Thread: What Happens When You Die?

Would you agree that some species extinction is due to a natural selection? For instance, Giant pandas in China. Due to their very delicate breeding mechanism. It is however stated that, these pandas do not hibernate in the winter, as they are unable to store sufficient amount of fat eating bamboos. They are generally carnivorous but have to survive on vegetation due to which they receive fewer amounts of nutrient and calories. Pandas mostly thrive in Southwest China, in the remote Bamboo forest. Due to ignorance by the Chinese Government, these pandas have failed to receive utmost care from poachers and loggers. Therefore, the environment where pandas strive are changing drastically and they can’t adopt to the new environment and circumstances and as a result they are extinct.
The same applies to dodo bird. Natural disaster implicated in dodo extinction. Scientists believe that the birds were killed by a natural disaster long before humans arrived on the Indian Ocean Island.
Birds couldn’t fly and they were naive, which made them a very easy target to kill. In addition, passing ships also brought rats, which ate the birds' eggs located in nests on the ground.
Tasmanian tiger. Why those animals are extinct, the science has a theory. It is a conflict between two species. It appears to have declined as a result of competition with the Dingo and perhaps hunting pressure from humans.
Due to pollution some species are mutating – “Hybrid Mutation”. You have probably heard about lizards with two tails, frogs with two heads, etc. Top 10 Strangest Animals

Originally Posted by natacha

Would you agree that some species extinction is due to a natural selection?

Yes, extinction is a fundamental & unavoidable process of evolution, natural selection is one of the main mechanisms by which evolution operates (the other being genetic drift). No species survives forever, they all eventually go extinct. 90% or more of all the species that have ever lived on this planet are now extinct. I can't see any reason why human beings would be any different. We'll probably fight our own extinction like no other living organism ever has but chances are homo sapiens will eventually go extinct.

Most species go extinct because of competition from a superior organism or changes too their ecosystem (or a combination of both). Given that humans are the top predator on planet earth I think it's likely that we'll play a very big part in our own demise. That could come from a microscopic organism of our own creation that wipes us out or changes we make to our own ecosystem. Either through pollution, overpopulation etc or more sudden & drastic changes like nuclear holocaust. Or a combination of some or all of the these examples.

However we eventually manage to do it our own extinction would make a fascinating case study. Shame we won't be around to learn from our mistakes :(

Absolutely agree with you, Tranquillo. If you observe carefully, you’ll see that “natural”, I would say” artificial” human selection started are while ago. We still have layers of society: poor, reach, middle, etc. The Holocaust in WWII. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic people (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioural grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. Cloning will play another role in human’s selection. Now it is a dilemma whether cloning is ethical or unethical. It is about time and it is unavoidable. The idea was as a good intention but the consequences could be disastrous, if it ends up in wrong hands. The same as it has been given to people a nuclear power and the result?

The dinosaurs reigned surpreme until a certain comet hit...no doubt we will go out in a similar fashion.

Originally Posted by azzah

The dinosaurs reigned surpreme until a certain comet hit...no doubt we will go out in a similar fashion.

oh i don't know. I reckon there is a very strong chance we will transcend this planet to another before that time.

As Dr Karl says, the only things that will survive a total nuclear holocaust will be the cockroaches, and us.

You are very possibly right Brick. And only humans would be arrogant enough to think they can beat the extinctions of time!

Originally Posted by azzah

You are very possibly right Brick. And only humans would be arrogant enough to think they can beat the extinctions of time!

True that.

Originally Posted by azzah

I'm just wondering what people think happens when you die. I alternate between nothing - you non-exist - to believing you return to the source of all that is, whatever that is - which to us might be like non-existance anyway, as we'd lose all our personal characteristics.

I don't mean this to be dark. I just know there's a lot of people on here with different spiritual backgrounds and experiences. It's something I've been thinking of quite a bit lately.

So my friend, it was 1.5 years ago you posted this. What view have you formed so far?

I believe your engery just gets absorbed into something

Originally Posted by mzgtr

I believe your engery just gets absorbed into something

Something?

