Following on from the Jimmy Saville thread, I was wondering what people's thoughts are on the subject of an afterlife. I'm not religious, long ago having abandoned my strict Catholic upbringing, but I swing between thinking that when we abandon our mortal coil we disappear for eternity, and the thought that maybe our minds at least are still preserved and go off somewhere else.
You often hear of people who died for a few moments on the operating table saying how they seemed to be floating above their body and could see what was going on below. Two instances spring to mind, one person is said to have heard a voice saying "It's not your time yet, go back," and another was asked, "Well, what did you learn?".
The mind playing tricks maybe, or perhaps there is something else after all? We'll never know (or not no anything) till we expire, and then of course we can't let anyone know.
Anyone else wonder about this on a boring Sunday afternoon?
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>>our minds at least are still preserved and go off somewhere else.
It must be a damned crowded place. Not just humans, but animals (ants, fruit-flies), bacteria?
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There are authenticated cases of people who think they have had a previous existence in a different body at a different time.. Usually they can give historically accurate recollections of the era they claim to have been in
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It's the only comfort we have in a very cold and lonely universe.
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>> There are authenticated cases of people who think they have had a previous existence in
>> a different body at a different time.. Usually they can give historically accurate recollections of
>> the era they claim to have been in
I'm boggling at how they are authenticated. By other reincarnated people presumably.
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No by already known historical details recorded in documents and paintings, for example. I don't think anyone would go to the trouble to do the research and then claim to be reincarnated, there's nothing in that for them!
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>> No by already known historical details recorded in documents and paintings, for example. I don't
>> think anyone would go to the trouble to do the research and then claim to
>> be reincarnated, there's nothing in that for them!
Apart from 15 minutes of fame.
It doesn't have to be researched, it could just be something they learned and stashed away in far memory.
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15 minutes of of fame is nothing unless you are a Z list loser looking for it. What was learned just could be a product, in the far memory, from a previous existence?
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>> 15 minutes of of fame is nothing unless you are a Z list loser looking
>> for it. What was learned just could be a product, in the far memory, from
>> a previous existence?
But more probably learned in this existence.
Dont know what to make of the Z list loser remark!
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Only Z list losers have to seek fame. If a person is worth it fame will find them.
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>>. What was learned just could be a product, in the far memory, from
>> a previous existence?
A classic example of extrapolating from the existence of UFOs to spaceships.
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Kindly note the ? I asked a question and did not make a statement of fact!
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Now noted, Meldrew. I was too eager. Please accept an apology :-)
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Accepted of course. Thank you.
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>>It must be a damned crowded place. Not just humans, but animals (ants, fruit-flies), bacteria?<<
They're in spirit form silly, in the Ethernet.
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Having reached a certain age, I too have started to wonder what happens. Looked at scientifically / biologically, when you're gone, you're gone. But I'm grappling with the concept of just not being anymore - I didn't exist before birth either and certainly don't recall a pre-life.
So thats it is it ? Blood flow stops, no oxygen, brain stops - THE END !
I don't find it comforting at all.
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I have no truck with any of the god-bothering, sky-pixie, religions promoted by self interested charlatans.
When you're dead - that's it: so much insensate meat waiting to rot.
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And your soul, spirit, thoughts, being - where do they go?
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There is no soul. It's a chimera.
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>> It's a chimera.
Not really. It's not the sort of thing someone might imagine they had seen.
Soul, spirit, are constructs, very ingenious and not unreasonable in the prehistoric, perhaps even pre-human, context in which thy must first have appeared. They were needed to make some sort of sense of a nature and an inner complexity that escape precise understanding in all their fractal profusion. To explain the mysteries, for that is what they still are, of consciousness in the first place and life in general in the second.
Being a cartload of monkeys, human beings learned early to abuse mysteries and exploit the vertigo they instil into the common run of humanity.
'You're probably going to suffer torture for all eternity! Give me your money and while you're about it persecute your wife.' That sort of thing, fairy tales for gullible idiots.
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>> That sort of thing, fairy tales for gullible idiots.
It's comments like that that give atheists a bad name AC.
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>> It's comments like that that give atheists a bad name AC.
Heh heh.
Last time I allowed myself to be sucked into a religious thread here, I was attacked by all sorts of little rationalists and Dawkins groupies for being soft on superstition.
There's something really cheering about getting up noses on both sides. Suggests one might have a point somehow.
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I suppose it's possible to be a gullible non-idiot.
But perhaps the many intelligent people who are sincerely religious don't take it all entirely literally. I doubt if many vicars actually believe in God as a personality. I grew up with Quakerism - I don't think many of the Friends and attenders I know, and knew, did either.
