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So, what happens after we die? Is there a heaven or are you trapped in a never ending suffering of reincarnation or is that just it, everything goes dark and the curtains drop? 

Personally I am an Orthodox Christian but my faith isn't as strong as it should be (that's cause I've yet to read the Old and New Testaments). Obviously the coolest idea is the western image of what reincarnation is. You die and get reborn, I mean what's better than not actually dying?

In my opinion even eternity in hell would be better than lack of existence

Ah, the age old forum thread about life and death that will soon be a thread filled with topics about war, poverty, Hitler, idiots, ponies, anime, religion, psychology, penises, Norris, Lee, color spectrum, time travel, quantum mechanics, computational sciences, mirrors, reality, social classes, books, geometry, theology, aetiology, biology, ethology, and most importantly the point of view from each person that one another cannot possibly understand to the point at which they become the same person yet two people in which results in the creation of a god and everything blows up into trillions of tiny pieces creating a new universe which will be referenced in the future as "A generally bad idea."

Edit:: I really hope this forum thread somehow connects everything I listed above to the afterlife theory xD

But in the traditional sense, an eternity in hell would involve an eternity of pain, so wouldn't that be worse than just winking out of existence and not experiencing anything at all?

I honestly don't know. Even the western view of hell seems better to me than complete lack of existence

what's the eastern view?

In the west hell is a fiery place in the depths of earth and heaven is a big garden with naked chubby angles

In Orthodoxy heaven and hell are states. Think of it as a light that 2 souls approach. The good soul feels warmth and approaches the light while the evil soul is burnt and goes away.

Weird

I don't know, Drakoblare...I wouldn't want to exist forever. our souls get old and tired. Existence is a toil and after a while, our time comes. Like there is a point where you become so jaded of existing that it is more painful than not existing at all. Mortality is a good thing: no one--nothing was meant to live forever. Everything has an expiration date, and when that comes, you have to hope that you have lived your life as you wanted to (even if there is some kind of afterlife or something)...

 

"no one--nothing was meant to live forever. Everything has an expiration date"

Turritopsis dohrnii Can technically live forever also when you say "meant" I assume you are referring to a higher power?

I would love to exist forever as long as I could end it when I wished it to end.

The only ones that know about the afterlife are already dead.

I like the idea of Reincarnation, I like the idea of Heaven and Hell, but that probably isn't going to make them exist. They probably do, but they probably don't. Even so, you wouldn't have time to care, since you wouldn't be able to think about how bad it is.

You know those nights when you go to sleep but don't dream?

That's the same thing that happens when you die, except you don't wake up.

I agree, I think your experience after you die will be the same you experienced before you were conceived, as in none at all.

Also, wouldn't eternity, no matter how pleasant it is, become a boring hell you want nothing more than to escape from in the end. No matter how often you change the scenario, it is competing with infinity, which is impossible to compete against. Heaven will eventually become so boring you'll want death. Groundhog Day anyone?

I sort of figured they gave you the equivalent of a celestial lobotomy so you never got bored with perpetual bliss.

Kind of like a goldfish constantly getting amazed at the same stuff in his fishbowl?

Yeah, I have to think it would be something similar. In any case I would also guess that your mind just gets wiped so you don't remember anything of your mortal life. 

This eliminates the problem of thinking about loved ones who might not have been as holy as you were and are going to hell. If you don't remember them then you won't worry about it!

If your mind gets wiped and such, doesn't that kind of make it pointless to have a hell? If you're going to turn people into Limbo Goldfish, I don't think it would be too difficult to create a bad guy rehab center.

Nah, they do the opposite for hell. You remember and feel everything negative and the intensity of those feelings are multiplied by oh... Infinity.

But, why?

Well Hell is supposed to be an eternal punishment so they'd want you to suffer the most agony you could. 

Now maybe they brain wipe you periodically just so you don't get too used to the pain and you can experience the various tortures all over again fresh, but all of this of course is just guessing.

Like eternity in heaven in Eternal?

The memory loss really bugged me.... I mean if you lose your memories are you really you? 

It would just be like a permanent case of amnesia. I think at your core you're still "you", but you've just transcended.

