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This whole thing reminds of the time when my grandmaother passed away. I was too young to remember all the complicated medical details but she had suffered for quite a time.
She then slipped in to a coma and the doctors said she had zero chance of coming out of it and that she would soon pass on. I believe she spent about a week in this coma and someone from the family along with hospice care was in the room round the clock.
She was getting worse sp the entire family had come to the house to be around her for her last day or so. { not that she knew.....she was far into her coma by this time.} There were quite a few of us in the room and what happened next I will never forget. She started to say something....... "home"....."home"......"home"...........then, all went quiet.
Not more than a few moments later, she opened her eyes and was awake! She was completely as normal as anyone, taling with her freinds and family, eating to regain strength, and even well enough to take in the baseball game on TV that night. Everyone was shocked, even the hospice worker, and we had high hiopes for her recovery.
It was all in vain though, because sometime through the night, she had slipped back in to her coma, and passed away that afternoon. Now, my family being the Christians they were, believed that when she was saying "home", her spirit was with God and he was calling her home, but let her come back to hyer family for the day to say her goodbye's and allow us to do the same.
What happened here? Was she just dreaming? Was it just a random thought floating around in her head that she verbalised still very drowsy from the coma she had just spent a week in? Or was she at that moment experiencing something.......something supernatural? I dont know, you draw your own conclusions, but it is certainly something that makes you think and wonder.
It was probably due to a pre-death rush of endorphins, however, we don't really know. However, I have no doubt that the experience had purely naturalistic causes.
You might not believe it, but think logically if an innocent child passes away, does it make sense to you that his life is just over, or someone who struggeled his whole life and passes out of nowhere, it does not make sense to me for he/she to be gone forever.
Think about it, if you were to suffer from severe depression and you struggeled to overcome that, then if i was to have the same view as you, then that sepific person is going to have a pretty terrible life, because they are not enjoying this life and they can also be hopeless about their life because whenever they pass away their life would be over anyways.
The bottomline is with all due respect to science and scientists when it comes to death you can't be deciding what someone sees when they die, because you're limiting your thinking that way, this is a serious thing; if i was you id look more into it, its not a joke because no one knows when they'll pass away and the minute they pass away, its gonna be too late. This is just my personal opinion though don't get offended.
You say: "Think about it...", etc...., as if, by visualizing and accepting all the horrid living conditions and situations many on this overcrowded planet have to endure, eps. children, this therefore strongly suggests an afterlife. A direct "cause and effect" relationship? Therfore, Ill assuje thsoe who are turly evil (Hitler, Stalin, "Dubb-yah" [in sothe mnids of sme sanyhow...], and others will, thus, go directly to an imagined Hell? Or those who, like me, who are staunch artheiss will go... will go... Hmmm...
Just sucked off into the vast and vacuous etherial beyond, to frantically listen to our echo-less calls for help and salvation? "Too late!" comes back the gloating reply, but only once. "You shoulda thought of that when you had the chance!"
I don't hardly think so.
A sort of "If this is all there is, then there pretty much HAS TO BE an afterlife!" conclusion? Why on earth do you ome to that hopeful conclusion? There's literally nothing to suggest that possibility, other than the fact that, since we haven't learned yet (and likely never will) how to peacefully co-habit this limited-resource planet, we're pretty much doomed to live the life and times of over-crowded rats in a limited-size maze.
Quote:
Originally Posted by northstar22
Logically, it makes perfect sense. Death is defined as the permanent cessation of brain activity. When a person's -- even a child or someone who dealt with many struggles -- brain activity ceases, they cease to be. I don't like it, but it is a scientific fact, and it makes perfect sense from an empirical standpoint. We as humans need to stop holding on to the fantasy of an afterlife and invest more in life-extension and disease-elimination research, as those are the only ways we can extend our lives and possibly reach a kind of immortality.
Never better said. Get a rational life! Realize it's up to us as to how we live and possibly what we consider when we die.
Yep; a loverly little fairy-tale-ending to be sure. Just one little problem: it's claimed to be an entirely different heavenly scenario with each and every unique religion, and that kinda puts the "kaibosh" on it's being an actual place with uniform characteristics.
(Not to mention that it makes absolutely no logical dsernse if you think beyond even the most rudimentary facets of such a place! Perfect, sin-less and providing of whatever your reasonable heart desires.)
So then... what about my amazed confrontation with my once-best-friend's wife, the lovely one I secretly coveted all my life? And she me. And now, here she is, stopped in her aging process at an incredible 27 yrs of age (when I first met her...) and I, no longer dragging my arthritic body along, but in my physical prime of, say, 28 yrs of age. And yet, like a block of mud dropped onto the whole thing, there he is, the gross chauvinist pig he always was, and who never treated her well.
So what do I do now? I'm in heaven 'cause there she is, and yet I'm in hell because there he is, wrecking it all!
Dream on, oh thou of mortal needs and fantasy dreams!
To me, the suffering does not suggest that there must be an afterlife, but that we, as humans need to get to work to relieve the suffering.
We have the brains to devise solutions and the power to implement them. Let's get to work instead of pretending that the suffering will be rewarded by some invisible being who caused it all in the first place.
Perhaps a bit overoptimistic, nana053, but a great and constructive post nonetheless. Certainly more so than lauding the 'famous last words' of a Confederate cavalry general.
Coming into this world and leaving are messy and traumatic. That the way it is.
Some spend a lifetime focused on their exit, other focus on the happiness that can be found until their exit. Your choice. In the end it really doesn't matter, only during the journey.
Personally, I think General John Sedgwick's last words were prophetic- "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance". Never underestimate a Southern sharpshooter.
There is no evidence we have a soul. Everything we are comes from our brain, our personality, our memories, our very essence. Scientists can "see" our brain working through MRIs.
When our brain dies we cease to exist in any form.
I hope that you get your chance for an "Oh Wow" moment. If no one knows for sure what he experienced, the arguement that he didn't see anything should be dropped, cause you don't know either.
And I HAVE been at many deathbeds. and there have been a few times I've witnessed some sad things, with my own eyes, a mean old mans feet stared feeling like they were on fire(his words), and the sensation moved up to his torso, some said he slipped right off into hell, not for me to judge him, but his fruits were barren.
Another and the saddest was a 6 year old little boy, told his momma, " the angels are here" and was gone in 5 minutes...I heard these with my own ears and saw it with my own eyes, can't say as to what each person was feeling or saw, but, I did hear it and can only take it for what I heard/saw.
Last edited by round4; 11-14-2011 at 06:24 AM..
Reason: had more to say...
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], and others will, thus, go directly to an imagined Hell? Or those who, like me, who are staunch artheiss will go... will go... Hmmm...
