What happens when we die ? views on Life after Death

No one knows, i think the whole idea of heaven and being able to do what we want etc is a nice idea, but personally i think when we're dead thats it, it's just like a very very long sleep that we are unaware of

What happens when we die ?
Views on Life after Death (LAD)

We can't ever know in this life so the possibilities are endless. Let your imagination run wild - you can't be wrong.

My logical sense thinks we just die and rot away etc but that is only a minute aspect of my overall view. I think LAD is possible .

One another thing - do you believe in the soul, if so what does it mean to you? In language people assume we have souls is this metaphorical or have any fundamental literal basis? e.g soul mates

To be honest, on the contrary I'm finding that the older I'm getting, the more scared I'm becoming. Time is going by so quickly and I'm acutely aware that even as the past 5 years seems to have flown by in a blink, so too will the next few decades, and before I know it I'll be on death's doorstep.

Also - I have already been 'capable of successful reproduction'. I have four lovely children. It doesn't help though. To make matters worse, my 8 year old daughter has started to speak of her fears of dying as well, which doesn't help me at all. I have to sit there and try to reassure her and quell her fears, when all the while my own fears about dying are so strong.

Personally, I find the fear of death to be completely irrational. For a fear of something to be rationally justified, the thing which is feared must be negative. But the state of being dead is the absence of any kind of experience at all, positive or negative. So death is thus, by definition, neutral. Fearing a state of neutrality makes no sense at all. The process of dying, however, is another matter altogether.

I should have been more explicit - the instinct which encourages you to stay alive (i.e. fear death) is going to have been driven by the evolutionary force related to the successful reproduction and upbringing of your offspring, so give it time. Otherwise I'd say try not to worry about something you have no control over; your death is a certainty as soon as you're born.

What happens when we die ?
Views on Life after Death (LAD)

We can't ever know in this life so the possibilities are endless. Let your imagination run wild - you can't be wrong.

Personally, I find the fear of death to be completely irrational. For a fear of something to be rationally justified, the thing which is feared must be negative. But the state of being dead is the absence of any kind of experience at all, positive or negative. So death is thus, by definition, neutral. Fearing a state of neutrality makes no sense at all. The process of dying, however, is another matter altogether.

Well I hope you're right, and that I do make my peace with it. Otherwise I'm going to reach my 70s and start turning into a nervous wreck!

The Qur'an has already established the answer to this question.

/thread.

It is a bit irrational I suppose, but then again so is a fear of *insert random phobia here* - non poisonous spiders/snakes, mice, small spaces etc.
At least those things are the *known* enemies. Death is so alien it's unreal. Nobody really knows what happens afterwards. We can speculate, and say there's nothing, or there's an afterlife, but we don't know for sure, how on earth could we?
I am quite happy being me, I don't want to stop being me and be nothing. I don't want there to be nothing. Of course when I die, if there's nothing I won't know about it anyway, rationally I realise that, but I still don't want to stop being me and be nothing.
Knowing that one day my life will end is a terrifying prospect.

I can no more explain it to you, than anybody else with a phobia could explain why it makes them scared.
Somebody with a fear of mice would say "I'm scared of their paws, their whiskers, their nose, the way they run," but somebody else would say "yeah but...those things aren't scary."
It just is what it is.

Well firstly, with regard to your comment that "nobody really knows what happens afterwards", I personally do not accept this. We know from observing the results of phenomena like brain trauma, Alzheimer's disease and Capgrass syndrome that structural damage to the brain can completely alter an individual's perception, personality and entirely erase a lifetimes worth of memories. Every aspect that defines a person can be changed by structural alterations to the brain. This, to me, provides incontrovertable evidence that a person is merely a product of the physical structure of their brain and the sum total of the electrical activity that occurs therein. If the structure breaks down and/or the electrical activity ceases then the person is destroyed. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that there's anything more to a human being than this. All notions of an afterlife are utterly baseless fabrications.

In any case, I do not dispute that some people can experience irrational fears, the very definition of a phobia is precisely that. My point was only that a fear of death is irrational, and that consequently, as a vehemently rational person, I personally see no reason at all to be afraid of death. I also share the sentiment expressed above by Joseon that living forever is a far more terrifying prospect. In such a scenario one would experience an infinite amount of pain, sorrow, loss and suffering in an endless unyielding torment. This is something that would truly justify terror.

im gonna throw this one out there!

i know and truly believe that some big bloke will get us and take us to a carvery for a slap up meal, then he will laugh at our faces and throw a golf ball at several humans including your loved ones, be aware

lets get #beaware trending worldwide so everyone knows this story

Wow aren't you just a bucket load of comfort.

I am the kind of person who prefers truth to fallacy no matter how unnerving the truth or comforting the fallacy. There are, however, aspects of reality in which somebody scared of death might take solace. For example, death can be thought of, from a subjective point of view, as nothing more than an abstract construct of consciousness based upon the erroneous concept of linear time.

The notion of time as a linear sequence of events, the so called 'arrow of time', is merely an illusion derrived from the limitations of our perception. There is no intrinsic distinction between past, present and future; all times are equally as 'real'. Experimentally verified phenomena like time dilation show how conscious beings in motion and separated by large distances cannot even agree upon what's said to be occuring 'now'. At the speed of light time ceases to exist at all. Thus, to a photon 'now' lasts forever and it occupies all it's positions in space simultaneously. Concepts like birth and death are thus products of linear time, and since linear time is just mental construct, so too are birth and death.