Death

[plain_insane]

I have heard many statements on this board, and I have a question. I know that Lori and I and a few others agree on Christian beliefs of heaven and hell. What does everyone else think happens at death?

Is it eternal?

And one side note, if it is not are there any other religions out there that have eternal rewards or punishments?

I am not looking for discussion on this subject. I just want to see what everyone else believes so we can know what everyone here believes?

[PercyPea]

I beleive the same as u monkee

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Im a shambles, but Im Gods shambles!!

[truestory]

I believe that hell is a place where souls which have turned their backs on God are condemned for all eternity to a state of misperception, of not knowing the truth, the truth being God.

[FyreStar]

p_i -
Personally, I see no reason to believe anything happens after death. As I stated recently in another topic, we are biological life forms, and death is cessation of our existance as such.

Regards,
FyreStar

[Vanja]

FyreStar-That's a very sad outlook.

[FyreStar]

Vanja -
Could you please tell me why it is a sad outlook in your opinion? I do not find it so.

FyreStar

[Bob T]

The part of us that is eternal is the part of us we call energy. The ancient peoples worshiped the forces (energies) in nature. The monotheistic version of these ancient gods is no different. When we die the energy merges with the energy that is all around us. There is no aspect of energy that has not been worshiped at one time or another beginning with the most important energy in the life of humans: the sun. Christians still worship on the pagan's holy day, SUN- day. (which they also stole from the pagans).

[DaveW]

This notion of our 'energy' existing after death is a poor attempt to rationalize spiritual views with some sort of physical argument. But if you wish to do this, then your argument is subject to criticism under the physical laws.

Even if we accept Bob's notion that somehow our 'energy' remains after we die (a notion that I would normally dismiss outright), we must realize that ours is a universe in which chaos prevails. As such, complexity is constantly being turned to chaos. Any residual 'energies' containing our consciousness would obviously have to be complex. It thus follows that ultimately the complex energies would degrade to chaos, and we would die (this denies your sense of immortality).

On a less technical note, this sort of immortal explanation fails because it seems to imply that the 'afterlife' is entirely dependant on the state in which we die. It is widely known that human cognitive abilities degrade slowly during life, sometimes significantly. In fact, most of us will spend the final decades of our lives without any coherent self-awareness. So if our immortal lives are determined solely by our state of being at death, then God becomes totally irrelevant. At the same time, one wonders why the expectation of immortality confers hope, when the actuality is hardly glorious, but rather mundane.

[Mierdaan]

Plain_Insane-

I'll get to the reply to your first question in a second, but I'd like to address the later one first. Are there any other religions out there with eternal rewards/punishments? Certainly, look to the East where Buddhism is the predominant religion. In it's beliefs, Buddhism is rather antithecal to Western theist philosophies. Western belief revolves around the fear that after death, there is nothing, and by believing in God, you might be reborn into a better life. Buddhism revolves around the opposite viewpoint: that all life, all existance, is filled with suffering, and the concept of being reborn again and again into eternal suffering is at least as terrifying as the Western fear of an eternal death. Consequently, the goal which is striven for in Buddhism is an escape from samsara, an escape from the Death/Rebirth cycle; you're all familiar with the term Nirvana, and that's what this escape is called. Literally translated, it means "extinction," the Buddhist belief is that, after comprehending the true nature of the universe, Enlightenment is achieved, Nirvana is reached, and after one's current body dies, there will be no more rebirth. Rather contrary to the normal religion discussed on this Board, but personally I find Eastern religions much more interesting than Western... but that's just me. And besides, you asked :)

As for *me*, do I believe in heaven/hell? No. Do I believe death is eternal? Well, having been given no evidence to prove the existance of some after-death life, or any supra-vital essence of a human being's existance, I'd have to say yes, death is eternal. There is no part of a human which I believe *could* survive the death of the phsyical body.

-Mierdaan


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"Not all who wander are lost..."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

[Vanja]

FyreStar-No end reward? What is life for?

[FyreStar]

Vanja -
What is life for? Well, in my opinion, it is for doing right, being happy, and making a contribution to my species. Being a higher lifeform than a dog, I'm not simply jumping through hoops to get a milkbone at the end.

FyreStar