Ok try this one on for size.

We as humans find it extremily hard to comprehend our own death being the end of our existance. One of the greatest questions ever posed by the mind of man has been, what is the following set of events that occur upon our passing from this physical world into the next life?

Most cultures and religions have their ideas based on the teachings of their prophets through history. And most usually have to do with the concept of the human soul extracting itself from the physical being and entering the afterlife in this form.

I think generally, most people view this scenario as our soul representing the greater whole of our mind's build up of memory, experience and knowledge. Most recorded studies of people who have been legally dead for a period of time then awoken have usually told of their experience as if nothing had changed in their general mindframe except for the fact they recognised they had left their physical body behind.

However I have a problem with this.

Brain damage.

It is common medical knowledge that brain damage exists. In severe cases, this can compleatly turn an otherwise normal individual into nothing more than a slobbering vegitible who no longer posesses any form of logical thinking or common sense. (And its not only brain damage, what about old people with alzheimer or a range of other mental disabilitys formed at birth or during the life.)

What happens after death for these people?

Do they remain retarded even in the afterlife?

See, you may be sitting there thinking.. This doesent effect me.. But let me tell you right now, during your death, depending on how you go out, it is very plausable that you may recieve a vast amount of brain damage before the final shut down of your physical being. In your very dying moments, you could be compleatly twisted in a mess with half your face sprawled out across the ground, imagine what might be going through your half dead mind at this very moment...

You would essentually be a vegitible..

So, how can we ever assume we will enter the afterlife in our currant mindstate? And furthermore, if damage to the physical organism that resides inside our skulls can cause us to compleatly lose our minds, effecting us on such a large scale, how can we assume this seperate 'soul' even exists?

And if it still does, what the fuck kind of entity are we going to be in the afterlife according to general belief?.. One that has no memory, experience, knowledge or imagination?

Its obviously a bit of a connundrum that we seem to take for granted the things that are contained in our brain as if we will even upon death, have the same mindstates as we have during life. Is it possible that when the brain shuts down, so does our very existance?

When we can no longer access the abilitys created by our complex physical brains, what exactly are we? Just residual energy left off containing only the most basic memory of what we once were?

I am not an athiest, I believe in god (although not in any form reletive to the mainstream perception of god). Therefore I do believe things run through on a grand plan and the afterlife is only the next stage in our development. But certain observable facts about life just dont seem to mould right with the general concept we as humans usually have about our own death's.

What do you think?

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i didn't read all of it...

but i believe we have a soul...otherwise we wouldn't necessarily be so aware of our surroundings EVERYONE believes in an afterlife even the people who deny it because the fact that we just die is impossible for me to comprehend and i know religion is based on the concept mainly of afterlife....

but i also believe the soul is pure and that only the physical body can be damaged and once you die your inner self can be released unscathed...i'm not saying all souls are good ones...but that the physical body may act as a shield to protect it from damging the soul...hence the brain damage...and diseases...

man im jibbering now but ye when you die ya soul remains the same...my opinion

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I think you might of needed to read a little more.....

Your response kind of glazes over some big logical flaws that I put forward in the innitial post.

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Human logic isn't even liable to use in arguments for the afterlife. Since the biggest rule of logic (nothing comes from nothing) couldn't even prove or disprove the way the world started. Since SOMETHING had to come out of nowhere for us to be here, obviously the outer influence of our world follows diffenerent laws of physics. So if we die, we can't expect to actually still be bound by our physical limitations. Everything about the afterlife can't be explained simply because we're not there.

Well ofcourse..

This thread is speculation on common belief vs. factual evidence. To be honest with you I'm mainly challenging religious believers to elaborate on how their belief's can fit in with certain undeniable facts that dont sit well with the things they have 'faith' in.

Call it trivial or whatever, its just an interesting thought...

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What's odd to me is how people who don't practise religion support the idea of having a soul, but, a soul was originally given value by religion. I'm not even trying to look down on them. Cuz, it was like a few weeks ago in school, I was in open with some friends and this weird fucking goth kids who was friends with one of the kids at the table came and sat down and was like "oh... I'm collecting souls blah blah blah" and we all kind of laugh you know, whatever he's a fucking nut job. But then he asked if you could have mine... And it kind of hit me, and it proved to myself my own underlined faith, due to the fact I was like "Fuck no... Leave the table and go hang yourself or something" (ya, I'm that much of a dick) But, point being... I'm not sure the value or purpose of my soul, but deep down it means something.

Common belief concerning the soul could not possibly be true.

Many religions promise that in the afterlife you will be completely free of any form of suffering. If the soul had anything to do with our current being and current lives whatsoever, this would be impossible. Because right now, our mindframes are designed for suffering.