The gullibility bit is believing in something very specific and unlikely, just to explain something we don't understand or can't adequately describe in familiar terms. An example is UFOs = flying saucers. A UFO is just a UFO. Another is paranormal events = ghosts. Why jump to the least likely conclusions to try and explain them?
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Well I'm an atheist and don't believe in all that religious stuff. But I think to class non-atheists (or the ones AC has in mind) as gullible idiots is to ignore the fact that people are different - it's like expecting my wife to choose a car mainly based on what it does and how it does it rather than how it looks; our minds work differently.
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Thanks Manatee. That is similar to the line I was taking last time when the Dawkins adolescent atheist fundamentalists were coming on at me.
Perhaps I am sometimes mistaken for one of those, but I'm not. One of my best friends and most frequent drinking companions is an academic mathematician and physicist who is a Catholic convert (from Anglicanism). Someone I've known and been close to for 55 years is a sort of old-fashioned gentlemanly intellectual Anglican. I know Muslims of similar stripe and quite a few people who won't say they don't believe in an omnipotent creator with whom we have some sort of special relationship.
These people are not gullible idiots by any stretch of the imagination. But alas, there are millions and millions of the carphounds, and clerical or pseudo-clerical toerags to exploit them. As there always have been.
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I look at it very simply.
The size of the universe suggests to me that it would be unwise to draw any lasting conclusions as we are only just exploring planets next door, so proclaiming to either know or not whether there are beings in existance that we may consider gods or god-like is a bit arrogant.
In terms of this vast universe we live in, we are a speck of dust, we dont know the half of it.
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OK Stu, you've convinced me.
I was sure I'm an atheist, but at the second coming I'm now certain I'll have been an agnostic.
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I was brought up in a Methodist household - I believe it equipped me with a properly functioning moral compass if nothing else. How people can believe in God after they witness, for example, humanity's worse excesses (thinking of my Sunday School teacher in particular who was a tankie in the war - his unit were the first into Belsen in 1945) and still believe that religion holds hope for mankind is beyond me. He's dead now and I know for a fact that he believed quite firmly in his God and that his particular Saviour didn't die in vain. He wasn't gullible or ignorant, he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Bible and ran a successful garage business (which his son still does). He was a Christian pure and simple.
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>> In terms of this vast universe we live in, we are a speck of dust
Trite but true; or as Douglas Adams wrote "The universe is big. Really big."
Perhaps what the more sensitive and spiritual humans have detected and tried to explain to themselves is just Slarty Bardfast and the Mice at work.
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Funnily enough, just now, someone on the radio was saying that there are more planets in the universe than blades of grass on this planet......
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If you have no facts, all you need is faith.
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"Civilisation" relies upon conformity. Conformity relies upon fear of retribution and/or promise of riches. All of the major religions conform to the latter. Go figure.
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As far as life after death goes, it depends how you define life,
When I go I will have left behind me memories, learned inherited and imparted behaviours in others, thoughts, writings, and physical things.
Is that life after death? A bit yes.
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As far as thoughts of a god, deity or greater being goes, its all ruined and discredited by religions.
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 30 Oct 11 at 19:56
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A lot of Pagans believe in different levels of existence, and that your spirit progressess onwards and upwards throughout time, hence life everlasting.
However, you are given only a set time on each level before you "move-on", on eack level you must pass (if you will) a residency test to prove you learnt the lessons of the last level. If you fail you are sent back, for another stint, as many times as neccassary until you pass. Hence re-incarnation.
Some spirits that are sent back can be rather disgruntled, and can let thier disgruntlement show, by causing mischief. and tommorrow night Saween, is the Pagan festival of the dead, when the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest.
Spirits, good and disgruntled can pass at will. so have your pumkin laterns on your doorsteps for protection!!!!
Last edited by: devonite on Sun 30 Oct 11 at 20:07
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I find simply turning off all lights visible from the roadside and watching TV in a back room avoids these spirits.
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It's easy to dis-credit religion on the grounds of the damage caused to its cause by various forms of organisation - but one's individual faith can be a very personal thing and one can keep clear of the organisers and their hierarchy...!
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Except when they pester for money. Obviously the established church need not - or not until they lost a packet through gambling:)
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Belief or not is a personal choice, no one has the right to ridicule, condemn or otherwise label a person because they do or do not believe in something.
Those who have belief may be wrong, or they might just be right, no one knows the answer.
My cousin is a Catholic priest, a thoroughly decent man who has done much good in his life and has brought great comfort to people at the lowest points in their lives, including me.
