Is there life after death?

Yes. The Lucy Ball Show has now traveled 50 light years, and there are about 1,400 stars within the volume. Perhaps some where among those 1,400 systems are a beings have a good laugh at our expense right now.

I just hope they can withhold judgement long enough for the Carol Burnett Show to reach them.

Oh that's nothing, there are higher dimensional cultures for whom a favorite pastime is playing "Incarnate as an Earthling!"

*re-reads thread suspiciously*

hrmph

Now that's an interesting hypothesis. A novel approach to the Fermi paradox. There are highly evolved species, but they stay as far away from us as they can in order to not accidentally squash us like ants...I like it

The solar system as an intergalactic nature protection area

Isn't that the intent of the Prime Directive?

True enough, but that just made me think of this:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ieW__BbjHU"]Mr. Deity and the Virgin (Episode One, Season Three) - YouTube[/ame]

You should be enamored with him, his work on black holes has mostly turned out to be correct and his changed the way we think about the big bang singularity...twice!

I voted no for afterlife because there is no evidence to support it, I trust the Scientific Method as a means to show the best understanding of these types of issues. Simply put - there is no evidence of life after death.

Since there's no evidence there is NOT life after death wouldn't a true scientist answer "not sure"?

Yeah, my first response on seeing the question was "What do you mean by life after death?"

But I'm not sure that even traditional views of life after death, whether that be ascending to heaven/descending to hell or traveling through bardo states on the way to reincarnation would really be analagous to life before death, except in the sense that there's some kernel of identity that survives the transition.

What I meant was any surviving consciesness. Whether you believe in the soul or resurrected body being in heaven, hell or just being an intelligent ghost trapped on earth.

Funny after all the poll responses, all the comments and views 25 people say definately no life after death and 25 say either yes or there is a possibilty of life after death.

Would've been more fun as a public poll. Wonder if the numbers would've turned out differently....

What also is kind of interesting is that now at least 27 people who obviously don't believe in god come on a religous and spituality thread.

I might not have completely respected it, but I didn't get excited enough to come on it.

I'm guessing you haven't spent much time in this forum, in my experience most of the people who use it are atheist/agnostic.

No, I haven't spent much time on the forum and I probably would have to describe myself as an agnostic.I know some people are sure one way or the other but I just don't know.I do hope there is some kind life after death. I wonder if atheists hope the're wrong.

Well not really, even immortality would get old after a while, it would be cool at first, to see how we develop as a world and be there for historical events, but eventually this world would get too crowded with people being born and nobody dying.

And who knows, if we are just energy then we will live for ever, like we did before we were born, we just won’t have a conscience of living.

Excuse my ignorance but you will have to explain the differences. I put more faith if any in EVP's (electronic voice phenomena) recorded by ghost hunters than any church doctrine.I certainly wouldn't say either way if there is a god or not.

Wait, is it possible to be an agnostic theist? You can't believe that it's impossible to know whether God exists, but at the same time believe that God does exist. Or is it the difference between knowledge and belief?

Sure, it's possible to be an agnostic theist.
You could say "I cannot possibly know whether or not god exists, but I believe he does nonetheless."
Though most theists probably claim that you can know god through prayer, the holy spirit, the bible, complexity in nature, etc.