Of course, no one can say with absolute certainty, but here's my take... Your body breaks down and goes back into the molecular soup of the universe. Your conscious experience is over - forever. Essentially, nothing happens as far as you're concerned. People don't like to accept this as reality because they are too self-absorbed. They're convinced that there must be something more for them. But there isn't. The sooner you come to grips with that, the more value you'll place on this life - the only life you'll ever have.
What CCR says. Nothing happens when you die, your physical body just breaks down into the Earth and your soul or spirit or whatever ceases to exist.
I think you're right, but I don't think it is because people are self-absorbed. People can accept that they are insignificant, but they can't accept that life has an ending because nobody can tell them with certainty what happens after it ends. I think the thought of turning back into soup is so horribly depressing that a great majority of people would rather honestly believe in something as ludicrous as heaven or reincarnation because it makes them supposedly happy and motivated to live a good life. Do good and you'll get a reward! Its the approval seeking mentality that keeps a great deal of children oppressed under the weight of their parents unrealistic expectations. When on the other hand, most atheists are genuinely happy about life itself, the only reason they aren't happy is because people who believe in stupid **** are too busy forcing their stupid **** beliefs down their would-be-happy atheist throats.
Many have this belief. And it certainly looks that way for Stephen Hawking. I don't understand moestavern's thought that people shove religion down other's throats. People go to religious establishments. They don't find you.
Unfortunately, this is how I have felt for a while now. ...I still keep that "maybe" in the back of my mind though.
When I say self-absorbed, I mean they can't imagine the universe existing without them in it. Not because they're more important than the next person, but because we perceive the world through our own existence. For most people I imagine it's too difficult or too frightening to imagine an outcome where they no longer exist, but everyone else just keeps on truckin'. Self-importance is a little different in this case, I think.
Basically, when you die, you won't even realize that you died, you no longer exist, it's like a total blackout, you'll have no time to be like "crap, this sucks I just died" your thoughts are gone, information vanished. That means no pain, no happiness, no sadness, no comprehension of anything.
It's not because people are self-absorbed. People fear death more than anything. It's unknown to us. It's much easier to comprehend an eternity of nothing than an after-life.This leads people to believe that the universe ceases to exist without them being in it. Does it only exist because you were born into it, and had you never been born did it ever exist?
I just know I'm not listening to Stephen Hawking. He's the one book I will judge by his cover. I don't care what he has to say about an after-life.
If I led a good life, I would be reincarnated to join a noble family in Greenwich, CT. If I led a bad life, I would be reincarnated to join a starving family in Somalia.
You're dead. You cease to be. The rejection of that is what pushed our ancestors to conceive of the "soul."
As you die, I think your body starts to try to comprehend what is happening to it. This is the first major step of death. This is why people that are able to communicate at/right before death start seeing old relatives and friends that have gone before them. I truly believe this is the body's last attempt at coping with what it is going through. It's your body's recognition that "this is the end," and then for most people, their brain's last activity is to think of what they hope life is after death. Usually, from my experience and stories I've heard, people seem to picture their relatives and friends waiting for them on "the other side," or their life flashes before there eyes. There is nothing wrong with this, it's just your mind's way of trying to cope with the situation. I have also heard, from more than one person that were clinically "dead" and then brought back, that they saw a bright light and felt extremely peaceful. So, perhaps it's not that everything goes black, but possibly everything goes white (which doesn't make much difference at all). I'm assuming the peacefulness comes from all stresses, cares, and thoughts suddenly being cleansed and wiped away, as your body literally ceases to be able to function anymore.
Your mind continue to live on forever, just like in Source Code. That or Tom Cruise comes and takes your soul to his boss.
Interesting topic. I appreciate everyone's honest answers thus far. (and ignoring the inevitable jokes that come with a question people don't know how to answer any other way) What I wonder is, has anybody else noticed that their seems to be a lot less belief (particularly in the afterlife etc.) in our society than there was only a short time ago - say, 20 years ago? Is this a trend in our society for this time period? What about 50, 100, 200, 500 years ago; did people (including the intelligent and educated) honestly believe in "nothing" to as great an extent that they do now? It does not seem like it from the things they wrote. I understand that we have greater knowledge about the physical world, and it may make it more difficult to conceive of anything beyond those physical limitations. Is that it, or have people changed? Or were many of them lying about believing in an afterlife the whole time? Just something to think about. Of course I'm biased. I don't want this life to be all we have. I find it easy to believe in a Creator, and even one who interacts with us and helps us with our lives; I have my greatest struggles with doubt in the area we are talking about here, possibly because I have been teaching science for too long and thinking of everything as molecules and atoms. Yet, again, this unbelief seems to have swept through our society on a large scale. It would be interesting to see if anyone else has noticed this.
The particles that comprise your body get reabsorbed back into the Earth, which then eventually converts it back to energy that will eventually form something else (molten rock, another animal, a plant, a gas, or most likely all of the above etc). Then hundreds of millions of years from now, when the Sun explodes, the Earth and the particles that comprise it (which now include your former self), will be shot back out into the galaxy, possibly creating material or life elsewhere in the galaxy. And thus continues the great eternal waltz of the cosmos.