What we are in this world is completely useless, utterly pointless, and overly insignificant (this is of course unless you see yourself for what you are). The way we perceive ourselves is completely wrong. If our souls are anything like what we are now, heaven could not exist.

But... If our souls have nothing to do with us, then what could they possibly be? What could the afterlife be? Bliss is obtaining the ultimate thing this world has to offer, and then not existing.

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True that..

But if you believe in a god then you obviously believe in an ultumate plan life is working towards. Therefore I dont look at myself as insignifigant because I am (according to my inability to strive towards a complete end to my universal concience) here for a substancial purpose that I have to complete before my time is up.

Just the same as everyone else, no matter how signifigant or insignifigant their contribution to man kind is.

There is no good or evil when life is looked at with a perception generated by logic. Because everything in existance works together as an equilibrium and continues to work through its course of cause and effect.

Even the worst occurances in the entire anthropic history have taught us as survivors of natural selection important lessons of life.

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Well I didn't necessarily mean insignificant in the scope of individual aspiration and acheivement. Of course the self is important to almost everyone. I'm just saying that from a more wholistic approach, the self is meaningless. For example, look at you... Your name is Alex. Does that have anything at all to do with who you are or what you are? Would you be different if your name was something else? It doesn't matter at all. And what makes you up? Just your memories and emotions. There is no actual substance or permenance behind what we perceive ourselves to be. If we drop our pre-conceived ideas and egos, we are left with our true selves. That is what I meant when I said what we are in this world is useless and insignificant.

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Your philosophies are based on everyone being the same.

Insignifigance is for those who feel they are just like everyone else. There have been studies about names of people influencing aspects of their lives. Did you know the very date you were born correlating to the gravity field you were in at a certain time in history defines vital aspects of your personality? Its called astrology. The study has been around since before 6000 BC and only since the inquisition have we as humans claimed it as witchcraft and only a probability factor or even pseudo science.

Everybody is born for a certain reason, at a certain date in time to perform a certain task required before we leave this realm to live on into the final frontier of life itself. Death.

We are not insignifigant. We are a chapter of time itself. We are the very fabric of recognition existance has to offer. If humans did not exist, there would be no intelligent lifeform we know of to examine our own species and the extreme narrow margin in which we take for granted as a chance equasion. There very well may be lifeforms out there that invented the DNA that makes us who we are, and I presume that entity would be god himself. No matter how skeptical towards the subject the modern scientific community is.

But I cannot believe in a god fabricated by the modern church reletive to the last 1700 years. This is the 21st century, the sign aquarious is now the currant cycle of the earth. Therefore humanity is now in a stage where we will begin to generate our own perception of life and not go by strict guidelines created by our ancestors when they contradict the logical analysis of data created by science.

As we go into this new era, the churches of the past will die out, and spawn the creation of the churches of the future. And those who cling onto old belief's as though they are still relevant to the culture of today will eventually die out also.

Time goes on... We continue to evolve as a species.

Whether alone or as guinnea pigs in a super intelligent life form's 4.5 billion year old experement.

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Human logic could apply to how the world was created and nothing from nothing, we just haven't figured it out currently. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If the next Einstein steps up and declares 'we were created when time itself looped and created a spark in existence that expanded by the Law of blahblahblah and the worlds swirled into blahblahblah'. So you can't say you cannot bring human logic into the supernatural simply because supernatural is what it is because it has yet to be defined. What's to say we cannot apply normal human logic? It's unknown.

That's assuming that it can be found, while his idea is assuming it can't be found. The point of it all is, if there was something that we cannot comprehend, we cannot comprehend it, PERIOD, whether it's in the future or whatever. Just because something supernatural has been explained also does not mean that it is the correct explanation, it can be a viable one from the perspective of a mere mortal, and yet comething completely ludicrous to that a higher being.

Catch my drift?

I'll reply to the original questions later or something.

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^Co-sign.. 100%.

Soc your views are based on defining something as an impossibility before the observable data has even been discovered.

Even speaking of the chance that understanding the supernatural is beyond our comphrension is like giving up before you start.

Very flawed way of thinking....

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That's like saying you should completely ignore the fact that it is more than likely you will not succeed as a commercial rapper making enough money to consider it as a career before you start. You have to come to some realizations before you begin so that things in the end will be more understandable. If you can recognize the fact that some things will not and simply can not be comprehended by humans, you're better off IMO. That's not giving up, it's just being more realistic and understandable. If you are faced with what I consider God and say to him that you can comprehend just as much as He can, that's so far beyond foolish it's not even funny. Just like an infant can't grasp the concepts of advanced physics; you're assuming that we are the highest beings possible and can comprehend things that simply can't be comprehended.

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