The Imperfect Community

Jessica · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:03 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

I was just curious about what everybody thinks about what happens to them when they die. I am honestly not trying to start a big debate or flame war over Christianity, I'm sincerely curious...

Why and how do each of you believe we came to be? How did the world start and what got the first living thing in motion and how did the universe begin. There had to be a starting point, right?

And, what happens to us when we die?

I can't wait to hear all the answers! This should prove to be very enlightening and interesting!!

prescott · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:14 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

I dunno, like worms and junk...

Rebecca_R · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 1:27 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

Mine's pretty lame and unexciting. I think we are nothing when we die. I believe the mind and body go together as one, and there is no great life afterwards that we go to. Why do I think this? Anything religion has come up with is theory and hard for me to beleive. Anyone can say anything really, one theory is not proven more than another.
If you get drunk does your mind not go with it? If you get put under for surgery do you have a higher state of consciousness. If you pass out, can you come out of your body and see yourself? No. The brain is very interesting, people who become vegetables have lowered brain function, and therefore they cannot see, think or feel on the same level as someone like me. (pls do not mistake that to me I think they do not see, think or feel at all) But I'm just saying, once your body goes, your mind goes with it.

Rebecca_R · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 1:30 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

Oh, and another thing MIke and I were actually talking about the other day. It is had to do with brain injury and surgeries, stuff like that. They used to use brain splitting as psychiatric surgery. Cutting of the corpus callosum created completely different personalities in people than they were before. Instead of being crazy, or manic, people became calm and lethargic. I believe our brain controls everything we see think or feel (like I said in previous post) and without it we are nothing.

Scout · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:02 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

I'm pretty much buying evolution as how we came to be. I'm sure they're not right about every single detail, but on the whole it seems like a sound theory to me.

I'm not sure what I think about death. I really like the transcendentalist view, with the "oversoul" and all that. Basically, it's like this: there is a pool of "energy" (for lack of a less hippy-ish word, lol) that exists. It has been contributed to by every person who has ever lived, in both good and bad ways. Picture it as the ocean. When you're born, your tiny portion of that energy is like a few ounces of the ocean being scooped into a glass. What you do, how you live, affects the contents of the glass (basically this is the same as karma). When you die, your few ounces get poured back into the ocean, to be drawn on by the people who come after you. In this way, humanity has a kind of shared spirit and unconscious "memory." I think that's a nice way of thinking about it. Really it's just another way of saying that even though you cease to be you when you die, the things you did in your lifetime have an effect on future lives.

I also find the Buddhist idea of reincarnation to feel somewhat logical to me. It's really not what most westerners think of. It's very similar to what I described above. They don't believe that an in-tact soul travels from one body to the next. Good karma ges one way, bad karma goes another.

new053105 · Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:21 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

I believe in the standard Christian model, that we go to Heaven and it's a really cool place and we are with God.

OTOH, I don't know if I quite believe in Hell that's designed for bad people or people who do not accept Jesus as their savior. I would like to think really awful people who were not nice to others just go in a dark black place to think about how they were or something. I don't know, but I don't like to think there's a Hell w/fire and brimstone.

I also don't accept that people who have grown up in cultures that are not Christian automatically go to Hell. I just can't accept that notion at all.

Becky - I have heard some nurses do believe in an afterlife, because they have witnessed people dying. When my grandpa was dying of cancer, he saw his mom and his father telling him it was okay to let go and die.

Rebecca_R

Anthromomma · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:58 am Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

I was composing a lengthy reply in my head as I was reading this thread, but I can basically sum up by saying "What Scout said." My chosen field is anthropology, so that pretty much puts me in the evolution camp, and I would also consider myself to be on the Eightfold Path

Jessica

Jessica

Jessica · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:13 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

The reason I'm curious about what you all think is because something one of the family members of the dead coalminers in WV wrote on their memorial really got me thinking, it read, "Enjoy heaven until we get there."

I started thinking about this whole idea of heaven of what it means. There are only two things that can possibly happen to us when we die -- we either turn into dust and nothing happens and there is absolutely zero significance to our lives and zero reason for our being here and we never see our family members; children, parents, friends ever again, or we are reunited with them in paradise.

