The Proof of What Happens To Us After Death and the Subsequent denial of it.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: TzarChasm

so in your opinion, what is it that gives life meaning? without the reward of an afterlife i mean.

People give life meaning—or in the case of believers, other people do it for them.

well, we can agree on that at least.

a reply to: TzarChasm

Unless they believe in themselves

originally posted by: artistpoet
a reply to: TzarChasm

Unless they believe in themselves

we should all believe in ourselves.

a reply to: TzarChasm

And also question ourselves ... lol ... your turn

a reply to: artistpoet

I have nothing preset in my beliefs. I consider each argument as they come to me. I am not programmed. I interpret my own data. I prefer to deduce. Believe it or not, I believe in everything. That's what true faith is. It is the nothings I have issue with. It is only that I do not willingly accept the truth values of certain propositions.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

I have nothing preset in my beliefs. I consider each argument as they come to me. I am not programmed. I interpret my own data. I prefer to deduce. Believe it or not, I believe in everything. That's what true faith is. It is the nothings I have issue with. It is only that I do not willingly accept the truth values of certain propositions.

I do not accept at "face value" anything that purports to be the truth ...unless I understand it to be so ... generally speaking that is ... for who is infallible

Proof is never second hand and as such and cannot be given by another ... Proof can only be confirmed by one's own understanding that it is so ...
In that way I tend to stay shy of repeating anything by others if I can not add my own understanding in my own words to it.

I was wondering what your thoughts might be regarding Intuition
The knowing of something which by logic one should not be able to know

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: artistpoet

I have nothing preset in my beliefs. I consider each argument as they come to me. I am not programmed. I interpret my own data. I prefer to deduce. Believe it or not, I believe in everything. That's what true faith is. It is the nothings I have issue with. It is only that I do not willingly accept the truth values of certain propositions.

So do you believe in the existence of dreams or at least the existence of the perceiving of dreams?

a reply to: bb23108

So do you believe in the existence of dreams or at least the existence of the perceiving of dreams?

Yes I believe dreams exist ... It is one of my favourite subjects
Since a young age I have be shown things in dreams that came to pass ... down to details I could not have imagined

Dreams are a part of our experience and not fully understood but are easily dismissed by un-enquiring minds IMO

Something to ask...If you die in your sleep would you know about it in the dream world.?

I have a fear of dying in my sleep, this stems from the dreams I have when I am unwell. I often see small dots of colours travelling through what I presume to be my arteries, veins and capillaries. An unceasing flow that I cannot escape, if it were possible to go insane while sleeping this would do it. So I wondered if this could happen to me leading up to my death and last for all eternity, my own private hell kind of thing.

a reply to: happytoexist

So I wondered if this could happen to me leading up to my death and last for all eternity, my own private hell kind of thing.

I have seen friends, family, pets die ... been there with them/for them
In all honesty ... What I have witnessed is nothing to fear
Of course one may be apprehensive ... no one wants to die in pain of body or mind
But all I have witnessed says that those who die ...seem to come to a point of acceptance ... especially with long drawn out illness's

Your apprehension is fear based ... you are not alone ... many do fear death
But fear clouds one's mind in imaginings ... but be assured ... at the actual point of death there is no pain, no fear. just release.

The idea of some kind of Eternal Torment is unfounded ... this is what some ungenerous and ignorant one's say
Nothing is forever ... all things pass

What I believe occurs after death ... I can not prove for you ... But this question is one I have faced and tried to understand for 40 or so years ...
That we are just the body and nothing more fails to satisfy my enquiry ...
Yes whilst here on Earth we are the body but we are also what gives the body life ... that is yet to be fully understood by any be they scientist or mystic ...

When the body dies ... the thought is withdrawn back along to where is linked
Humans have never truly understood the way of thought and where it originates

If someone claims to know ... I say question them deeply
Science can only ever view the affect of thought occurring but can never say what is causing it to happen
For example ... We can locate and observe the electrical activity of the brain but can not see what is the causing that activity

The Universe is the product of a Higher Intelligence
In understanding what Intelligence is ... Would it be Intelligent to create a being and then callously destroy that being from Reality ...

