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[IndonesiaWarMinister]

I've got my normal Christian-esque outlook on the afterlife, with the addition of Fiddler's Green.

I've got my bit of normal majority Islamic look on the afterlife, with the addition of a few otaku dreams.

[Jackrabbit]

One idea I've sometimes entertained (though never believed) is that you can't die. Sure, you die, but each time you do you don't notice, and go on living in a parallel world that's exactly the same except you didn't die. Obviously, other people would die but when they die, they end up in a different universe where they didn't and they don't notice it.

Example:

Someone wraps their care around a tree accidentally.
Suddenly (though they don't notice it) they're 30 before the accident begun. The accident fails to happen and they have no memory of it. This continues until natural death, upon which either a greater state of being occurs or you're reincarnated.

Colossal bullshit, but a nice idea.

EDIT: I just briefly read the beginnings of that quantum immortality thing. Holy shit, I'm like a clever scientist guy now for thinking that up on my own! Ohohohohoho.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

One idea I've sometimes entertained (though never believed) is that you can't die. Sure, you die, but each time you do you don't notice, and go on living in a parallel world that's exactly the same except you didn't die. Obviously, other people would die but when they die, they end up in a different universe where they didn't and they don't notice it.

Example:

Someone wraps their care around a tree accidentally.
Suddenly (though they don't notice it) they're 30 before the accident begun. The accident fails to happen and they have no memory of it. This continues until natural death, upon which either a greater state of being occurs or you're reincarnated.

Colossal bullshit, but a nice idea.

Quantum Immortality, thar.

[Jackrabbit]

That's actually kind of scary. I'm so awesome for thinking up an improbable senario that already exists. I mean damn, I thought it was a stupid enough idea that I'd be the first.

[Muz]

I believe in the afterlife. I'm just not sure what's after the afterlife. I sort of believe that nothing happens to us when we die. We just cease to exist, our bodies, souls lie there in the dirt, or wherever. But eventually the universe gets destroyed, and that's when our souls get scattered somewhere outside this universe.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I certainly don't go with a Dantean semiphysical conception of the afterlife (literal flames and clouds and the like), though I very much believe in one.  It'd be hard to describe what I believe in words, a sort of a timeless (in other words, not an infinite progression of time, but a lack of time at all), immaterial, pure emotional state.  There's more to it, but to try and go into any more detail would be impossible, though...

I've considered the possibility of a lack of an afterlife, of course, and atemporal non-consciousness doesn't really sound all that bad.  It's not as if I could get bored with it, after all, as that requires some measure of consciousness.

[Jude]

The idea of an afterlife requires the existence of an immortal soul or some other magical "essence" that might as well be a soul, and everything modern science has told us is that there is no reason to believe such a thing exists. There's no essence of a person; you're a collection of cells and neurons working together in certain combinations. When you die, those cells gradually disintegrate - YOU gradually disintegrate, and in any case, your brain and hence your mind and consciousness, stop functioning. So you stop existing.

Any other belief requires a leap into faith and/or superstition which has no logically justifiable basis.

[blah28722]

I'm not one to jump on the religious bandwagon, but I'd say there are things that science hasn't been able to explain.

That said, I still adopt the atheist's view that you simply stop. It'd be a bit like falling asleep, but much deeper and less remembering.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I like to think of complex problems like these. So far, I think that conscience as we know it exists purely due to the activity of the brain. That's the scientific approach. However, there are several major caveats, going into metaphysics. First, supernatural occurences such as the "souls of the dead" "speaking" to mediums - sure, not documented or scientifically proven, but a possibility nonetheless. Second, some notable occurences of - again, unproven - transplant memory. And finally, the theory of reincarnation. All of these tie into the concept of the human soul. Evidently, the soul is some form of an integral information field - quite possibly an imprint of structured information created by the human brain and its activity. And then we circle back from metaphysics into physics - for an imprint of information to be conceivable, much less analyzeable or transferrable, information must exist in the universe as a form of energy. (Which leads straight into a work of Stanislaw Lem that mentions Donda's Law - that information, or structured collection of matter, has its own mass. It's impossibly small, yet in the age of computers it is possible to gather enough information to notice the mass.) It is possible that the Earth has accumulated a sort of a "psychosphere", a collection of imprints of people that have lived on it, and that these imprints periodically manifest as "speaking dead" or even ghosts. The idea that an information imprint may continue to exist or function when the biological machine that created it has been destroyed gives a different meaning to Heaven or Hell - they may as well be literal, as the magnetic fields surrounding the Earth would have an effect on the imprints, and the structure and integrity of the imprints could both affect the exact conditions they would be put into.

Alright, that went quite a bit too far beyond the scope of any sort of normal science or theology. Feel free to discuss.

[Nilocy]

Quite frankly I believe that when you die, your dead. Nothing happens except your dead corpse just rotting in a wooden coffin. Its a sad truth that I think too many people are afraid to admit too. How can you trust people when they say theres an afterlife, no-ones come back from teh dead to say there is have they?

I'd really really like to believe in life after death, but being a total realist I can't. Its a shame though, kinda makes you wish there was more than your 75 Years on this wonderful planet.

[Phantom]

I believe after you die,  you just watch life from the sidelines, not a heaven or hell, just a small room you use to watch life go on by.

[Vester]

I'm 50-50. If there's an afterlife, cool. If there's not, then, well, I'm dead anyway, so I won't mind.

[Vester]

Quite frankly I believe that when you die, your dead. Nothing happens except your dead corpse just rotting in a wooden coffin. Its a sad truth that I think too many people are afraid to admit too. How can you trust people when they say theres an afterlife, no-ones come back from teh dead to say there is have they?

I'd really really like to believe in life after death, but being a total realist I can't. Its a shame though, kinda makes you wish there was more than your 75 Years on this wonderful planet.

The metaphysical justification for an afterlife lies in human desires. We have needs/wants that can never be satisfied by anything finite, so it stands to reason (apparently) that there must be something infinite we are striving for. (I probably got that wrong, because it seems an oversimplification)

Also my coffin will be made of ivory. Ivory, I say! I will rot in splendour!

[ein]

I don't really believe in an afterlife, so I intend to cheat death.
If I can find a way to transfer my consciousness (soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it), then I can build a robotic body and transfer myself to it. When that body starts to fail, I'll build another one.
If I don't accomplish that, I want a coffin made of osmium.
No gamma rays are gonna touch my corpse dammit!

[Vester]

I don't really believe in an afterlife, so I intend to cheat death.
If I can find a way to transfer my consciousness (soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it), then I can build a robotic body and transfer myself to it. When that body starts to fail, I'll build another one.
If I don't accomplish that, I want a coffin made of osmium.
No gamma rays are gonna touch my corpse dammit!

How will you effect the transfer?

If it's just a memory transfer, to, say, a spare body, then you'll still be dead (as in, annihilated), but someone with your memories will be wandering around. No one will be able to tell the difference, not even you. Because, you know, you don't exist anymore.

A consciousness transference would be interesting but how would they bring that about? Maybe if you just replaced your current body bit by bit with robot parts, then you could get immortality, although your brain would still be subject to degradation.