What do you think happens when you die?

Hmmm, Travis, do I know you?

On to the topic, what do I think happens?

Well, you have to take some things into consideration. One of course is the fact that if you're a religious person, you know...or at least you know what you think to be true.

Others may think that you just reuse your life forever.

Personally, being a Christian, I believe in a heaven, and a hell, and Trinity.

[edit on 2-11-2006 by Shugo]

I have a weird view on this topic. We all know the classic theory of how being bad sends you to hell. Being good sends you to heaven. The question is what happens when we die. I am reminded of the movie "Pump up the volume" when Christian Slater says something along the lines of "Who would want to go to heaven, it's f-ing boring" What if when we go to heaven, that we do become bored. Is it possible to ask God to let us come back and have another shot at it. Maybe like requesting to born in whatever time frame, location, etc. What if married couples who are in heaven wanted to have another chance at living life and meeting each other all over again. They could both be reborn and go through life, and meet - all with a little help from God, and continue life. Then when we die, we basically just wake up, remembering our request for re-birth, and being able to reflect on the choices made the last time around compared to other 'past' lifes. It just seems to me, that eternity is a very long time. When God answers all of our questions in heaven, we may want to go back and have a chance to discover answers on our own. Don't know though, could be way off base with this line of thought.

what the heck?!! noone asked for ur religious answers, this is not the topic to speak of souls, not the topic to talk about what u believe in.

we need pure and raw facts here. noone can prove theres a soul, and that is because it either does not exist or we havent proved that yet. so unless u can proove it is there, give us some real facts.

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Stay on topic.

No-one can prove what happens after you die either, so we may as well not have anyone post here according to your logic?

Of course we can prove what happens to us after we die. We decompose... either quickly or slowly depending on how many preservatives we ate in life. Now, what can't be proven is what might happen to our conciousness after we die. Two entirely different subjects, the latter being based entirely on faith.

What I don't understand is the mechanics of death is no where nearly that hard of a concept to grasp. Just unplug your computer and smash the crap out of it. It no longer functions. The information stored in it's hard drive doesn't go anywhere, there's no hard drive heaven.

We exist, thankfully, because we have a source of feul. I know I've already said this, but. You take away that source of feul, the electrochemical interaction's through out the body and brain can no longer function. There's no power being generated. The "energy" in our brain's, the electric current's coursing through our neuron's are well understood, even a simple moron could grasp the concept. Regardless... You take away the electric current's powering the nerve cell's, your brain no longer function's. There's nothing left for it to function, hence death.

The concept of a soul/afterlife are well understood psychological problem's. NDE's and OOBE's are understood by science now. They are reproducable and shown, in some case's to be both chemically induced and also damage to the brain. There has also been an experiment done (article somewhere on wired.com, look it up, I'm not mommy) where it's been shown that even electromagnetic fields can induce within the subject to hear or see god/aliens/loved one's/heaven/hell/theme parks, all depending upon the subject's belief's.

The evidence for a soul or some other form of energy is non-existant. There is none. Like I said, just as your hard drive doesn't have a hard drive heaven, neither does the biomolecular electrochemical computer that we call a brain. Hell, just consider yourselve's nature's most advance AI software running on this planet's most powerfull bio-computer. That's pretty much how it is. You can also goto the link in my sig and discover how religion isn't even a valid form of belief anymore.

See this is what bugs me we demand such stringent criteria for proof of an after death existence but accept such weak evidence as proof it's all phsycological/biological. I have my own beliefs about this (belief being an opinion not backed up with any definitive proofs) but at the present time the skeptical argument is no where near proven. The induced and replicable NDE's championed by Dr Pershing et al are of the weakest calibre and come no where near to the profound, often life changing experiences reported by people, all they prove is the brain can be stimulated to have hallucinations basically with no veridical back up which many NDE's have provoded if not in any empirical, replicable sense granted.

