What is death? If there is an afterlife?

[PolyHedral]

I see, you're one of those people who don't bother stopping at traffic lights.

A traffic light is an instruction. I really don't think "positive energy" could be interpreted as an instruction.

 

[Willamena]

A traffic light is an instruction. I really don't think "positive energy" could be interpreted as an instruction.

Any "instruction" the symbol carries resides in you, in your interpretation of the symbol, whether learned or intuited.

In vitalism, "energy" or "flame" or the "vital spark", or even "soul", can be a symbolic image. I imagine, as in Astrology, the degree to which it's all taken literally is the degree to which it appears to work.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It's relatively easy if you believe that life is more than just your body.

If you believe that your life is a conglomerate between your body and your soul and that the body and soul both have unique experiences and also have shared experiences, and that death is nothing more than a shared experience of separation wherein the body spends some time in the ground and the soul spends some time somewhere else, and that all of this is a part of your "life", which continues on even after death and eventually when your body and soul rejoin one another, then it really isn't that hard.

I've yet to hear any notion of "soul" that adequately deals with what happens in the real world.

My father died of cancer - lymphoma that spread to his brain.

Over the course of about a month, I watched as each aspect of his personality, and then even his capacity for conscious thought, slipped away. Nothing recognizable of the man who was my father remained... and then he died.

If you think that the "soul" inhabiting my father's body at the moment before his physical death is the "soul" that lives on in an afterlife, do you think it can be legitimately called my father?

If you think that his "soul" departed at some point before his physical death, exactly who was it that had access to my father's memories and mannerisms, but was markedly different from the person I knew? Was that a different "soul"? If so, where did it come from? If not, are other human beings wandering around without "souls" as well?

 

[TheKnight]

I've yet to hear any notion of "soul" that adequately deals with what happens in the real world.

My father died of cancer - lymphoma that spread to his brain.

Over the course of about a month, I watched as each aspect of his personality, and then even his capacity for conscious thought, slipped away. Nothing recognizable of the man who was my father remained... and then he died.

If you think that the "soul" inhabiting my father's body at the moment before his physical death is the "soul" that lives on in an afterlife, do you think it can be legitimately called my father?

If you think that his "soul" departed at some point before his physical death, exactly who was it that had access to my father's memories and mannerisms, but was markedly different from the person I knew? Was that a different "soul"? If so, where did it come from? If not, are other human beings wandering around without "souls" as well?

Who is to say that the soul had any change at all? If the soul is a spiritual component of who you are that requires a body to interact with the physical world, then physical decay or in the case of your father, the damage to his brain caused by the lymphoma, would inhibit his souls ability to express its unique personality in this physical world.

So the fact that your father's body, may he rest in peace, experienced damage means that the soul's ability to express through the body would be, at the very least, similarly damaged without any necessary change in the soul itself.

As I said, death is a transition wherein the body and soul spend time away from one another. Death is ultimately the separation of the soul from the body as both go on to their respective experiences.

So if a person is dying, then it signifies the process of the soul separating from the body and thus the soul's expression the body would begin to slow down or stop completely.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

The afterlife is when you don't get to find out how wrong your ideas about the afterlife were.

 

[sojourner]

There is absolutely no reason to think that there is any form of afterlife, heaven, hell, ghosts, spirits, reincarnation or anything similar.

Nor is there any reason to think there's not.
There you go!

 

[sojourner]

Ah, vitalism! When will we ever be free of this ridiculous error?

Asking where we go when we die is like asking where the fire goes when the fuel is exhausted.

Wake up! This is just a scam to enrich the avaricious and power-maddened clergy!

What about the clergy who are not those things?

 

[Kilgore Trout]

There is absolutely no reason to think that there is any form of afterlife, heaven, hell, ghosts, spirits, reincarnation or anything similar.

Actually, there are plenty of reasons to think those things exist - just not good or rational reasons.

 

[sojourner]

Actually, there are plenty of reasons to think those things exist - just not good or rational reasons.

That's a matter of opinion.

 

[Riverwolf]

How can you define death, if there is an afterlife? and/or conscience still 'alive' or 'around' after your body has been pronounced dead by a doctor?

Good question.

The Sages teach that death is nothing more than transitioning from one body to the next, as we in life transition from childhood to adulthood.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

That's a matter of opinion.

Not all opinions are created equal.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Who is to say that the soul had any change at all?

So souls aren't affected by the physical?

Has your soul remained unchanged since you were born?

If the soul is a spiritual component of who you are that requires a body to interact with the physical world, then physical decay or in the case of your father, the damage to his brain caused by the lymphoma, would inhibit his souls ability to express its unique personality in this physical world.

It's not just a matter of inhibiting one unique personality; in the case of many forms of brain injury or chemical imbalance (i.e. physical effects), a different personality manifests itself.

Is this new personality an effect of a soul? If it isn't, then why assume that the original personality was an effect of a soul in the first place?

 

[sojourner]

Not all opinions are created equal.

Awww...
don't be so self-depricating, now! We like your opinions just fine! Don't we, Gang!

 

[sojourner]

Who is to say that the soul had any change at all?

It would have to, if it took the cross town bus to heaven...

 

[TheKnight]

So souls aren't affected by the physical?

It depends on what you mean by "affected".

Has your soul remained unchanged since you were born?

No.

It's not just a matter of inhibiting one unique personality; in the case of many forms of brain injury or chemical imbalance (i.e. physical effects), a different personality manifests itself.

Is this new personality an effect of a soul? If it isn't, then why assume that the original personality was an effect of a soul in the first place?

Who said personality is an effect of, or at least solely the effect of, the soul?

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Awww...
don't be so self-depricating, now! We like your opinions just fine! Don't we, Gang!

*pats sojourner's head*

 

[Riverwolf]

Just goes to show what happens when people didn't quite understand elementary school physics...

Well, in all fairness, that kind of physics isn't really taught in elementary school (at least I don't remember it being taught.) It was, however, taught in middle school... kind of.

Not to mention, the teachers didn't quite understand how to translate the language of science to something that kids can understand, so the only sciences we really took from that was based on things we could actually do. (For me, the best part was creating the water/corn-starch mix. ^_^ But guess what? It wasn't until the stuff was featured in Mythbusters that I learned that it's called a "non-Newtonian fluid."

So, in other words, I don't think most kids really understood most of what was taught to us. My knowledge of science at the time primarily came from the Magic School Bus, Bill Nye, and 3D Dinosaur Adventure, and even then it didn't really mean anything; it was just a bunch of factoids.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Who said personality is an effect of, or at least solely the effect of, the soul?

If it isn't, then what makes your soul "you"?

 

[Riverwolf]

If it isn't, then what makes your soul "you"?

It's unchanging. Personality is very subject to change; I used to be an arrogant bully, for example, caught up in his own little world, almost completely oblivious to the outside world. (This was primarily in Middle School.) Now, just barely a decade later, only a small vestige of that personality remains. (I still haven't quite figured out how to be fully "present.") The soul is, essentially, not subject to change.

Sure, from what I've heard (I'm too young to really know if this is true), once you become an adult, it's really hard to change personality. But, at the same time, I've heard of it happening, so the point still stands: personality is not what our true identities are.

 

[TheKnight]

If it isn't, then what makes your soul "you"?

"You"is the combination of your soul and your body. Neither one, on its own, is "you".