What's So Great About Being Immortal?

I think it was in John's Gospel or it's a traditional belief in some Christian denominations that in the afterlife everyone is the same age as when Jesus died (aged 30ish I think it was). So babies will have the body they would have had at age 30 (A healthy body).
I think the passage says that when Jesus comes back we will all be "like" him, so it's a bit ambiguous.

But then I'm pretty sure a lot of people go back to the point I made earlier about any further life being a totally different existence which we can't understand as humans.

 

I think i'd rather be reborn on earth than go to heaven.
(assuming i wasn't destined for hell... O:] )

 

I was raised RC and now see my self as generally agnostic.

The whole thing comes down to consciousness. What is consciousness?

We know the biology of why a number of our organs and systems work the way they do. We know that certain parts of the brain seem to be responsible for certain functions, and certain hormones or chemicals can impede or accelerate some of these functions. We know that if we hack out a certain piece of the brain, or if it is damaged in an accident, we could lose certain functionality or memory. Does that brain missing all it's memory and having a completely different personality after an accident make it the same person?

But how the heck is it that our own awareness of our existence works?

I don't believe in afterlife as presented in Christianity. After all, different religions keep having different ideas. How do we know what's right? Also I think if there were an almighty being, they seem to have a pretty sick sense of humour.

At best I think we might be dealing with this "greater energy" type horseshit. I mean when an organism dies, the atoms and molecules become recycled into other things, and the atoms inside you could have at one point or another belonged to millions of other humans, and other organisms. Likewise there's other forces that we are aware of, can kind of describe, but can't fully explain how they work (gravity). We're also subjected to magnetic, electric, and electromagnetic forces. What's to say there aren't more?

If there is in fact a distinct thing that we can't quite detect that is in fact a "soul" or "conscious", given physical damage to the brain can cause permanent memory loss, I don't think our memories and experiences travel with us, and I don't think it may be one discrete thing, that individually gets reincarnated, but rather the whole mass would get lumped into the rest of the ocean of consciousness. But that is complete conjecture, and could likely be completely wrong.

I think religion was "made up" to give people hope, and as an ultimate "reason" to follow a given set of rules that establish order (since nothing is inherently 'right' or 'wrong'). That's not to say that it's necessarily a bad thing. If it gives them hope, and lets them get through the day, there's nothing wrong with that.

There's lot of people who had very vivid dreams, or simply 'can't believe' that their loved one is gone. This is nothing new, and has has been going on for millennia, which is why I think different regions managed to "answer" these questions through developing a religion. Each of which is different than the others.

 

I would be willing to say you aren't close minded because you are a skeptic, but as a skeptic, you are open minded to EVIDENCE... [if someone could be so kind as to present it... and I mean REAL evidence of God/an Afterlife]

Science uses proof to uncover what we don't know, while religion uses stories to control what we do know.. yeah, sure not all religions are bad... but, all religions are interpretations... and an interpretation based on no evidence and no proof is just an opinion.

On the topic of God,
1) I don't believe a dream is evidence, even if I'm having it. It is just a dream.
2) Nor are the hairs standing up on your neck because you feel some presence is behind you...
3) Same goes for the good word that some 70 year old "Guru" (who talks to God) is telling you... he's just good ol' crazy.
4) Same goes for some book that was written by some dudes so long ago, before we really understood anything about life, death, the earth, the universe... etc.
5) And my personal fav: The sun, the trees, the grass and everything else we see around us is NOT evidence of God... it is only evidence of a poorly formed argument.

 

Throughout my entire life I have been non-religious. My family didn't attend church. (Although recently my father has found faith and he attends, but I am 24 now and I don't live with him so...)

Anyways, for most of my life I just subconsciously understood that one day I would cease to exist. Cease to be. It never really bothered me. I knew there wasn't much I could do about it so why waste precious time fretting over nothing? Then one day--and if you want me to I can give you the exact date and time--I was lying in my bed and I thought about death. And it hit me so hard. Like being hit by a train or a bus. Or worse. It struck me so hard I had to get up and walk around my house to feel alive again.

I don't know what did it. I didn't have a revelation or anything. I imagined what it would be like after death. I tried to imagine how not being anything...just nothing...felt. It scared the living crap out of me. I have NOT been the same person since. I have become obsessed with it, obsessed to the point I have literally soaked up every bit of after-life/existence information I could get my fingers and eyes on.