We are all here for such a short span of time ... there is a reason and there is rhyme as to why we are here
That is for each to come to their own understanding of

But if any place fear in your mind including yourself regarding such matters ,,, Be sure that it is not intelligent.
Truth is never anything to be feared regarding the soul

a reply to: qiwi676

I see this argument a lot and it really bothers me. This is not a fair comparison. Science has not found a "soul" because they do not have the tools to look for such a claim.

How would you know which tools are/are not required?

The term 'soul' is incredibly vague and inconstant due to the fact we have no information on such claimed phenomenon. That is unless you have some world changing facts on souls that you've been withholding?

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: dominicus

That's pure B.S. (bravo sierra) and you know it. Know one in science uses that anymore. It's no loner the late 80s early 90s. Absence of evidence in no way what so ever represents evidence of absence. You are forgetting predictive modeling in mathematics, statistical analysis, philosophical possibility, and the list goes on and on. Just the ability to propose something to exist, that proposition itself is evidence of possibility, and that possibility can then be broken down into a number of different branches of thought and statistics.

That's pure B.S. (bravo sierra) and you know it. Know one in science uses that anymore. It's no loner the late 80s early 90s. Absence of evidence in no way what so ever represents evidence of absence. You are forgetting predictive modeling in mathematics, statistical analysis, philosophical possibility, and the list goes on and on. Just the ability to propose something to exist, that proposition itself is evidence of possibility, and that possibility can then be broken down into a number of different branches of thought and statistics.

I wonder how many of our dear readers are merely taking your word for it. Everything you stated here is wrong, and I hope the reader is not as credulous as you must hope I am.

I cannot take your self-proclaimed authority seriously. I suspect it rather than respect it.

please do show me, which authority, which book, which branch of science says that it is 100% Absolute fact that "absence of evidence = evidence of absence.

I'll be waiting

a reply to: artistpoet

Thank you for the reply, I agree with what you have to say regarding the release from all worldly concerns and the torment of a limited comprehension. I was present at my mothers death but I did not feel the sadness expressed by other family members. I felt remarkably calm, in a way that I have never felt before, while those around me sobbed I expressed a loving smile and kissed her cheek.

Sometimes I do fear the end of this part of my journey, but as you say I have no reason to, after-all reasons are for the senses and are part of the human condition(another part is forgetting this apparent fact or allowing yourself to be misled). Yeah good science is useful but it has more holes than substance, religions have many tales to tell but the meaning is so often missed. I pay some heed to them both because I am here and I have definitely felt the need for spirituality.

Hope I make sense, pleasure connecting with you.

One could say all matter is a fluctuating potential, an atomic mass transference here, one there... and over a indeterminate amount of time; lead transmutes into gold at the perfect atomic weight to define it as gold... but the lead newly turned into gold is still losing atomic mass from particle decay... becoming something else, even as it has just become gold. It is no longer lead says science it is now gold, but eventually when it's particle decay has reached the specific amount? It is now something else and no longer gold either. So what is the difference between lead and it's final form, or before it was even lead, in observation as it slowly loses it's particles? Time.

The time of course, it takes for this to occur is too long to witness in a lifetime... but it does occur, the whole nature of the world is like this. Science calls it entropy, even our bodies are going through it... except we call it aging. Everything is in a steady cycle of decay into something else... we even have a number that does this when we calculate trying to quantify it to it's lowest rounding called PI but we can't seem to find the end of the damn thing can we? So while computers sit day in and day out doing millions of computations trying to hit the end of PI, it keeps on... pretty fitting it's the number for the infinite circle isn't it? It just goes round and round, if we look at the macrocosm, galaxies spin round and round at the microcosm particles spin round and round.

At our largest perception and at our smallest perception, we can see the nature of everything is cyclic, even our measurements, such as summer temperatures, seasons occurring... the only thing we think we see in nature that ends in a straight line is life. We give it an end called death. Of course what death is, depends on how one quantifies it. Even if there is no soul, the person you were can live on through others memory. So there is a transcendence in that sense, the impact we made on the environment will last beyond our life, even the very body we carry our consciousness with, blends in the soil.

