Where do we go when we die and are you afraid?

[ignoramus]

Because people's lives suck and they shudder to think that there's no punchline.

It's the horrible world we live in.

[AniKoferBo]

when our brains die, everything that makes us human goes with them. we are our bodies. even our personalities and our emotions and our intellect. it all comes from the brain. the brain relies on blood and electric impulses among other things to function, and when we die all of this gets cut off and the brain cannot be active. some people believe that our true selves are embodied in a soul. but the problem with this is, if we have souls, then what is the point of our physical bodies? we might as well just all be spirit beings if that's all we need to exist. but we are not. we completely rely on physical bodies to survive. and most people don't believe that other animals, like rats or snakes, have souls. but we are the same thing. we are animals that are biologically related to all other animals. so why do we get to have the privilege of having a soul? i think the answer is that we are the only species intelligent enough to invent the idea of a soul.

[arewethereyet]

when our brains die, everything that makes us human goes with them. we are our bodies. even our personalities and our emotions and our intellect. it all comes from the brain. the brain relies on blood and electric impulses among other things to function, and when we die all of this gets cut off and the brain cannot be active. some people believe that our true selves are embodied in a soul. but the problem with this is, if we have souls, then what is the point of our physical bodies? we might as well just all be spirit beings if that's all we need to exist. but we are not. we completely rely on physical bodies to survive. and most people don't believe that other animals, like rats or snakes, have souls. but we are the same thing. we are animals that are biologically related to all other animals. so why do we get to have the privilege of having a soul? i think the answer is that we are the only species intelligent enough to invent the idea of a soul.

Pretty sure Shazz wants to hear about how after we die we don wings and robes and sit on big fluffy clouds playing harps...after St. Peter opens the gate, of course.

Shazz isn't looking for logic.

[Ranjr]

I am afraid of unfinished business.  Promises to keep.  People to see after.  I'm not afraid of eternal damnation.  What kind of prick would sentence me to that?  The kind I tell fuck off.  

A being knows my thoughts, sees my actions, and wants to torture me forever because I don't take a knee for what makes no sense and has no presence?  Fuck that and the sad donkey it road in on.

When I die, I want to lie on a bed of dry cedar soaked in cottonseed oil that fills my Olde Towne.  My kids will shove the boat adrift from our house and take turns shooting flaming arrows at it.  They will miss and miss until they hop on the pontoon boat and ride out with a torch.  That's a bad idea and they will set themselves on fire, which is why I'm afraid of dying.

[Paleophyte]

If you can't prove that there's no afterlife, then how can you say definitively that there is no God. Can't you be open to options?

That isn't how the burden of proof works. Whoever makes the absurd claim gets to back it up. The rest of us get to ignore it until they do. If this weren't true you'd spend your life trying to disprove the thousands of religions that you don't believe in.

So you get to provide the evidence for this afterlife of yours. Have fun with that.

From a purely philosophical standpoint, Hell is the sort of moral abomination that causes real difficulties for anybody trying to pass off an all-loving God and Heaven is so ill-conceived as to be distinguishable from Hell only by the finest forensic examination.

[GrandizerII]

We shouldn't beg the question either, though. We may have reason to believe there is no afterlife because that is the conclusion that science (and educated reasoning) currently directs us atheists/naturalists to, but we shouldn't assert with unwarranted confidence there isn't. It's a bizarre reality we're in (just existing and being aware of one's existence is bizarre itself on its own), who the fuck knows what's really going on here?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

when our brains die, everything that makes us human goes with them. we are our bodies. even our personalities and our emotions and our intellect. it all comes from the brain. the brain relies on blood and electric impulses among other things to function, and when we die all of this gets cut off and the brain cannot be active. some people believe that our true selves are embodied in a soul. but the problem with this is, if we have souls, then what is the point of our physical bodies? we might as well just all be spirit beings if that's all we need to exist. but we are not. we completely rely on physical bodies to survive. and most people don't believe that other animals, like rats or snakes, have souls. but we are the same thing. we are animals that are biologically related to all other animals. so why do we get to have the privilege of having a soul? i think the answer is that we are the only species intelligent enough to invent the idea of a soul.

Pretty sure Shazz wants to hear about how after we die we don wings and robes and sit on big fluffy clouds playing harps...after St. Peter opens the gate, of course.

Shazz isn't looking for logic.

Well, I can play a harp and sometimes wear a robe. I’m halfway to Heaven!!

Boru

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

I think Phili Jose Farmer's idea of "To your scattered bodies go." is better.

[Mister Agenda]

I wanted to address the 'fear of death' thing. Every atheist has to come to grips with their inevitable death in their own way, we don't usually have a place to go to on Sunday to give us a doctrine on what we should believe that's about. I think some of us hash it out on discussion forums. Most atheists I encounter have made their peace with it, but occasionally I run into a newbie atheists who is stressed about it.

I'm afraid of dying painfully, or very unpleasantly. I'd like to go peacefully in my sleep, and if a nice morphine drip is needed for that, I'm okay with it. Actually being dead doesn't bother me. As Sam Clemens pointed out (paraphrasing very roughly), not being alive up to the moment of his conception inconvenienced him not at all, why should not being alive after his death do so? When I'm dead I won't suffer, or have to deal with millennia after millennia after eon of some sort of afterlife that never, ever ends; I'll just be gone. But nothing will ever change the fact that I was here while I lasted. That's eternal, even if no one will know in a lifetime or two.

[zebo-the-fat]

How many people have given serious thought about their funeral?


I have made my wishes clearly known:-

The doctors should be given the opportunity to use any part of my body for transplants, research etc.

The cheapest coffin/body bag available (no point wasting good beer money feeding the worms or the flames)

At the funeral there should be no priests, vicars, ministers, shamans, witch doctors or other peddlers of superstitious nonsense.  

It should also be made clear that I am DEAD.
I am not sleeping.
I have not passed.
I am not resting.
So please, no wimpy euphemisms, face the reality of death.

Now go and have a drink, think nice things and enjoy your life as much as I have enjoyed mine.