I’m way too curious about the afterlife, I totally think reincarnation has to be real, right?

[1] When you think about the history of humanity, doesn’t it seem impossible that we wouldn’t be reborn after just 100 years?

[2] I definitely think we get reincarnated.

• [3] Life is a one-time thing, you know. Whether there’s an afterlife or not, we just don’t know.
• [5] There’s no such thing as an afterlife. It’s just wishful thinking created by religion.

[7] >>5 Well then, what happens when you die?

• [8] >>7 You become “nothing.” That’s it.
• [11] >>8 Saying “you become nothing when you die” – don’t you see that’s just another kind of belief system?
• [125] >>8 That’s kind of like a religion itself, you know.
• [128] >>7 You go back to how it was before you were born. That probably makes “nothingness” easier to imagine, right? You don’t remember anything from before you were born, do you?
• [155] >>128 Are you an idiot? Before we were born, we definitely “didn’t exist.” So of course we have no memories of it. But we were born, or more accurately, we were made to be born. And now, we definitely “exist.” Thinking you can equate the state before existence with the state after existence is completely nonsensical.
• [12] It’s no different from the world before you were born.

[13] I don’t think there’s a Heaven or Hell type of thing, but I do believe in reincarnation.

• [14] Well, if you think about it normally, reincarnation seems likely.
• [16] I get this. Sometimes it scares me too.
• [18] Maybe it’s like being in a continuous dream state. If so, maybe reincarnating into another world isn’t just a dream, right?
• [21] Why is it that most people who have near-death experiences report being enveloped in light?
• [161] >>21 I think I probably remember what it was like before I was born, and yeah, I was definitely surrounded by bright, warm light.
• [27] Stop it, this stuff keeps me up at night.
• [29] I vaguely think we just become nothing when we die, but has anyone actually proven there’s no afterlife? Has natural science given us a clear answer about what happens after death? Probably not, right? So, the most scientific stance regarding the afterlife is to admit “we don’t know.” Claims like “there is an afterlife” or “there is no afterlife” have absolutely no reproducible evidence, so you can’t call them scientific claims.
• [36] >>29 Do you remember the world before you were born? The afterlife is just like that.
• [46] >>36 Can you explain how the state before birth is the same as the state after death? It seems pretty easy to think that the event of being “born” makes a huge difference.
• [56] >>46 Before being born and after death are the same in that the “brain,” the seat of human consciousness, isn’t functioning. Meaning, nothing can be observed. It’s likely a world of non-existence.
• [94] >>56 There’s no proof anywhere that the human self is just the brain. Whether spirits or souls exist is unknown, but you’re only talking based on what we can currently see. Saying something doesn’t exist just because it can’t be observed isn’t a scientific attitude. Any modern scientist delving into fields beyond subatomic particles would agree with that.
• [30] I’ve thought about various afterlife scenarios, but becoming nothing seems the most relaxing.

[33] >>30 Really? Isn’t it more interesting to know you could reset and try again?

• [60] >>33 It’s easy for you to say, being born into a normal family in Japan now. But imagine being born in the past, or in Syria right now – that would be hell. No thanks. Besides, wouldn’t reincarnating forever be tough too?

[62] >>60 It’s fine, isn’t it? It’s not like you remember your past lives anyway.

• [70] >>62 If you don’t have memories of past lives, isn’t that just the same as dying? Plus, what happens if the Earth gets destroyed? Where would you reincarnate then? The whole idea of past and future lives doesn’t quite sit right with me.
• [41] Even if reincarnation exists, does it just go on forever? The universe itself might end someday, you know. Nothing lasts infinitely, right?
• [43] Reincarnation (samsara) is real.
• [44] Actually, I’m looking forward to it. Not that I want to die now, but I know that time will eventually come.
• [47] From a quantum mechanics perspective, I read somewhere that reincarnation could be possible, whether consciousness is involved or not.

[50] Humanity’s been around for hundreds of thousands of years, right? There’s gotta be something more.

