re: What Do You Think Happens After Death?

Well I hope to live a long a productive life with people I love. But oblivion seems like a reality.

With reflection I don't think anything about me is truly immutable. If all of my components (including essential parts of my character) change during my lifetime? I can't make much of an argument for my permanence even in the decades I will be alive.

Whatever meaningful influence I have on others may persist in some fashion and that would be potentially good. In a optimistic potential future that would contribute to the betterment of others and the carcass of my thoughts and character would have meaningfully advanced what follows.

They strip the bed, change the sheets and admit another patient.

Matter and Energy are not destroyed. They just change form.

First off, you need 3 days undisturbed so your life force can fully withdraw in an orderly fashion. This makes the transition much more orderly. Hopefully in a cooler somewhere.

Your guides will bring you to a “place” where you can unpack all the lessons of your past life.

The more you accomplished, the more people you impacted, the longer it will take. Maybe a few hundred or more earth years. But that’s ok. Time is not the same over there.

If you had a short embodiment or did nothing, maybe not so long. Less to unpack.

Once lessons are learned sufficiently, you get to try again. Usually picking familiar bloodlines but not always. Maybe you decide to have the experience of an untouchable in India. It is really up to you, based how well you have positioned yourself in past lives with good works and activities.

Souls like a Hitler may be 1000’s of years before deemed to learn the lessons and allowed to return to attempt to right their wrongs. Or maybe never.

But the lessons of the past lives become encapsulated as your instincts and tendencies in the the next life. Pay attention to them and nurture them.

People you fight with online are the same entities you did not get along with in the past. Nothing really changes, without effort in the present. Personal growth. Your choice.

In the end, you chose your destiny by your actions and desires. You choose the time to come back. You chose your parents for the lessons or bad examples you seek.

Your birthmarks show where your previous mortal wound occurred. Don’t let that happen again, k?

It’s a complex system, this soul mechanism we are blessed with. Don’t waste it. Grow. Develop. Create value in this world.

Then when you next shed this mortal coil, the adventure only gets better. Best of luck!

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you're making my point though. we were 'dead' for billions of years, but we time skipped all of it, and from our own experience/perspective, instantly emerged into this life form. this, happening again and again is probably all there is to it.

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Now you're getting philosophical and we must define what "self" means. Who are you and how do you define being you? If I make a machine that can output perfect copies of an object and I make a perfect copy of you (down to every atom) is it still "you?" Scientists would probably say yes, but some philosophers might not.

What I am getting at is how do we know "you" are being reincarnated? Most certainly your atoms will not emerge again in their same exact state.

Or will they? This is a question Ludwig Boltzmann tackled back in the 1800's. He postulated something called "Boltzmann brains" which is a phenomenon that emerges out of the laws of thermodynamics. Basically he said that if you wait long enough, atoms will randomly come together and form a human brain. Who is that human brain? If the atoms in the brain are arranged identically to your brain, then it could be "you" emerging spontaneously. Kind of an unsettling concept.

Before you get your hopes up, the universe will not last long enough for this to happen. We only have about 5-10 billion years left before most stars burn out.

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it could be argued that Christianity is just a man-made construct that was used to control the behavior of the population through time

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The optimistic point of view would be many elements of Christian faith are parts of essential human truth. That doesn't endorse the literal stories but the moral lessons embedded seem to have a lot of sound social structure.

The best evidence for that might be that cultures without dominant religion seem to rapidly replace religious faith with other systems which are more haphazard and often as easily or more easily abused by authoritarians.

It isn't necessarily as simple as saying religion is always a net good or inherently better than all of the structural alternatives. But a system that has been able to coexist with and possibly nourish stable societies in which flourishing occurs more easily? That seems to have some demonstrated utility and attacking it strictly because it isn't the literal inerrant word of God may miss the point.

TLDR Bill Burr riffing on the belief system

Bill Burr

Rumor has it I still get to vote. But not necessarily by my choice for candidate.

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beginning to wonder myself. I'm almost 82 so I guess I better get all my ducks in a row

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Old joke:


Q: Why are there so many old people in church?



A: They are cramming for the final examination

This site needs a philosophy board.

I’d say one’s answers to the unresolved mind-body problem and hard problem of consciousness will likely paint most of the picture of what they believe to be required for human experience and for the sense of self to exist, and ultimately, what prospects are even possible upon the termination of the body.

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that makes something that’s dead somehow become alive again as a completely different being.

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Yo Darth. Not how it works. You leave this body behind and return from whence you came.

The answers you seek are out there. Don’t stop looking.

You are a soul having a human experience.

If it’s reincarnation, I’m doing whatever the frick I want in the next life