Would you prefer an afterlife, nothingness, or reincarnation after death?

YOLO is an excuse for stupid people to act stupid. It's as old as humanity itself.

You can YOLO perfectly within reason while devoting yourself to HIM and an enviable position in the afterlife. Even if you don't believe in Christ, the payoff of living a life with a certain moral fabric almost always shows itself to you within one lifetime.

 

That is a very narrow way of viewing things. An afterlife doesn't conflict or disprove science or vice versa because that isn't a scientific question. If there is such a thing as a soul, if we go to heaven or are reincarnated can't be proven or disproven scientifically. The most science can be is neutral on the issue.

 

Without time from a perceptual standpoint that would be nothingness. The only way we are aware of existence is passage of time and being able To compare one moment from the last even if it as simple as breathing in and breathing out.

Heaven could be something that is beyond human understanding of existence but then we have no way of judging it and wether we should choose it in the here and now.

 

I don't think timelessness equals nothingness. it doesn't fit our definitions of life or living, but so doesn't a rock or star, which to us seems eternal inside our monkey minds.

In the most literal sense, I've interpreted nirvana as death. After all, once you leave everything behind and breathe that last breath, there are no guarantees of transcendence, only of letting go plus a mastery over mind and body that could imply a zero point mastery over time.

As for the debate about the struggle or journey, I think Heaven is a construct where the universe reimagines itself while disseminating personal experiences. As we're made from dead stars and galaxies, the living is an observer of the infinite.

The question from that idea then becomes what does that make the conscious nature of the living where said struggles in limited resources and our insatiable desire to better ourselves over others for prestige and recognition runs counter to the globally held beliefs of love and altruism? How much of that struggle beyond food and survival (sport, competition, game, entertainment) is really necessary?

That manufactured struggle is necessary enough to stake our limited time, lives, and our precious drive on it. Yet a rich man enters the after life the same as the poor. So will ten time sport champions or expert game hunters.

To choose nothingness means that one possibly has lived life the most they can or one has conceded some ground to our gestalt perception of reality.

I feel or wish there's a heaven as a possibility for something more to discover or unveil. Without the limitations of a body, what becomes of our personality and our human quirks? Perhaps that state is so sterile that the "me" everyone knows of right now doesn't exist regardless of "nothingness" or "everythingness". So why am I vested in preserving my memories and experiences?

I'll put that on the back burner when I'm on my deathbed.

 

Just saw this last week and I am blown away. If interested, check out the interview about the "Future of the mind" at 12:50 mark.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/tue-february-25-2014-michio-kaku?xrs=share_copy

 

At no cost? Yes, I could ... but that's not what I believe you were implying.

 

I know what I wouldn't prefer, nothingness.

To just die. And that be it? We struggle on this planet for 80 years or so, or less for many, and we just disappear? God, I hope not.

I'm not sure what I'd prefer or what I even believe in. I was raised Catholic. I consider myself a Christian. I believe in Jesus. I think we got a lot wrong, so I guess I'm like an outcast Christian, I believe in the essential stuff, but believe the Bible is full of a lot of crap, as it was written by man....anyways my point is that I grew up believing in heaven and hell and I still do to a point, hooooowever....

My mother and I both believe in reincarnation. I should say that SHE believes in it, I think it's possible and would still allow for a "heaven."

I kind of view death as a stage, we all go through stages, each stage is a new life (reincarnation), we learn things during these stages that eventually makes our souls "complete," where they move on to "heaven." I think that there are "levels" of some sort. I am not sure if humans are on the top or the bottom tbh, but he all progress up (or down for the evil) until we have hit some point...maybe a level (a butterfly or something) or we've "collected" enough "points/rewards."

But in the end, as you said, we just can't KNOW. We can only have faith that what we believe is true. Faith, hope, whatever.

 

I get an overwhelming sense of deprivation just reading this post....

 

You can just as easily have that peace in reflecting on the life you experienced with the time you had, knowing it was an incredible journey, hell of a ride, etc... and you lived a life as full as you possibly could....

Whether there's an afterlife or nothingness... your emotional attachments to people in your life go with you... There's no need for interpersonal reunions in death to have such peace in death...

