What do you think happens when we die?

[Funny Girl]

What I think happens when we die is that our soul goes to heaven or hell depending on what you did in life. But it can be different and sometimes we can end up somehwere else or be given a second chance. We could also be reicarnated into someone else and will never know what we did in our past life.

[Prons]

I'm a Christian, I believe if we accept Jesus, we get to go to Heaven. I love it. I love the idea of not wandering around life, and at the end of every day thinking that all the things that I've experienced, felt, and thought are all moot and void in the end.

[Dragonboym2]

[COLOR=Blue]I ask myself that all the time. I'm Catholic, so I do think there is a heaven, and a Hell.
I don't really think about death, really. I find that a little depressing, and sad.
But on a lighter note:
[/COLOR]
[COLOR=Red]Calvin: What do you think happens to us when we die?[/COLOR]
[COLOR=DarkOrange]Hobbes: I think we play saxaphone for an all girl caberet in New Orleans.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=Red]Calvin: So you believe in Heaven?[/COLOR]
[COLOR=DarkOrange]Hobbes: Call it what you like.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=Blue]"KAMEHAMEHA!"

Dragonboym2[/COLOR]

[Starwind]

I must say that I lean in the way of the hopeful agnostic. I would like to think that there is a place we go when we die and that I might get to go to heaven, but you can't really know these kinds of things unless your dead. So there might really just be a big black void at the end of it all, but I kinda hope there's more to it then that.

[Dodeca]

[SIZE=1]Heh, one of my friends had a ditzy moment today. Though... to be fair she has them most days, I think. We'd been having a group conversation vaguely on political correctness, and this came up afterwards in a [very basic] conversation about the afterlife;

[COLOR=DarkRed][B]Obvious A:[/B] Heaven is good, hell is bad.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=Navy][B]Ditzy B:[/B] [I]*gasp*[/I] Hey, that's discrimination![/COLOR]
[I]*awkward silence*[/I]
[COLOR=Navy][B]Ditzy B:[/B] Oh... right... [I]*blushes*[/I][/COLOR]

Heh, almost on a par with her [I]Barbie Jesus[/I] doll show. : P

Anyways, though I'm a Christian, and naturally believe in heaven and hell, I do have difficulty at times accepting that any and all non-Christians're automatically condemned to hell. It just doesn't really make sense to me that a loving God would condemn people who may have lived good lives based solely on their decisions [or lack thereof] in the spiritual department. Though the whole "Only we will be saved!" is the main drive to 'converting' people, as is with pretty much any traditional religion, I'd like to think that good people would be given a chance to 'attone' for the spiritual aspect of their lives before they'd be judged.

Still, even if Christianity isn't the real thing and we're not all saved, I've got no problem with plain-old ceasing to exist. After a [hopefully] long, healthy and probably quite tedious life, I imagine I'd quite look forward to it actually. Wouldn't be so optimistic about eternal damnation though, for the most obvious of reasons. : P [/SIZE]

[Jeebs]

[color=navy]I have no way of knowing what happens after I die, so I just hope for the best. For me that's reincarnation. Heaven doesn't seem too tempting. What's the point of existing if you're eternally happy? You'd eventually forget sadness, anger, etc. How can you be truly happy if you forget why you're happy? With reincarnation, you get to start life anew, without the knowledge of past lives. You get to re-experience what makes existence great as if it were the first time.[/color]

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Interesting, most interesting.

Hmm, being a Roman Catholic I simply take what I know happens on belief, I live my life and after X amount of years, I die and make the trip up to Saint Peter and the Gates of Heaven. He has a look at my life and either tells me I was a decent enough man to get into Heaven, or I wasn't good enough and go to Purgatory, or I was a real **** I end up in Hell. Seeing as I try to live a good life, and obey the rules of God and the Church I hope that eventually when I do move on to the next life I'll get the all-clear from Saint Peter.[/SIZE]

[SunfallE]

[COLOR=RoyalBlue]I don?t have any set beliefs about what happens when we die. I only have what I would like to happen if there was a Heaven and Hell. Until I actually die I won?t know and what I believe won?t change what actually happens so it almost seems pointless to think that ?this? is what happens because I believe in it.

I?m not really concerned over reincarnation or simply ceasing to exist since both of them comes across, as I won?t be aware of it anyway. So in that case, since I will be unaware it?s unimportant to me.

The only one I think about is if there is a Heaven and Hell so to speak then I do want it to be like it is described in various religions where sinners either go to purgatory or Hell and the rest go to Heaven. Primarily because I think that people who murder or beat their wives and children to death are not someone I want to have to live with in Heaven. I?ve had a few experiences with people like that and they tend to continue their destructive behavior if given a chance.

Being a spirit may make killing others impossible, I certainly don?t know, but there are other ways to hurt someone without laying a finger on them and from the same people I?ve dealt with who hurt others, I?ve also learned, that often they will take any route to hurt you, even if that hurt is only mental and not physical.

From that line of thinking I also try to do my best to not hurt others and lead a good life. After all if Heaven does exist, then I do want to be with the people I love after I die. [/COLOR]

[Fasteriskhead]

I'm not going to disabuse anyone of the belief in a real, or even a physically extant, Heaven or Hell. But some aspects of it are, I think, worth questioning, particularly as to whether they have anything to do with Christianity.

When we die, our essential "goodness" or "badness" (or alternatively, our good or bad deeds), are examined and balanced against each other. If the good part wins out, then we head up to heaven for a blissful eternity united with God. If the bad part wins out, it's down to hell for an eternity of suffering. For the moment, never mind the historical origin of these ideas (which do NOT come from the Christian bible... or at least, not from any reading that isn't very very choosy). The central event in Christianity is the terrible, inglorious execution of Jesus, and the ramifications of that moment (including the resurrection). This event is described and understood with an extraordinary, often shocking power by Paul, by John, by Peter, and by the gospel writers. Now [i]what[/i], praytell, does this have to do with saying: "Watch out! Do what you're supposed to do and God will reward you, but be bad and you're really going to get it!"