However, we are to believe the energy that animates it simply does not exist? or if it does exist then it goes nowhere after death. But energy is not equated with the self, even though it can store memory given the proper conditions such as in a brain, muscle, or hard drive? There are processes not alive, yet they are animate, like weather, or the tides from the moon's rotations, also not alive but animate or set in motion, some cultures believed them to be alive because they were animate, or that someone somewhere unperceived were moving them, or set them in motion... we couldn't explain exactly why they were there and animated. The cause can be guessed as a god's doing a side effect of the big bang occurring or whatever... makes no real difference, what we blame it on does it? Oh but it does... in one single place, inside our conscious mind.

We can blame the first cause that gave rise to all of this on the big bang, or we could blame it on a god or something else altogether... instead of realizing either or, really doesn't matter. We are here, right now, in this moment and slowly decaying or quickly, depending on one's relative observation of decay. Remove all electrical processes from one's body and yes that equates to death... it simply has no awareness of the passing of time once depleted. Matter is known by the senses. The properties of matter, are given by learning and reasoning based on the information gathered by the senses. Essentially this means, an object is simply a construction of our consciousness consistent with information provided by our sense spheres.

This means your reality and everyone else's are different, simply because of one's perception, it even includes the concepts and perceptions of others... that we have not even experienced ourselves. We can accept or deny whatever perception we want, it still will not change the phenomena or stop it from occurring. So, what we call the self, is simply an amalgamation of various types of matter animated by energy. It is debatable that the information we gather is of any real importance. Does a cat care about Schrondinger's observations of opening or not opening a box? Does the smallest measurable distance know about Planck? If we look at our day to day processes, none of it is really significant unless we somehow agree it is significant, but that's a personal decision to give meaning or significance, to the insignificant.

If you don't give meaning to your life, the government to which you were born, or the religion to which you identify with will be more than happy too. If you toss religious meaning and purposes for you aside and also government meaning and purposes for you aside then what are you left with? he meaning and purpose you give yourself. What does this mean? If we don't get a reason for being from, a religion, a government, nor from ourselves... there really isn't one. Meaning there isn't really a purpose or reason for being. Since we allow ourselves to be assigned a reason or deny the one handed to us and choose one, we have also decided that it is also important, because we feel we need some justification or reasoning behind all of our actions.

Living without the concept of a purpose for awhile, given or self made is an interesting experiment to undertake... it gives you a pretty good feeling of what the life of a ghost may be like. Discussion whether they exist or not is not part of this. But the experience I am conveying fits the description... people can feel this without trying. Some call it lost, not being able to decide what to do. Hell, some people even fear being given a choice to decide... many have grown to want someone to give them a reason or purpose out of fear... they want to know exactly the role people expect out of them, and think if they fill that role then that is life, and that is meaning, and that is good enough in the end. But when you remove all the reasons and purposes for your reason for being including your own... you can see there is really not point to anything. So the mind or memory of all you have collected is absolutely moot to all existence except yours and those that will miss you.

Of course people fear that state. But it is possible to live in that state, and it's easy to see what the life of an animals life is like doing so. There is a calmness that can arise, because none of the objective world matters in the grand scheme... your dog doesn't know jack about Iraq, terrorism, god or anything else outside of it's sense perception... we've expanded ours quite a bit since evolving to the point of self and other awareness and the grasp of remote concepts. We can conceive things, we can hatch plans and decide what to do, and manipulate our environment to achieve goals for this moving about based on what we conceive... but it's importance still is only perceptual to those perceiving it, and it is perceived uniquely by all of those involved, due to personal bias... still it means zero beyond our made up bias, moral, or ethic, the idea that is does mean anything is simply the ego demanding it, a.k.a. you matter even though without a given purpose or even with one you truly don't.