At home I label myself as agnostic the majority of the time. My parents don't understand this because they believe if anyone should have proof of God it should be me because in high school I was diagnosed with cancer and I am now in remission. During my cancer bout my father randomly found a cross necklace in a junkyard. He said the way he found it was so weird. Something along the lines of you had to be standing in the exact right spot to have been able to see it. (Maybe that day changed his life.) (Maybe it should have changed mine?)

Back to more recently:

I started reading everything I could. I even started arguing FOR the existence of God. Most people wanted empirical evidence. Something substantial. Personal experiences are not good enough to the skeptical mind. Even the most insane of coincidences does not deter these hard-edged people who claim up and down that it is simpler for no God to exist therefore God doesn't exist.

And to be fair I cannot prove the existence of God, but again they couldn't prove God didn't exist. So where does that put me and them? Exactly where we started in my opinion. Anywho.... I began reading about near-death experiences(NDEs). For those who know nothing about this phenomena please do not make outrageous assumptions. This phenomena alone is worth looking into. There are millions of documented cases and there are numerous occasions where someone has had them while being completely brain dead.

I don't consider it the silver bullet in proof, but even scientists are dumbfounded. They brush it away as chemicals in the brain but this has not ever been proven or tested to be true so it's just a guess on their part.

Aside from NDEs there are also two other options I have found to prove an afterlife might be possible. There are numerous people who control out-of-body-experiences (OBEs) and they share stories of traveling through the universe/existence in spiritual form. And there are ranges or levels that they can "tune" into. They levels are numbered and it is believed strongly that at certain points in our maturing we can reach these higher levels of existence.

Are these people crazy? Who knows.

The next thing I found interesting in the search for my immortal soul was past-life stories. And there are some AMAZING accounts for this. There are documented cases of children being able to SPEAK the language of their former past self and recount who they were, what their name was, who their family members were, where they lived. And these cases have been followed through and sometimes it's astounding how 100% accurate these kids are. To know information that not even the parents knew....It's mind boggling.



To this day I haven't reached a conclusion on my own. I'm still searching. There will always be doubt and fear when it comes to this conversation because I know that there will never be enough evidence to convince me that death isn't the final act. But to say the search is hopeless.....Hardly. We as a human race hardly know anything about the universe and how it came to be.

I mean geez, it's crazy enough that anything exists at all. But things do. Conscious life exists. Whether it was random or not that is pretty damn phenomenal all on it's own.

If I'm certain about ANYTHING, it's that we live and breathe and that is fucked up all on it's own. What an anomaly. It's the biggest puzzle of all.

If you guys are interested in this type of stuff you should look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc (watch it til the END)

This doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the afterlife, but still. It just goes to show how freaking crazy this universe we live in is!

 

well my two since i believe im going to heaven even thought i am gay and that my animals go too i also believe that there is a heven and hell and i believe that there is proof of it it just people are not looking anyway that my two cent worth

 

"There is proof, but you are not looking= Anti-logic, Conformation Bias.

 

why oh why didn't i discover this thread sooner, I personally don't believe in any type of afterlife or religion (i'm atheist). BUT, that doesn't stop me and my friends from coming up with hypothetical situtations and beliefs, and it just so happens i have one for this topic, basically this is just going to my random belief if i wasn't atheist

First off that I'd like to state that according to the "king james version of the bible" it states that if you do said bad things you will go to hell, doesn't say anything about burning or suffering, everyone just assumes you do and says you do. I say on that note that if i had to choose between heaven or hell i'd choose hell. Cause if heaven's the place with all the politcally correct crap and what not then, I'd rather go to hell if thats the place where you get to do all the fun stuff (although I think you would become more enlighten'd when you die, so you aren't runing around killing people in hell and stupid shit like that) if the devil wants you to do the wrong thing then why would he dick you over when you do it (and god supposedly loves you so he wouldn't either)? that and the only thing we know that the devil did wrong was defy god, about what? who knows, one can only speculate and offer an educated guess (if you want to know what my guess is just drop me a line on my wall and i'll get back to you, it's not for everyone, and i don't want to offend anyone). So i'd be able to drinking, smoke, and have pre-martial sex with anyone i wanted and do just about anything with no consequence

feel free to rip into this belief, its just a hypothetical to me, i'll take under constructive critizism (also this the shorten'd version the orginal is about 7 pages long [we actually wrote down the whole argument and it is quite long] so i tried in give the shorten'd version without boring people to tears)

oh and immortality would be suck ass, you'd eventually get around to doing everything and then where would you be? on your ass bored as hell praying for death, cause you'd be so bored. that or drinking yourself to a sleep everyday

 

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyHc1B3h4g[/YOUTUBE]
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