What are your thoughts on death and reality?

[eric]

So I get pretty anxious sometimes thinking about death and reality. I think back to "before I was born" and all I can surmise is that same void is what happens when we die.

It further worries me, because excluding our ability to question why, and frankly the things that make us intelligent, we are no different than other animals. When they die, we don't imagine that they are reborn, or that they move on to some special plane of existence. Can we even experience death? Do our brains perhaps slow down time and reconstruct our lives through memories and interpretations of past events?

It makes me further question whether our consciousness and what we perceive as having intelligence is really just the culmination of 4 billion years of evolution, but that it is just an illusion; animals have consciousness and intelligence, it's just a very lesser degree. As a bit of a digression, I sense that animals are not only more intelligent than we think, but experience a wide range of emotions, they just don't quite have the same control over their minds as we do. Mammals, some birds, and perhaps octopi.

Anyway, kind of a random thought and tangent, but I wanted to see what you guys think. Now, I'm not going to tell anybody to not post anything religious, because you may very well believe that to be the case, but I think that I want to avoid an argument about it and frankly we are all familiar with religious theory. If you want to say that you think there is a creator, that's fine. I definitely welcome different interpretations of religious text, in that sense.

So let's hear it?

[Philly]

It would be much better just cease existing, as I believe is the case, then to somehow still have a consciousness and be sitting around like "damn, I'm dead..."

[eric]

So another question, does the universe still exist if we are dead?

[Philly]

[eric]

Well why would it exist if you can't experience it? Perhaps we each experience a version of the multiverse?

[Philly]

[The Comrade]

solipsism is also classified as a psychological disorder. tread lightly, friend.

[eric]

[eric]

[Winchester]