I mean even in traditional Christian heaven this seems to be the case that you lose memory of your former mortal life on some level since you basically do nothing but sit around and find joy in basking in God's glory. You effectively are going to transcend  due to the nature of not being part of the mortal realm anymore and such things just not being important anymore.

I'd say something like Muslim heaven sounds more tied to mortal realm since you get your own mansion and 72 virgins. It's a "tangible" reward for good behavior.

 

Well, some branches of Christianity believe that the only way to get into Heaven is by being willing to do nothing but praise God forever...and ever...and ever...and ever...and ever. And if you don't get into heaven, you immediately go to Hell, where you are burned, frozen, eaten alive, and excreted over and over again forever...and ever...and ever.

I always thought in Hell they put you in an eternally castrating rape box lined with nails and then made you simply listen to the creepy demon voices, and reminding you exactly how TERRIBLE it's going to be when they take you out of the box, and eventually the fearful intimidation drives you insane.

Oh, dear. That's remarkably worse than my impression.  Your's...is just...wrong. But, I mean what would happen after you go insane...would they still be able to torture you...or would your mind just melt into a ball with all of the other insane souls, and then, the demons like just torture the ball of souls.

You probably go insane just enough that you can still be mentally coherent to understand your suffering.

If not, well restart the mortal's brain and let's start fresh so he can suffer all over again.

Oh my. That sounds like something my ex-stepmother would do. Btw, if you want to have nightmares tonight, kiddies, remember that there is a branch of Christianity that believes God has already decided where you will go and that nothing you do will change his mind.

Once more shit goes eternal :P

Damn you westerns and your wild imagination

Nah, if you get broken into a sadistic and vengeful sociopath, they turn you into a demon when you're out of the box. If you become a sniveling, pathetic and fearful madman, or catatonic, they just reincarnate you and hope you're more evil the next time around.

I was going to say the same thing.

Well, unless nothing is infinite :D so, although time may seem infinite - it may not be. Depends on your viewpoint of time, and since time is an illusion - you need a point of relevancy. That point of relevancy would have to be in space, so you can measure time as events happen within space relevant to another point in space.

"Wouldn't eternity, no matter how pleasant it is, become a boring hell you want nothing more than to escape from in the end?"

The sentence contradicts definitions. Eternity is defined as un-ending time aka infinite, and since time is a measurement of events relative to a point in space - that means there is an infinite amount of differentiating events taking place relative to anywhere (since anyone can choose a point of constant relevancy). So it boils down to your definition of boring, which - in eternity should never be able to happen, unless the point of view is directed to a single point in space that happens to be fairly consistent (such as earth). So eternity itself, when relevant to anywhere and everywhere at anytime, is never boring; and who would want to escape from having fun?

I think of death as an indifferent constant that very few can escape, and even fewer can control. So since it is very likely (99% at least) that I will sometime (relative to my point of view in space), at some point (relative to my perception of time/space) die, then it is illogical to not enjoy the wait to the inevitable (supposedly inevitable). In this stance of indifference and logic, the choice is clear between "Don't enjoy the wait, because something bad could happen in the future that I can't control. *panic*" or "Enjoy the wait, because there is no known risk."

Here I am with my two cents. In Hinduism, reincarnation isn't really seen as a good thing. They believe that life on earth is fairly close to a living hell, and they wish to end the cycle.

Hindus believe that every soul is derived from one huge soul, and that if you do what you are supposed to in each life, you will slowly get closer to becoming one with this huge oversoul. When you do rejoin with this thing, it is the equivalent of a drop of salt dissolving into a glass of water.  I am sure you have all heard the phrase Namaste. It literally means "the god in me bows to the god in you."  This reflects the Hindu idea that all are derived from God.

This is why I said the circle of reincarnation is suffering in the OP.

 I was just restating it for the people who might not have known.

I'm not religious, so, although I hope there's something after death, I doubt it.

This question has stunned me for so long. What actually is after death when your body can no longer sense? You cannot see anything, not even black, as that still counts as "seeing", you can't hear, you can't smell, touch, taste or even KNOW anything. You are simply existing yet non-existing at the same time. It's almost a paradox if you put it like that.

