alright ladies, once again thnx for your input.

my money is on the afterlife having been cooked up by egotistical religious leaders refusing to believe that this is all we get. its your "reward" for being an obedient child and paying the church.

So you don't believe in any after life?

Ah if it were only that simple.

It would be the greatest escape from the responsibilities and burden of life.

tribo,

We all have to find our own path, be it continuity or an end.

And you don't find your way through others, it has to be within yourself.

lol. along the lines of suicide is eay lif eis hard.

its jmo though. i can fully believe someone hated the idea of all he did going to dust and not being "there" anymore. lol.

Well Tribo I know you are not terribly interested in the scientific angle. Or maybe you are I dont want to jump to any conclusions. I guess I need to quickly explain the differentiation between chimpanzee and homo sapien. I will summarize it. The DNA sequences of humans and chimpanzees are 98 percent identical. Yet that 2 percent difference represents at least 15 million changes in our genome since the time of our common ancestor roughly six million years ago

1. Cerebral Cortex (greater capacity)
2. Oposable thumb (we can touch thumb to 4 fingers)
3. Language or FOXP2 gene

Lets go with those.

These would be the recognizable areas where we clearly diverged and continued to evolve in another direction from chimp. Now do I assume that these differences created the soul? No. I feel that animals have souls in the same way that we do. Now that would be assuming that we have souls. I think its an either/or. Either we all have souls or no one gets to have a soul!

You cant have your pudding until you eat your meat!

Again, good stuff Tribo.

I might clarify something though. If you’re going to separate into only two camps, I think it would be more accurate to describe the two camps as:
1) When we die awareness ceases
2) When we die awareness continues

I guess the reason I think of my view as being right is that it is the only one I have found that sufficiently explains, to my satisfaction, all the phenomena I have observed in my life. (Particularly OBE and past life memories.) To paraphrase Lazarus Long – “I may be incorrect, but I’m not uncertain.”

And as I think of that, it occurs to me that I’m probably no different from anyone else in that respect – “explains to my satisfaction”.

But to me, whether it’s “correct” or “incorrect” is secondary to the requirement that it work.

That is, does it help one in dealing with “life, the universe and everything” as one perceives it? My viewpoint does that for me. And that’s all I really require of it.

In a spiritual sense I have to say that any being is “special” in that it is capable of self-determinism, which is not the case with anything material. So “special” in that sense is only a difference between “living” and “non-living”. (Or maybe “self-determined” and “other-determined”.)

Observation is, by definition and necessity, self-centered, as is any viewpoint or opinion about death. Saying that it is egotistical or self-centered is pretty much meaningless because it is self-evident.

Yes, it most certainly does. That is its entire purpose.

Hi, I -

i agree with you totally, this not about me trying to figure out what i believe, i already know that if that was what you were inferring or referring to - i was just curious as to what others here thought on this. ive run across many thoughts here as to an after-life and just wndered how many diff. views there may be on this subject. and thnx for your input.

That's an interesting thought Bergeia, thats why i asked if mankind may think more highly of his place in all this than he ought to? Is there a possibilty that mans ego plays apart in wanting his life to not have been in vain? wanting his life to be of lasting worth or at least be able to carry it into the next plain of existence?

I know Sky doesn't see this but i wonder honestly how many may?

I like that Sky said:


I might clarify something though. If you’re going to separate into only two camps, I think it would be more accurate to describe the two camps as:
1) When we die awareness ceases
2) When we die awareness continues

i will agree with that Sky if you will exspand on your defintion of awareness [briefly } so that all may understand it as you do.

Oh gosh, you hadda go and pick that one!

The real core of the problem is that we’re actually talking about subjectivity in its purest, most absolute form. In fact, "awareness" and "subjectivity" are virtually synonymous in this context. So any attempt at trying to define "awareness" in objective terms is necessarily a misnomer.

So with that in mind, here goes: "awareness" = "the subjective viewpoint of perception".

(Hope that was brief enough. )

thnx sky, but next time just a little shorter please - think of Neitche - god is dead - or the bible jesus wept - or well you know wat i'm getting at.

lol. id say awareness is simple enough for anyone to understand imo.

i think therefore i am?



then again alot of the poeple online dont think anyhow so i guess it is subjective! lol

Are you alluding to implications that I employ unnecessarily profuse pedantically pedagogic verbiage? Or what?

ME think YOU ???? no way, i like the fact that your a bowery boy -

Well that tears it! I demand satisfaction! <throws down the gauntlet> Malapropisms at dawn to first blood! Bring your second! Slip Mahoney and Reverand Spooner will referee.


OMG! I loved those guys! Slip and Sach. Better than Abbot and Costello or The Three Stooges as far as I was concerned. What a blast from the past!

By studying the mystic book, the Necronomicon I have found various ancient spells and arcane methods of becoming one of the undead.

Was that supposed to be "one of" or "one with"?

lol

they were my favorites and spanky and the gang also when i was younger. much better than A&C, though they could be funny at times to. as well as larrel and hardy. but the bowery boys were best!