• [53] Thinking you become nothing, thinking you go to heaven, thinking you get reincarnated into another world… since nobody knows for sure, they’re all equally plausible, right?
• [64] >>53 You get it, don’t you? Since we don’t know, all we can do is choose the “understanding of the afterlife” that works best for us. I, for one, wouldn’t willingly choose a belief as negative and despairing as “you just become nothing.”
• [74] >>64 It’s precisely because we become nothing that we live this limited life to the fullest. Relying on the next life is foolish; there’s no future in that.
• [110] >>74 You don’t know if we become nothing. Maybe Christians are right, and we’ll all stand before God at the Last Judgment. Or maybe Buddhists are right, and we reincarnate. How can you say for sure we become nothing? Or are you deliberately choosing that belief?
• [54] Maybe it’s like… you’re conscious, but it’s just pitch black? Something like that.
• [58] Humans are just a tiny part of the universe. Why would you think something special like reincarnation happens?
• [65] To be serious, the afterlife can’t be experienced or imagined. It’s beyond language. So, whatever you’re imagining is just a combination of elements from this world. Therefore, your fear is a fear of this world, and even if an afterlife exists, it’s not affecting you in any way right now.
• [71] Can an OS just transfer to another device (reincarnate) when the PC it’s on breaks down and loses power? Logically thinking, there’s probably no afterlife, right?
• [81] >>71 That changes if you think of consciousness not as the OS, but as software existing in the cloud, doesn’t it?
• [92] >>81 Isn’t your understanding of the cloud itself mistaken?
• [99] >>92 Tell me how it’s wrong then.
• [114] >>99 The cloud still stores data somewhere physically, right?
• [133] >>114 Exactly. If consciousness exists like cloud data, then if the PC (the human body, a container for consciousness) dies, it doesn’t necessarily mean the consciousness itself dies.
• [73] Nah, you just become nothing when you die. There are no ghosts. No past lives, no future lives, this is all there is. When you die, there’s nothing, no afterlife, you just become nothing, gone forever. Never again.
• [75] Apparently, they decide where you reincarnate by throwing darts.
• [76] I have this weird fear that the world will just keep going on even after I become nothing.

[57] Becoming nothing? That’s impossible, right? If that were true, the probability of us being born in the first place must be incredibly low.

• [61] >>57 No, it’s not that you were born. It’s that a baby was born, and that baby became you.

[80] If that’s the case, does that mean that in millions of years of history, we just came into existence a few decades ago? Were we “nothing” for all those millions of years before that?

• [82] >>1 I’ve heard that your soul leaves your body when you sleep. So, sleeping and being dead are the same thing.
• [85] Death doesn’t exist. There’s no need to fear something that isn’t real.
• [96] The total amount of life, including microorganisms, surely fluctuates. So, soul recycling probably isn’t happening.
• [107] Even if you had past lives, if you don’t remember them, aren’t you just a different person anyway?
• [111] The human soul is an electrical entity with consciousness. Its final destination is the universe, which is the afterlife.
• [120] The human soul is data, you see. It circulates throughout the universe, and sometimes it reincarnates.
• [132] >>120 I sometimes think along those lines too. Like, maybe it inhabits a life form through some kind of mutation?
• [131] If the brain structure is similar to yours, wouldn’t the soul likely be similar too, even without memories? Considering Poincaré’s recurrence theorem, it’s conceivable that something like reincarnation could occur.
• [134] Becoming nothing would probably be better. Continuing to live as a ghost after death sounds like too much hassle, though it’s an interesting idea.
• [151] Isn’t it possible that the moment you die and everything goes black, someone just says, “Okay, good job,” and takes off your VR headset?
• [168] >>151 That’s what’s scary, it’s not impossible!
• [153] If the brain is like the storage on a phone, and there’s something like cloud storage… then getting cremated after death sounds bad. Better not to think about things we don’t know.
• [160] People always talk about reincarnation as if you’re reborn into a later time, like it’s a given. But I think it’s possible to die in 2100 and be reborn in 1500 or something.

