Your thoughts: What happens when you die?

[DeV]

Reincarnation....?

Eternal rest in Heaven or Paradise...?

You decompose.....?

Return to the infinite......?

Nothing....forever?

Is it like alka seltzer dissolving into the everlasting atomic universe...?

discuss

[fallenSaint]

Sym preserv

/wait for cleric

;)

[Bobmuhthol]

You become dead.

[DeV]

Originally posted by fallenSaint
Sym preserv

/wait for cleric

;) Perhaps if real life deaths immitated gemstone.

[Xcalibur]

Believing nothing happens is, for me, the STUPIDIEST thing to think in the whole universe.

Define nothing: Seeing nothing, thinking nothing, breathing nothing, being nothing.. It's a paradox.

Something MUST happen. Otherwise, we would be animals, a simple conscious with robotic behaviors.

[Skirmisher]

Who said we were different from animals?

[Nakiro]

Same thing that happens when you fall asleep and don't dream. Nothing happens, until the moment before you wake up.

[Xcalibur]

I'd say most people would think that, and a lot of people that made research on the human's psychee.

Animals do NOT worship God/gods, animals do not cry, animals have, mostly, the same pattern of life, already determined by their instincts, et cetera et cetera.

And more importantly, that what differ us from them, animals do NOT fear death.

[Nakiro]

Aniamls do cry, and they most certainly fear death.

[Xcalibur]

Originally posted by Nakiro
Aniamls do cry, and they most certainly fear death.

Names please, and research made about that.

And as the other stuff you said, when you feel asleep, you don't see nothing for 8 hours, you just awake the second you felt asleep.

It's impossible to define being nothing, feeling being nothing, seeing nothing.

[Nakiro]

Just try running after a bird and you'll know they fear death. Kick a dog and you can hear it cry. No one researches things that are so obvious in the world around us.

But I'd like to see some offical statement from whatever scientific institution you invest in that states animals have no fear of injury or death.

And sleep is generally separated into five levels of consciousness. Its only at the first that you dream, and that's where you go to sleep and think about things, and when you dream right before you awake. Real refreshment comes from experiecing REM (rapid eye movement), which occurs at the deeper levels of sleep.

[Xcalibur]

Eh, don't confuse fearing an injury, fearing death to wanting to be alive.. Any animals, or so, got the strongest instinct on Earth: survival instinct.

Most would do anything to remain alive as it's the purpose of life, to be alive.

Yet, a buffalo that got his leg broken KNOWS he will die and is prepared. Ever saw those touching BBC studies about that?

A cat KNOWS when he will die, if it's natural. He will try to go outside and die wherever he is feeling well, et cetera.

About sleep: You were seeming to talk about sleeping without dreams, I was too.

Death =! dreamless sleeping.

[Nakiro]

Sleep without dreams just means you don't remember them. They still occur as your mind is still processing information. Your consciousness simply doesn't know or remember it.

[Nakiro]

Fearing injury is a sign of fearing death.

[DeV]

Animals are also not on the same level cognitively as a human being. However, I do agree with Nakiro in that just as they may fear being injured, what would prevent them from fearing death. When a lioness is hunting down a gazzelle in the African Wilds, that gazzelle may be inches from being caught and eaten alive yet they still run, until caught, why is that?

[vigilante]

Silly argument. It's exceedingly simple to prove animals cry and fear death. Spent much time at a slaughterhouse? Ever shot a rabbit in the ass? Ever seen the eyes and sounds of a deer or moose up close when it's offspring is dying? Don't get me wrong -- I kill many of the things I eat and this is not some wussy, liberal lamentation. But don't slip into the egomaniacal and anthropomorphic stance that humans are the only living things on the earth capable of such things.

It's just a fact that animals do both those things. Close your eyes to it if it makes you feel better.

[Xcalibur]

Then take as an analogy, being in coma and being dead.

For the person in coma, it goes as fast as a wing of an eye. For the rest of humanity, it's not the case. Yet, death cannot be that fast, death is permanent.

It cannot be nothing forever, as nothing cannot be even for a second in our existence.

And no, fearing an injury is not fearing death.

Your brain use pain as an information, although it sux TERRIBLY, pain is needed to FORCE anything to remember to be careful/avoid source of pain, after.

A good example about that: the male Mantis religiosa (don't know its english name, so I guess latin is universal) KNOWS that he will be killed UPON coupling.

Fear? No. Will do it? yes.

And so on and so on.

Why, darelfvoid? Survival instinct.