The NDE could be a complicated, strictly biological process that takes place within a degrading and dying brain as yet though it has failed to do away with the metaphysical explanation anywhere near as thouroughly as is claimed.



[edit on 11-2-2006 by ubermunche]

Ok, let me get this straight ubermunche,

Despite any evidence, whether you regard it as weak or not for a physical explanation of NDE's and OOBE's that explain all the aspect's of each, you'd much rather believe in another unfounded idea that has litterally no evidence of it at all period?

This is what blind faith is, religous or not.

Originally posted by Produkt
Ok, let me get this straight ubermunche,

Despite any evidence, whether you regard it as weak or not for a physical explanation of NDE's and OOBE's that explain all the aspect's of each, you'd much rather believe in another unfounded idea that has litterally no evidence of it at all period?

Weak evidence is weak evidence and not conclusive IMO whether it's in favour of a spiritual explanation or a prosaic one, neither should be accepted just considered, unless of course your desperate to bolster that particular belief system be it spiritual or reductionist.

This is what blind faith is, religous or not.

No this is what open minded is. It seems this old 'blind faith' criticism is getting tired and over used against anone who doesn't fall into line.

dictionary.reference.com...

belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination

dictionary.reference.com...

A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment: The broken window was evidence that a burglary had taken place. Scientists weigh the evidence for and against a hypothesis.

While you could be saying your having an open mind to the possibility, the second you hold belief in it as a fact, you cross the realm of open mind to blind faith. There is absolutley no evidence supporting the case of an afterlife or soul, and all the evidence does indeed point to a psychological cause for NDE's, OOBE's and all the evidence point's toward's the evolution of religion leading to the belief's in afterlife's and soul's. However weak YOU may consider it, you still cannot deny where the evidence is pointing to and where it is not.

Again, once you start believing as a fact in the existance of a soul/afterlife, you are indeed holding those belief's on blind faith alone.

Thanks for the dictionary definitions, I'm familiar with the concept produkt but it really has no bearing on my previous post and an assertion that all the evidence points to a psychological conclusion is a case in point of faith based scientism. There is as much soft evidence to support the afterlife hypothosis as there is to support the psychological. And a willingness to accept one over the other is subjective and not objective.

Regardless of whether or not I want there to be an afterlife, the question remains open ended with no definitive proof either way, this is not good enough to make an apriori assumption that such phenomona have been explained or explained by proxy. Therefore I accept at present and for the purposes of debate that we don't really know.

[edit on 11-2-2006 by ubermunche]

What soft evidence exist for the concept of an afterlife? Oh right, people's report's of a tunnel of light or seeing loved one's etc. So far, stories, this is all that exist's of this so called "soft evidence"

Now, what evidence exist's that show's this is all a psychological manifestation in the mind of the individual? As I posted earlier.

serendip.brynmawr.edu...
brain.oxfordjournals.org...

Someone else also posted another link about the release of a chemical starting with D, forget what it was or where it was posted.

This is all rather, hard evidence. Verifiable and reproducable evidence showing that NDE's/OOBE's are in fact, all in the subject's head. Also, if I can find the article on wired.com I'll post the link, in the mean time, it wouldn't hurt if you looked as well. Anyways, in that article (I'll say it again) it show's how one can induce the sensation of seeing or hearing god's, angel's, devils, aliens, hippo's, other planet's, afterlife, giant mounds of elephant fece's, all depending on the belief's of the person undergoing the experiment.

There's also the issue that everyone who "dies" and come's back, not all experience this so called afterlife. As a few people even on here posted, nothing happened. Likfe fainting/sleeping, or however you can best explain non-existance of the mind. These are first hand account's of death. Your "stories" can't refute what they experienced. Your "stories" can't refute the hard evidence concerning the psychological reason's for this belief. Your "stories" can't refute the evidence for the evolution of religion and the belief's contained within it.

Your soft evidence are stories. This is not evidence of anything. So again, yes, blind faith my friend. And yes, we do know. You should take a look at the computer analogy one more time, perhaps banging your head against the desk while screaming nooo nooo, don't unplug my brain.

