[CosmicJalapeno]

I would like to know what the concept of an afterlife creates within the mind of fellow INTP's (yes you inferior types are welcome to partake as well). What are your opinions in regards to such, and what backs up said opinions?

 

[Alpengeist19]

I honestly don't think anything happens after we die. Our body ceases to function, and therefore our brain also. I see religion as something that was made up by people long ago to explain what they did not understand. Nobody wants to accept the fact that they will simply cease to exist when they die. Even I find that disheartening. But I would rather have nothing to look forward to than live my life around a false belief. Religion is based on the concept of "faith - believing in something that you can't see." I can't see evolution, but there is overwhelming evidence to support it. Creationism has very little. I call that being gullible, not faith. I simply don't believe in magic. I saw a very funny comic the other day. It shows a pair of scientists saying "Here, are the facts, what conclusion can we draw from this?" And the next slide shows a pastor talking to someone else saying "Here's the conclusion, now what facts can we find to back it up?"

 

[onebelo]

afterlife in the common sense, im not so sure. i dont think i could stand an actual afterlife for eternity. heaven for example would soon enough turn into hell.

but we do carry on in some ways. i think it was carl sagan who said "we are stardust. so wehn you look up at the stars, you are the universe looking at itself".

we are all part of a connected universe, right now and when we die. when a cloud dies it turns into rain, when the rain hits the soil it becomes are a part of the ground, when the ground grows plants those plants have part of a cloud in them. it is the same for us, our energy is still here, we're a part of everything.

 

[onebelo]

But I would rather have nothing to look forward to than live my life around a false belief.

even if the nothing made you depressed your whole life, whilst the false belief (which in your eyes is real, seeing as its your belief) made you happy?

 

[qingdom]

I want to experience how it feels like to be ripped apart atom by atom while entering a black hole.... before i die.

dying from natural causes, disease, natural disasters, drowning, murder, lava, freezing, decapitation, blood loss, cancer, electrocution, etc etc is done by so many others already.

Not that I could live to tell about it, but to be able to experience that as a 'last request', dying wish, or final checkbox off the bucket list would be awesome to me.


BUUUUUT... if there is by some miraculous means that black holes aren't as they're said to be by present day physicists such that I appear on the other side of another dimension, that would be even more badass to be able to live to tell about it in an alien realm.

But being cut up and spliced as a lab experiment would be a crappy as way to go because the black hole thing didn't go according to plan. =\ oh well.

 

[Master of Visibility]

I'm willing to accept any belief that happens to be true once I am dead.

I try not to tie myself down to one or two beliefs. :tongue:

 

[feefafo]

I think that when you die, you die. Your mind/soul/personality doesn't live on. You don't think any more. You're completely and utterly blank.

That, to me, sounds heavenly. It's a real shame I won't have a mind left to enjoy it.

 

[Hosker]

I struggle to believe in any sort of afterlife. I guess it'll be a lot like before I was born.

 

[Alpengeist19]

even if the nothing made you depressed your whole life, whilst the false belief (which in your eyes is real, seeing as its your belief) made you happy?

That's the thing. I used to be a Christian. I was brought up going to Christian private school and going to church every Sunday. And even then I had so many questions that couldn't be answered and doubts about it. It didn't make me happy, it made me scared that either I didn't get something about it and was going to Hell, or that everyone I knew was living a false life. It's like believing in Santa. Christmas is so great when you're a little kid because the magic man up in the sky comes down and brings you gifts. But eventually, you have to grow up and face reality. It's the same with religion.

 

[CosmicJalapeno]

I honestly don't think anything happens after we die. Our body ceases to function, and therefore our brain also. I see religion as something that was made up by people long ago to explain what they did not understand. Nobody wants to accept the fact that they will simply cease to exist when they die. Even I find that disheartening. But I would rather have nothing to look forward to than live my life around a false belief. Religion is based on the concept of "faith - believing in something that you can't see." I can't see evolution, but there is overwhelming evidence to support it. Creationism has very little. I call that being gullible, not faith. I simply don't believe in magic. I saw a very funny comic the other day. It shows a pair of scientists saying "Here, are the facts, what conclusion can we draw from this?" And the next slide shows a pastor talking to someone else saying "Here's the conclusion, now what facts can we find to back it up?"

I appreciate the answer but this is not about religion. Also, what is your evidence that nothing happens when we die? Your answer seems a little faith based given the fact that you haven’t given evidence to support a lack of experience when the brain ceases to function.

 

[CosmicJalapeno]

I think that when you die, you die. Your mind/soul/personality doesn't live on. You don't think any more. You're completely and utterly blank.

That, to me, sounds heavenly. It's a real shame I won't have a mind left to enjoy it.

What makes you think that your consciousness does not continue on?

 

[CosmicJalapeno]

I struggle to believe in any sort of afterlife. I guess it'll be a lot like before I was born.

How so? That's like saying the absence of a cause would be akin to the after math ie effect. Perhaps the positive value of existence causes a never ending chain of such in some form, or maybe you don't remember what it was like before you were born. I don't remember what it was like the second I came out of my biological mothers body, but it happened supposedly.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

After being bitten by a rotting corpse and turning soon thereafter, I didn't feel that different. Sure, I had an insatiable appetite for toes and some of my skin peeled off. But I was still the same lovable bachelor, stuck in a Manhattan apartment, roaming the streets and moaning "braaaaiiiinssssss" to my neighbors. The mailman didn't greet me anymore and girls won't speak to me. All in all, beside needing some cream for my green skin, not too much has changed.