[Edited on 30-6-04 by Xcalibur]

[Drew2]

The way Xcalibur is wording it makes it sound as if someone is trying to say that we blink out of existance when we die. That's not the case.

Bobmuhthol said it quite well. "You become dead." That's about it. Your brain shuts off, your body stops working, the end. Like turning off a light.

I think Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, etc. was all created to buffer the fear that your life will be over, permenantly. I, however, believe that's the case. Once your time is up, your time is up. You don't get to watch from the stars as the rest of the people you love live on, you don't get to come back as a giraffe in Africa, you don't get to live in a world of peaceful bliss.

I don't see any harm in believing in those things, however. It's not like you can be disappointed if you're wrong. You'll be dead.

[vigilante]

X, your argument could just as easily be applied to humans. In every way. You have done nothing to separate animals from humans except make assertions. Just because I KNOW a football game is going to involve 45 minutes of PAIN and a RUMBLE and possible DEATH, I don't avoid suiting up and joining in.

Yet you'd decide that an animal is unaware of the possibility simply because they do it? Lame.

'Ski to die'

[SpunGirl]

I believe in reincarnation. I don't think there is any possible way to learn everything about the human experience in one life or even five. I don't believe in coming back as a plant, animal, dung beetle, or whatever.

Animals are a unique and special thing all on their own - below humans in some ways, far above us in others.

-K

[Latrinsorm]

Originally posted by Nakiro
Its only at the first that you dream,That's not true.

As for death, I believe God has something in mind for us. Whether its Limbo, Heaven, What Dreams May Come, Nirvana, or other, there will be something.

While I am agreeing with X's conclusion, I'm not agreeing with his line of reasoning, so I don't need to hear about Mantis football, or whatever is going on between him and y'all.

[Czeska]

Reincarnation for me too.

Also.. in a college philosophy class we talked about anhiliation, ie, you die and that's it. The professor said, "Rememeber what it was like before you were born? Yep, just like that."

[Killer Kitten]

Died once during the course of a long illness when I was 18. The doctors brought me back, and it was the turning point in the illness for me. By that I mean the point where I stopped getting sicker and started recovering.

I remember nothing about the experience. No white light, no hellfire and damnation, no dead relatives waiting to welcome me home. Just a period of several minutes that I timewarped over, because I sure didn't experience them.

I think dead is just that. Dead, gone, oblivion. The hardest part is getting your mind around the concept of a world with no 'you' in it, since all of the world that we experience comes to us filtered by the notion of 'self'.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, too. Since I survived the whole dead thing it isn't like I 'really' died.

Kimm/Ex-Tilone

[Satira]

Obviously no one knows for sure.

I can make something up that makes sense in my head...

We're all energy, and energy only changes, so I can't really imagine us being completely "gone". Our consciousness as we experience it may cease to exist, but who knows what happens after that? Only dead people do. Or don't.

I'll find out when I die. I try not to worry about it because when I did it made me a nervous wreck.

[Meos]

It seems you have died my friend...

But it totally kicks ass dude!

[Jazuela]

I don't think it's much a matter of belief. When your body dies, it's dead. You cannot "see" after you're dead, because "seeing" requires eyes, which are in your head, which is attached to your body, which is dead. You cannot "walk" or "float" or whatever else to Heaven or anywhere - because these things require a body - which is dead.

HOWEVER

Like Satira, I believe that sentient beings are made up of more than just a body. Krillian photography proves this true - we are surrounded by, and contain within us, energy. Energy doesn't simply cease to exist. It dissipates. BIG difference there. And I am confident that the energy within all sentient beings continues to do SOMETHING after the body dies.

What that is - I have no idea. But I'm sure it's something.

As for the whole malarchy about humans being different from animals, or not different from animals - HELLO - WE *ARE* ANIMALS.

We are not different or not different. Human = animal. Member of a species of animals - not to be confused with a genus of plants, or a type of mineral. WE ARE ANIMALS.

[Latrinsorm]

We sure are animals. After all: we leave the old and sick to die, we abandon our young, we make no lasting impact on our planet, we have no concept of selflessness, and we have nothing that distinguishes us from every other animal.

[Back]

A couple of people have posted this, and I'll agree. We won't truly know until we are dead. Anything else is pure speculation.

I used to think it was geared on belief. Hindus would be reborn, Christians would go to heaven or hell, and so on. While a nice fantasy, it means you could believe killing innocents will get you into heaven. Beacuse of this I've adapted a more unified theory.

