Many ancient views of the afterlife were not as pleasant as the ones we have now-a-days. For example the one of the beliefs held by the Ancient Greeks was that, with the exception of a select few, Hades for the masses was a dark and depressing place where people remained the rest of days as simple shades of who they had been while alive.
This is just one example of one of many differing afterlife views around the world. What do you think will happen to you after this life? If you respond please include your name. Also please just try and talk about your own views, don't mock others.
posted by Brian Lutrey | 8:52 PM
17 Comments:
My opinion of the afterlife differs depending on the life of the person who has died. For those who are granted into Heaven, who have lived a life of goodness and general stayed away from evil, afterlife will be very pleasant. Picture having your own world, where everything is as you like and would have wanted it to be. You can relive the happy moments in your life or create a brand new one. It can be populated with anyone you wish. You could be linked to other's worlds, so that you could reunite with those you loved, not just your own conceptualization of them in your world. It's hard to wrap your mind around, but there would be an infinate number of you, depending upon who wants you in their world.
Hell, for those who are evil, would be quite different. For those who killed themselves, they would have to live an existance composed wholly of the reasons they killed themself, with no hope of respite. Most others would simply be taunted by all the things they loved and enjoyed but will never be able to again because they allowed themselves to become too greedy, too wrathful, etc. etc.
Really, no one can know what the afterlife will be like. But, in the end, this is something that everyone forms an opinion about in order to give themselves solace in the quiet hours before they fall asleep, when the truly important questions are closest at hand.
My name is jess Rehrey and i attend anne arundel community college. I am religious so i feel that the afterlife consist of heaven and hell. I am hoping that my afterlife will be heaven. This, of course, is just my views and beliefs.
The stories us humans invent about the afterlife are sometimes nice and sometimes not nice at all. In the end they are all just stories and like stories do they reflect the dominant ideologies of a community and are subject to change as people's ideas change.
Personally, I feel that the Christian idea of the afterlife is completely unappealing on all accounts. It emphasizes the preservation of a unique identity, which is typical of Western religions. However, I'm not really down with the Eastern ideas of reincarnation, either. It makes a lot more sense to me than the Christian Heaven/Hell but it still seems like a lot of religious mumbo-jumbo to me.
The only thing I can be sure about is that I will rot into the ground and be eaten by worms and turned into something else in our universe. I am a very emotional person, but I am also very rational, and I can't bring myself to believe in an afterlife unless there is proof of some sort.
We may never discover proof. I guess I might not know until I die! Death is a natural part of life and although I am scared of it like most people I think that, like most things in life, death and what comes after will probably not turn out as we expected it to.
To be honest I don't know what I think will happen to me after I die. I don't believe that there's much that I can do to affect what happens though, and that I should be a good person for the sake of being a good person and not for some reward afterward. I guess I'd like something nice in an afterlife, but I don't really know what will come.
decompose, become grass, get eaten by bugs, become larva etc........
Josh Kordani @ McDaniel
I am not about to sit here and ream western religons' beliefs across the coals, but I am heavily disinclined to believe in christianity's view of the universe, afterlife included. In terms of the general idea of the afterlife, Islam's is similar enough to also warrant exclusion. I guess if I had to say which view seemd the most likely, id have to say the views that hold that the self becomes given up, and that one becomes a part of the universe in whatever way makes sense. It also seemes to be a healthier outlook, too. But then again, we could just end up ceasing to exsist, which is also crazy to try to think about, and for those that havent tried it, try to imagine yourself ceasing to percieve and to think. Tried it once when I was little and I didn't get very far. Inconcievable!
My name is Kim Via and I attend McDaniel College. I was raised Catholic so I feel that my actions here on earth determine what will happen to me in my afterlife. I do believe in an afterlife- a continuation of a person's spirit after passing away. I believe if you are a good charitable person while you are alive then you will be sent to heaven.
However, the majority of people on this earth today are sinners who make bad choices. I base my opinion of the afterlife on Christian ideology but that doesn’t mean that I agree with everything that the Bible says. I do not believe that if a person does not attend confession before dying they will be sent straight to hell. Do I feel that I will be sent to hell after I die? No. I believe I am a good person with a kind, forgiving heart (even though I may not always show it) who has made some bad choices. God is a forgiving person; he has put those bad choices in front of me so that I would choose them and learn from my mistakes. I believe that after I pass away I am going to heaven to join my relatives and friends.
My name is Kristen Davis. I was raised Presbyterian and have lost my faith. My opinion of the afterlife is that it has been glorified by EVERY religion i have had the pleasure to explore to create fear in their followers. This fear compells people to be "good" and make each person serve a role in the community and create a functional society. The afterlife is a promise to these people if they abide by the rules of any given religion they will be rewarded after they die.