If he should ever be proved wrong in his passionate belief then it wouldn't make a scrap of difference he will have done his duty, his calling and he has brought peace to many who were lost at times in their lives.
If there should be no after life, would it matter so long as those who believe felt comforted by that eternal hope, and those who truly are believers helped them on their way through life's twisting path.
The alternative of there being nothing other than the material selfish me first lives of so many who believe in nothing is a cold stark concept indeed.
Stark as in no warmth from an uncaring heart, there are many who are cold.
I hope those that ridicule are not hypoctritical, a true believer would forgive them without a moments hesitation if they were.
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>> Belief or not is a personal choice, no one has the right to ridicule, condemn
>> or otherwise label a person because they do or do not believe in something.
Well..
If someone has the right to promulgate their beliefs, someone else has the right to promulgate a different, perhaps contradictory point of view.
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>> If someone has the right to promulgate their beliefs, someone else has the right to
>> promulgate a different, perhaps contradictory point of view.
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Couldn't agree more Duncan, if someone who believes is trying to convince you that their belief is right, whilst you have a belief or non belief which you think is right, you have every right to give a different point of view.
Most people who have beliefs go about their normal lives without discussing such things aloud, and you'd never be any the wiser, they don't spend time trying to convert anyone else.
They may at certain times of the day take time to worship, they may one or more days of the week or at certain special times of the year go to a place of their choosing to worship, they may well go with others like minded.
Each to their own, all our views are equally important.
It would be unjust and unnecessary to ridicule beliefs that they keep inside.
It would be equally unjust for someone who has belief to ridicule someone who doesn't.
I suppose i just want a little respect and tolerance of each other so long as we do no other any harm, even if we find others personal beliefs a bit strange, the problem i have is that some who have no belief will ridicule those who do, whilst it isn't usually the case the other way round.
I don't agree with people who have certain beliefs knocking on people's doors trying to get them to discuss something they may have no interest in, but then i believe a persons home is their castle anyway.
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Anybody has a right to ridicule or condemn any belief. If a religion or a belief is so fundamentally week that it has to receive preferential treatment and be above criticism by other that surely displays its weakness.
Mocking someones religion or beliefs might be be ill mannered but there are all sort of beliefs in this world that could do with some mockery especially when they affect the lives of others.
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I'm glad you said that CGN. I couldn't quite find a way to put it that didn't sound offensive.
There are plenty of sincerely held beliefs that thoroughly deserve to be heaped with ridicule*, though I don't extend that to religious beliefs, which usually have a complex basis and can't always be expressed easily.
Put another way, some of my best friends are religious ;-)
*you could start with sincere Nazis, to instance an extreme.
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As I said in the OP I lost my religious beliefs a long time ago, but when my mum was dying I envied her the comfort she got from the certainty that she was on her way to meet all her old family and friends and that the rest of us would be there to join her in time.
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You remind me of grandfather's death, he was Royal Field Artillery in the first war, and was convinced on his death bed he was seeing the horses and donkeys he served with in the war on a mountainside he was climbing.
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Ooooh, there's no point in any of it if we don't live and learn is there?
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Spirals of DNA moving from generation to generation.
The vessel (life) is irrelevant, be it animal, vegetable, or micro-organism.
There's an inherent beauty in the cold, hard, bleak reality of what life is, was, and will always be due to.
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My Father died when I was 9 years old and on the night of the burial there were a crowd of us sitting in the lounge discussing his death late into the night when someone noticed that the old Napoleon Hat (style) clock had stopped at exactly 11.45pm
The following night the clock stopped again at precisely 11.45pm
This went on for 5 nights (11.45am it was perfectly OK) and on the 5th night we were all sitting around waiting for 11.45pm, the old heavy black door knocker knocked and the clock kept going, never stopping at 11.45pm again.
I (and others) have always seen that as my Father saying goodbye.
I have over the years been to spiritualist churches on more-than 3 occasions and have been told things that no one could possibly have known, or guessed about me or my life,
When we lived in Hastings, I had a retired accountant to look (cook) after my books and save me a lot of money, he was in his 70’s and was at Arnhem in 44, he was also a Medium, as was his wife, he once explained to me how they could go into an old property and ‘pick up’ on the people that had lived (and died) there in the past, he explained to me how it was as if the very fabric of the dwelling held a sort-of recording of the previous lives, much like magnetic vcr/cassette tape.
