- Devon Gisbert
- Patchogue, NY
- United States
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What happens after we die?
People will often wonder, well what happens after we die? Everyone has asked this question at least once in their life it would be foolish to deny that. And it's funny because, well I mean it's pretty self explanatory we die, there's a big funeral (most of the time) people come and mourn over your body then they dig a hole and put you in it. We have SEEN what happens to people when they die and we can go to the nearest grave yard and have a whole post death stake-out.
But if that's the case then why is it that we ask that question? Why is it that seeing what happens after we die isn't enough for us? We know what happens after we die, yet when the philosopher, the teacher, the artist, the scientist, and the homeless man the lays there head down at night they wonder. Is this all there is, is this all I'm good for, just this life and then I vanish?
Ecclesiastes 3:11 it says "He has made everything beautiful in it's time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
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Allan Macdougall 30+
Can anybody therefore ever know what happens after death without direct experience of NDE?
A consciousness trying to fully understand itself, using only its own inherent limitations, can only get to a certain point scientifically - then it has to resort to creating metaphor (and even mythology) to help intuit the rest of it, in the absence of certainty. (Is this where God exists?)
Consciousness is beyond the kind of science that concerns itself only with the known physical world. Up to that point, we are only 'what' - not 'who'.
I think it is the understanding of our 'who' area, that is likely to enable glimpses of what happens after death.
I've quoted this before, and rather boringly, I'm going to quote it again:
"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence"
The scientist, Nikola Tesla
John Dunbar 10+
Allan Macdougall 30+
How does the mind deal with such voids of understanding?
Science will try to fill that void with facts and certainties gained via the scientific method, which by its very nature can not go very much further than the evidence it needs to support hypotheses.
Religion will try to fill the void with Gods, metaphor, mythology and the afterlife - all of which are untestable and full of uncertainties - yet provide comforting, graspable 'visuals' of what might be there for us after death. The visualising of what happens after we die - and in the absence of such certainty from science - these metaphorical thought processes are all we've got.
This doesn't have to be seen as religion getting the upper hand over science in that visualisation process. I think the whole process can be contemplated within the wider arena of psychology, which is a discipline concerned with both the physical and our perceptions of the metaphysical.
This is the point illustrated in Tesla's quote - that the physical and the non-physical have closer links with each other than we think. If the disciplines we currently have to study them could just work closer together with each other, then we might get a lot nearer to the understanding of phenomena currently out of our reach - such as what happens after we die.
John Dunbar 10+
You saying that the metaphysical thought processes are all we have got, is true.
That's why I firmly say, that I can never accept anybody's proposal of what the afterlife consists of.
All we really have, are people using brains to contemplate the unknowable. So any thought about the afterlife is going to be loaded with personal bias and human understandings.
We are always going to run into God of the gaps arguments. But what does it accomplish to deem something you don't understand, as God.
I postulate that the things we don't know or understand make for a lack of control.
By projecting a loving, caring figure, who never leaves your side, loves you eternally, and forgives you for your human faults allows for you to mentally dominate the unknown. This restores a sense of control. This control wether false, or not, pacifies anxiety.
That is my position on how the mind fills the gaps of our understandings.
I happen to think science is starting to move down the road you are referring to. Michael Persinger's God Helmet is an example of this. The helmet stimulates the right temporal lobe and induces out of body experiences.
This stuff is incredibly interesting thanks for your well thought out response
-Brian
daniel hehir 20+
A NDE is a threshold experience.. Sort of like entering a dream, but your wide awake.
As I mentioned earlier in another comment thread. Artificially induced NDE have been around for thousands of years .. Baptism was, at one point in history, an actual NDE that the initiate was actually drowned and brought back to life. The person being baptized experienced directly the other side of the threshold. This came to the point where many actually died in the process.
What the Russians have experienced in their space development program with their G machine. A sort of a giant spinning machine where the astronaut is spun around at high speed. It is reported that they too have NDE ... Some say that this is simply due to the lack of oxygen to the brain, but this is often the cause. Its not the lack of oxygen that "is" the experience. The lack of oxygen loosens the souls attachment to the physical body. Drowning people also relate such a story of seeing their whole lives pass before them...
John Dunbar 10+
Having an NDE doesn't tell you how the world really works, or what death really is.
I don't know if there is a soul or not. I have to say, when i look at the evidence for both sides i feel as though there is not a soul.
Im not quite sure how you can claim that the soul gets loosened from the physical body during an NDE. There is no evidence for this.
There are many things that people remain ignorant of during an NDE. I have never heard anyone ever talk about being able to view there own brain function.
Very rarely do you hear about an NDE that was horrifying. My guess would be, that if you have an NDE and it induces terror, you are more likely to chalk it up to brain malfunction. The stories you generally hear are very peaceful and comforting.
Like I stated before, i don't know if we have a soul, but one that is fastened to our brain and lifts off at death to recognize my dead genetic ancestors seems very implausible.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
daniel hehir 20+
Things in science are changing fast though. It's hard to forsee the future. With the technology that is available today, its not so difficult to imagine that a whole human being could be "frozen down" slowly and then reawakened. ... They are always talking about this possibility to live an extra couple of hundred years. Wake up in the year 2412 for example... Strange..
I would think that the problem of the preservation of the physical body is not much of an obstacle.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Give it 1,000 years or 10,000 and I would not be surprised if we will be able to rebuild a human from a DNA sample. Some theists reject this as it conflicts with their assumptions. There is certainly ethical and other considerations.
Perhaps in my life time we will be able to change human DNA and genes, to play with "creation"
If I can clarify. my best guess is our consciousness is due entirely to our brains. With NDE there is still some sort of intact brain, maybe damaged, maybe lack of oxygen, but still a brain. No evidence for any mind or consciousness close to a human level without a brain, or without something physical.
If NDE is an experience going on in our brain like a dream it is entirely consistent with a material view, unless the experience included some out of body experience that could be verified. Then we would have a big question.
Even freezing, or suspending life is still leaving some sort of body and brain.
If there was a way to destroy the brain, rebuild it and bring the person back to life, and the person recalled out of body experiences of the interim that could be verified, then we would be in search of a better explanation than current neuroscience etc.
Not sure is suspending the body is that easy. Guess we can slow down processes, but how avoid breakdown, rot, damage from water expanding if frozen etc. How long can the brain go without oxygen. How to stop the brain processes. etc. Interesting. Guess is we snap froze someone, they might not be revivable. I'll leave it to the experts.
I guess a lot of our current science and technology would have been science fiction even a few decades or centuries ago. Hard to believe we have only had controlled flight just over a century. My phone is more powerful than computers we had at school. Parents didn't even have calculators at school.