we might never know until we get there, but we must keep strong to our believe, why would we come here in the first place? what are we doing here sitting at home infront of the computer typing this for this message board? we have a purpose, we come for a purpose, and our lives really dont start until we day, i read this quote somewhere "death is only the begining" we are living in earth in this flesh but our soul? were is it going for our soul death of our flesh was just the beginning and for our souls the life just starts.

Of course it makes more sense to you... you call God the 'big magical man in the sky'... it seems you do not take Him seriously...

Edit:

I agree with you camarorz28... the must be a purpose to life... otherwise... well... whats the point?
We'd just be random organisms with random functions randomly fulfilling random animalistc desires (which of course, some of us do...unfortuneatly)... doesn't seem right...

We all have a conscience... a pre-determined moralistic sense of things... that doesn't come from no where.... if it did, it would be considered a learned behavior, but we are born with it.... and it can be seen in young children who have yet to understand what it is...

One final rant...
To me, existance feels so paper thin.... whats keeping us here? Whats keeping us going... the thoughts I feel... feel so thin and frail... they could pass and never come back at any moment... there must be something to keep it there, alive... and some other word that I can feel don't know.... we can choose to do anything, but what directs that choice? Whats stopping me from walking up to someone and wringing their neck? the existence of the mind and thoughts feel so thin to me, that they could not exist on their own...

This post has been edited by KansukeKojima: Nov 27 2007, 12:08 AM

I really like that argument. It's exactly true, and it's difficult to think of it like that but it makes perfect sense. I don't believe in life after death just because there is no evidence to suggest it's true. I'm typically a logical person, and something must be spelled out logically for me to believe it, and to say that there is an afterlife just because not existing is unfathomable, that is simply illogical. Just because we fear not existing, it is impossible for us not to? again good one Liam, I really like that.

There's nothing simple about that.

The main problem is that we don't have any scientific way to detect consciousness.
We don't know it's necessary or suficient causes, we don't know its neural correlates, even if we knew them we couldn't consider them the mental event per se, if fact we don't even have a good solid consensus about what consciousness is. A few decades back it wasn't even proper to use such word in a scinetific journal or debate.

I sugest reading the following chapter of a most interesting book by Alan Wallace. The whole book worths reading.

http://www.alanwallace.org/ChoosingReality23.pdf

I believe it sheds some light about the probelms science faces when dealing with consciousness and the biased trends sometimes adopted when approachig this sery interesting issue.

personal feelings about believing in life after death? well there IS and that is a FACT! i have experienced and seen too much to believe otherwise. alot of people have seen and experienced what i have but for those that haven't.....well......you have a lot to learn about life because there is a whole other exisitance out there. you can see it sometimes, you can hear it sometimes, and sometimes you can even smell it.

someone mentioned that we come back to make up for any wrongs. this is absolutely TRUE! but in fact, it's more than just making up for wrongs, also reliving past mistakes until you learn from the experience. now some people believe in god, some goddess, etc....but it's that higher power that DOES dictate what is right and wrong and morality and values etc....

we can choose how we want to live, but if we learn nothing, we come back and relive the same crappy experiences until we do and ready to move on to other levels. there are people out there considered "old souls". what this means is that there are people out there that have been reincarniated many times. they have experienced much and it's these people that are more in tune with "life" and it's meaning than other people

it's a sad world when there are people out there believing that when we die, we are fertilizer for the grass to grow taller and that's it because there is so much more to life than that. it's sad to see people question or play devil's advocate on such a deep and important issue that needs strict guidance by those who know better.

i'm not saying i am an expert or know it all, but i do know there is life after death and i do know there is reincarnation. aside from what i KNOW as FACT, let me tell you what i believe in other areas that i don't know as fact.

we are here to learn and grow and abtain a stronger soul and spirit while we are here. it's inside us all and this is fact. we die 3 ways. we can die naturally....which means we have nothing more to offer or learn from in this lifetime and it's our time to go. after we pass, we are able to either be reborn, or guide the living as what some will call spirit guides. we can die in an accident which means sometimes our spirit will linger in the afterlife until we accept our own death and move on to be reborn. we can also die commiting suicide which means we didn't learn a DANG THING in this lifetime to take our own life. we will relive our own suicide over and over in the afterlife until we learn from it and are strong enough and able to be reborn. now those are my beliefs alone. they have no factual basis for it but my beliefs come from everything i have already experienced in this life as well as a very intuitive nature inside my own self. i believe in my intuitiveness and how it has guided me so far in this lifetime.

now let me get back to more facts that are less substantiated. since we are here to learn, and we ARE judged while we are living AND in the afterlife, the more we learn, the more we experienc. we are NEVER put on this earth to experience more than we can handle. this is fact. we have to use our brains, and most importantly our minds in what our purpose is and what is meant for us to expeirience, learn, and grow from. we will make mistakes, but this is how we learn and grow and move on to other higher experiences. the more we experience, the stronger we are to experience more difficult tasks each lifetime. we grow from this.