He never charged anyone for any ‘readings’ he gave, and said that anyone who does is a charlatan, he told me about many quite famous so-called Mediums, that were fake,
My German g/f Margo used to go to a spiritualist church here in Cornwall (Camelford) every Sunday, some of the things she was told, about events and people long, long ago in Germany they simply could-not have known about, or guessed,
I met a chap up on Bodmin Moor who had had an out-of-body-experience, he explained to me in-detail the exact modus operandi of the event, how he left his body, floated high above his bed looking down upon (what was) himself, and then returning,
I have read accounts from people, some quite famous like Liz Taylor, who have had these out-of-body-experiences, I have also read the Egyptian book of the dead, and the Tibetian book of the dead, and the autobiography of a yogi by Paramahansa Yoganada ~ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramahansa_Yogananda + many others on the same theme,
I do believe that we survive bodily death and although I don’t subscribe to any man-made religion, I would recommend getting to know Jesus, what he stood for, what he taught, it wouldn’t be a bad idea (for us) if our leaders did the same.
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Deep thought provoking post there D, thankyou.
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would recommend getting to know Jesus, what he stood for, what he taught, it wouldn’t be a bad idea (for us) if our leaders did the same.
Spot on Dog - And I'm an agnostic.
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Good read Dog.Agree about the man made religion,go to church on a sunday and hurt somebody on a monday.
If anybody can explain a spiritual divine that means they don't understand it.Don't know where I got that from double dutch.;>)
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Near death experiences from people who have an idea what a near death experience should be isn't going to be any clue. You need descriptions from people who can't read or write or have never heard what should happen.
How do we know we're alive an not a figment of someone else's imagination anyway? Solid objects aren't solid. How do tables know they are tables and keep themselves together?
Lyle Watson had this idea that machines also had some kind of consciousness which is why you get temperamental machines!
Our brains aren't entirely sure about the difference between imagination and reality anyway. There were some tests showing brain activity about flexing certain muscles. The same areas lit up whether you actually flexed those muscles or whether you just thought about doing it.
If none of us exist anyway then there is no death :)
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>>Lyle Watson had this idea that machines also had some kind of consciousness which is why you get temperamental machines!<<
They are made of stardust just like us, so why shouldn't they.
My German friend would always thank her Benz for a safe journey, and greet it in the morning,
very spiritual person she was, reckons she could hear the grass grow!
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>>Lyle Watson had this idea that machines also had some kind of consciousness which is why you get temperamental machines!<<
At last a reason why my office photocopier would only fail when I went near it!
Maybe it recognised that there was an error in what I was about to to copy and was trying to prevent further problems for me. I had always said that the only way to find mistakes was to make multiple copies - the mistake would then stand out on the first page, invariably in a lift on the way to a meeting:)!
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Copiers and printers are fitted with stress detectors. As you approach the machine, it detects your level of stress with respect to time of day, urgency of job, etc etc. High stress levels induce the various functions, toner blobbing/streaks/creasing/jamming/
The stress is constantly evaluated, and if levels peak high enough, will induce the ultimate function. Complete destruction of the source material. I used to service one model that the ability to make your source material disappear, and one that frequently turned your output into a flaming smoking funeral pyre.
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"Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.”
www.palmyria.co.uk/humour/ipu.htm
Last edited by: VxFan on Mon 31 Oct 11 at 10:14
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>>one that frequently turned your output into a flaming smoking funeral pyre<<<
and I thought that was because the inside was full of light bulbs ;)
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actually it was, AND a two bar electric fire.
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Is it only me who sees an advert for meditation below this thread?
Perhaps we can all find the answer there....altogether now!
Pat
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>> Is it only me who sees an advert for meditation below this thread?
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No, i can see it too, and t'other day there was a rack of young females up for dating above, you know the sort, look as if they couldn't pull a bloke in a million years, the ones that are gagging presumably, maybe the same half dressed ones desperate to text talk with me during the interval in a late night film.
i'm being more than a bit sarky here, these ads are starting to get on my nerves..;)
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>> >> Is it only me who sees an advert for meditation below this thread?
>> >>
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>> No, i can see it too,
I saw it coming three days ago.
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I read earlier that Steve Jobs' last words were 'oh wow, oh wow, oh wow'.
I wonder what they had pumped into him?
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>>I wonder what they had pumped into him?
He probably just realised that it wasn`t his Apple-Mac that was crashing but himself!
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Or it's 'oh ow, oh ow, oh ow' and he was just misheard. Seems more likely to me!
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The best last words I think were:
"It's all been such tremendous fun".
That would be my aim in life if I didn't have the depressed bits, but I try to make life fun.
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Life After Death - bathtub tom