Aside from the fun you had, and the people you met... think of all the marvels of the universe/existence that have amazed you... moved you... inspired you.... that you've been fortunate to be consciously aware of, and applied such personal precious human meaning to... to essentially have been a conscious extension of the universe/existence... How incredible is that...? There's absolutely no need for paradise after death.... you've already experienced it...

 

I used to have active study over this ten years ago. It's too bad I haven't put any use of it lately... If you've ever seen Ghost in the Shell (movie/series), the idea to download memories and consciousness seems farfetched, but the progress neuroscientists will make in the next 20-30 years will overshadow in scope to what bio-ethicists are fearing with cloning and cell augmentation.

What does that mean to me personally? Ghost in the Shell poses interesting questions about the barriers of cyber-organic life. What perhaps constitutes as 'self' or our identity is an amalgam of both our consciousness and the medium it exists inside. If water is our consciousness then our bodies could be a teacup, a kettle, or a giant ass bong. As our bodies age and change, we're constantly left in a paradox-like state where other people may know us more than we'll ever know ourselves (a different kind of Uncertainty Principle...).

Our physical shape and spiritual form constitutes what we are, so if our memories become digitized onto a CD, is that best seller really an identity of someone or rather a virus waiting to infect and rewrite its host into something else, a being neither like the source nor its destination?

With the current topic of Heaven and the analog-afterlife, what happens when discussion converges with the digital can be a trippy thought-experiment.

 

So one could probably infer from my replies here here that I could think the afterlife as some eternal memorial or epitaph, since without a body, it exists in a permanent and intangible state. As it is permanent and possibly unchanging, whatever that form 'is' could grasp the entire definition of itself (no growth,death or decay). It therefore then becomes a snapshot rather than a continued existence of what it once was when it had a body.

This idea also leaves out a Buddhist concept of living through several different consciousness within a life time. The you that existed 15 years ago could very well be a different person with only your memories as a tether. How that reconciles with Western concepts and notions of the afterlife seem mutually exclusive.

In these cases, I prefer wishful thinking rather than abstract hypothetical thought experiments.



...But if there were ever enough interest, the implications of what Michio Kaku is saying is a pretty cool topic. It plays with different aspects but most importantly allows scientific reproducibility on experimenting with the undying question of free will, let alone Christian concepts of the soul and afterlife.

 

Nothingness, in the poll, sounds so...empty. lol.

 

Sounds natural... you die... you cease to exist... 1-1=0... It also makes living even more exceptionally precious...

 

Are you speaking scientifically... where matter and energy simply do not decay... or are you speaking supernaturally... where energy is conscious and self-aware...?

my question is... why should science even care about religious/philosophical abstract concepts when approaching/addressing/treating the topic...? What exactly is their great insight that we give credence by making it part of the equation...? Unless, I'm wrong, and this isn't at all what your concluding remark implies....

 

I would argue that it makes it exceptionally pointless.

 

Of course, because obviously from your "logical" perspective.... we live simply to return to our non-corporeal state of existence... so you're well within right and reason to make arguments in favor of a existential point......

 

important correction^

 

There isn't much scientific basis for my wistful ramblings about the afterlife.

Science is mainly a tool used to answer our questions, fears, and curiosities. Old rich people hate dying. Therefore they pour money into science and research to stay alive longer.

That I could possibly live in a lifetime where I impart my consciousness into a magic vial doesn't answer the original questions we've asked since we've lived in the stone age...Determinism vs NonDeterminism, what a soul is (which a neuroscientist would not seriously consider it as being independent from the body), or even what's going on during that gap in between your sleep/coma/cryogenic hibernation. But it could possibly cheapen the meaning behind those analog questions and mislead with different conclusions.

Hopefully, I'm not being vague. Too sleepy...

 

So this life is pointless if there isn't a grand reward at the end? That seems pretty shallow.

 

YOLO could be interpreted as the complete opposite as well. Since "You Only Live Once", wouldn't you want to make sure you avoid any situations in which death is a remote outcome? It's not like a video game where you can push the "Reset" button.