What Happens When We Die?

[blondifan]

With respect, it becomes semantics doesn't it?
I mean who can truthfully state the spirit or soul exist outside of our physical body and yes - we all want to believe they do. Perhaps the greatest irony is that no-one can truthfully state or prove otherwise and yet each and every one of us will find out eventually for ourselves, when our time comes.

I'm not disregarding those that have had visions or "technically dead for a short time" experiences, but you have to wonder if these visions (for want of a better term) are somehow retrospective or brought out of regaining consciousness.

Similarly, I recall reading a long time ago that a lot of dreams last only a few seconds.
Somehow our minds embellish these on recollection.

By all regards and I hope I'm wrong here, but mostly what I imagine there to be is some kind of dreamlike state, possibly at best.

[MrKinkade]

What happens when you die err death I know this sounds too simplistic and I do believe in some kind of karma when your alive that is, but I think you should have a read about this view on life.

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

[dohupa]

Well, I might as well through my take on this for what it's worth. There are as many theories as the philosophers who devoted time on these issues. From the ancient Greeks to Descartes - mind, memories, life & death, the universe; all this seems to be interconnected on the simple seek for the answer to Stephen Hawking's question. That is, "why does the planet bother to exist?" to which he concluded his great text with "well, if we knew the answer then we would know the mind of God".

Although religion is very strong down here where I live, I'm not at all convinced there is a bloke up there being in the minds of 6 billion people simultaneously. One cannot even imagine the complexity of such a creature and also the embarrassing dilemma still emerges; who or why created God in the first place?

For all we know so far, our species is at the highest level of evolution (sorry to spoil it for you who believe in the fairytale of Adam & Eve or Steve depending from what perspective you look at things ), but it is a well known fact that we come from animals.

Darwin did not do trips in the world in vain to piss off the organized religion; he provided proof in an comprehensive and organized manner. Having said that, life is a lot easier for animals cause they only have to feed, avoid predators and mate. We on the other hand, are much more complex species cause we are self-aware; that is, we have consciousness. A concept that puzzles for ages philosophers, cognitive scientists, neurophysiologists and so on and so forth.

I personally agree with Roger Penrose (a brilliant mathematician who did quite a bit of thinking on the subject and wrote some great papers and books), that there may be in fact some undiscovered law of physics behind consciousness; the brain is certainly not an advanced computer like that joker Minsky claimed in the past.

Evolution we come to understand now is not just about genes, but memes and cultural history passed along to our descendants. The world is in a sense a dynamic system (any control engineers on board? ), a non-linear one in fact (and here's the trouble); with an infinite number of dimensions. So, there are no simple differential equations to simulate life on Matlab.

Anyway, this whole fascinating discussion on life & death bounces away on all sorts of directions, so back on the mortality agenda - I'm personally not convinced either way though more likely I think that's all there is right here. It's just devastating for societies not to have hope for something better next, so this opinion is rather taboo - to put it mildly. Guess I'm an agnostic; the atheists cannot give me a straight answer to the question how come something was created out of zero/nothing (this statement contradicts the 1st law of thermodynamics), nor do the Christian hooligans on where the hell was God at times of need; millions were burnt during WWII and He/She was up there watching as if this was some f*cking ball game? Are we for real?

So, for all I care I'm just a soul consuming energy (and so is the rest of you) and the total of this energy in the universe remains constant. Thus, I'd say don't worry ourselves too much about what happens next; just concentrate doing the right thing every day and give all our loving to family and real friends. You know, the ones they would give you their last match and likewise you would give them your last fag.

Essentially, the moral of what I'm trying to say here is summed up by that line in Dead Poets Society and I quote "seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary".

[dbailey]

In my case when I die, my younger brother has the duty of clearing out my cache of VHS and copied DVD 'artistic movies', discretely hidden in the tool shed, before the good memsahib finds them and curses me to hell and back.

On a higher level, I would like to go on in some form or have my spirit recycled into another existance.......but in all likleyhood the end is the end and the best I can hope for is to live on in the deeds and memories of my children and my friends.

I feel so sad now

[billybunter]

Originally Posted by brianwp

Ok, but what's the difference between the body, the soul, and the spirit? Hmmm?

The body is your vehicle here on earth. The soul is yourself and all that you are. The spirit is the ether were all souls become one.

[BigBucket]

When people talk about life after death, most people try to understand it in terms of heaven and hell. I like to think its just something we dont understand yet. With the universe as massive as it is i think its foolish to disregard anything.

Maybe our existance here is actually a first stage of a greater existance in the same way a seed turns into a plant. or an egg turns into a chicken etc. we die our spirit is released into .. wherever the next stage is. We have barely got off our own planet. I believe we have barely scratched the surface.

In the end though, if i am wrong and if there is no heaven or next stage or whatever, what can i do about it? LOL

[dohupa]

Originally Posted by dbailey

I feel so sad now

Don't be - it's irrelevant what comes next cause there may be nothing else.

You have to live for today and experience a sense of well-being every day and make your people happy along the ride as well.