I do wish there's some kind of afterlife or the reincarnation thing, perhaps even allowing you to recall memories, but it doesn't add up IMO.

delta im also not religious but i hope the same things that you do but when i was younger my mom told me that everything in you shuts down and its like that forever and never at the same time but just thinking about it makes me cry like a 5 year old

The most frightening description of the afterlife I've ever heard was that when you die, you just start over again at the beginning of your life. Then you get to live everything over again,  exactly the way it was before. 

Well seeing as how you wouldn't remember any of it then it wouldn't really matter if that happens anyway now would it?

Personally? I consider Death/Afterlife to be the Final Frontier, one that we each must eventually enter alone. Regarding that, my beliefs tend to vary slightly from time to time.

I came up with that theory when I was like... 6 or 8 years old. My sister responded " What about people who die at birth?"

You turn into carbon. There is nothing.

Oh dear. A little pessimistic, aren't you? I'm not saying I disagree with you; they way you said it just sounds a little harsh.

It is logical. I do not see that stating objective facts makes it harsh.

Well, I'm not certain that they can be considered objective facts; after all, it's not like we can actually ask anyone who has died. Any way, the "you turn into carbon" thing reminds of what an atheist will tend to say when trolling someone who has shown religious beliefs.

I'm not calling you a troll. It's just that the way you said that reminds of the classic "you just die" and "you are worm food" lines. They might have the most logical argument, but they still choose to use strong, powerful wording to extract a negative reaction from their victim. You could have achieved the same effect in your statement while leaving off the "you turn into carbon" part.

That is all, Sir.

I dunno, I thought Madglee's response was more matter of fact rather than pessimistic.

Now Drak's response of what happens when you die a few posts below was pessimistic. (And awesomely METAL)

(Awesomely Metal is more of an "epic war at Armageddon between Satan and Cthulhu with lightning, fire, and axeblades everywhere as fire and fallen angels rain from the sky when the blood pools waist deep throughout Las Vegas and everyone is having a gigantic S&M orgy over the sounds of electric guitar blarings" kind of thing.)

Yes, I do.

after you die, you stink. Literally.

As far as I know, when you die, your gone. Your not even a sentiment being anymore. Just gone.

That's a sobering thought.

You die and that's it, everything that has ever made you and what you are is then gone permanently - everything you ever accomplished and did utterly meaningless in the fact that you are no longer anything. You cease to exist, stricken from life. You will eventually be entirely forgotten as you lie in a grave that no one visits anymore, as your name is forgotten by all who remembered you, and those who remember you die, and those who remembered those people die as well.

You become nothing.

Hopefully.

I really can't see how that is something to look towards to.

Anyway, if you are an awesome guy like Alexander the Great or Hitler you'll probably never be forgotten. 

Well I could see if your life really sucked a lot, oblivion could be something to look forward to. It would certainly be better than your life really sucking and then going to an even worse afterlife because you also didn't follow the right rules of some deity.

While I certainly wouldn't look forward to oblivion, I'd definitely still take it over a horrible hopeless afterlife if I had the choice.

 

He was responding the the first comment, I believe (He's done it quite a bit before)

I was responding to Sethaniel who said "Hopefully" at your opinion, as if he hopes it is that way. 

Yes, I know; and i'm saying that Sethaniel frequently posts replies to other users' comments that are actually replies to the first comment (as seen in pretty much every thread he posts in).

Ever heard of Maximilien Robespierre? History tends to slowly remove or downgrade horrible people and what they have done.

IMHO, you just die. In Jewish lore, heaven and hell are the same, and the only difference is that heaven is filled with good people that love everyone, and in hell everyone hates everyone (also in heaven everyone spends all day praying). I believe that even if there is an afterlife, it is not eternal, because eventually the universe will implode on itself and everything is the the universe, nothing is outside of it. I don't like heaven and hell because I only personally know maybe 3 people who would fit the standard for the Jewish standard, and none who would fit the Christian standard. According to the Jewish standard, good people go to heaven, and in the Christian standard, only good people who spend a completely Christian life praying every day go to heaven. D: 

Huh. Betaband, are you Conservative, Orthodox, or reform? 

