Yeah, but you're clever enough to read and understand them.
After you've pegged it... Page 5
Quote: Aaron @ December 14 2008, 7:34 PM GMTYeah, but you're clever enough to read and understand them.
Yeah, you're such a big thickie aren't you? 
See, no one but you thinks you're thick.
Ugh, not you too.
Quote: zooo @ December 14 2008, 7:40 PM GMTSee, no one but you thinks you're thick.
"Almost universally, people's actions betray a belief that they're struggling for something that will perpetuate beyond their lifetime (wealth, fame, etc), which, if they believe in oblivion is nonsense. They won't have any benefit from their effort. Here I'm talking about a musician who records an album knowing he'll be dead before it's release, or a woman that starts studies for a degree after being diagnosed as terminally ill. These efforts make no sense if oblivion negates it all."
Breaking that bit down into something simpler - this man and woman you speak of could be doing what they are doing for no reason other than it gives them a sense of purpose, great satisfaction and enables them to have a focus in this life that detracts from their suffering.
Hi Loop 
To be honest my thoughts are not clarified or even settled here. I'm really thinking aloud on something I've been mulling over for a while.
Agreed, but my point would be if I assume there's nothing but oblivion then those imaginary examples' response would be meaningless because there would be no recollection of achievement or failure after death. This life will not seem like the deep sleep of someone forever within a favourite dream but as if it never occurred. So in a way, a very common human response to bad news produces an unexpected and not (in my odd mind's) logical response. It seems contrary.
We could suggest that acheiving goals before death produces a short-term feeling of well-being BUT if we didn't have the ability to consider the nature of death and the afterlife, we'd be much happier animals performing the basic biological task of passing on our genes, oblivious to some future state that we'd never even experience. As it stands, we have this odd ability which mostly only causes distress, anxiety, and misery to the human race.
I'm wondering why we have the ability to comprehend something of no relevance to the funtioning of the human as an animal.
Aaron - you understood but you're just too busy posting elsewhere to read.
Moonstone - 
I wish. I'm just too weird in the head for mine (and anyone else who knows me) liking. And I spend too much time on my own.
I think the Scinetologists maybe onto something slightly.
All human thought is essentially bio-electrical energy supported by a biological construct.
Energy can not be destroyed only redirected/shaped.
As such could the energy that makes up our thoughts carry on with some one memory of who we are after our death?
You die and become worm food. End of.
Quote: SlagA @ December 14 2008, 10:40 PM GMTAaron - you understood but you're just too busy posting elsewhere to read.
I really, really didn't (understand)! Your sentences are about 3 x too long! 
Quote: Moonstone @ December 14 2008, 5:20 PM GMTWell noone can say for sure, but don't you have a slight leaning to one particular outcome, just a gut feeling?
My gut feeling is that there is more to find out about death than we already know but whether or not that equates to life after death, and what kind of life that would be, I don't have a feeling for.
I have experienced the death of close family members but felt nothing. Mourning for the dead is not something I can do. I somehow don't accept it. My mother is dead but I actually feel she lives on in me and somehow sees the World through my eyes..
Yes, I am on medication. 
Fade to black I'm afraid. Then again, it would be pretty embarrassing to arrive in the afterlife only to find all those people that knew you before they popped their clogs, had actually been flies on the wall, watching what you had assumed were private moments - yikes!!! I sometimes think of that when I'm doing something I'd rather keep to myself (use your imaginations...)..
Maybe a good comedy idea - the afterlife people watching, and maybe influencing or trying to influence, their living friends, relatives or even enemies...
Logically I guess we're worm food.
But all the thought, anger, love, passion experience snuffed out?
It seems on a purely emotional level improbable.
Well what on earth could possibly happen to it? You've got to offer us some ideas.
Quote: Blobster @ December 14 2008, 11:48 PM GMTFade to black I'm afraid. Then again, it would be pretty embarrassing to arrive in the afterlife only to find all those people that knew you before they popped their clogs, had actually been flies on the wall, watching what you had assumed were private moments - yikes!!! I sometimes think of that when I'm doing something I'd rather keep to myself (use your imaginations...)..
Maybe a good comedy idea - the afterlife people watching, and maybe influencing or trying to influence, their living friends, relatives or even enemies...
Maybe your whole life is a TV programme like the Truman Show. Right now everyone on this board is watching you type away. We all saw what you were doing last night as well 
Quote: zooo @ December 14 2008, 11:49 PM GMTWell what on earth could possibly happen to it? You've got to offer us some ideas.
I think viewing our bodies as biological systems, is perhaps as limited as those early geographers who thought the world was flat or scientists who thought all life was based on 4 humours.
We're metaphysically not smart enough to understand life beyond the physical process.