To speculate, and what I'd like to think now is that your soul is born to another level, and it is in your hands whether you absorb into the collective origination of souls, or, remain an independant fragment.

[Betheny]

I don't know, and frankly, I don't want to.

Half or what makes life what it is is not knowing, and thus living life to its fullest because there very well may be nothing at the end of it.

[Jazuela]

Originally posted by Latrinsorm
We sure are animals. After all: we leave the old and sick to die, we abandon our young, we make no lasting impact on our planet, we have no concept of selflessness, and we have nothing that distinguishes us from every other animal.

We have opposable thumbs, like all simians, and this distinguishes us from most other species of animals. And just like other animals - we -also- revere our old, nurture our young, make some significant impact on our planet (some good, some not so good), and do selfless deeds. Oh - and lions don't abandon their young. If the kit is weak or sick or unable to survive beyond the den, it is consumed. Much more selfLESS than forcing it to try and survive when there's no hope - and nourishing too.

-She who eats her young

[Parkbandit]

Originally posted by Xcalibur
Believing nothing happens is, for me, the STUPIDIEST thing to think in the whole universe.

Define nothing: Seeing nothing, thinking nothing, breathing nothing, being nothing.. It's a paradox.

Something MUST happen. Otherwise, we would be animals, a simple conscious with robotic behaviors.

Believing we are anything but biological beings.. that something MUST happen to us because we have a conscious.. is very arrogant.

When we die.. my belief is that we die like anything else.

[Xcalibur]

Yet, we fear death, mostly, while animals do not.

Fearing is not knowing, so a good question follow: Does animals KNOW what is beyond death?

[CrystalTears]

You keep on saying that animals do not fear death, yet you do not back that up with facts. Incidentally, a survival instinct pretty much means that you are doing everything in your power to not die ergo very possible that they fear death.

Besides no one really knows what is beyond death until you're there, and no one knows if it's possible to come back and relay that answer. So that will always be a mystery to animals all over the world, including the human race.

[Xcalibur]

All we can do is listen to stories people died and got "raised" back by medecine or just with shear luck.

I know, most of the time it's the light tunnel that goes out, but I think there was a kind of speculation about why people were seeing that.

Something with the way the dying eye was getting the light information in the dying brain, bla bla bla.

I still think that if,. tomorrow, someone prove WITHOUT any doubts that after death, there's nothing... we'll get a very high rate of suicides thereafter.

[SpunGirl]

That doesn't make any sense. If someone could prove that there was something BETTER after death, the suicide rate might go up. If there's nothing, you might as well stick around and see how life pans out, right?

-K

[CrystalTears]

Originally posted by Xcalibur
I still think that if,. tomorrow, someone prove WITHOUT any doubts that after death, there's nothing... we'll get a very high rate of suicides thereafter.

Oh yeah, I'm dying (pun intended) to find out what nothing is like. Let me kill myself now. /sarcasm

[Atlanteax]

Originally posted by SpunGirl
That doesn't make any sense. If someone could prove that there was something BETTER after death, the suicide rate might go up. If there's nothing, you might as well stick around and see how life pans out, right?

-K

I think he's suggesting for some people, that staying alive would probably be better than going to Hell...

[CrystalTears]

No I believe his comment suggested that having nothing after death is better than living.

Quite sad that people feel that way but I suppose some people do. Then again, those that feel that way probably already have.

[HarmNone]

I think Xcalibur might have been referring to the fear of reaping the results of one's earthly sins in the afterlife. :D

HarmNone doesn't worry about such things

[Atlanteax]

Originally posted by HarmNone
I think Xcalibur might have been referring to the fear of reaping the results of one's earthly sins in the afterlife. :D

HarmNone doesn't worry about such things

That's pretty much what I meant by refering to Hell.

[Back]

The fact that we don't know for certain what happens may in fact be a failsafe in the design so that we don't all commit suicide tomorrow.

[Suppa Hobbit Mage]

Who has time to worry about death, too much living to do now. Just do right by yourself and others and be happy.

[Galleazzo]

I kinda hope there's something.

I don't really think so though. I think what I'll do is die and then they put me in a hole and 50 years from now no one'll ever know I ever lived.

That bothers me sometimes.

When we die, we decompose.

Some of us, however, are charred and ceremoniously placed on mantles. But in the end, we all end up crispy, or 6 feet under.

Oh and X, no disrespect, an animal that doesn't follow homeostasis, isn't considered alive to begin with, and therefor, cannot die.