Acinom

excreationist,

I'm not going to respond to your post in full again since this topic is pretty much dead.

I think you took my first post way too personally than you should have, probably as a result of the fight you had going on with crocodile at the time. And I think that your response to my last post was also out of line at very points.

One line of your reply that I really took offense to though, would be the following:

So you really think that I believe in nothing? Please... that statement was so low and not conducive to a calm discussion on the topic at hand at all. I think I made it pretty clear in my first post that I believe in life, that since the afterlife cannot be proven either way, it's pointless to speculate on it. If some people believe in reincarnation and it comforts them, what's the big deal? Same goes for people who believe in heaven. As long as it doesn't hurt you or me, what's the big deal? That's all I was saying, and you had to take it as an attack.

I replied to your first response coherently and calmly. The way that you responded to that post, however, suggested to me that you wanted another fight. So if you really want the adrenaline rush of another flame war, I suggest you PM crocodile. This will be my last post on this topic.

excreationist

Acinom:
Well you earlier said:
Those were your words. You said you based your entire belief system on nothing. I didn't say that you believed in nothing! My reply was "Are you being serious?" I was asking you to clarify what you meant - whether you meant if you really did base your belief system on nothing or if you were being sarcastic. I couldn't tell. Or perhaps there was another possibility.

See? You're doing it again. You're telling me what I should do. You see, sometimes people disagree with you when you tell them what to do.
I don't think this is a "flame war". But I guess you don't like me disagreeing with things you say so I'll just stop.

excreationist

crocodile deathroll:
Maybe choice 2 is equivalent to choice 1, but when I did the poll, I chose the option/s that obviously agreed with how I saw my beliefs.

Here's an example which I think is related to choice 2:
Say there was a dog, and you taught it some commands like how to sit and speak when you told it to. Then say you totally destroyed its head... this could be done by simultaneously decapitating and vaporizing its head.
The rest of the body would remain so it would be identifiable as being a "dog".
Perhaps it could be argued that this decapitated dog "forgot" your commands... but personally that kind of wording seems odd so I wouldn't really agree with it and choose that option on a poll.

Answerer

My choice is number nine. Simply because I feel that whatever one will experience after death is greatly dependent on his or her state of mind during his or her moment of death. Therefore, to me, it is almost impossible to foretell what a person will experience in his 'afterlife'.

Mad Kally

I think that is most likely. I really just wanted to vote and leave. I suspect others have done the same. I voted for #1 of course.

crocodile deathroll

If your dog is a certain breed of working sheep dog like a border collie then there will be some genetically predetermined propensity to be trained in a certain way. Because of these non-linear processes, you would have an uphill battle training a pit bull terrier to work with sheep as reliably as a border collie.

crocodile deathroll

I somehow agree, it was a real toss of a coin with #9, because any question will my ask about the nature of our existence after death.
I feel there is a difference between the mind and consciousness. The mind is linear and is a product of much more higher level processes. I involves such complex processes as memory storage and retrieval and cognitive processes and a sense of personal identity.

I am sure the mind dies at death and it is goodbye nurse.

Consciousness on the other hand is much simpler and just involves a simple on off switch and you are either conscious or you are not. consciousness is a non-linear univeral perception of time. Unlike the mind you do not have to taught your circadian rhythms and levels of sleep rhythms or your perception of time.

excreationist

I'm giving an example where an animal used to remember something... another example might be an ape that can do sign language to communicate what food it wants to eat... while it is alive it has that information stored in its brain. If you vapourized its head it wouldn't be able to recall that information - my point is that I personally would find it odd to say that it "forgot" the information, though perhaps it might be argued that it did. Since I'd find it odd, that would be why I wouldn't choose that as an option in a poll.

excreationist

Are you saying that infants, who don't even know language, are "conscious"? (Since they "don't need to be taught it") What about recently fertilized eggs, etc? Or amoeba? Could you give examples of what is and isn't conscious and at what point it crosses the line between being not conscious and conscious.

Jayjay

I'm a bit surprised to see that none would bet in reincarnation or spiritual existence without heaven or hell... I thought this line of thought was far more common than, say, parallel universes (2 votes at the time I'm writing this) or "cryonics will save me" (also 2 votes).

I've been of the "game over" persuasion for a long time, and for all intents and purposes I guess I still am, but if there's even a remote possibility of an afterlife I'd say it lies in the parallel universe thingy. If somewhere, sometime a pattern forms that corresponds to the state of my brain at the precise moment of death in this universe, that pattern would practically be me... it would be wondering "where the heck am I?" just as I would if I were to be star-trek transported away.

The next question is, what's the likeliest way of my brain patterns occuring spontaneously? This is an issue with afterlife that I have not quite yet come to terms with.