Near Death Experiences - Life After Death (souls, hell, myth)
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I don't feel/believe that there is an afterlife but I accept that I could be wrong, as I haven't been dead yet and have neither personal experience nor any (as far as I can see) legitimate evidence. "Sort of" still doesn't fit because from my personal belief system, no, there is no afterlife - yet I wouldn't (pun coming) bet my life on it, because I understand that I can't actually know.
Anything is possible, but an afterlife is highly unlikely in my view. Nor do I find the concept compelling. I don't really want an open-ended existence from which I effectively can't escape or see some sort of end point. Plus, even more unlikely than afterlives in general, is an afterlife which is actually something you'd want to experience forever. What basis would we have to think an afterlife would just be this life with the warts magically excised?
In any event all evidence points away from an afterlife. The usual argument is that energy can't be destroyed. Well my body will never cease to exist in terms of its component atoms, but it will cease to be organized as my body. If you don't think so, just dig me up 10 years after I'm buried. If my body ceases to be organized as me, then so does my mind. The mind is even more ephemeral than the physical body, it is electrical impulses and chemical reactions in an unstable stew of cottage cheese in between my ears.
I would classify my desire to believe in a "god" of sorts as extreme. By logical extension, assuming that the god is a benevolent god, I would also classify my desire to believe in an afterlife as extreme. I experience a constant, nagging, painful internal conflict between my desire to believe that these things exist and my education.
Anything is possible, but an afterlife is highly unlikely in my view. Nor do I find the concept compelling. I don't really want an open-ended existence from which I effectively can't escape or see some sort of end point. Plus, even more unlikely than afterlives in general, is an afterlife which is actually something you'd want to experience forever. What basis would we have to think an afterlife would just be this life with the warts magically excised?
This! So very this. Plus, not everyone's wart is the next person's wart. So how could there be a "perfect" place?
For example, for some people, if heaven means country music and NASCAR, they'll be singing and cheering along joyfully. Me? Well, just thinking about such a possibility makes me realize I'd darned well better start raping, thieving, coveting and blaspheming my head off right now. Cheeses, I'd be spending eternity jabbing an ice pick into my ear and scrubbing my eyes with a Brillo pad in an effort to escape the excruciating onslaught.
And of course, my heaven, with a weird mixture of *my* music, books and books and books and books, and a daily Renaissance Pleasure Faire, would make practically anybody else go running straight for Satan. "PLEASE take me in, nothing can be as bad as what I just ran away from!"
For people who love children, surely heaven includes lots of little tots singing and doing all sorts of cute little tot things. For child-free by choice individuals, only hell could possibly offer such a scenario. (Actually, I fully believe hell for child-free couples consists of a gigantic daycare that has glass everywhere to get fingerprint marks on, white walls to get smothered with kiddie goo, and a conspicuous absence of ear plugs. Oh, and no "furbabies.")
We think "heaven will be perfect" but perfect is different for every single individual. Is "perfect" floating peace and gentle angelsong for eternity? I think I'd go crazy. I'm actually reminded right now of the alien from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who was so bored with immortality that he occupied his endless empty hours by locating every single other being in the universe and insulting them individually.
Same with any "vision of heaven" that includes or excludes animals...includes or excludes family (what about Uncle Morie who tells gross sex jokes in front of the teen girls and farts all the time?)...includes or excludes music...is chock full of people or is empty with lots of room...rolling hills or picturesque desert...water or not (some people really hate the water)...on and on and on and on.
And if "we'll all just be happy" there, period, then obviously, we will all be devoid of a good 85%, if not more, of the personalities we carried in life...otherwise, our preferences would get in the way of our thinking of it as heaven at all.
I think (just *my* thoughts here, I don't *know*) that people's "vision" of heaven is their vision of which they wished their *earthly* life had been but never was.
Anything is possible, but an afterlife is highly unlikely in my view. Nor do I find the concept compelling. I don't really want an open-ended existence from which I effectively can't escape or see some sort of end point. Plus, even more unlikely than afterlives in general, is an afterlife which is actually something you'd want to experience forever. What basis would we have to think an afterlife would just be this life with the warts magically excised?
A part of me wouldn't mind an afterlife.
Some Christians have accused me of taking the easy path, being an atheist. Heh, if only they knew. Because, you see, my life is a big waste. Chances are, I will never enjoy my existence being in the pain I'm in. All of the things others take for granted, things people do without a thought, can be a monumental and taxing effort for me. I will never get the chance to realize my potential, live my dreams, and be anything even close to happy.
A person like me would crave an afterlife, a kind and merciful God, a "second chance." Being an atheist and thinking this is it, this is the only life I'm going to get ... that's been a real struggle because who wants to think that their one shot in all the cosmos was ruined by a freak disability that no one can even figure out. Easy way out? LOL! Yeah ... just LOL!
So sometimes I do find myself clinging to the idea that maybe there's some sort of "second chance" beyond the veil. The idea is so appealing, so tempting like a siren's song drifting into shore from the sea. Yet just like the mythical siren, I know that it has to be resisted since it is my longing and desire - NOT rationality and reality - that is causing that temptation. If wishes were horses ... and suchlike.
I know that people think NDEs are proof of an afterlife. Yet how can anyone know for sure given that these people aren't dead for very long. I know, dead is dead, right? Not necessarily. Just because instrumentation cannot detect brain activity doesn't mean there isn't just enough going on in the brain to make the dying process easier to handle. It is the brain fooling our dissipating consciousness into thinking we're going somewhere.
Even if such an afterlife DID exist, it should be a lesson to the fundamentalist Christians who dance gleefully about threatening others with hellfire and damnation. I don't remember anyone reporting a NDE who said, "I saw all of my family there ... well, except Uncle Cecil and Aunt Tootsie because they were both atheists."
I honestly don't know what to think about an afterlife. I mean, what about ghosts? How do they fit in - or do they even exist? I think there is some compelling evidence that they do. Has anyone talked to a person from a non-Western, non-Christian culture who had a NDE? What do they report?
As you said, Mordant, an afterlife is probably very unlikely and I'm only giving it the credence I do because of how soulsick it makes me, thinking my one and only life has fallen to this.
I've heard doctors explain those "so-called" NDE thingies as nothing more that the hallucinations of a brain starved of oxygen. Brains, and eyeballs, starved of oxygen may very well hallucinate bright white lights.
Although I was comatose for several weeks in an ICU last year, I had no NDE, saw no bright white lights, heard no angels singing, no nothing. I've been told I did speak incoherently throughout that time, but I have no memory of it at all. I was Near Death, but had no Near Death Experience. I think it was because I kept breathing, although sometime I needed some supplemental oxygen. Since I never stopped breathing, my brain was not starved of oxygen enough to hallucinate those white light thingies.
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