Afterlife Poll
Offline First... this site is really interesting. It has me thinking a lot about a lot of things that I haven't thought a lot about in the past. 
I think critically frequently-- it's just that, as I've shared elsewhere, I believe I come from and surround myself with mostly spiritually ambivalent people. And although we have mixed feelings we tend to spend our thinking energy on other things. But I digress.
So... just a kind of quick survey (trying to get to know the peeps here): How many of you (atheists) believe that there's something else AFTER this life. It seems to me that you can have a non-belief in a diety and still feel that, perhaps say, there is some sort of "greater energy" from which we all come from and to which we will all return after we shuffle off this mortal coil. That's just one example-- hopefully you get the point.
My guess is many, if not most, of you believe... you're born, you die... everything ends with death. But maybe there are a few out there that have smoked enough grass <grin> to have some other interesting notions.
(By the way... I'm really appalled [and I never knew until reading through many of these threads-- seriously, never knew it] how discriminated against and poorly treated outspoken athiests are in our society. It's a shame.)
Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual character
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My response will be the same as most atheists: There's nothing after you die, but other people will still remember you after death, so in a way you kinda live on in their memories. But you don't go anywhere after you die.
Nothing, back into the earth.
I will occupy a special place in the memories of my family. I can't think of a better place to be after I'm gone.
I can't say anything stupid to mess it all up (as usual) when I'm not here any more
Religion is the ultimate con-job. It cons the conned, and it cons the conner.
Mr.T : "I ain't gettin' on no damn plane [sic]" - environmentalism at it's best
My thoughts are as follows: I think that after your body has been consumed by the earth (which is why i want to be creamated, just because rotting away doesn't sound pleasant) that our energy will disapate. Our body is full of electrical charge and according to the first law of thermodynamics that energy has to go somewhere. As to whether it has our mental blueprints still attached, I don't know, but I don't dismiss the possiblity of ghosts for that reason.
www.derekneibarger.com/chrissy
The same thing that happened before you were born will happen when we die.
I, too, wish to be cremated... but not because of it not sounding "pleasant." I assure you rotting away in a pine box, breaking down the feed the earth is at the very least a pre-death pleasant thought. But I don't think many allow for burial like this any longer-- so nix that.
I'm going with the cremation for a whole other reason-- EXPENSE. The whole "death bill" is one big fucking racket and it pisses me off. It's like one big final-fuck you to you on the way out of this life.
Screw that. I'm finding the cheapest, easiest and quickest way to go and taking that path. There will be no... whatever the hell they call that breakfast/brunch thing that costs another $1500 for the mourners. I will set aside exactly $1000 and have my friends meet (if they choose) at our local watering hole on the night of their choice and get them shitfaced-- they can then remember me in any fashion they want.
I hope there's far more laughter than tears.
Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual character
I really REALLY want to believe in an afterlife, but sadly, all the evidence seems to indicate it's just total oblivion once the brain stops functioning, so my vote also goes to 'nothing'. However, if there's anything else after death, I'll take it. That's the good thing about expecting nothing in death: anything else sounds kind of good by comparison, even hell. Well, at least to me.
I think I'll also request cremation upon death, but none of this sitting around in an urn bull. I want to be scattered around.
I do not know what happens after death, but it would be interesting to find out. The problem with saying that "nothing happens" is that "nothing" means, well nothing, and it leaves certain quantum physics and conciousness paradoxes unsolved, like the self-perception paradox.
The self-perception paradox is odd yet simaltaneously seemlingly simple. Why are you you? Conciousness is a biochemical stream produced by constant feedback from areas of the brain, as ultimately contained by the brain, you can only percieve as "you". But this is paradoxical. Why are you you? We do not have a "soul" which is an abstract notion for some kind of immaterial control room which makes up the "vital essence" of a person, yet we could not conclude that it is random chance that you are "you" because that implies that there is an entity or force which "chooses". But there isn't.
In quantum physics there is the "information perception paradox" similiar to the self-perception paradox, becuase things only "exist" when they have the capability to observe itself, the physicist Wheeler said that physical entities contain information known as the "It from bit" theory. Similar to Esse est percipi, but conciousness is not inherently necessary for existence, merely information.
Then there is the multiverse paradox, which dictates that there are an infinite number of copies of you, this is the Everet interpretation of the Schrodinger's cat paradox.
So yeah...I'm holding off on what happens when we die.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Did you know one of the solutions to the paradox is that God collapse the probability waves?
Did you know one of the solutions to the paradox is that God collapse the probability waves?
LOL
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
I knew you you'd like that solution
edit for clarity
There's nothing to show me that anything happens after we die as far as another existence or something like that. But I'm one of the few atheists I think that aren't too cool with thinking we'll rot in the ground the end. I'm not sure what happens after our death but meh I dunno hope it's something good if the energy or w/e in our bodies does go somewhere else.
---George Carlin---
I cannot say for sure what happens to us after we die. However, I do know that is not to a heavenly body with a bearded old man or to hell. As far as I know, our concious mind is contained entirely within our grey matter and when that rots, so does our "mind". I simply cannot imagine the mind transferring into some yet unknown energy. The only matter energy conversion would be the burning of your body in cremation or little bacteria and worms turning you into energy for themselves.
I think the simplest explanation is the best - we just blip out of existence.
I think it is a little snobbish of humans to concentrate on themselves after death. Surely this question should be addressed for every living thing including plants and bacteria.
Biochemist & Law Student
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." -Thomas Jefferson
I'm one of those odd atheists who actually does believe in some sort of afterlife. I didn't always feel this way, I thought once we're gone that's it untill about 13 years ago or so. I HATE to tell people that my belief rests solely on an expierence I had when I was very ill, an experience that appeared to seperate my consiousness from my physical body. I never thought it was all about god though. My rational could see that this didn't prove anything about a god's existance, but at the same time I didn't know what it meant. Over the years I've come up with my own theory that our energy goes to a different deminsion or plane of existance, or something similar. Or maybe I really was consious at the time of the incident even though it appeared to everyone that I wasn't and my mind added the images to the sounds I heard and the sensations around me. I don't know, but just because I don't know doesn't mean I have to give up reason and submit to the will of a church just because they claim to know.
http://arlettaq.spaces.live.com
The atoms that have combined to help make me a body will dissipate as I decompose and go off to form other things, juist as these same atoms formed millions of things before I was ever born.
In a way, you're not 'gone', you're just part of a huge cosmic recycling initiative.
http://atheismisrational.blogspot.com/
The important question is does any part of "me" persist. Is my self awareness irradicated by the cessation of this body's biochemical processes? The afterlife is the place where my consciousness continues.
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Then no.
I don't think that I will continue to exist in any conscious way whatsoever.
My conciousness is a by-product of this body and this brain that I am currently in possession of and could not exist without it.
http://atheismisrational.blogspot.com/
So it seems.
Blow up the left side of your brain and then evaluate the remaining working capacity. If it's 50% or less, you're in some serious trouble with your afterlife belief.
Inquisition - "The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on..."
http://rigoromortis.blogspot.com/
I think I would prefer blowing up your brain and then evaluating you
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This doesn't follow. Diminished capacity doesn't automatically eliminate self-awareness. There is also the possiblity that the physical body is a conduit for something (conciousness?). Destroying the conduit doesn't necessarily destroy the source.
If you are saying that conciousness is solely the result of biochemical processes, then you are correct, blowing away 50% of my brain would be devastating and at death, conciousness would cease.
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