When you sit away from the computer, with the t.v and radio off in a quiet and serene place, what exactly do you really truly believe happens when you die?

[Creatorexists]

Do you think that like sleep you just slip into a peaceful darkness?

Do you believe that somehow and somewhere we are resurrected in a new shape and form?

Do you believe that as the books have said we are sent to hell or await judgement from god in our graves?

Do you believe that we're incarnated back here?

Something else?

Were you brought up to believe one thing and then changed the way you thought? Was there any reason for this change of mind?

Serious answers only as i genuinely would like to know what different slices of society really think of this question on a serious level.

[naomi24]

Well, he didn't last long. He's a gonna!

[jackthehat]

Must have 'previous form'.......

[naomi24]

A proponent of reincarnation then. ;o)

[joko]

i would love to believe - i would love there to be a heaven, somewhere glorious where everyone would be happy and healthy etc etc

but being of sound logical mind, i simply cannot, sadly.

[Old_Geezer]

I believe I may find out one day. In the meanwhile I have held a changing set of beliefs over time. Presently, based on past life experiences, I suspect survival of bodily death is likely, and so it follows that my awareness would find itself in some other place. Possibly in some other form. I can speculate but so can you too.

I do not believe in the fire & brimstone flavour of heaven & hell. It makes no sense except as a means to frightened the living into being "good".

Why did I change my mind over the years ? Firstly because those who taught me one thing could not explain it so I rejected it. Then I realised that didn't mean they were necessarily wrong, so I became more open minded, and then beyond that I've been to seances and had experiences with mediums and so feel the likelihood is as I now believe.

[Infomaniac]

I, like you, have no idea what happens when we die. I like to believe we enter a state of oblivion (or nothingness).

[dickythecook]

Perhaps he was called before his time and Ed had to let him go.

[ludwig]

I think there's just oblivion. I'm ok with that though.

We're alive now, and should make the most of it.

[TTG]

We might return to the same 'state' we were in before we were born. That poses another question...how long were we in that state?

[EDDIE51]

When you die that is it , end of , nothing after. No reincarnation no heaven no hell just nothing.

[thenry]

How many people in your life that you have been close to have died ? Any of them ever got back to you ? Reckon when you're dead, you're gone. Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms .

[mibn2cweus]

Grasping reality has always been difficult enough for me without contemplating having to do the same without so much as a semi-functioning brain to do it with.

If however to some extent it's possible that some fragment of my conscious processes can be relegated to the minds of maggots chowin' down on my brain, more power to them . . . after I'm dead, of course.

[Stargazer]

There are hundreds of first hand accounts of people who have died and been pronounced dead for several minutes or even hours who have been brought back to life and almost all of them speak vividly of having experienced the most wonderful feeling of happiness and being met by beloved family and friends. They are also reluctant to have to return to their earthly mortal existence. A few people have been revived having experienced what can only be assumed is the opposite of this blissful place which may be what is known as Hell. I personally know someone who is still alive who had the former experience following a fatal car accident whereby he died and went to this wonderful joyous place and was eventually revived and came back with this amazing account. But he did actually die in the medical sense and it was not a dream or hallucination. The experience is as vivid today, decades later, as it was at the time.

[mibn2cweus]

Imagination is interpretation liberated from the restraints imposed by objectivity essential to understanding and the ability to distinguish reality from chimera . . . but not everyone prefers the former to the latter.

This is not to suggest that imagination is not useful or potentially conducive to consideration of what the reality might be. But it is only a first step towards arriving at a conclusion based on a logically established non-contradictory correlation between what might, can and should be and what really is.

[vulcan]

I have often thought the "travelling down a tunnel" is a long lost memory relating to being born.

[Baldric]

I suspect 'Heaver' has been resurrected and suspended again

[joko]

people bang on about free will, but how can it truly be free will when you are threatened with eternal hellfire and pain if you are not good?
terrifying someone into doing what you want is not freewill - it amounts to bullying or threatening

true freewill, and true goodness is how you behave when its a total choice, when there are no penalties

[Tom Braider]

I prefer not to "believe" things in the sense implied in this question. I don't know whether my consciousness will persist after the death of my body but since my consciousness seems to be so intimately connected to and dependant upon my physical body it seems unlikely that it will. But I don't "believe" in any of the alternatives listed, even the "something else". Soon enough I will know - or not. Meanwhile I don't intend to bother my head about it...

[pugwashjw]

Exactly what the Bible tells us...Not many people are aware of this...
(Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6) For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten. 6 Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun.
No consciousness...so there cannot be any such thing as ' active' ghosts.
There ARE demons, and they can imitate dead people...but the dead can do nothing...
So all beliefs where people think they can approach their dead relatives for help...are wrong.
They are simply approaching the demons...which is dangerous.