Life after death?

I study the brain. I don't want to go too in depth because of anonymity. I have a rather narrow focus. However, everything that we know about the brain suggests that nothing at all happens after we die. Near Death experiences are also accounted for and we are well aware of why they happen. There is no way to tell for sure what happens after we die, just as you suggested, but it appears that we  simply die.
 
On a related note, people have a really hard time understanding and/or accepting what it's like to be dead. However, this can easily be done. Think about an event that occurred before you were born. Try to think about how you felt during that event, what it smelled like, etc. That's how it feels to be dead. You simply aren't present. 

 

There has to be. I don't want to come back here, reincarnation is a crock of shit.

 

Either which way everyone will find out and probably sooner then later. Death often comes at a unexpected time. 50,000 Americans die on our highways..someone has to occupy that number. Cheers!

 

I believe that it has to be possible to be present again (be it as an animal, insect, a human etc....maybe even life on other planets) after dying as long as there is life in the universe. I've been "dead"-not present-before, so why shouldn't it be possible experience consciousness again after dying in this life (of course without any memories of past experiences since those die with the brain in my opinion).

 

That's pretty much the way I see it, too. And for much the same reason. Death is a no-brainer - literally. No brain - no mind. No mind - no experience. All the biomolecular functionality ceases.
 
Does that rule out the existence of spirit? No.
 
Am I absolutely certain there isn't some aspect of our being that transcends the physical biology of life? Nope.
 
I only can go on what I've experienced and learned about life from living and being immersed in biochemistry. They cause me to lean heavily toward the purely physical. I have had one (and only one) experience a few years back that completely contradicts this viewpoint. But even that hasn't convinced me that we are any different after all the functionality ceases at death as we were before it was initiated at conception.
 
In my view we are a system - an assemblage - of complex electrochemical processes that arises from the information contained in our parents' DNA in conjunction with the electrodynamic laws governing molecular interactions. But these processes are only temporary, unsustainable eddy currents in the statistical thermodynamic river of physical reality. Eventually the energy patterns that form the ripples fade back into non-existence as the pattern vanishes into the underlying stream. 
 
Maybe I'm completely wrong and missing something. But I think, given ALMOST all of the evidence (in my case), that after all of my atoms have long dispersed back into the environment from which they had been assembled, there will be nothing that is "me" - just like there was nothing that could even remotely be construed as "me" before sperm infused egg. Even now, like the eddy current, I'm a very transient and ephemeral thing, with energy and matter coming and going and interacting to the point where it becomes very difficult to really define where "I" stop and everything that's "not I" begins. 

 

I believe the same for the exact same reason. Was "technically dead" for 2 minutes in the crash

 

 
This is more abstract, but speaking from a physics point of view, all energy is conserved, and all atoms are conserved, so whatever... 'makes' you is still intact and just takes a different form
 
That's a really basic view on it though and might not even be applicable
 
what I feel confident doesn't happen is anything claimed by any religion ever

 

During those minutes i was entirely coherent and can remember, in detail the exact course of events.

But my girlfriend says i can't remember anything two days later. So idk.

Think about your question OP, and the answer, answers itself.

 

With me saying "I've been dead before" I meant the time before even becoming alive though like VaWaveRider mentioned it. In case you misunderstood me.  
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This is exactly how I think...are you...me...?

 

There's nothing after death.

 

I see what you are saying. I've pondered it before. I just don't have any evidence that it's true. What people call a "soul," what makes you you, if you will, is our specific neural network that is formed based on life experiences. There are sections of the brain that make you feel as though you are present. For you to be you again, the exact same atoms would have to rearrange in the exact same way with no variables whatsoever. Even the course of your life would have to be exactly the same. Even then, would it feel like you? I doubt it. 

 

Great album. Reps to biggie! So the question of a soul has been on my mind lately as well. My academic pursuits brainwashed me into a materialistic outlook on life. However recently they have been doing research on quantum teleportation with particles in hopes of doing bigger objects later and it's stir a little uncertainty within me. The premise of the eventual technology is that there is a scanner that scans all the atoms in your body and their configuration, then it destroys you and reconfigures you somewhere else. But what if there is some essence we don't know about yet like energies interacting on the quantum level producing a macrocosm of energy or as we call it in spirituality, a soul. Perhaps our conscious energy is a manifestation of these complex quantum interaction, and after we die and decompose those particles that made us dissipate and float out turning us into the experience of oneness of all things instead of the experience of the individual you. Yeah, if you give to the materialist mindset then you might think there is nothing after (and some people of the materialist mentality believe you are your mind because your mind processes all the stimuli and so you die everytime you go to sleep because when you sleep you neurons get so rearranged by neuro-parasites and neurogensis/neurodecay, that the next day your mind is quite different from when you fell asleep, so when you wake you are an entirely new experiencer, however the mind experiences these changes in very subtle ways) however science is constantly discovering new realms and there may be some realms beyond the tangibility words and equations we use to describe nature. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has convinced me a number of times that perhaps we are actually dead and waiting to be reborn. I believe is death is the ultimate psychedelic and I'm excited, when the time is ripe, for me to experience it, but I choose to stay opened minded about it and not let try to cheapen it by attaching my small thoughts to it, when the ineffable is lurking in the nooks and crannies around us. 

 

No, it wouldn't feel like you. I just mean being able to experience life.

 

But if it's not you, then you aren't experiencing anything. When I die, the matter that I'm composed of will be utilized again, but it won't be me. 

 

It boils down to the question "does the brain give rise to mind or does the mind give rise to the brain?"

Each view would have predictions. For instance, the former would predict that all experiences are due to local stimuli. The latter would predict the possibility of nonlocal experiences like remote viewing or telepathy.

I lean toward the latter simply because it is a less restrictive assumption. I could be swayed either way though.

 

Maybe you are focusing too much on the "you", soul, or whatever people call it. Or I'm wrong...too bad no answer to be found here.

 

It stems from the assumption that brain gives rise to mind. If you ARE your localized brain, then when its disassociated, YOU are no more.

If the mind gives rise to the brain, YOU are simply no longer localized, nonetheless YOU may still 'exist' in some capacity.

 

The former isn't an assumption though.. it is a lack of assuming that there is more to it. It's like when an (agnostic) atheist says they don't believe in God, they aren't assuming God isn't real.. just that they don't believe. When you withhold all assumptions in terms of the mind, all you're left with is the brain.