Where do they go?

[uscitizen]

I have been promised a great place with my father, I don't care what you do with my body.

It is better to live my life as if there were a God and die and find out there isn't than to live as if there were no God and die and find out there is.

Think about it.

Not for me. I lived a good life and treated people well. I pretty much always lived by the golden rule. No major sins.
But to follow a religion out of fear of burning in a hell that cannot even be proven to exist.
And all the contradictions in a single religion. This bunch is buring in hell becuse of drinking , gambling, dancing, blood transfusions.

Sorry but I dance to my own tune and am a puppet for no one.
If there is a hell and I wind up there that will be the way it is.

 

[Ringel05]

I'd like to know where dead people go when they die...

No, no you don't. You just want yet another useless argument.

Not everything is an argument...

True, but with Ravi one can never be sure......

 

[uscitizen]

No, no you don't. You just want yet another useless argument.

Not everything is an argument...

True, but with Ravi one can never be sure......

You sure you are not thinking of Xotoxi?

 

[Ringel05]

Not everything is an argument...

True, but with Ravi one can never be sure......

You sure you are not thinking of Xotoxi?

In that case...... both.....

 

[westwall]

I'd like to know where dead people go when they die...

No, no you don't. You just want yet another useless argument.

Nope I think you are wrong and Ravi is really wondering.
Of course this has been a primary question of mankind every since they could conceive death.
And has also been the root of a multitude of religions. Christianity being only the latest and by no means the longest one.

Islam is 600 years younger than Christianity, and I still say Ravi is trolling.

 

[uscitizen]

No, no you don't. You just want yet another useless argument.

Nope I think you are wrong and Ravi is really wondering.
Of course this has been a primary question of mankind every since they could conceive death.
And has also been the root of a multitude of religions. Christianity being only the latest and by no means the longest one.

Islam is 600 years younger than Christianity, and I still say Ravi is trolling.

Who said anything about Islam?
And the gospels of the new testament cannot be proven to be any younger than several hundred AD.
But in any case I was thinking of the Mayans, Egyptians, Chinese, Greek, Norse, etc religions.
there were many other religions that predate both Christianity and Islam.
And some of them still exist.

 

[Mr. H.]

I belive in the dreams and visions that I've had of my afterlife. It's good. I welcome it.

 

[Ravi]

Thanks all for your answers...even the non-serious ones.

I like Sheldon's idea the best, which is basically reincarnation...it would just be nice to know that people don't just stop existing because their body is no longer alive.

 

[Sarah G]

Thanks all for your answers...even the non-serious ones.

I like Sheldon's idea the best, which is basically reincarnation...it would just be nice to know that people don't just stop existing because their body is no longer alive.

I like that one too.

 

[Mini 14]

Is it interesting to anyone other than me that there never seem to be people who have had "near-death experiences" who wake up and tell us:

"Nothing.....just nothing. I wasn't aware of anything, and nothing happened at all."

Nope.

They ALL have a story.

Either the true "near-death experiences" are not anything near death (even though there is clinical evidence of death in many of those cases), or there really is something going on after your heart stops beating.

I guess not?

 

[Ravi]

But is the energy of the mind/soul separate from the biological part?

The spiritual goes beyond the physical..

There seems to be some evidence, based on the testimony of those who have seen and talked with the physically 'dead', that we know each other in our spiritual bodies and that we are ourselves in our spiritual bodies. So I think the spirit of course is involved in our identities produced by our minds but is not bound by it. So the mentally damaged or disturbed or other anomalies that may plague us in mortal form do not continue into a different life as our spiritual selves.

This is an interesting concept. I never bought into the heaven story simply because if I manage to get there it is certain not everyone I care for will also get there...obviously I cannot control the behavior of friends and family. Therefore, I would be punished by the lack of ever seeing them again.

But your explanation, if carried to cover all human failings would mean everyone got to go to heaven.

Then again, that would kind of kill the notion of free will.

 

[sitarro]

I had a very vivid dream a few weeks before my Mother died, my Father had died 6 years before(they were married 57 years). The dream started with an extremely bright light to my right where I saw an old woman with a cane walking towards me. As she progressed her cane disappeared and she became younger and younger until she was in her twenties. She was smiling and stunningly beautiful, my Mother in her twenties. She wasn't looking at me, she was looking to my left. I turned to see my Father, in his twenties, wearing his Army Air Corps dress uniform and holding flowers. Behind him were all of my deceased relatives, all young and yet I recognized them even though I didn't know them at that age........ all smiling at my Mother. I woke up and was amazed at how well I remembered this dream, I rarely remember dreams in that type of detail.

My Mother was gone 2 weeks later and very few tears were shed at her funeral, we were all sure that she was back with my Father. It really didn't hit me until I thought about her Chicken Fricassee a couple of weeks later and how I would never have the pleasure of tasting it or any of the other wonderful dishes she served us for over 50 years, I pictured her in my mind answering her door and lost it. It has been almost 2 years and I still think of them both a great deal but it doesn't physically hurt as much.

