# What would your personal afterlife be if you died tonight? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 20, 2010, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377 "2010-07-20T18:28:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![tallcoldone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9a140/32.png) [@tallcoldone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tallcoldone)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/41 "2010-07-21T17:06:10Z")
My afterlife is the memories of me that my loved ones and friends keep. I guess I better start being nicer to people! ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/42 "2010-07-21T22:55:29Z")
A library, if I’m good. Junior High School, if I’m not. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/43 "2010-07-22T04:03:40Z")
There is no afterlife. When you die, it’s like a candle flame being blown out. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/44 "2010-07-22T20:15:23Z")
@ **Reply** - If you want to know about different traditions on the afterlife, you might want to specify “Theists, what do you think would happen if you died tonight?” Because the majority of Dopers are atheists or agnostics. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/45 "2010-07-22T21:09:09Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > @ **Reply** - If you want to know about different traditions on the afterlife, you might want to specify “Theists, what do you think would happen if you died tonight?” Because the majority of Dopers are atheists or agnostics. I didn’t want to just hear from the theists. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/46 "2010-07-22T21:22:31Z")
It would be The Last Supper. One very long Last Supper. …only for microbes. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/47 "2010-07-22T22:57:31Z")
My belief is that it’s just lights out. I think it’d be cool if my spirit detached from the body and could tirelessly wander the earth, still seeing, still learning. But if it’s neither of those I like to think that my conscious mind would lose all sense of time as the ability to communicate with my senses breaks down. Without distractions I could exist in a word entirely in my own mind for what would seem to me an eternity. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/48 "2010-07-23T01:34:45Z")
I’m an atheist, and I don’t believe in an afterlife. However in contrast to some of my fellow atheists: 1. It does bother me. As sucky as my life has been, I want it to last until I decide I’m done. 2. I don’t _absolutely_ rule out an afterlife. I understand that consciousness is a product of the brain, but the hard problem of consciousness just seems intractable… I don’t rule out that an all-explaining theory of the mind might require new physics. > [@Ludovic](#): > > On the other hand, if you slowly replace the pieces of my mind with artificial computers that completely replicate every portion of my thinking, even at the point where my entire brain is artificial, I’d still be me. You’re aware though that what you are saying are not _facts_? For example, there are plenty of neuroscientists that think there is no continuity of consciousness, making the whole distinction between piecemeal and instant replacement moot. And there are many other perspectives too. ---
**Author:** ![Critical\_Mass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@Critical\_Mass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical_Mass)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/49 "2010-07-23T01:55:34Z")
You know the scene at the end of the Sopranos? Th ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/50 "2010-07-23T01:55:58Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I don’t rule out that an all-explaining theory of the mind might require new physics. Actually I don’t really mean “physics” by any normal definition. I’m just leaving room for the possibility that there is more to reality than meets the eye. Though I am not religious. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/51 "2010-07-23T02:23:37Z")
Wreaking terrible retribution against my killers as the spectral embodiment of vengeance. At least, that’s how I’ve always imagined it. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/52 "2010-07-23T02:27:14Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Any of you atheists or agnostics have a _different_ take? Where you sincerely believe – for whatever reason – that something DOES happen? I’m an atheist who believes in an afterlife, or believes it is more likely a yes than a no on it’s existence. Why? Because I think we attribute to god anything we can’t understand. We used to assume earthquakes and disease were due to god, now we understand the natural phenomena behind it. Famines aren’t due to god, disease isn’t due to god, earthquakes aren’t due to god. And if there is an afterlife, that has nothing to do with god either. My evidence is basically books like ‘the afterlife experiments’, or how certain physical variables always change when people claim to be around consciousness that survived death (temperature goes down, etc), or people who have seen things in OBEs that they could not physically see due to their eyes being shut and directed at the ceiling, etc. There are too many independent variables and pieces of circumstantial evidence for me to throw the idea out wholesale. I’m not a pseudoskeptic (Penn & teller, etc), so I think we should investigate these issues rather than dogmatically dismiss them. Do we really even understand what subjective consciousness is yet? No. So the concept that we ‘know’ consciousness dies at death is not a valid argument to me until we know what it even is. And so far we do not. If neuroscientists know with 99.999% certainty what consciousness is in the brain, can prove it dies at death, and we can find valid explanations for all the circumstantial evidence that consciousness survives death (double blind psychic studies like the ones in the afterlife experiments, changes in temperature, animal behavior and EM readings across cultures and times wrt presence of what could be detached consciousness, OBEs reporting things that can’t be explained by seeing with the eyes, the Scole experiments, etc) then I’ll say the afterlife does not exist. But we are far from any of that. So right now I’m somewhat undecided but leaning towards the idea that consciousness survives. Not certain, but closer to saying yes than no. I really don’t want to get in an accusatory debate about my beliefs either. Not that I mind debate, but usually the ‘debate’ consists of people insulting me for not blindly subscribing to materialist, pseudoskeptic dogma. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/53 "2010-07-23T03:24:01Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > I didn’t want to just hear from the theists. Okay. I thought you might think 75% of the posts being “we get eaten by worms, what do you think happens?” was a bit repetitive. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377/54 "2010-07-23T07:48:12Z")
Organ donor. Parts of me will probably live on in others, but the parts won’t know it. I won’t either, but then again there won’t be an ‘I’. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-your-personal-afterlife-be-if-you-died-tonight/547377.md?page=2)