was it round? Yes. So, if a man came up to that ancient civilization and claimed that the Earth was round, would he be considered insane, even though he was right? Even though he harbored some secret truth we weren't ready to understand? Yes. So, couldn't these great men and women simply be delving into an area we have no earthly idea how to yet comprehend, a greater understanding of reality we just aren't ready for?. They, after all, were the masters of this way of thinking. Maybe they've moved on to something even greater, and we just aren't ready to accept it. Maybe, those clinically insane people we see in mental asylums.. have a much, much, better grasp on reality than we do. Because who's to say they don't? Not us. So, as I said earlier, about how our logic may not be the only one.. Obviously, someone couldn't learn every way of thinking about every subject in the known Universe. Human lifespans aren't that long. So, in our Science, what do we do? If we can't look at the very big, we look at the very small. If we can't think everything, maybe we should think nothing. When I improvise on my guitar, am I thinking? No, but it's coming out somehow, it's coming from somewhere, and it's one of the best feelings in the world. When Buddhists meditate, are they thinking? Of course not, but hey, they keep doing it. They could easily stop. Something is keeping them going. This post was pretty long and sloppy, and my thoughts go off-track a little, but if anyone has any questions, I'll clarify. I could go on and on, but I won't. This was probably the longest post I've ever made, and if anyone disagrees, that's fine with me. Point it out. I don't want to be wrong. My eternal being might be hanging in the balance, after all.
To be honest with you, I think that once you die, you die. no heaven and hell, no eternal happyness, nothing. It's just like being asleep, you can't think or feel or anything. However, I do think that a aprt of your soul, like who you are, gets passed down to someone else. I was the next child born after my great grandmother died and everyone in my family swears I am so much like her it is uncanny. now it might just be down to jeans, but my granddad says our smile and laugh and even the way we brush the hair from our eyes is the same. I dunno, I guess it would be nice if a aprt of our soul could last forever.
Pretty much that. We cannot even comprehend.. think Slaughterhouse 5 logic.. being able to "see time". We can't even COMPREHEND what that would be like, and that's something we can almost grasp. It's like explaining colors to a blind person, no matter how you try you can't do it. We cannot understand it. And the scientific explanations for existence are so based on speculative fact, and those facts are understood in the terms of "well we know this causes this.. but don't know why" that I highly doubt we will ever understand. One answer causes 10 questions; we will never find an absolute answer until we're dead.
Yeah, I agree with some people that it can't be determined what it is or if it exsists. Only hope and faith is what makes me think of going on to an after life. I tend to not worry and just let life happen.
It seems to me that we humans are so focused on our life after death that we forget about the life we are currently leading- it is becase of that, why this subject means a great deal to me, as it seems to be profound enough to affect not only how we as individuals conduct ourselves within our lives but how entire societies do also, as well as how these societies interact with one another. It's simply mind boggling the sheer power of this concept of life after death, the matter itself seems the foundation of most religions, 'conduct yourself this way and then you shall live on in the next life without consequence'- at least in my perspective anyway(even though it may seem crude of me to have somewhat reduced something as complex as a religious system into a hypothesis). It all seems like we're living in hope for something more in fear that the life we're leading right now is meaningless- it's as if we've reasoned, 'well unless this life can be continued onwards perpetually it means nothing'. Anyway, with the ramble aside, of course we do not know if there truely is a life after death or rather what life after death actually 'is', all I know is that we get nowhere by consistently speculating about it- apart from religious war that is.
I like your theory. I certainly hope my wisdom will become part of one of my grand children when my kids grow up and leave home.
Yea, that would be nice. I mean, I am not saying that exact copies are passed down, like that your grandchild would be born knowing everything you do, but if you are quite smart or quick at picking things up, then so might they be if ya get me. It is ard trying to work out whether it is like a part of the soul being resurected in abother life or just keans passing down though
hmm. Peace. I look forward to the afterlife. Whatever and wherever that may be. I like the happy thoughts. But how do describe what heaven is like to an eight year old boy? My Nephew asked me what heaven was like. His six year old brother had passed away and I honestly didn't know what to say. I just said that heaven is Peace. No pain and what suffering there is in this life is taken away. You are loved and warm. I think I even told him he could play X-box whenever he wanted to as well! but yeah. What the afterlife means to me? yeah, peace. I want to feel at ease. I don't want the pressure of life. I look forward to not worrying about what I look like, I can eat what I want, I can feel loved and I like the thoguht of having access to knowledge! I believe there is an afterlife. Or something out there. Because I simply don't like the idea of not being able to think anymore. We can close our eyes but we tend to think about things. Thoughts creep in, or we just plain listen to our surroundings. I hate for all of that to go away. No imagination. No dreams. Nothing. I like the thought of afterlife and maybe we all go to where we believe we end up. Another thing on death, my mum always said that she wants us kids to be cremated purely cause she can't think of us being in boxes and in the ground with creepy crawlies. My niece asked me if her brother (same family) would be bones yet. He was only dead for roughly 2 weeks. He wouldn't be bones. The thought nearly made me throw up and I told her that she shouldn't think of him as bones. Cause bones are not her brother. The spirit that filled her brother was (name). So if I have to explain to children what Heaven/the afterlife is like, I will tell them that you are loved unconditionally, warm and filled with peace. To tell them anything else is cruel.
To me the afterlife is if you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord And Savior™ you get wings and a glowing ring that floats over your head, and you sit on a cloud playing a harp for all eternity. If you were a Buddhist or an atheist or a gay guy or something, though, you spend all eternity burning in fire but never dying, and red guys stab you with pitch forks.
Being Christian I'm supposed to believe in that method, but I like to think that as long as you lead a decent life and never did anything terrible you'll be ok. I know people at school who are downright annoying while their trying to push this ideal toward me. I asked one of them if he believed someone who slayed 2,000 people suddenly and truthfully accepted Jesus would go to Heaven. I was disgusted to hear him say yes. I believe in repetence and second chances, but that's ridiculous.
Personally I think once the end comes that’s it. What Id like is we move onto the next plain become maybe non caporal like the next phase of our evolution.
Ok I personally think that the afterlife is what ever you believe it is. I've heard people say that they think it is just like an eternal slumber, a bright and warming light, heaven and hell, parrallel worlds,, being reborn. I don't know, I don't delve into thinking about it anymore. I just think that whatever you believe in your heart, is what the afterlife is. If you believe in heaven and hell then it is there. It's the only opinion I have on this matter these days.
I don't really think about it. I live my life for the now and just go with the flow. I don't like thinking about it because I would worry about there being nothing when you died.
What is death? And where is it? Is there really life after death? Or is it just another story? What will happen when you die? Will the world blow up? Or will it just fade away? Isn't it scary just thinking about death? I think death is night time forever, or flames just burning away. A nine year olds views on the age old death and what comes after death questions.
A nine year-old thinks the afterlife is one of two things, and it's either oblivion or eternal hellfire? If that's not depressing, I don't know what is.
