Another thread made me realize I think about this question more than I wish I did, but certain events in my life have captured my attention.
What do you believe happens if anything after you die? Not what is it like to die because that is another question all together. Dying is a part of life. Death is unto itself its own opposite. There just cannot be anything like it in my opinion. I'd like to believe in an afterlife and see that all this time human beings and all our civilizations weren't wrong. I do believe in fact, but I have much doubt. Maybe it's that I don't put much value into my own life and that I don't feel significant that makes me doubt. Why us? Why should we be so special as to be alone and cursed in such a way in all the universe that we have some form of knowledge? I mean what else makes me wonder about the idea of an afterlife is even if you become this great leader or person that changed the outcome of our history or helped so many our accomplishments like the physical things of this world will cease to exist when this world ends. Isn't it likely this world will follow the fate of so many other planets in other solar systems? I think it's pretty likely. But even so the fate of our history and existence more importantly is in our hands. So what happens is because of our own actions even if you believe in a higher being, which I do, having the ability to intervene in some ways. So, perhaps it is in the idea of an afterlife that we see our escape from this sometimes trivial, gruesome, and merciless life. We witnessed it early on and recognized life for what it truly was. It was about survival and everything it entailed back then, which ultimately has lead us to the present. We still have our questions, our answers, and our doubts, but life is the journey we both hide from and attempt to conquer. Some cowar before the questions and doubts and some attempt to perhaps vainly understand everything there is to know. I think it is in our finiteness that we face our dillemma. We can't see time, but recognize it universally as the idea of time. We keep track of it. We use it to record significant things, but what we don't attempt is to count down time unless it is leading up to something of importance to us. But we never like to countdown in life if it is to remind us of the ominous and imminent. We marvel at our own significance and accomplishments. It is obvious we are selfish beings. We can't help it we only know what it is to be. I am not you and you are not me. The nature of the human being is to try to understand. We have our questions, our answers, and our endless doubts, but we respond to such things through rejection, acceptance, and in those two a denial sometimes is the root of the response. But maybe it is in these types of responses that we created the idea of an afterlife. Every single culture ever has dealt with death in some form.
Maybe the idea was created as a way to deal or to keep hope of survival. I mean even my dog "understands" what it means for something to have died. The wimpers next to a dead pup can't mean something that different than what humans mean when they moarn or cry. I'll add more later. This isn't a topic anyone can close the book on especially not in one post. But what I must say is that I believe in an afterlife, but it's hard for me to. I don't see what the point of this life is without an afterlife, yet I don't see the point of this life with an afterlife. Whatever the answer is we all will find out eventually. Lately I've just thought perhaps death is like before you were born. No one can say they remember that. Then again that fashion designer claims to have been the person who broke King Tuts or one of the Egyptian Kings necks in another life and claims he saw it one night in a vision of sorts when he was a child... Anyway even if you claim something as absurd I don't believe you can recall anything years before so maybe that's what it is. Nothingness. Your energy goes back into the earth and eventually the universe. ??? One last thing for now... since it is an idea does that make it enough for us to simply apply the term reality to it and thus it is a possibility and therefore it is so because we believe in it? Or does the possibility lie in the uncertainty of it? Is it in the faith or is it the unknown? Does it exist for you because of both?
What do you believe happens if anything after you die? Not what is it like to die because that is another question all together. Dying is a part of life. Death is unto itself its own opposite. There just cannot be anything like it in my opinion. I'd like to believe in an afterlife and see that all this time human beings and all our civilizations weren't wrong. I do believe in fact, but I have much doubt. Maybe it's that I don't put much value into my own life and that I don't feel significant that makes me doubt. Why us? Why should we be so special as to be alone and cursed in such a way in all the universe that we have some form of knowledge? I mean what else makes me wonder about the idea of an afterlife is even if you become this great leader or person that changed the outcome of our history or helped so many our accomplishments like the physical things of this world will cease to exist when this world ends. Isn't it likely this world will follow the fate of so many other planets in other solar systems? I think it's pretty likely. But even so the fate of our history and existence more importantly is in our hands. So what happens is because of our own actions even if you believe in a higher being, which I do, having the ability to intervene in some ways. So, perhaps it is in the idea of an afterlife that we see our escape from this sometimes trivial, gruesome, and merciless life. We witnessed it early on and recognized life for what it truly was. It was about survival and everything it entailed back then, which ultimately has lead us to the present. We still have our questions, our answers, and our doubts, but life is the journey we both hide from and attempt to conquer. Some cowar before the questions and doubts and some attempt to perhaps vainly understand everything there is to know. I think it is in our finiteness that we face our dillemma. We can't see time, but recognize it universally as the idea of time. We keep track of it. We use it to record significant things, but what we don't attempt is to count down time unless it is leading up to something of importance to us. But we never like to countdown in life if it is to remind us of the ominous and imminent. We marvel at our own significance and accomplishments. It is obvious we are selfish beings. We can't help it we only know what it is to be. I am not you and you are not me. The nature of the human being is to try to understand. We have our questions, our answers, and our endless doubts, but we respond to such things through rejection, acceptance, and in those two a denial sometimes is the root of the response. But maybe it is in these types of responses that we created the idea of an afterlife. Every single culture ever has dealt with death in some form.
Maybe the idea was created as a way to deal or to keep hope of survival. I mean even my dog "understands" what it means for something to have died. The wimpers next to a dead pup can't mean something that different than what humans mean when they moarn or cry. I'll add more later. This isn't a topic anyone can close the book on especially not in one post. But what I must say is that I believe in an afterlife, but it's hard for me to. I don't see what the point of this life is without an afterlife, yet I don't see the point of this life with an afterlife. Whatever the answer is we all will find out eventually. Lately I've just thought perhaps death is like before you were born. No one can say they remember that. Then again that fashion designer claims to have been the person who broke King Tuts or one of the Egyptian Kings necks in another life and claims he saw it one night in a vision of sorts when he was a child... Anyway even if you claim something as absurd I don't believe you can recall anything years before so maybe that's what it is. Nothingness. Your energy goes back into the earth and eventually the universe. ??? One last thing for now... since it is an idea does that make it enough for us to simply apply the term reality to it and thus it is a possibility and therefore it is so because we believe in it? Or does the possibility lie in the uncertainty of it? Is it in the faith or is it the unknown? Does it exist for you because of both?