I believe the afterlife is something made up to do just this. We die we rot. We become food - not serving mankind's desires but following the natural decomposition process. Nutrients are returned to nature. This is fact. Until i find something that changes my view on the afterlife, this is what i believe it consists of.
Dan Krieger @ Mcdaniel
The afterlife is an unknown for all people. The majority of people in this world find peace of mind in religious tradition or in general family and cultural beliefs. I rather prefer not knowing what will happen once I die. One of the greatest parts of being alive is uncertainty, and true knowledge of an afterlife would take away from what it is to be alive. If I cease to exist, I would not be all worried about it because I will have ceased to exist and therefor be incapable of doing such. Ideally, my personal afterlife would be similar to being alive except I would be utterly happy and content at all times without any of that “you can’t know happiness without sadness” crap. If nothing else I hope that the afterlife will provide me with all the answers to all the questions that I have ever had and give me the metal capacity to understand it all. When I chose to believe in a hell type of afterlife, I view it for the worst of the worst, where a person is forced to endure all the metal and physical pain that they have brought upon the world for an eternity. I truly have no expectations of the afterlife nor do I hold any absolute beliefs regarding it. If there is one, I hope that the actions of my life are weighed and I am given a fair placement as a result.
As far as I understand, the nature of an afterlife is such that it is outside of any possible living human's experience. With this in mind, it is beyond the ability of living humans to provide any evidence for or against any particular afterlife.
To answer the question, I don't believe there is an afterlife. Any metaphysical speculations on where we go when we die seem to be designed to satisfy a psychological itch, rather than say something meaningful about the world.
My opinion of the after-life, for my self, is some kind of eastern thought based reincarnation. The idea of coming back with some subconscious knowledge of past life is fantastic. Also, a kind of study period of my life after I die, and before I come back again, would be there also. This study period would be to learn from the bad things of my life, recognize the good things, and find some answers to the questions of that life using the experience of many previous lives. By the time I am done outlining the after-life for me, it proves to be a veritable smorgasbord of concepts from many many different ideologies and ways of life.
I think that the afterlife is a personal thing. Everyone has their own personal heaven in which they will be reunited with those who have meant a lot to them in this life. It's kind of like what happens in the movie 'What dreams may come'.
This is all assuming that you deserve to go to your heaven. If you have done things in this life time that are considered 'evil', the after life won't be as pleasant. I'm not quite sure what I think of hell.
I think that once I die, all there will be is nothingness. I don't really believe in a heaven or a hell or anything. I think that once it is our time to go, our lives just end and that's about it. I don't think we have souls inside of us either. I just think we are permanently put to rest when our lives are over.
Regardless of life lived, erroneous judgements and fortunous escapades, the after life is one thing that evades us all. I have never entertained the concept of heaven/hell and a vengeful God casting judgement on all those who have given into mortality. Neither have I been able to fully accept the possibility of a soul or reincarnation. I don't deny their existance, but I do not accept them either. Without proof, to the best of my knowlege at least, death is the end of the universe. When my life ceases to be, so does my conscience. I do know know whether the rest of the inhabitants of this world have conscience, or whether they are truly human or merely very highly adaptive and intellegent robots. All I know is what I know about myself. When my conscience ends, the world and universe, as I know it, ends. I would say that after that there is nothingness, but nothingness constitutes something that is nothing and death brings the end of everything. Evil, good, dull, integral, whathaveyou....however one lived their life, I see the end as the same for each. In a world where we strive so hard to rid ourselves of barriers and ranks, why not accept equality in death? Ashes to ashes...
I think that God will give another chance as someone else. Or maybe something else. I think we will get the chance to relive. Unfortunatly I don't think we will rember anything of our previous life or experience on earth. I think the good God has everyhting worked out to a perfect balance of happiness and bliss.
I've never given much thought to the concept of an "afterlife" To me, notions of what happens after we die are not particularly productive to entertain. It's one of those things that cannot be proven or disproven. Its one of the concepts that can be debated infinitely, yet never actually understood. There may be six billion odd opinions to be heard, each equally plausible or bunk, given your perspectice. In short, we just don't know
The most direct effect of believing (or not) in some afterlife is the effect it has on those last moments of your life, and this is what is so appealing about believing (or not) in some form of afterlife. Do we wish to believe the last thoughts of our life, perhaps filled with fear, regret, closure, comfort, or whatever else we predict them to be, be the last experience of our consciousness? Whether or not we believe in an afterlife and why is directly dealing with this question.
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