I'm conservative. I do most of the "good person, helping people" laws, as well as keep kosher. I keep kosher and most of the stuff that Conservatives do, how ever completely ignore and shun the semi-racist parts of Orthodox Judaism 

Ah. Okay, that makes so much more sense. Yeah, Orthodox Judaism's hell is entirely different.

Isn't there a thing in 'Jewish' hell (Gehenom) that all your sins get erased via a burning like torture? I think even good people typically go there for a small while, so that they can gain access to Heaven. 

Then there's the abyss, where people are literally erased from existence.

Worse than the above, people like Hitler (this is Kabbalistic stuff) who've murdered millions of people (and by thus one death on Earth isn't close to sufficient repentance) get repeatedly killed, go through an extremely painful recreation process, and then get killed as much times as they killed. Something like that, anyways.

Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure that the "worse than average"  counts as anyone who killed a child/woman.

Also because Judaism is thousands of years older than most religions, there are dozens of interpretations of heaven/hell

He's talking about the conservative's hell, ha ha. (Basically, much more similar to Christian Hell then te Jewish hell)

Come on, people. It's been two days and this thread hasn't derailed to quantum mechanics or ponies yet. What it wrong with you all? Any way, I find the existence of an afterlife (of any kind) unlikely. On a slightly unrelated note, don't you like how people are still trying to justify the existence of ghosts? I was reading something from someone who asserted that ghosts exist because the human "soul" is a bunch of electric impulses that have to go somewhere when we die. I guess they completely ignored the fact that these impulses would likely dissipate like heat from a smothered fire. Still, on the metaphysical level, it's impossible to tell what will happen.

Our energy will spread so thin that it doesn't even matter, throughout the entire world, indirectly effecting everything and nothing at the same time.

Or something.

"People die when they are killed!" - Snooki.

It's a fact.

That's what I kinda said. I just meant that some people ignore that.

I am a Protestant and I believe that there will be a judgment day, Jesus will ascend from the heavens and take all of his loyal children. The sinners will stay on earth where they will most likely die. God destroyed the Earth by water with Moses and vowed to never destroy the Earth with water. This means that he will most likely destroy it with fire.  The people that were saved will go to heaven where the streets are made of gold.

Have you even read the Bible? Are you trolling me right now?

Heaven is above the earth for one thing, so Jesus would be descending. Unless you're a satanist, in which case the proper term is "antichrist".

Also know that God vowed never to destroy the earth. Period. In Revelations, the book which actually supposedly tells people how the world is supposed to end, God kills everyone through various symbolic punishments, and by releasing Satan and proceeding to make earth a battleground between Heaven and Hell.

And then he takes the remainder of the world and puts all the good people in a heavenly golden city, and a ways away from that, he puts a crevasse full of burning sulphur, where all the bad people are left.

Of course, looking at the time it was written, it's probably riddles, but it has nothing to do with it not being water, and therefore fire. Hell, have you read about the star called Wormwood? It poisoned a third of the water in the world and killed a third of the people in the world.

Didn't god destroy the world with water in Noah? :P

Yeah! And Noah took two of everything so that when all of it blew over they could bang!

And a load of incest came about.

Exactly!

Adam and Eve's kids

Some of Abraham's family

Noah's family

Lot and his daughters

Nimrod and his mom

Any other references?

Though I have heard some religious folks claim that incest wasn't genetically damaging back in the biblical days due to people being closer to God or something.

 

So somehow incest leads to more specialized genomes?  O.o

One of Esau's son (or grandson, I forget) married his mom.

As for the whole mutant baby craze... Some say like what you noted they say, others say that God could've 'created' more humans for Adam's kids (and that Adam eloped with other... Creatures). And some say that they 'got lucky/blessed' that they're children didn't become mutants until it got spread far enough.

Weird stuff to be sure.

It makes more sense in a religious view that God would have blessed Adam and Eve(+their children) to have 'pure genes' for several generations, maybe even up until after Noah died.

At least, that's what would make sense in my head. lol

Where is the story where fallen angels bred with human women to create the nephilim? 

I'm guessing Goliath was supposed to be one of those given that he was a giant.

Nah, Goliath was a runt. Og was supposedly from Noah's time, so perhaps him? Don't remember.