I started thinking about the complexities of how the world works and how we, as human beings, work in it. How everything affects something else, how every minute living create; a bug, a plant, dust mites all are co-dependent. Yes, evolution explains the enormity of the complexity in which it all works, but it doesn't explain the how or why it began or what happens to all of it when a living thing dies.

MainstreamMom · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:26 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

I'm not an overly religious person but I was raised to believe the traditional Catholic views that we were created by God and reproduced through Adam and Eve. But I don't particularly "buy" that theory. I do, however, buy into an afterlife and the fact that we have a reason and purpose for being on earth. I do believe in a higher power (I'll define it as God for me but it can be different things for different people).

I have a very hard time with the whole concept of death and heaven, hell etc. until I read a book given to me by a religious relative. I have to admit, I thought it was hokey and that I'd hate it but I ended up absolutely loving and more importantly, identifying with most of it. It's called Embraced By the Light http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553565915/qid=1137525654/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-3890833-3822551?s=books&v=glance&n=283155.

Another book I thought was good was "The Five People You Meet in Heaven."

MainstreamMom · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:29 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

Oh and wanted to add that I fully 100% believe that I will see my brother again in Heaven.

Scout · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:44 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

Petulant Pixie · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 2:43 pm Post subject: What happens to us when we die?

I dunno. I really want to believe in the whole Christian heaven thing. I really want to think that there is ultimate paradise after life on earth, where everyone you ever loved is there (as long as they weren't ax murderers or something) and that all is good.

But...I'm in the middle of a faith crisis right now, so I don't know. This faith thing has been a couple of years, brewing, but where my head is right now (not only on the heaven thing) is: We say God is all good--but who's word do we have on that??? His? What if he's lying. What if He's all, "Oh, yeah, sure, I'm all good. ALLLLL GOOOOOOD, there, he he, now do what I say."

I absolutely believe in a God, a creator, a large and powerful force that started this whole thing. I believe in God because I believe in the devil. I have no doubts that there is a force of evil and that there is a head of that. Therefore I have to believe in a God, too.

But, as Mike and I were discussing recently, maybe they're not different things. This isn't new theology, the idea that God/Satan are the same has been around forever. That the creator of the world really did make us in His own image--which means that we, and He, have both good sides and bad sides and it's us who divided that force into good and evil, and because He's really NOT all good, He has the capacity to lie and mislead and He just never changed our minds on it.

Another big theory is that God started out all good, but by making the world, which is imperfect (by His design--to encorporate free will into it) He had to allow Himself to become imperfect.

I don't know. All I know is that if God is all good and He created this world and humans in it, and allowed free will, hoping against hope that we'd make good choices and please Him, then he fucked up. He created a species that is never satisfied no matter how good we have it--he MADE us that way, and then He blames and punishes us forever because Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Well, what the hell did He think was going to happen? He should have made more complacent people. He's God, he made that choice. So, now, we all live a life guaranteed to be full of suffering.

Those are the three promises He's made--the first is that life will be full of suffering. But, life is IT, it's the bees knees, only He can give it and only He can take it away and it's the most precious thing there is. So, built into the most prized thing--life--is suffering, because we fear our own deaths and we miss those who have died before us.

But, the second promise is that we will have eternal life with Him, if He decides, on an individual basis, we deserve it. He set the bar for the rules so high, we can't possibly achieve it, so He gave us a loophole--forgiveness. We ask, He'll forgive. Now, if you're Catholic, you also have to try to "make pennance" for your sins along the way. They've come up with their own ideas of what that is, but who knows really...is it saying the Our Father fifteen times? Does that do it? Or do you have to pluck your eye out? Really, there aren't clear answers. So, we can hope that we're good enough and we can hope that those we love have been good enough and maybe we'll get to see them someday, and won't that be a hoot?

The third promise that God makes is that one day...maybe tomorrow, maybe a million years from now, He's gonna close shop. Just send his kid back down to get "the good ones" and torch the rest of it. He loves us so much and He loves the earth, His creation so much that He's already got it planned, one day, He'll just say enough is enough and be done with the whole hairy business of it. Or so He says, if He's not lying.

I know, a lot of what I said is blasphemous, and I intend to go to confession before my surgery to be good and forgiven for it all, lol, but I'm just having a hard time with all the suffering lately. Not just mine...not just people! I watched fucking March of the Penguins a while ago, and what the fuck? What the hell did the penguins do to deserve that life? Holy shit. I hope they have a heaven, I seriously do!