(continued next post)

(II)
This doesn't mean all is hopeless or it's something we should fear, not really having a purpose or reason for being; just that we need to realize, whether we make our purpose god given, government given, parental given, self given. We don't just have one if we don't take or give ourselves one. This is at the same time one of the best things humanity has going for it, and one of the worst things humanity has going for it, it's a double edged sword because it can be taken to extremes.

Islam is great for the Islamic, horrible for the Christian. Simply because their reasons for being and purpose, do not agree with each other. This is the bad side for humanity, because it leads to war, does it mean we all should be one religion, one race, or other genocidal solutions for stopping the nonsense? Of course not, it is as simple as saying: the reason and purpose you give yourself is fine and tolerable as long as it isn't taken to such a serious extreme as to take another life, or deprive another in their own pursuit of happiness. it's possible to have a balance of tolerance in all the worlds diversity and respect it as it is.

Unfortunately, the world doesn't want to work that way due to the ones in control wanting to stay in control. Control a mind, and you can control the body attached, meaning you can put it to task to achieve what you want it too even if it isn't yours. We see this behavior in animals as well in displays of dominance... when the police pull you over, it is the same thing it is a display of the governments dominance over you and your driving an automobile. Rolling over so they can scratch your belly may or may not get you out of a ticket.

I believe the OP has realized much of this, as to why the perception that Les is morose, morbid or depressed in some way. Perhaps it's disillusionment with the purposes people choose to give themselves... and it makes no logical or rational sense that they would choose to believe in an unfounded afterlife with a transmigrating conscious energy that is scientifically possible btw, we move data from one storage device to another, with switched on / off / 1 and 0 electrical coding, The same positive, negative, or neural switching we do in our response to stimuli that is completely individual or "programmed" by ourselves and our experiences each individually coded to make us think we have a self unlike any other.

Of course looking beyond the programming and seeing the framework the coding is on, is not very easy as it runs counter to our innate need to cognitively deny, anything that does not compute or that does not mesh with our personally conceived framework. We have to throw out all of our concepts one by one by taking a look at each one of them, to accomplish this task... running a program counter to the programming, is basically what undoes the multiplicity of existing realities. We rotely say there is one reality everyone perceives in a general way... but when it comes down to it, we don't perceive it as it is because of all the programming binding us to it.

He and she, become John and Jane, their life dramas are real and matter to John and Jane, and those John and Jane effect and the environment they come into contact with and no more. We can say John and Jane work in accounting, they live in the same city, and both have two children. We can further entropy he and she into deeper and deeper more complex individuals the more experience of them we have yet, all that does is support the concept of an ego self, it eventually states John and Jane matter in reality as John and Jane and not a random He or She. Reality is the frame work we all fall on is the same, a name, a job title, etc. is the framework the self falls on and relies on to exist and fee it matters in some sense, it gives reason so it can have reason. If John and Jane didn't get quantified further, then there would be nothing to personally identify with except maybe the gender of He and She.

So all of this personal and other coding that becomes John and Jane, you or I is not reality in it's root form, but it's person-ably identifiable form. John and Jane, you or I are animated by energy that's the reality, the same as the weather, and the planetary orbits etc. they are there and they are animate they have an effect. We have a concept of good weather and bad weather. Does weather have the same concept? It's just weather, a bright sunny day is no different than a hurricane to the weather, it just goes about it's functioning and we are the ones that label the experience of it good or bad, in a self centered view. John and Jane originally were like the weather, but parents trained John and Jane to behave in a specific manner to suit them whether John or Jane liked it or not, the control of John and Jane is simply passed behavioral training or programming.

There is a danger in the belief that we can keep our egotistical self, we know as us an individual into a life beyond this one... although we are energy and it may transmigrate into something else. The very concept can be dangerous to the life being experienced now. it's like lead just daydreaming for the day it turns into gold, ignoring the importance lead can have. There are many people living for their next life ignoring this one, or feeling they have some duty to push what life will be like in some indeterminate future, and ignore the possibility of what it could be with a different purpose. We have people killing each other for thousands of years, over what comes next, using the voice of religion as a justification. Of course this seems senseless, and it is.

