Welcome to Gaia! ::

Well, I had to get really high grades in secondary school to get the ourse in University I wanted. I'm only in my first year of the course, but so far, it rocks. You have to do extra modules in Sociology, Philosophy, ll that... But all the har work is so worth it. It'll take me a long time to get there, but I'm gonna go for it. The Irish educational system is a tough one to crack.
Don't know what it's like anywhere else, though...

I'm a lowly one, I'm just working on my Bachelor. whee
What's it like as you progress? Do things change?

I like the way you think, apart from the past thing. I quite like the past, personal and global. My memories are what keep me going; my fonder ones bring me up when I'm feeling a little down, my less pleasing ons teach me lessons when I need them. I'm not sickened bythe past. Sure, people have made terrible mistakes, people have done horrfying things, but there's good stuff as well.

I just wanted to bring up people's concept of afterlife... Do people here believe in it? I mean, I certainly dont. What's the point of living if you're just gonna live on forever? But I want views and insights from others.

I fear death because I fear the end of my life. I fear the end of my life because I feel, deep down, that there is nothing beyond that which I now have.
I've lost my memory once because of a blow to the head sustained in a car accident. I remember nothing in a large period of time and to this day it haunts me. But I don't associate this with what happens after death. Death to me is the end of everything, finally a total release. You won't have to worry about mourning the loss of your life memories, because you won't wake up.
I'll admit it: I fear death as much as any sane person. But my fear of the post-death nothingness spurs me on to appreciate my life even more.

What bothers me about religious views of Afterlife/Heaven is how people might not appreciate their life as much if they are looking forward to something that might be better than what they have now. Surely Heaven would be a preferrable existence to struggling everyday through banal chores?
Sure, I'd like to believe that there's an afterlife. But something in me just knows that it can't possibly exist.

Ah, I'm not bothered by religion in itself, I'm fully accepting of others' beliefs, but I'm just a bit puzzled by the existence of an Afterlife when we have a perfectly acceptable life here ahead of us.
I like the fact that things have changed though. Your statement shows that people need to apply themselves to both spiritual and materialistic aspects of their lives... Not just the prospect of a solely-ecclesiastical existence. It's a vaguely comforting thought.

Your statement is a bit hard for me to digest. While I love all forms of science: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, and Physics, they simply cannot answer every question. It answers the "how it happens", but not the "why it happens". Even if science were capable of explaining every function of the universe and how they came to be, I'd still question why those functions existed in the first place.

What I can't find from science, I look at from religion, philosophy, and other point of views.

Sure, broad theories from people like Schrodinger may even be able to explain how everything happens, be it dependent on observation or some other power. But the more we explain it, the more important the individual becomes.

For example:
Let's assume that if a tree falls in a forest, it remains both "fallen" and "unfallen" until someone observes it's state of existence. Now let's pretend this is the only person in the universe. And they die. The tree would simply cease to exist, as none of its states had been realized. In this particular situation, a single entity controls the fate of everything.

Now let's scale this up to today. The universe is there because intelligence recognizes it's existence. There have been points in history, where according to some theories, no intelligent life existed. At these points, the universe should not have existed at all; UNLESS later intelligent life was able to speculate a history and cause that history to exist. (Of course that's just science fiction.) Either way, the simplest explanation that I've always found is as follows:

Consciousness is a form of energy. It cannot be created or destroyed, but simply changes form. It may exist as man, god, or lesser being, but it cannot simply cease to exist. It's because of its existence that everything is capable of being observed, and therefore existing.

This is why I'm forced to believe in the afterlife, the supernatural, god, and immortality. It's my only explanation for why there's a universe at all.

I don't care about the how (evolution or creation doesn't really make a difference to me.) But I do care about the fact that it is here, and why it's here.

I know that's probably a bit incoherent. I'm not great at explaining such a vague theory.

Its quite cool as you go through. How many years have you done? Its neat as you can pick the areas that you are interested in and gradually specialise. And the essays get bigger >.<