Does our consciousness end after we die? Or do we get 'reborn' as another creature?

Do you believe in reincarnation?

  • Yes, but not in the spiritual sense.

    Votes: 4 6.2%

  • Yes, in the spiritual sense.

    Votes: 9 13.8%

  • Not sure.

    Votes: 21 32.3%

  • Nope.

    Votes: 31 47.7%
  • Total voters
    65
I hope reincarnation is false. Why would anyone want to be stuck in this limited mortal world of suffering and death over and over? The chances of anything horrible being done to or by someone -- no matter how small -- can become a certainty given enough lives.

Anyway I believe in the somewhat popular phrase "we're spiritual beings having a human experience," and that life is kind of like being in the womb compared to the next one.

If you don't believe there's a spirit in the traditional religious sense, there cam still be allowance for an afterlife: look up "quantum consciousness" by Roger Penrose, and "The Atheist Afterlife" by David Staume.

And if you believe there's no afterlife at all, then at least in nonexistence one wouldn't be around to experience the lack of existence.
 
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Jon-Kacho said:
We won't know about the world to come until we get there. All of the theories are probably wrong but the "you just disappear" idea is the silliest of all.
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Uhh... we know what consciousness is. It's literally chemical and electrical processes occurring in a physical chunk of meat. What happens to a process when you break the machine it's happening in? It stops.

What happens when you're playing minecraft and I drop a bowling ball on your computer? Does that game of minecraft keep existing "somewhere"? Or does it "Just disappear"?

The silliest theories of all are the ones people just make up because they want them to be true. Saying "I don't know and nobody knows so therefore magic" is laziness. You're not required to try to figure shit out, but don't claim because you don't want to think about it that it's unsolvable.
 
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I believe OP wants a collected consensus on thoughts of an afterlife, limiting it to reincarnation or non existence.
My thoughts, No. Don't fear dying though, your brain kicks in the endorphins making it almost pleasurable. I do not want reincarnation, this shit world recycles plots enough.
 
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It's pretty obvious why the belief in an afterlife and reincarnation is so strong and attractive. We literally only ever experience existing. We have 0 experience with nonexistence. How the fuck are we supposed to comprehend something we can never experience, because to experience something is to exist in it?

I cannot imagine what it would be like, literally. I just don't have the capability. I also can't imagine what it's like to fall asleep, or to be in a dreamless sleep. I know these things happen to me every single day, but I have no comprehension of "What happens" to my consciousness during those periods of non-experience. I'm pretty confident that it doesn't take a form and travel to a place, though.

Do reincarnation believers think your consciousness goes somewhere during periods of non experience like these? Or would you deny my claim of non-experience, and say instead we just don't remember those moments, but we do experience them while they're happening?
 
My long answer to this is very long winded and would probably put people to sleep.

So my short answer is that I hope that we reincarnate as a fantasy race or something- a stupid and dumb dream but hey, it at least gives me something to hope for.
Lord knows humanity is currently getting me down all the time.
 
KiwiLedian said:
My long answer to this is very long winded and would probably put people to sleep.

So my short answer is that I hope that we reincarnate as a fantasy race or something- a stupid and dumb dream but hey, it at least gives me something to hope for.
Lord knows humanity is currently getting me down all the time.
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I wanna be a catgirl in the future.


Man that sounded autistic
 
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Harbinger of Kali Yuga said:
Technically you could reincarnate someone dead if you scanned their entire molecular structure and created a 1:1 copy later on. They'd feel and act as if they did right when they were being scanned, which is to be expected and is just as "them" as the "original." Hell, you could create a copy of someone alive, and the "clone" would be the exact same person but with the perception of having teleported a little bit since they obviously can't be taking up the same physical space as the "original."
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The Undying Mercenaries book series explores that idea a lot. Earth gets annexed by a galactic empire and we have to provide a primary trade good. We decide to purchase machines that can recreate a person's body and mind on a molecular level and sail off to provide mercenary infantry for various bush wars. They don't really dwell on the metaphysical questions, or at least the protagonist doesn't, but the idea of how different a mind that has lived many deaths is to your baseline totally mortal person who hasn't even had another version of them die once kind of is.

Incidentally the Galactic punishment for people abusing the respawn infrastructure to run multiple copies at once is species-wide death
 
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Honestly I believe that when you die you go into the state that you were before you were born. Does anyone remember what it was like before they were born? Anyone?

I assume that if you can be born in the first place, then the process can repeat itself. Whatever molecules that make you up however will be scattered around the Earth though, and the only form of life you will probably be apart of is whatever structures your atoms end up making it into after you decompose.
 
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From nothing, we return to the void. Existence is itself a gift of infinite meaning.
 
Give Her The D said:
We just die. No afterlife, just release from the fecal matter that is this decrepit Earth.
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That statement is about as logical is saying flowers only bloom so you can look at them when you walk by which is clearly not the case there's much more to it they bloom fruit reproduction get attention from bugs that can pollinate them so on and so forth and in that same manner we are alive for time and then we move on but existence is not pointless because there has to be growth or decay and seeing as how we started out as nothing and we are full grown adults most of us at least we are in a state of expanding this is just one stage of growing up doesn't stop when you leave the womb doesn't stop when you get a car doesn't stop when your body dies
 
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MiyaEL said:
That statement is about as logical is saying flowers only bloom so you can look at them when you walk by which is clearly not the case there's much more to it they bloom fruit reproduction get attention from bugs that can pollinate them so on and so forth and in that same manner we are alive for time and then we move on but existence is not pointless because there has to be growth or decay and seeing as how we started out as nothing and we are full grown adults most of us at least we are in a state of expanding this is just one stage of growing up doesn't stop when you leave the womb doesn't stop when you get a car doesn't stop when your body dies
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That sounds like something Hitler would say.
 
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