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[quote=Anonymous]I'm agnostic.  I honestly believe that it really isn't something we can know with any certainty -- what happens to consciousness or "self" after life.  We know what happens to the body.  We know the brain shuts down.

On the one hand, we can explain away our sense of self as a construct of our brain, and so of course, it dies with the brain.

But I don't know that there's any way to definitively prove that.

That said, I find so much of what various religions espouse to be pretty far-fetched.  I also don't fully get how people can say humans have souls but other animals do not and then piece together a whole set of rules for what happens to human souls when they die.

A lot of it is an exercise in imagination.  Speculation.  Maybe wishful thinking.

But who knows.  I do think that the concept of afterlife comforts a lot of people.  It's painful to think that loved ones who have died are really and absolutely no more.

I'd love to believe -- really believe -- that all of the people and animals I loved that have died are still with me.  But I don't know.

I also sometimes think that death as an absolute end can also be comforting.  Life is beautiful, but it is also hard and difficult.  And sometimes I like the idea that one day it all ends -- not just the body part, but also the thinking part, the emotion, the mind.

But where does that leave us as far as "meaning" goes?  Well, much has been written on that topic!  And there are so many philosophies and schools of thought.  I find existentialism is probably the most compatible with agnosticism.  But even existentialism has its limits.  And often, any and all attempts to explain some sort of meaning to life becomes absurd.

But it's not easy to live with absurdity, so most people may spend brief periods of their lives accepting the absurd nature of existence, but they don't stay there.  They find some sort of system of belief that enables them to function.

I could ramble all night on this topic!  [/quote]

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