[brianwp]

"Ex nihilo nihil fit". In other words, "out of nothing, nothing comes". Pretty persuasive logic.."without a creator you can have no creation", this can explain it better...

Not all ex nihilo thought specifies a divine creator.

A major argument for creatio ex nihilo, the First cause argument, states in summary:

everything that begins to exist has a cause
the universe began to exist
therefore, the universe must have a cause
Another argument for ex nihilo creation comes from Claude Nowell's Summum philosophy that states before anything existed, nothing existed, and if nothing existed, then it must have been possible for nothing to be. If it is possible for nothing to be (the argument goes), then it must be possible for everything to be.[2]

Other support for creatio ex nihilo belief comes from the idea that something cannot arise from nothing; that would involve a contradiction (compare ex nihilo nihil fit). Therefore something must always have existed. But (this account continues) it is scientifically impossible for matter to always have existed. Moreover, matter is contingent: it is not logically impossible for it not to exist, and nothing else depends on it. Hence one deduces a Creator, non-contingent and not composed of matter: God.

Interesting, but like Einstein said, "matter cannot be created or destroyed". So, matter cannot be made out of nothing. But we now know (by E=MC2"), that matter can be transformed into energy, and vice-versa. The bible says "God is a spirit", so what is a spirit? (Thus my last question about soul and spirit). In the Greek, spirit is "pneuma", which is translated "spirit", or "breath". I'm thinkin energy here. Both of which denotes a being, not necessarily physical, but a life force, nonetheless. Or...energy. So, it's possible that energy transformed itself into mass, or matter, so..here we are. This matter that we call Mother Earth was not created out of nothing...it was created out of energy, possibly the energy that would be the spirit of God.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by brianwp

"Ex nihilo nihil fit". In other words, "out of nothing, nothing comes". Pretty persuasive logic.."without a creator you can have no creation", this can explain it better...

Not all ex nihilo thought specifies a divine creator.

A major argument for creatio ex nihilo, the First cause argument, states in summary:

everything that begins to exist has a cause
the universe began to exist
therefore, the universe must have a cause
Another argument for ex nihilo creation comes from Claude Nowell's Summum philosophy that states before anything existed, nothing existed, and if nothing existed, then it must have been possible for nothing to be. If it is possible for nothing to be (the argument goes), then it must be possible for everything to be.[2]

Other support for creatio ex nihilo belief comes from the idea that something cannot arise from nothing; that would involve a contradiction (compare ex nihilo nihil fit). Therefore something must always have existed. But (this account continues) it is scientifically impossible for matter to always have existed. Moreover, matter is contingent: it is not logically impossible for it not to exist, and nothing else depends on it. Hence one deduces a Creator, non-contingent and not composed of matter: God.

When you say everything which exists has a cause, brian, are you speaking in pure physics terms:

The universe is the effect: something happened which led to our universe being here, and that ''something'' is the cause which created this effect?

Or are you using the word cause in its more romantic sense of ''purpose/mission'':

The corrolory of this is implied: we are here, not as an accident of physics and biology, but to fulfil our destiny, whatever that may be?

When I try to make sense of this world and this life, I get very tired, very quickly. Philosophy is extremely hard work, even before you start the process of reconciling faith in the power and validity of scientific observation with faith in the existence of something which cannot be measured or even directly observed. Its heavy stuff.

I don't know what happens when we die. I will be curious to know when the time comes. But I am in no hurry for that time to arrive: my life is very incomplete. I am going to take the liberty of quoting from a war memoir by Major James Goodson of the US Army Air Force, a passage I find moving, thought provoking, and which I think is relevent to this discussion. To set the context, Major Goodson is recounting his final meeting with Major John Godfrey, the latter dying in his old age of multiple sclerosis in a hospital after a rather gaudy and heroic life:

''How are you doing Johnnie?'' My question was stupid but what the hell else could I say?

''I'm dying, Goody'' He had trouble mouthing the words. The muscles in his face had gone.

''Well, I guess we're all dying.''

He shook his head. ''It's OK Goody. I've had a good run for my money. I've hit the highs and the lows, and its all been good.

''I've done a lot of thinking while I've been lying here waiting; and think I've learned a lot about life - and death. I don't mean I understand the meaning of life, no-one can, but I think I know what life is for: life if for living; living to the full. If you've done that, death isn't so sad...Death is only sad for people who have never lived, whatever age they die at.

Major Godfrey would gladly have gone on living but he was content, dying, in the satisfaction that he made full use of his time. Whenever my own time has to come, I could ask no better than to go with the same spirit, my flag still nailed to the mast. In that way, you are as prepared as you can hope to be for the surprise of what happens next, whatever that is.

RIP Major John Godfrey. You earned it.

[dohupa]

I've done a lot of thinking while I've been lying here waiting; and think I've learned a lot about life - and death. I don't mean I understand the meaning of life, no-one can, but I think I know what life is for: life if for living; living to the full. If you've done that, death isn't so sad...Death is only sad for people who have never lived, whatever age they die at.

Exactly. That's what life is all about my friends; the experience of being. The loves, the good & the bad, giving birth, the loss of a beloved one - all of that and more is worth being around for.