Actually, let's do this instead!

Let's see all the evidence for an afterlife/soul. As you said, there exist's soft evidence, so let's see it. I showed you mine, now you show me your's

www.skepticalinvestigations.org...

www.near-death.com...

www.near-death.com...

There's a kind of contradiction in that you dismiss something as a story then employ other peoples stories with the addendum that they were there and this refutes all my stories don't you think. By the way they're not mine there other peoples claims and no more or less valid than the ones you choose to focus on surely.

What happened after I died....nothing

What happened after I died...something

50/50

I can live with that, can you.

Yes, abit of a contradiction. Agreed. Moving on however.

The first link seem's pretty interesting. It says only 18% of the subject's actually reported NDE like experience's. That's a very small ammount. You have only 62 people out of 282. That leave's 220 people who didn't report any NDE like experience. Another interesting bit of information posted was brain wave activity. Mostly delta and theta wave's.

Monitoring of the electric activity of the cortex (EEG) has shown ischaemic changes consisting of a decrease of fast high amplitude waves and an increase of slow delta waves, and sometimes also an increase in amplitude of theta activity, progressively and ultimately declining to isoelectricity.

So, in some case's there was an increase in delta wave's and in other cases the increase was with theta wave's, prior to a flat EEG reading.

www.crossroadsinstitute.org...

Delta waves: Subjective feeling states: deep, dreamless sleep, non-REM sleep, trance, unconscious

Theta waves: intuitive, creative, recall, fantasy, imagery, creative, dreamlike, switching thoughts, drowsy; "oneness", "knowing"

I haven't noticed which subject's had these different brainwave activities, but it's very probable those who reported NDE experience's are the one's who had the increase in theta wave's and those who did not had the increase in delta wave's. this is a very important aspect to leave out. The site even goes onto discuss electromagnetic fields. It sounds like the site is implying the possibility of the soul being electromagnetic in nature perhaps? IDK... What part it doesn't allude to is how electrmagnetic fields in our brain's don't exist on their own, they are generated by the electric current in our brain's, and as I pointed out previously, you take away that electric current, everything fails, including the electromagnetic fields generated. If you integrate the research from that site along with the other two, it then become's even more appearent that nde's and oobe's are all in the head.

The other two site's are rather weak imo. They aren't verifiable scientific report's and as some remote viewers for example might appear to be real, they've been later found out as hoax's.

Originally posted by apc
Of course we can prove what happens to us after we die. We decompose... either quickly or slowly depending on how many preservatives we ate in life. Now, what can't be proven is what might happen to our conciousness after we die. Two entirely different subjects, the latter being based entirely on faith.

Well the latter is what the author of this thread is interested in I'm sure you'll find.

Originally posted by TravisT
^ i think the both of you dont know what the soul is. The soul is what makes us live and breath, what motivates us to go on. I belive EVERYTHING that is alive has a soul. Why do trees grow roots and also try to get sunlight?? They do that to feed and live, therefore, I think EVERYTHING has a soul. A tree dosnt have a brain, but it does have a will to live(soul). Im in NO WAY religious, but I do have an understanding of what a soul is, just think about it.

edit:sorry pepsi, I was talking to the people above you.

[edit on 10-2-2006 by TravisT]

Nothing has a soul the reaon we live and breathe is becasue our central nervous system better known as our brain sends impulses through your bod that allow you to do these things and make you do them unconsiouly, the reason trees and such work is in there genetic make up not there soul, there cells reproduce and grow, because of water that falls into the ground is absorbed threw there roots, as it is absorbed the plant grows, its roots aswell as its above the surface trunk or stem, they don't try to find sunlight the sunlight finds them, if everything in your theory has sould, do there souls change when there state of matter does, when water evaporates does each particle tha the gas is made up of have a soul, or is it a body when its to gether and its soul goes away but come back when it condenses?