 

[Finagle]

I don't see the need of a soul to explain consciousness. Consciousness come from the brain, you kill the brain, you kill consciousness. Thus, I don't see any reason to imagine an afterlife. I assume there will be a distortion of time when you brain slowly stop working, a sort of schism with reality (a base this on my personal experiences with lost of consciousness),probably a sort of half conscience without emotions, and then nothing. My corpse will decompose and will feed new forms of life. My atoms might gain consciousness again in new bodies, may they be insects/plants/animals/bacteria/whatever, but me, I'll will have stopped existing.

I would believe in afterlife if I needed it as an explanation for my understanding of life, that that's clearly not the case.

 

[Ablysmal]

Alright, I am going to go against the INTP stereotype of not believing in the afterlife and things "unexplainable".

I actually think that there is an afterlife in which the consciousness continues to "live" on. With the vast number of near death experiences, I find it hard to believe that there isn't something after we die. These people who experience NDEs even come back with information that would have been impossible for them to know.

NDEs provide insight into "astral travel", similar to OBEs. According to the people who have experienced this, they find themselves in a sort of new dimension in which they are purely manifestations of energy. When a person is actually brought back to life, he/she may even return with heightened levels of awareness and intuition, yes known as psychic abilities (another controversial topic). But people dismiss this as well because it just seems too crazy to be true.

All I say is that with all of these mysterious concepts, one shouldn't be so dismissive of something that isn't 100% understood.

*I admit that I am a complete paranormal freak... it just fascinates me so much*

 

[stuff]

I'm a Christian, although most of the time I come off as a Christian hater just because there is so much about religion I dislike, but my main beliefs are still there.

What do I think will happen when I die? Hell if I know. I have my beliefs but I'm not foolish enough to think that just because they are my beliefs they are facts.

The way I see it, believing in something after death or believing in nothing after death both require a great deal of faith in what we believe but have no way to prove. In my opinion believing in nothing really takes up more faith. If I die and nothing happens, well, tough, I was wrong, no one will say "HA!! TOLD YOU!". I don't think believing in something after death kept me from living a good clean life that I enjoyed. If I go around believing in nothing and then I die and I happen to wake up somewhere, well, that's gotta be a some scary stuff.

Of course I could always die and wake up somewhere and then it turns out that all my religious beliefs were wrong anyway and now I'm doomed anyway. No one knows, we all just believe and put faith in what we believe.

 

[bornobtuse]

When this topic comes up, the first thing that I think of is 2001: A Space Odyssey. Is death just the next step or transition into another form? Does our energy live on? I don't think anyone can answer these questions with absolute certainty. Personally, I don't believe in souls or spirits, making the belief of an afterlife absent to me. I know that my body will still exist and run its course through nature, but I don't know if there is or isn't an afterlife.

 

[BUtheBabyUnicorn]

Hmm, based on the description of "heaven" (which, btw in my head, is "a place without sickness, unhappiness, or suffering," supplied by the many well-meaning Sunday school teachers I've had over the years), we're turned into mindless zombies. Which doesn't sound like that much fun to me.
WARNING: RANT
How can anyone in Heaven be happy if they know that there are people destined for Hell? Can they really justify that by saying, "Oh, they did bad things in life against God and didn't repent." The system doesn't make any sense. What if they didn't know the Christian "God?" What if they weren't given the chance to ask for forgiveness? What if a pastor was going to go see a rapist or something and perhaps turn his/her life around, but then the rapist was killed in a prison fight? Yes, I am one of those, "What if?" children.
If God is perfect, then why is he so attention seeking that he created a whole race just to worship him? A "perfect" being should be able to realise that they don't need to be worshipped. And why threaten us with the concept of "Hell?"
If there is a God, my current knowledge of him makes me think that he just created us for some laughs. He could just sit around and troll us with the concept of Hell.
God must be the first chain mail writer. You know, one of those, "If you don't send this to 30 friends a murderer will show up in your room with a chainsaw at midnight and kill you IN YOUR SLEEP!!!" things, except it's something like, "Tell everyone you know to worship some guy in the sky or else you'll spend all of eternity in a fiery pit!"

That was completely off topic but I liked that last bit.

 

[sotic]

But I would rather have nothing to look forward to than live my life around a false belief.

edit: woah! Quoted the wrong person. Sorry onebelo.

Why? What difference does it make if what you believe so happens to be false? It's not like people will say "but he was wrong about _____ so nuts to him".

I think that when you die, you die. Your mind/soul/personality doesn't live on. You don't think any more. You're completely and utterly blank.

That, to me, sounds heavenly. It's a real shame I won't have a mind left to enjoy it.

This is what I think, too. Just as in a computer, when it's turned off the electrons dissipate and the RAM is lost.

What makes you think that your consciousness does not continue on?

What is there to suggest that it does? There has never been any causal evidence that the mind exists anywhere outside the brain, which stops function after death.


Also, remember that an afterlife does not mean heaven or hell; could be limbo, could be reincarnation, could be all sorts of things... an argument against hell is not an argument against afterlife.

 

[BUtheBabyUnicorn]

Also, remember that an afterlife does not mean heaven or hell; could be limbo, could be reincarnation, could be all sorts of things... an argument against hell is not an argument against afterlife.

I know, that's why my post is slightly irrelevant. But ever since my confirmation class stopped convening I haven't had the place to argue against anything christian.
That being said, I don't know how your consciousness would be supported anymore. How would it function? Is it like software that mustbe installed into a computer (aka the brain) in order to exist? Or would it just somehow float around? I'm afraid that I don't know enough about the brain to make a fair judgement on that.
In short, I don't really believe in afterlife.
I believe, though, that my body will decompose, become dirt, nourish plants, the plants will be eaten, pooped out, and then cycle begins again!