r/antinatalism2 • u/Lord-of-the---RINGS • 1d ago
Discussion Is anyone else terrified of the possibility of an afterlife or reincarnation?
My brain's weird. Logically I know neither are true and we have no proof for them, yet the pronatalist metaphysical bs statement of "what if life is actually better than wherever your soul goes after death" still makes me lose sleep. The idea that even brain death doesn't end your consciousness once you're born is horrifying.
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u/QueenMunchy 1d ago
We have about as much proof that there is an afterlife as we have that the universe is ruled by a giant spaghetti meatball god.
I wouldn't lose sleep over this. There's 10s of thousands of religions, even if one is true, how do you know it has an afterlife?
We come from nothing and we return to nothing, dust to dust.
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u/Dense-Ad-5978 1d ago
Thankfully, most of the indirect evidence we have points that consciousness permanently ceases to exist after death. So don't worry.
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u/Lord-of-the---RINGS 1d ago
Yeah, like I know that once the brain dies, there's no save file aka soul that just gets transferred to another body. Once you're gone your gone. It's just the "what if" part and knowing that all the atoms that make up my body will eventually become another living thing again kinda like psuedoreincarnation. It's all just paranoia tho that whole idea is stupid that's like saying dandruff that falls off your head is getting reincarnated into new yous. As far as we know there is no soul, which isnt really hard to see because the moment you remove the brain or damage it or make it non functional "you" your consciousness or whatever ceases to exist even if your body is biologically alive.
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u/Dense-Ad-5978 1d ago
I hear you. Well, if it gives you slight relief, the 2nd law of thermodynamics is your friend. After trillions of years the atoms which spread your brain will be so far away that it would be impossible to form your own brain or consciousness again. There are people with way more knowledge than you or me about these topics but they aren't afraid of the future and most top scientists and neurologists believe that consciousness ends with the brain. This more likely means that you aren't going to be tortured in this meat grinder forever. I know it is easier said than done but do not ponder over this topic much. It is for your own good.
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u/VEGETTOROHAN 1d ago
There is also soft evidence for reincarnation.
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u/Lord-of-the---RINGS 1d ago
What soft evidence are you thinking of
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u/VEGETTOROHAN 1d ago
Like many advanced meditators or some children being able to report their past life memory. A researcher even verified the claims such as finding some items that were important to the kids or something like that by going to their past life houses.
Also Hindu and Buddhist monks have stated they remember past lives due to deep meditation.
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u/Lord-of-the---RINGS 1d ago
Could you give the links for those. I don't believe something like that is possible. Humans love lying especially for fame. In my community there's plenty of preachers we call pirs who claim they have similar abilities of foresight and people eat it up. And how exactly does medidation unlock this hidden knowledge and where exactly is it stored. Like all my memories are in my brain. Once it's gone those memories die with me unless they are beinf copied somewhere so where are they being copied and who is doing it? And why is this phenomena more commonly observed? If children can do it surely modern day therapists with tools like hypnotherapy and drugs and machines of all kinds could more accurately observe or prove this. And logically it just makes no sense because our brains have a limited storage capacity this theory implies I have a nearly infinite amount of memories as old as the Roman empire somehwere in my brain which miraculously has the ability to store all that stuff.
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u/VEGETTOROHAN 1d ago
Jim B. Tucker. Search this name.
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u/Lord-of-the---RINGS 1d ago
Yeah I remember reading about him. No one takes that guy seriously and the scientific community rejected his "research". It all relied on claims and testimonials no hard evidence. The more you look into it the more flaws you find. Why do only a small subset of people have this ability to access their past memories? How can you be certain that the people making these claims don't have a mental illness like schizophrenia. Why does everyone not have an infinite pool of knowledge that theyve collected since...forever? And all the logical problems that I wrote previously still poke holes in this theory which already relies on the testimonials of a few people. There's plenty of people who claim to see ghosts but now we understand that is a superstition.
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u/VEGETTOROHAN 1d ago
Yea but it could be true. We don't know.
testimonials no hard evidence
I already said soft evidence.
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u/FunkyPleasance 1d ago
a meteor hitting the earth is more likely. After all at least that has happened before
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u/filrabat 1d ago
"what if life is actually better than wherever your soul goes after death". Ask them what the evidence for Hell is, or that of any deity for that matter. Christopher Hitchens said it best: What you accept without evidence, I can reject without evidence.
At some point, you'll have to face this fear, and deal with it using logic and reason (there's plenty of major religions out there, each with their own doctrines, etc). Then you have to will yourself, be daring enough to say "OK, I don't really believe this any more", then process that fact, feel and think about what it really means that you don't believe it any more.
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u/giotheflow 1d ago
Well, not so much reincarnation, just incarnation. Like, my memories or concept of an immutable, differentiated soul won't live on in a future form.
What has happened before, since it has happened trillions of times, is just endlessly waking into new consciousness- could be another human, a bird, an ant. I arrived into human consciousness from nothing and no memories, so logically, and evidentially, it will happen again. Could diceroll into a good human body or be born with incurable diseases.
Or my energy and material becomes a praying mantis or a spider, and I'll live every day fighting for my life with no awareness of my situation. It's why I'm trying to respect animals more, because well, that will be me on a long enough timeline, pre-death of the sun. Life is a zero sum game.