[169] >>160 True. That’s actually kind of scary.

• [164] Just live in the now!
• [171] The human soul is an electrical entity, plasma.
• [178] What if an asteroid wiped out the Earth? Where would all the souls of living things go then? There’d be nowhere to reincarnate, right?
• [186] Think about it the other way around. Is this your second life? It’s your first, right? That’s how it is.
• [191] You do reincarnate, you just lose your memories right away. Just like we don’t remember being babies, we forget our past lives, so we never realize we’ve reincarnated.
• [193] The “me” that I currently think of as myself ends with death. That’s all there is to it.
• [198] We perceive the world because of our nerves and brain. It’s strange to think that the entity experiencing the world would still exist after those organs stop functioning. Let alone that its entire signal could somehow transfer into a different embryo.
• [210] >>198 That’s just perceiving the afterlife as “non-existent.” For example, when I die, from the perspective of you who are still alive, it might seem like I feel nothing, but maybe I actually do feel something.
• [224] >>210 So, what exactly is this “me” after death? If the self is just the interaction of nerve signals, where is “me” after that stops? Stop talking as if the existence of a soul is a given.
• [239] >>224 Including that concept of “me,” isn’t it ultimately just the living judging the dead? From our perspective as living beings, doesn’t it just seem like dead people feel nothing and there’s no afterlife? I’m not trying to pick a fight, I’m serious.
• [256] >>239 So you’re saying there might be a self existing outside of the brain’s signal processing? That has never once been observed. As long as it’s just speculation, it’s on the same level as saying “Maybe God made humans out of mud?”
• [266] >>256 I don’t know if it’s on the same level, but isn’t it pointless to define the afterlife based solely on observations from the real world? Sure, we living beings can’t observe the afterlife, but isn’t that inherently contradictory by definition, since we are alive? If we living beings could observe it, it would just be part of the living world, wouldn’t it?
• [303] >>266 It’s probably not as pointless as fantasizing about an afterlife.
• [203] I think of it like turning off a power switch.
• [213] My father died suddenly of a heart attack, but right before he died, he started doing strange things like suddenly buying me things, inviting me out for meals, taking me to movies. Thinking back, maybe it was his way of telling me from the afterlife that he was about to die.
• [228] Humans are creatures that cling to life, you know.
• [234] If you think about this stuff too scientifically, it ends up leading to boring conclusions like denying free will, doesn’t it?
• [242] >>234 It’s not boring. Observable science denies the existence of consciousness as something separate. What we need now is to create a religion based on that understanding.
• [243] This is getting deep, huh.
• [247] Good thread.
• [254] People often say successful people are on their second playthrough of life. If they kept their memories from a past life, of course they’d succeed.
• [261] Well, when you really die, you’ll forget you were ever scared of dying, or even that you ever lived. It won’t be painful or anything. After all, your brain will cease to exist.
• [267] Maybe we’re actually beings who can’t die for trillions of years, and this life is just a virtual experience to forget that terror for a while?
• [297] I saw on TV about a doctor who used to deny the afterlife, but changed his mind after having a near-death experience and seeing it himself.
• [301] I’ll tell you what happens when you die. You just repeat this exact life over again.
• [305] Thinking about an afterlife is just arrogant. A person dying is just a natural phenomenon, nothing more.
• [315] Forget about souls, cells, whether it exists or not. If the afterlife could actually be observed and defined by us, the living, wouldn’t that mean it’s not the afterlife anymore? We’re alive, after all. So, isn’t the argument “There’s no afterlife because we can’t observe it from the real world” just logically flawed? This is more about the logic of language than about the afterlife itself.
• [15] It’s a world you don’t know.

Note: “あなたの知らない世界” (Anata no Shiranai Sekai – The World You Don’t Know) was the title of a Japanese TV show from 1973 to 1997 that dealt with psychic and supernatural phenomena.

• [51] It’s just resting until the Last Judgment. Don’t worry, it’ll come soon enough.