h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

..in an after-life?

Haven't decided yet. I plan to wait until I die to figure it out.

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realised there was a contradiction there and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."
-- "Life, The Universe and Everything" - Douglas Adams

Only in the memories of those that are left behind.

"Given that God is infinite, and that the Universe is also infinite: Would anyone like any toast?"

As stupid as it might seem, that quote from Red Dwarf sums up my entire views on the Afterlife and all those other ineffably unanswerable topics.

It's absurd. Why bother about what happens when you die? You're alive for the time being, so enjoy what you have whilst you can. I'm sure questions about what happens when you die can wait until you actually *do* pass on. Once you've died I doubt there's much else of greater importance than wondering what happens to you next.

But as I'm not yet dead (nor are any of the rest of us), I intend to enjoy what I have, leaving the unanswerable until I find myself under a truck and ready to come up with a feasible response.

Several - ie reincarnation, and I'll tell you why if you ask me nicely, and dont flame or spit.

a buddhist called Ben

I had that idea, The Apathetic, and naturally my Christian friends told me that it would then be too late and I'd have to spend eternity in Hell.

I still don't believe them. Maybe I'm too much a scientist, but I'd like a little bit more in the way of proof before I accept the black and white heaven and hell vision. If there is an afterlife, either it's one big place where everyone goes and is probably totally incomprehensible by the living mind, or it's interpenetrated with this one, hence numerous claims of spirits and ghosts and so forth.

But I think the best way to find out is to wait until you die. However, I would not advise attempting to accelerate the dying process. Enjoy life first, because there's no guarentee that there is anything after death.

Ooh. Suicide. Bad topic.

I know far too many people who have gone and taken up the sport of big bridge jumping. Believe me, accelerating rapidly towards hard concrete from a hundred feet up is NOT a good way of finding out if there is a God. And far from delving into the great unknown, all these idiots have managed to achieve is to stop traffic for a while as someone scrapes them off the tarmac.



Make that people I 'knew'. Past tense.

I personally see no reason to believe in an afterlife. Simply made up by people that couldn´t cope with their own mortality. But if there is, DNA would be in Hell now. Kinda sad.

don't say that!

no. don't believe in any.

DNA would only be in hell if:
a) there is an afterlife
b) it is a Judeo-Christian afterlife

I find it highly unlikely that both of these are true. Why? Because I don't believe in a Judeo-Christian God. And without Him, their idea of an afterlife cannot exist. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, heaven and hell are just patently nonexistant. Simple.

And no, I don't need any evidence. I'm an agnostic.

I believe in an afterlife simply becuase there are so many special people who are there ahead of me that I can't believe I will never see again. (Of course the whole Catholic "of course there is a heaven, don't ask silly questions child" thing has probably rubbed off on me a little too!)

-- violagirl

Since the question is, do you BELIEVE in an afterlife, my answer would be yes. It is the nature of the afterlife that I am confused on. Is it a heaven or hell existence? Or do you come back for another try at life. Or do you become part of a collective mind of all who have died before throughout the universe. Or do you just dissolve into nothingness. I believe that life goes on, only changed for the one who died and the ones left behind.

Mostly

Several Star Trek programs (and other sci-fi fora) explored the possibility of dumping a human consciousness into a computer. Not just the holodeck recreations that have a life of their own, but people who left their bodies at death and downloaded their mind and spirit. Sometimes this was explored as a bad thing, sometimes a good thing - but I think we've all seen enough variations on it to at least be able to imagine the possibility.

If this is has any credibility at all, I'd like to salute the man who first envisioned the SubEthaNet and recently left this mortal coil in order to explore Cyberspace in a more convenient form. Having created h2g2 and given it a life of its own, filled with his ideas, his spirit, his sense of humour, his sense of adventure...
If there never was an afterlife before, then there surely is now.

Well ..as the founder of the thread I must say I'm impressed with the responses. I wasn't sure if anyone wanted to talk about it. In light of the recent passing of Perry Como it occurred to me that some might want to say something about the heavenly choir.

So far we have the believers who simply believe, and non-believers who simply don't believe, and a few who think it's best to keep a 'wait and see' approach. I'm in that third group for the moment, but I'm also inclined to believe that those who have questions should perhaps expand on the discussion. Thinking and talking about it must surely be mostly harmless.

A nice girl called Ben ought to be encouraged to give us her thoughts on re-incarnation. (All my past lives seem to be non-human.)

I would argue with MaW about the admisssions requirements of the Judeo-Christian Heaven since I'm sure DNA would be welcome, however improbable that may seem, if he could only pass his riches thru the eye of a camel, as unlikely as that may be.

And I wonder if Gravity Welles is serious about DNA becoming the first in Cyberspace. I hate to admit it but I can almost get my head round that one - too much Star Trek perhaps - but as I sit here typing into this machine - connected to this h2g2 extension of his creative mind... "your mind to my mind ..my mind to your meld".

According to various conversations (or rather, arguments) I've had with the Christians among my friends, in order to get into Heaven you have to believe in and accept God. DNA was an atheist, therefore by those requirements he doesn't get there - if you deny God, you spend eternity deprived of His light and love (also known as Hell - they say that apparently it's not a nice warm place full of devils and torment, the torment is the absence of God's love). I don't believe them, but by their view of things I'm going to Hell too.

Oh yes, and not forgetting the view presented in The Black Adder:

"Heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in Heaven. Like singing, talking to God, watering pot plants. Whereas Hell, on the other hand, is for people who like the other sorts of things - adultery, pillage, torture and things in those areas."

Of course, that was just Edmund trying to get someone to leave their lands to the crown, but it's interesting nonetheless. I have often wondered if it is not the case that when one dies, one goes where one _expects_ to go.

that an afterlife could be recognised within the terms of the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

doh! sorry, I've just checked, and that should have been the first law, i.e. that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, including perhaps the energy that it takes to get out of bed in the morning, write books etc.

I suppose the laws of thermodynamics could allow for an afterlife, at least the first...but if you take the second law into account also it gets trickier. The second law states that the entropy of a closed system has to increase, it can never decrease. But a "system within the system" is allowed to have constant or decreasing entropy, as long as the net change in the whole system is an increase.

Not sure how clear that was...but I think this implies that thermodynamics would definitely allow for reincarnation, and possibly an afterlife as well...

Anyone with more physics knowledge perhaps?