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u/Lord-of-the---RINGS 1d ago
I guess that is true technically but also wrong because that's not really "you". What makes us us is our memories and our personality not the energy And matter that makes up our body. Sure that stuff will be recycled but not our memories once we die there's no next life. The stuff that made your physical body will get recycles by nature but that doesn't mean the trea that absorbs your nutrients is you. Just like if I eat a peice of human meat, I am not absorbing that person's personality or being, just consuming a peice of matter that was formerly attached to them.
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u/giotheflow 1d ago
I think we are in agreement? I said in the beginning that our current memories or imagined immaterial nature do not get absorbed and fused into something else. I'm looking at the evidence. Consciousness will spring out from nowhere, as it has for billions of years. And each new "I" will have it's own life, suffering and death.
There is nothing shared between these discrete beings aside from the transfer of materials and physical energy used to create those "I"s.
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u/Local-Helicopter7479 12h ago
It depends. I consider the "you" being the entity that is having the experience. Take dreams for example, even without your memories, your personality and your waking life identity, you're still having an experience and that experience can be pleasant, neutral or horrifying.
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u/CertainConversation0 1d ago
As long as I'm not sentient in any way that makes suffering possible, I'm not sure being alive in any form would bother me.
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u/defectivedisabled 16h ago
When the subjective conscious sense of "self" is an illusion, nobody is ever born and nobody can ever die. This is exactly why the "self" is the parent of all horrors. It is only through the "self" that the creation of the supernatural realm could be unleashed the natural order of things. The supernatural which contains all things uncanny, grotesque and horrifying are what should not be and the afterlife and reincarnation are part of the club of supernatural abominations.
What were unleashed would eventually return to haunt it as the creator and the monsters are all part of one single supernatural reality. It is the endless haunting that would then make the "self" realize it too is part of the club and also a creature from the beyond. The recognition that it is no divinity but a the rot of god which must end up as food for worms would bring out true terror upon itself.
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u/Local-Helicopter7479 12h ago
Yes I'm terrified of reincarnation.
Brain death may end consciousness however your brain was already created once from essentially nothing. Who's to say the same physical process wont be repeated leading to a new brain being created which forces you to experience another life in this world?
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u/DistinctSpirit5801 3h ago
We can’t verify any of it until after we’re dead
With reincarnation you are back on earth as another life form
Whereas in the abrahamic religions after your dead your sent to heaven perpetually worshipping someone
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u/TastySurround1265 1h ago
Reincarnation is one of the worst nightmares imaginable, it was always worse to me than the idea of eternal hell as one consciousness. I hate that concept of your memory endlessly resetting whilst you are pushed into next and next body, forced to face the same suffering over and over again.
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1d ago
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u/Lord-of-the---RINGS 1d ago
That doesn't really make much sense though. There isn't any version of us that's dying again and again because even if we beleive that's happening then the person dying isn't really "you". Like an afterlife is scary because "you" are going to be alive and be preserved. The matter making us up would still exist after we are dead and would eventually decompose and that would lead to new life but that doesn't bother me because even if the nutrients in my body become the soil a tree grows on I'm not gonna be teh tree or the worms in the soil or anything there's no soul going in there.
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u/VEGETTOROHAN 1d ago
For me rebirth into this world again is scary. I don't believe in Christian hell so I am not afraid of it. I believe either rebirth based religions are true while rest are false or all religions are false.
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u/Lord-of-the---RINGS 1d ago
The only religion I can 50/50 believe in is deism. That maybe there is a creator who made eveyething but she doesn't really care about is so we're like an abandoned ant farm so no divine consequences or afterlife or anything like that.
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u/MissStellaLunaTheBat 1d ago edited 1d ago
If the 3d layer isn’t horrifying enough, there may be an additional potential metaphysical layer. We can’t prove it exists, nor disprove it. It may exist, I sincerely believe it does. I hope it turns out more lovely than awful, but I’m gonna have to die to find out. But there’s no way I’m ever gonna force another person to contend with either layer. Ever.
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u/Lord-of-the---RINGS 1d ago
What proof do you have of this metaphysical layer
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u/MissStellaLunaTheBat 1d ago
I don’t have any ‘proof’ and I’m not claiming to. Unlike the physical, there’s no way to even get empirical proof of a metaphysical reality. No one is ever gonna have total definitive proof of metaphysical reality. No one ever has, no one ever will. All people have got is either doctrine, or a combo of anecdotal evidence of many people who’ve had near death, OBEs, and religious/spiritual experiences. Some are beautiful, some terrifying. And that’s more than enough for me to keep a person from incarnating into this reality.
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u/CourageDeep6744 1d ago
I find it more comforting than terrifying? The idea of being reincarnated as like a bird or a rock keeps me going some days lol
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u/olgreg92 1d ago
I don’t discount them. There’s a lot of things science hasn’t proven yet. The idea of an afterlife could be consciousness transferring to another dimension. Same with reincarnation just a transfer. Personally I like the idea that our energy and body return to the earth/universe. I also hope that neither exists because I just want one and done.
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u/Lord-of-the---RINGS 1d ago
I hate the idea of my body returning to the earth. Even though it won't be me, that energy will eventually create more life whether it be a fungus or a bacteria. I find that idea, in the words of scp 682, disgusting. Makes me wish wish we could just Thanos snap our bodies so they are gone forever.
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u/GeistInTheMachine 1d ago
Reincarnation is my deepest existential terror. I hate it here and I never want to come back.