So, the brain stays alive for 15 minutes after the heart stops beating. Someone can have thoughts for 15 minutes after death is inevitable. After being beheaded, the brain is alive for 20 seconds. What is being thought of when such circumstances are acheived? This is where the theory of heaven and hell originated. It is the time when someone knows death is coming and the judgment of one's life is present. One may give the control to others and consider their point of view valid on one's lifes value or take into one's own hands.
This judgment which occurs is an absolute. Death is an absolute. When consciousness drives from something to nothing a barrier is broken. In nothingness, time may not occur; eternity is expected. The thought of mind in the last second of life is in fact one's summing up the worth of living.
Heaven: feeling as if life was worth it with knowing there is nothing else to be done.
Hell: holding onto regrets and past pains which are understood to have caused undesirable accounts.
Those who do not know to understand this last "endless" thought are thrown into indifference; purgatory. Children who are oblivious to judgment would be too naive to recognize such a concept.
Religion arrived to held stabilize this thought by putting the perception in an intangible creator. The idea is still the same, but extreme distorted. God (the "all-knowing creator" ) will look at your life and basic self and judge you at death. He knows all you know. He has been with you all your life. God is everyone; not exclusive but ABSOLUTELY inclusive.
God is more than one thing which as time (theoritical time) passes will give the concept we call God less and less of a mystical aspect and more of a necessary one. There will always be the unknown which needs to be labeled as something so as to be discussed and uncovered. In math it is a variable.
A question now to be asked is why there would only be 2 (three if purgatory is considered) dimensions of death? Why not 4 or 125,232,312,349? How can I be lead to believe that something greater than I exists that holds only a dualistic ability of "good" and "bad" (+,-)? Why not a positive realm, negative realm, indifferent realm, and a carrot realm (+,-,0,^) and so forth?
In the absolute known as death, why is there such a tangible representation?
My explanation suggests why we consider such a thought. Whether it is true or not will NEVER be known. Discussions of that is relatively irrelavent, but the thought behind it...why?

Firstly, what would you say happens when a person dies in such a way that their brain is destroyed instantaneously? I know its an unpleasant thought, but its viable....

In nothingness, time may not occur, indeed. But how does this lead to eternity? Eternity is time passing without end. Time is a necessary component of all events and things. Nothing knowable can exist without time, without being-as-such (as an observable thing or phenomenon). Eternity, then, couldnt exist without some time, even if that amount of time is infinite. Nothingness is void of all things and phenomena, including time.
God will not take on more and more of a necessary aspect. It will be more mystical, if anything. Theologists will continue pushing him into the unknowable, which is the only place safe for him, and consequently, the only place where human-borne myth can survive.

As for "such a tangible representation", lets go to psychoanalysis: The only conscious part of the brain is the Ego. it is the Superego that commands the feelings of guilt and worthiness you are describing. It is something imposed upon the consciousness, the Ego, so its going to feel as if it comes from an outside source, and just about everyone is going to feel one of nearly the same set of emotions at death.

The concepts of infinity and nothingness (void) go hand in hand. When you observe one, you are in fact observing both. One may not have infinity without absolute nothingness because when one talks of infinity he speaks of all things known and unknown; a complete void is something theorized and thus questionably known.
There may not be time without end. If such a thing occurs, time would have never started and thus all events possible would have already taken place. In other words, there would be no placement or ability to form a timeline. With math it is correlating with inverses:
0=1/oo oo=1/0 or if one argues such things are impossible, just accept that the limit of each is what is meant.
You say "the only conscious part of the brain is the Ego". I'll play Socrates and question what it means to be conscious. If you mean to interact directly with stimuli, then of course there would only be that part of the brain capable of such. There are many other levels of consciousness that most ignore or tend to leave out of consideration because it is too subtle.
One may not define God because He is literally unknown. The first person to consider such a creator was attempting to explain something; give a name to the unknown. God used to create the winds, the sunlight, fish spawning, and even our own actions ("freewill"). As more and more is learned and understood God gets pushed back into a section of existence which is still unknowable yet fundamentally similar to the original. The ultimate cause (aka creation). This will never be known for certain because it would require all factors of a single moment to be known so as to trace back to the absolute beginning. God will never disappear because He is the variable in life. Variables are not definite; that is their purpose.