people are meant to learn little things like smiling and learning from other peoples reaction, to bigger things like experiencing rape and forgiving and possibly creating awareness....turning a cruel and disgusting act in to something positive. god forbid you don't learn to forgive or turn that negative in to a positive because you will catch yourself reliving your experience until you learn and grow from it. life is supposed to be balanced.

now all this may seem irrelevant to the after life, but it's not. it's all connected. life is what we make it and death is a mirror of our life. we don't die. our bodied die. our host for our soul and spirit dies. the flesh becomes fertilizer but our spirit and soul lives on and continues to live on as it's meant to be

and because i know this to be true about learning experiences, i also know the world will never be perfect or a utopia. there will always be problems, there will always be pain. but with the problems and pain, there are the happy, fun,and exciting times. on a depper level, there is nature all around us that is NOT bad and most people are too busy to take 10 minutes out of each day just to enjoy the birds that sing to the dropping of the leaves in autom. it's all around us and ever changing

now i was at a cemetary recently. i was with my wife and her daughter that took me there. they are strong believers in the afterlife and while we were walking through, i don't think the daughter experienced much, but my wife said she heard a baby crying and also felt a child touching her hand trying to hold it. what i sensed was very positive energy. a calming feeling. somewhat exciting feeling because i felt there was lots of energy there that was somewhat sacred. i walked around with my camera. i took random pictures where i felt i needed to take a picture. i didn't see anything until i developed my pictures off my digital camera.
this experience at the cemetary was very enlightening to me that verifies what i already knew. life after death. the pictures are on my myspace. i think i posted 6-7 of 'm. spirits and energy all through out the cemetary. i never caught such good pictures before. whenver i take pictures, sometimes i'll catch some orbs or something. orbs are white balls of light that show up on camera. sometimes they are visiable to the eye as well. these are spirits. just like the ghostly image i caught of a person standing next to his head stone at the cemetary.

life after death? i feel sorry for anyone who says no. and doubly sorry for anyone who doesn't believe we are on this earth to LEARN and allow our soul and spirit to grow. here is the link to the pictures.... http://www.myspace.com/anwiii

although the spirit by the head stone was a good one, that's not the one that leaves my curious. it's the last picture i took which had a white misty ring around a tree. above the mist, you can barely make out something that looks like someone that belongs on a totum pole. something sacred appeared and i don't know exactly what it is. only thing i can come up with is something sacred protecting the cemetary. i've never seen any picture like it, and i took it. a little bit freaky to me because i don't understand it fully yet(but i will in time) also, that last picture on myspace is also the last picture i was able to take before my camera went completely dead. that was strange too knowing what i took right when the camera went dead.

so anyway, i wanted to share a tiny bit of my experience with you and to show one reason why i believe in life after death and the purpose behind it. those pictures were taken with a flash, and i set the camera to a very low shutter speed with an iso setting of 400 on my digital camera. they were taken in missouri, usa about 4 months ago

welp, that's it for now. if you didn't enjoy my long winded post, i hope you take the time to go to my myspace and take a look at those pictures. i'm sure you will at least enjoy those

I Think That There Is Such Thing As Life After Death. No One Would Make Such A Thing Up

Here a poem I wrote on the subject - I'm sorry if it offends anyone

Life after Death.
Mans Great Delusion.
So Determined
to Ignore there fate.

Man Cannot
Accept the truth.
When We Die
We Rot

In the ground with the
ants and the maggots.
Death is a never ending
world of nothing.

This is a very strong view on it and I don't mean to offend anyone, thats just my view and I'm not shoving it down people throats but if your not up for disagreements in faith don't read topics that may challenge there views on the subject though i'm sure no-one will be and this was mandatory for school

nice poem i respect it bud but i hve to disagree with the direct meaning behind it. the indirect meaning will probably never be known except by you. which is ok. i say nice poem because it reminds me of one i wrote in my mid 20's "never ending re-run". i have learned a lot about life since then and my views have changed dramatically. some things i know for a fact, such as life after death. there is no other way to explain what i have personally experienced. i was once the most skeptical person one can know. why i never really believed in "god". because i am still skeptical. and although i hold no proof of a higher power, i believe in one wether it's "god" or some other higher power or powers. but life after death is a fact. no doubt in my mind and based not on faith, but my own experiences. but i refrain to talk about them most of the time because one excuse people can have is to just chalk it down that i'm crazy i know this post holds no meaning to you. your most did me though because i could relate to it and my thinking in my mid 20's.

your thoughts actually take a way a lot of the good that is in our lives and what is in our souls. why we are meant to experience things. it's not your time yet, but it will be one day i have faith

actually, i do agree with you that our bodies die and will rot like you said but there is more to us than our bodies that are used as hosts for our soul and spirit...