Hey friends. These days, I spend most of my free brain capacity thinking about what happens to us when we physically die. I am a fairly devout Christian, however our Bible isn't really detailed about this topic. Pretty much, if you believe in Jesus you go to a better place. If you don't, you go to a worse place. I have been reading alot of books and articles on the topic. From what I can tell, there are likely to be levels of Heaven and Hell. Reincarnation is possible but not guaranteed, and we may be reincarnated somewhere other than Planet Earth. Our beliefs and behavior in this life (or others we have lived) determines which Heaven or Hell we go to. It seems quite possible that we can graduate from one level to another, or go backwards to a worse level. Also, some spirits of deceased people can stay here for various reasons.
This is what I have come up with so far. My Christian faith doesn't demand that I proclaim one particular explanation of the afterlife as 100% true and all others are false. So, I am willing to learn and revise my expectations. What does everyone here think about the afterlife? How did you arrive at your beliefs? Any books/articles/lectures or other resources that you found particularly enlightening?
There is a lot to consider about The Christian View of the afterlife, A lot of people don't know this, But Jehovas witnesses believe that There is no afterlife at all, That Death is the absolute end and Ressurection is simply people being remembered and brought back from nothingness. I don't subscribe to that, While I am a Christian, There is a lot of hope in the idea of an afterlife just within known science. Consider, Time is a subject we speak much of in the science forums, But, Time isn't a linear thing. We experience time in a linear fashion, But How we perceive time, Isn't how time hashes out to be through experimentation, With concepts like Time dilation, That proven experiment that time being relative can be manipulated predictably in opposition to acceleration, Time dilation has to be accounted for with GPS in satellites so data can be sent accurately,
Error analysis for the Global Positioning System - Wikipedia So in a way, To ever exist, In all of time, Is to exist forever, Because Time Exists as a whole, Past present and future, you see.
The short and sweet fact is, Time exists all at once, Past present future, It's all there, All the time, It's just our limited perceptions in how we experience time that prevents us from experiencing the past and future right now, In fact, in some cases, of paranormal or extrasensory preceptions, PEople do in fact experience future events, This can be seen in everything from Past Stories of ancient profits, too Modern-day clairvoyants. The thing is, Reality isn't what we think it is, Death isn't what we think it is. Consider, Our bodies used and burn energy, But to boot this, Everything is energy, Every particle every atom, Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light in the vacuum of space. Mass is energy. The law of energy conservation states,
Conservation of energy - Wikipedia
Energy can not be created freely nor destroyed completely, It can only be converted from one form of energy to another. You are energy, your thoughts are energy, your consciousness is energy, And I prove this by saying, If all energy was completely deprived of your brain, You would indeed perish. So, the law of energy conservation, Tells me, That our consciousness, What we are, IS energy, So, Death can not destroy consciousness. The consciousness must be converted into another form of energy, An after existence. Because look it, The Fact remains, That If you concede that Our lives and our consciousness are energy, And they are, Then that energy can not just stop existing. It must convert to another form. There are so many scientific reasons, To believe that this Life, is simply a beginning for us. A stage of development.