I think the whole attraction of Hell and Heaven lies in the expectation.
Expectation seems to be the most thrilling, the sweetest thing, as it allows for the greatest potentiality, the greatest fantasy.
It seems the mind can always top any experience.

So playing on that ace, people can easily be hooked.

I think the whole attraction of Hell and Heaven lies in the expectation.
Expectation seems to be the most thrilling, the sweetest thing, as it allows for the greatest potentiality, the greatest fantasy.
It seems the mind can always top any experience.

So playing on that ace, people can easily be hooked.

This tends to depend upon the extent of the frustration.

Post orgasm the attraction wears off.

--- Ron.

First of all, the brain is not alive for 20 seconds after one is beheaded. Where is your proof? If so, how on earth were they able to get their data. Secondly, if your heart stops beating you can still be revived --so death really isn't inevitable. Thirdly, a majority of the scientific community views death as "brain death" where there is absolutely no activity in the brain.

Ok, Possumking, you want to not discuss this idea instead of move towards an attack? alright.
What I was arguing towards is a moment in time when the body is unrevivable that from then one it holds inevitable death. In this moment, what occurs. If you do not believe such a moment exists, then you may not BELIEVE in death. All I mean is from one unit of time to the next consciousness ceases.
The moment that everything becomes nothing...where I theorize in return nothing becomes everything again. Nothing cannot perpetuate forever.

Ok, Possumking, you want to not discuss this idea instead of move towards an attack? alright.
What I was arguing towards is a moment in time when the body is unrevivable that from then one it holds inevitable death. In this moment, what occurs. If you do not believe such a moment exists, then you may not BELIEVE in death. All I mean is from one unit of time to the next consciousness ceases.
The moment that everything becomes nothing...where I theorize in return nothing becomes everything again. Nothing cannot perpetuate forever.


You're right --my post was rude and I apologize.

So you are referring to the point where one is going to die and there is no coming back no matter what? The ACTUAL split second of death? I'd assume that after everythign has winded down to a halt and you are on the very, very verge of brain death you almost certainly by then have lost any sense of consiousness or feeling of being alive.

For example, say you get shot in the head at point blank. As the bullet enters your brain its likely that you pass out and then die. But all very, very fast.

But hey! Who knows?

True that there are times when death occurs so "fast" that the brain can't comprehend it. I guess I am trying to cover too many random ideas into a basic topic. My thoughts are now wandering towards the theory of time. Time only occurs where there is matter or energy...or simply where there are interactions (because that is what we have now labeled "time" as). What about the space inbetween time? The two moments, the time when I am alive and when I am dead. What occurs then? The quickness between moments is irrelevant. If there is no space inbetween moments, then there is no DIFFERENCE between moments. Life and death are the same...
If there is, then something must occur implying a reaction of some sort associating to life. There would be an importance to death then. I'm just trying to get some kind of feedback on my ideas...I don't know if they are using some sort of backwards logic or something else worthless.

It is true so called 'death experiences' convince some people that there is some sort of existence after death or that God exists.

However, the problem when this belief is examined critically, is NDE's cannot really furnish us with reliable information about whether or not God really exists or whether a supermundane realm beyond this universe exists. This is because of Kant's fundamental insight that all human knowledge requires some kind of interaction of our senses and concious mind with the object of knowledge. Kant was able to argue quite convincingly and strongly that such realms cannot be the object of rational knowledge, because all positive knowledge relies fundamentally on the limits of our senses and conciousness.

It is true mystics argue God/Ultimate Reality is unknowable, and quite often describe such a reality as totally inaccessible, unknowable and incomprehensible. Yet again if we analyse arguments from mystical experience using rational argument, the arguments of mystics seem both self-contradictory and incoherent. Kant also notices this and remarked on his lectures on metaphysics this is why the mystical has to be banned from Philosophy.

Philosophers may disagree with the Kantian position and argue we can have some kind of positive knowledge about God, heaven and hell, or supermundane realms outside of our universe. But the primary challenge is to explain how God, who is One, infinite and unchanging, and incomprehensible, is comprehensible to the human mind and how such a being is related to this universe. So far in Philosophy, no argument immune from valid skeptical criticism has so far been demonstrated.