Originally Posted by Bricktop

Something?

Yes something in the universe but I don't know what

Jesper, I will get back to you, I promise. Unfortunately I've been caught up the last few days and I really wanted to put my thoughts in some kind of logical order. But I have been thinking about it.

I have been considering how to approach Jesper's question for some days now. I've also read quite a few theological books over the last year on life after death - some good, some not. So where am I now. Here's a summary:

1. Human beings are the first creatures (perhaps the only creatures in the universe) to have moved from unconciousness to consciousness to self-consciousness.
2. The rise of self-consciousness has created an appearance of separation between us and all other creation.
3. Self-consciousness meant that we are the only creatures that consider and prepare for our deaths far before they happen. We alone our concerned with our eventual demise.
4. This sense of separation, along with a lack of knowledge on the laws of nature, led to the creation of a God (or gods) as an external being who intervenes in the world through nature.
5. The invention of an interventionist God required us to worship and serve this God in order to gain their favour for large harvests, lack of disease, high fertility, etc.
6. In serving this God, religion was created to ensure that there were few in society undertaking activities that might offend this God.
7. One of the factors invented to control society and ensure society served this God correctly was to create a heaven and hell. This also served people's needs for justice, and helped in garnering martyr's (particularly in the Jewish uprisings against Rome).

But Newton showed that the universe ran on certain physical laws. Copernicus demonstrated that we were not the centre of the universe and that there was no heaven above us or hell below us. Darwin showed us that life evolved, and was not created. The need for an external God being dissolved and, along with that, the need for a heaven and hell as a means of control in serving that God.

But, science has also shown that we are part of a greater whole, whether in DNA, geology or quantum physics. We are literally the universe and the universe is us. If this is the case, is it not logical that all consciouness is also one, and we are just expressions of that one consciousness?

Human beings have the ability to enter timelessness within their minds (both to the past and future and back again) and to travel to any location. Do we experience a kind of eternity when we do this? We take it for granted but we may be the only beings who can undertake this experience - from childhood to an imagined old age in an instant.

A mystic once said "my me is God" and I tend to agree. I believe life is part of eternity, and we enter that eternity when we live life to the fullest, move beyond our security bounds, and love wastefully. When I enter nature, I have moments of transendence and oneness which are beyond mere words. I can only call them moments of enlightenment.

So perhaps the next step in evolution is to move from self-consciousness to a whole or one-consciousness.

I'm not sure where that leaves me, except to say that I think I believe in life after death (there is still some agnosticism in me), but what that may be is beyond both my mind and words. By living deeply and looking within myself, I can touch that eternity I call God. In death, I will enter it more fully, once again becoming part of that oneness. In that way, I think there's a paradox - the more vibrant and openly I live, the more I become convinced in life beyond death.

Peace.

Azzah that is so well said that it stings by brain.


On a side note i spent a lot of today in a Mosque (longish story) and i can say more than ever, that listening to the Imam and watching the kiddies rock back and forth as they learnt the Koran by heart during their morning lesions, that religion based on an interventionist god is the most amazing load of nonsense we every made ourselves believe. Abet completely necessary in a certain space and time, but with no place in a better, fairer and more enlightened present and future.


Well done again Azzah, you may never let go of that agnosticism, but then again maybe it would be best for you not to......

Fantastic Azzah now that is the best.

I would like to add, that not only have Newton and Copernicus changed our worldly view but so have other masters such as Carl Justin Jung and Sigmund Freud. They showed us that there is a subconscious mind. Jung showed us that this mind has archetypes and these are the gods of old cultures(pre-religion). They showed us that we are often motivated by these subconscious forces. Jung showed us that the group has a mind such as the planet or racial gestalt.

Such simple explanations of the mind and the process of personal development in introspection and psychoanalysis has proven that these exoteric religions are bullshit and that the true path is inward(esoteric).

So even though organized religions, as we know it, has been proven a load of crap, we have been shown a perfectly logical and intelligent path. I think that the new wave of spirituality is here to replace religion - for those who are ready for it.