By the way, I'm not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination but there were numerous things that happened around her death that can't be explained. As a designer I think that the idea that all this perfectly designed natural world around us, the shear magnitude and complexity of those designs, both in animal and plant life, couldn't possibly be a wonderful accident.

 

[editec]

Where do the waves in the ocean go, Ravi?

Wait, that is not as much a goofy philosophically question as it appears at first blush.

String theory suggests that everything is really a wave (a structure of energy) passing through the content of space/time.

Now, you probably know that you are not the same collection of atoms you were seven years ago, right?

You know that you body (your wave if you will) has sluffed off old atoms and replaced them with new atoms, right?

So...where is that person you were seven years ago? You're still here, right?

You were and are that resonance (that wave, that string, that soul or call it what you will), not those specific atoms.

And, if you subscribe to the theory that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, then the wave that you are today, is indestructable.

However, it (like energy) is NOTnecessarily unmutable.

Its energy must either go into something(s) else or someplace(s), else.

So the question is what is that something/place? Is there sentience after death and will your wave recognize itself as being YOU when it has moved on?

Now that, nobody knows.

Personally I rather doubt that the ego survives death, but I am convinced (faith) that the energy force that made you what you (the whole you...not just the ego) are does move on.

So I don't know where egos go when the bodies they inhabited die.

I don't know if your ego survives intact.

I rather doubt it, actually.

Your ego is a rather small part of who you are, anyway. It is a construct of your entire mind, sort of like an operating system in a very grand computer.

Ego is NOT the sum total of the data that make you who your are, thought, not by a long shot. Your subconscious is another (and much larger and powerful) part of who you are. In fact mostly your ego is doing your subconsciousness' bidding. After you arrive at a decision, THEN your ego invents rationalizations for why you chose what you chose.

But I do think that that your life force (that wave's existence in time/space)has to go somewhere.

Either it, like an ocean wave's energy, gets distributed throughout the time/space ocean, or perhaps (and just perhaps) the wave stays intact and finds existence in an ocean of time/space being that, as yet, we can know nothing about.

That's not a very satisfying answer, is it?

Okay, let me simplify and perhaps you can find some solace in this.

Nothing gets created, not gets destroyed, but everything CHANGES.

 

[syrenn]

Its alright Ravi.

 

[Foxfyre]

The spiritual goes beyond the physical..

There seems to be some evidence, based on the testimony of those who have seen and talked with the physically 'dead', that we know each other in our spiritual bodies and that we are ourselves in our spiritual bodies. So I think the spirit of course is involved in our identities produced by our minds but is not bound by it. So the mentally damaged or disturbed or other anomalies that may plague us in mortal form do not continue into a different life as our spiritual selves.

This is an interesting concept. I never bought into the heaven story simply because if I manage to get there it is certain not everyone I care for will also get there...obviously I cannot control the behavior of friends and family. Therefore, I would be punished by the lack of ever seeing them again.

But your explanation, if carried to cover all human failings would mean everyone got to go to heaven.

Then again, that would kind of kill the notion of free will.

I don't know if everybody goes to heaven, but I like to think at least everybody has that option. The God I have experienced on a very personal level is pure love and I can't reconcile that with a being who would condemn those he loves to hell. But can we choose hell whatever hell may be? I don't know. That's above my pay grade.

But I do know that God is big enough and strong enough to fix all human failings. There are people that I have no desire to see or be around in this life. But if we meet again in the next, I would like to think we will meet each other as we were always intended to be--people saved in every way a person can be saved by grace, beloved of God, and lovable to each other. And in my mind, that would be perfecton.

 

[Sallow]

I'd like a serious attempt at an answer...if you can't give one, go away.

Ever lose consciousness?

That's probably like death.

 

[Sallow]

Nope I think you are wrong and Ravi is really wondering.
Of course this has been a primary question of mankind every since they could conceive death.
And has also been the root of a multitude of religions. Christianity being only the latest and by no means the longest one.

Islam is 600 years younger than Christianity, and I still say Ravi is trolling.

Who said anything about Islam?
And the gospels of the new testament cannot be proven to be any younger than several hundred AD.
But in any case I was thinking of the Mayans, Egyptians, Chinese, Greek, Norse, etc religions.
there were many other religions that predate both Christianity and Islam.
And some of them still exist.

Hinduism is probably one of the oldest organized religions.

 

[uscitizen]

Thanks all for your answers...even the non-serious ones.

I like Sheldon's idea the best, which is basically reincarnation...it would just be nice to know that people don't just stop existing because their body is no longer alive.

Just for the sake of discussion, we have more people all the time where do the souls for the additional ones come from?

Or does that explain right wingers?