Not everything, kosher animals he took 7 of so he could sacrifice 5 of them.

SHHHH TAN! DON'T TALK ABOUT IT!

But that would still leave 2...

Yeah, but he took 7 haha.

Or you know, it doesn't really have to be gold.

It could just be really really clean paved roads that reflect the sunlight into your eyes that make you perceive it as gold, because hell I'd dig that more than staining that sizzling metal with my burnt flesh...

God has to be very lenient because you know has to has a sense of humor you know not just to send you to hell for a bery little sin

We won't know until we die. People have died and have been brought back to life with no recollection of what they saw in the after-life, which points toward their being no after-life. Others, however, have been brought back claiming that they went to hell or heaven, while their statements mostly contradict one another. People can only have faith in whatever religion they choose, and hope it awaits them on the other side, in my opinion.

Well since it got necroed I might as well add to it.

We do not know what happens when we die but the most logical explanation would be that when we die....we are gone.

That's a retarded explanation.

Our defined "consciousness" could be gone, but from a purely scientifically view, we just don't go "poof!" upon death.  We leave behind the defecation in our fleshy corpses, fresh organs (if you've been living a somewhat decent lifestyle), liters of blood (bad or good), and a really nasty smell for the mortician to deal with.

From there, your body parts could be used for cooking, cremating, ski-ence, or for saving that rotten bastard child that didn't get gutted the right way.

Or you could turn your body into a diamond and dump it in a cave system to grow.

As for the concept of "souls", that shit might as well be disputable, but you can't just go off and say that "WE DISAPPEAR HURRRRR" until it's a fucking fact, aight?

It's like asking if aliens exist when life already exists here.  If the consensus of the scientific community agrees on the universe's ever-expanding size, it'd be VERY unlikely life has also got a kickstarter program elswhere.

And if God(s) exists?  That's a fucking disputable question.  If you know the answer to that, please hand me your Nobel Prize.

And unicorns exist; they're fucking rhinos.

I was referring to our consciousness :D

That was certainly a creative reply ^_^

1. I don't believe in souls...

2. I do believe there are aliens somewhere....

3. I don't believe in god.....

Hmm...I'm not too sure about the soul thing. I think that the universe is so expansive that life on other planets is at least a possibility. Of course, life could be a phenomenon that occurs solely on Earth. I don't see what difference it makes

It doesn't make a difference really, but considering Swift mentioned them for some odd reason, I thought I would add my comments on them. Very simple comments at that.

Well, if time travel becomes possible, let me know, so I can absorb the time vortex and kill/reanimate a younger version of my self, making me effectively immortal. (Seriously, why hasn't anyone in Doctor Who done that?)

Wouldn't killing your younger self, kill your present self aswell? Either that or create a paradox.

Alter the TARDIS, turning it into a paradox machine. This will reduce the possibility of grandfather paradox, and the version that absorbed the vortex would die shortly, making everything alright. Plus, it's alright to have multiple versions of the same person...as long as they don't touch.

The Doctor is already immortal in a way. He just keeps changing his form whenever he nears death and lives on like he normally would. Also, the Doctor can do this an infinite amount of times (forgot why).

Destroy both hearts or shoot him with an energy weapon while regenerating or use poison from the Judas tree or Rassilon's gauntlet and he's dead. Jack, as far as I know, is immortal in every since of the word.

Yes, but no one ever hits both of his hearts, and combine that with the Doctor's intellect and he is a bitch to kill. Even the Weeping Angels find him hard to kill, and those things are nightmarish. 

#GottaKeepTheSeriesGoingForWayTooLongForMoney!

1st time you see them they are terrifying, except for the fact that they only boop people on the back and send them back in time.

2nd time. They learned to start snapping people's necks, but somehow they lost part of the nightmarish qualityl.

Still, I have one question: why is something vaguely resembling Judeo-Christian angels (well, actually, valkyrie, but that's a topic for another day) living in the time vortex? I mean, didn't they say those things lived in the time vortex. I mean, are there enough cultures with angel statuary for their schtick to actually work?

That's funny. That's not at all what Brad said, but I know a lot of people who seem to think that.

Unicorns are really fat looking and don't have magical powers then. lol

And they look like statues when you see them standing still!