The Buddha wouldn't ever give a clear answer on an afterlife for just that reason, we have no reason for being to begin with other than what we decide that's the reality, so what happened in the past were from choices, we take that and try to forge a future by running around in the present trying to make it happen. If we believe in an afterlife, and that we are saved or going to heaven, then what evil could we feel we could possibly do, when feeling justified in it? The truth is there is no good or evil, they are co-occurring concepts based out of moral or ethical beliefs, a part of that programming frame work, people are constantly codifying into who they are and how they perceive the world.

I don't like telling people, there is no ultimate reason for being because it can cause an existential crisis if they realize it beyond concept and not know how to handle it. Fortunately, we can choose one that makes us happy in the here and now, it is something we have control over, so there's great hope in making it livable for all where we don;t have to have wars and disagreements over reasons and purpose for being, the sad thing is we do have disagreements over our purpose and reason for being making life way more complicated, difficult, painful, and a struggle than it really has to be, simply because they believe their purpose and reason for being is superior than another persons choice for their purpose or reason for being.

Bottom line? There is no purpose for being here. But don't fret you can give yourself one. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and is what allows the conglomerate of matter you know as a body to be animated and alive. That energy will not carry your limited ego self with it. Because it isn't you, it's just dust over the real you experienced in bliss... just pure energy waiting to unbind.

originally posted by: happytoexist
Something to ask...If you die in your sleep would you know about it in the dream world.?

I have a fear of dying in my sleep, this stems from the dreams I have when I am unwell. I often see small dots of colours travelling through what I presume to be my arteries, veins and capillaries. An unceasing flow that I cannot escape, if it were possible to go insane while sleeping this would do it. So I wondered if this could happen to me leading up to my death and last for all eternity, my own private hell kind of thing.

From my own experiences I've come to a basic concept of what to expect. Please don't use up more than a bit of the time that you have to live in worry about passing in your sleep. In this day of high technology and the tug of war between businesses that profit from prolonging the life of a patient in some room, isolated from loved ones and friends except for rare visits (if they are coherent enough to care) and the business of "harvesting" bits and pieces of the freshly dead (and it IS a business), the fortunate ones are those who pass peacefully in their sleep in their own bed.

After a period of time dealing with all the pressures of life and frailties of the human body, Heaven could very well be an eternity of the deepest, most restful sleep you could ever imagine.

ETA:
As far as Eternal Damnation, that shouldn't factor in to the concerns you've expressed. For those who have spent a life of selfishness, hate and total disregard for their fellow man, if they have shred of conscience or doubt the relatively brief period between life and death could very well feel like an eternity. Almost anyone who has been in a traumatic accident has experienced the odd way that time suddenly passes in a very different way and all of our perceptions seem to suddenly be boosted to hyper-natural levels.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Our senses are conclusively a factor of our material body and brain, if consciousness isn't a factor of that material construct and survives death then that would be worse than non-existence. Our memory is also a chemically stored and accessed feature of our material brain, so consciousness existing without any real ability to observe and retain would ultimately be non-existence anyway.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

There is a saying from the Bible of all places "The living are aware that they will die but the dead are aware of nothing at all" being afraid of the uncertainty of what may lay beyond death is not a luxury we will have in death, for both its inevitability and the nature of the state itself. It becomes a matter of ego to not be subject to irrational thoughts about the reality of existence.

Basically you will not be in a position to worry about death when it occurs, and obsessing over it in life will only impact your ability to live and make rational decisions.

In my earlier post HERE, I forgot to include the "perception gap" that was at the core of the point I was attempting to make.

Just as the man blind from birth struggled to share what he experienced with sighted curious, science will always have the difficulty of dealing with the perception gap between the living and whatever continues once consciousness has left its vessel and returned to its source, the Collective Unconscious. Without the wonderful tools that the human body provides, I have difficulty with the idea of any functions related to it being available. I may very well be wrong, that is only my opinion.

I am open to new ideas and have considered rebirth/reincarnation as possible for much of my life. If that is the case, then who is to say how long we linger in the "In Between"? I'll leave there rather than risk drifting onto a tangent.

a reply to: happytoexist

Yes of course you make perfect sense to me