As far as I know, no serious Christian thinker has thought anything like this since at least the Renaissance, and probably they NEVER have. "Heaven" is mentioned quite a lot in the NT, particularly in Matthew, but never like this. Gehenna and Sheol (usually translated in a thoughtless way) are also mentioned or inferred, again particularly in Matthew, but they have to be understood in a very specific way... having to do with the NT writers' very unique understanding of what death is. And finally, in theology ideas of heaven and hell are sometimes brought up, true, but never naively and always with great care.

But more important than this, what exactly is such an idea saying about Christianity? That the purpose of "being good" is just to get into heaven? Certainly this isn't true; we only need pay attention to Christians, who by no means only do good to keep themselves "in the black," to see that for the most part they know better. Yet it does reveal a worrying kind of hubris, one shown particularly in response to questions about [i]why[/i] one has to believe in heaven, hell, or God at all. Too many of the answers to this that I've heard, from people I know and respect, boil down to: "Because if there's no heaven or hell, why be good? If there's no God, what meaning is there to anything at all?"

How dare we! As if God was at our beck and call. As if God's entire purpose was to make our lives "meaningful." This particular idolatry leads to a very dark place, something that's been understood for a long time. Isn't meaninglessness [i]exactly[/i] the threat posed by the cross, which Christians must "take up every day?" Isn't meaninglessness [i]exactly[/i] what Jesus confronts when he cries out, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" If so, what an insult to take this threat of meaninglessness as something to be avoided at all costs; what egotism to believe in heaven, hell, and God only because without "faith" in something like them we would be confronted with a senseless world. We should ask the question: at what point in the gospels does Jesus ever have to "believe" in anything, in the sense that we use the term?

I may be accused of being "intolerant" for writing all this, which is fair enough. But I respect Christianity too much to let it be untrue to itself, especially on something as important as this.

On the death question (the actual topic): death is precisely the thing that we can [i]never[/i] know about, and has to be approached with this in mind. It's not something we'll ever experience, because "experience" means there's still an us left to experience anything. We can guess from watching other people die that when it happens our bodies will probably stop moving, collapse, and eventually rot... but this isn't the same as understanding death as dying ourselves. Is saying that we can never "know" death also to say that we should ignore it, refuse to talk about it at the risk of making ourselves sound silly? No. Because if we're really paying attention we can learn what our immanent death [i]means[/i], although this isn't the same as grasping death mentally as something knowable and predictable. Understanding what death [i]means[/i] is something very rare, and I can't go into it here. It deserves more discussion than it gets in our usual halfhearted admissions that yeah, we're going to die "someday." But discussing like this doesn't mean picking and choosing which kind of afterlife we prefer, or talking about what dying is going to feel like. As Heraclitus says, we shouldn't make random guesses about the most important things.

[Horendithas]

[COLOR=Sienna]In all honesty I think we just die. It?s a natural process and the constant attempt to find importance in death to me is in itself meaningless. I see the different beliefs as a tool to comfort the living instead of a record of what is going to happen, just a way to feel less hopeless over the inevitable knowledge that we too will die like everyone else.

The problem I have with even attempting to accept or embrace a belief that something happens to you when you die is that we really do not know what happens as it takes death itself to find out.

And though I?m sure this isn?t what you meant Fasteriskhead (you are a bit difficult to follow ;) ) I see God as being unnecessary for one to be good. For me being good is a matter of ethics and not a means to secure my place in the afterlife. I don?t steal, murder or other things because I want others to treat me in a kind and courteous manner. Being good to me makes sense as how can I expect others to treat me well if I do not treat them well in return?

Being good to me is about fitting in with society. I?m more concerned with how my life is today and tomorrow, not about being good to save myself from possibly going to Hell. I don?t even believe in it so it?s not a factor in influencing how I behave. I think it would be interesting to know what happens but I don?t see that event occurring anytime soon. [/COLOR]

[AnimeFront]

IMO, after we die thats the end. Not even a void. I, if you have'nt figured it out yet, an athiest. I respect people's opinion to believe in Heavn and Hell or things along that basis. And regardless of your belifef in something or not, it should epend more on the deeds you do in life than more on how much you go to church or do mission work.

[2010DigitalBoy]

I can't help but wonder if death is mechanical. Everything in the body is controlled by electronic impulses moving through the body. If these impulses end, you die. So... what happens when a machine stops working? It doesn't float up to heaven, does it? Just like everything else on the planet that moves or lives, we operate by a set configuration. Really, how can we say that we will transcend and our microwave will not?

If an appliance ceases to work, does it die? If a human ceases to work, does it not just lie there useless until someone throws it away? I wonder what it really means to be living. Honestly, who is to say that such thing as a soul even exists?

[Aberinkula]

Maybe our particles get scattered across the cosmos. Or heavin or hell. Who knows.
First of all if god is real who created god and who created the god that created god and so on? Really its like the universal question.

[Guest liger00x]

ok im a pagan so thus we belive in all things like jesus or what ever you call him we started him and we still own him to a point in pagan religion you finish life after reaching perfection you have resting periods then you go back if you dident finish on your first try if you do finish in one shot the its party time we also have a deep connetion with nature so dont think we worship the devil cus thats a hole other religion that we had nothing to do with if you dont belive we started it all then look up the pagan scriptures that should clarify it for ya :animesmil

[liveinmybubble]

I believe that the soul is recycled also sometimes it stays in one plain some times it goes to different plains. If you really did find out the truth now when you're alive then would the end really be worth it when it does come? :catgirl: