How can we be certain that there is any form of existence after death? [Spirituality & Religion]

Try as I may to keep my mind open to core spiritual ideas, I can't help but think most of the time that nothing happens after we die.

I would like for there to be some sort of nice afterlife, but I cannot shake the feeling or rather understanding that we are just animals who will decay and return to dust.

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SW-User

We cannot be certain. Even so-called "near death experiences" can be explained as processes within the mind, the result of DMT present in the brain, etc. The fact that near-death experiences always seem to be culturally framed betrays that. (It's no coincidence that Christians have NDEs with Christian elements, Muslims have NDEs with Islamic elements, etc.) Death is always going to be the great unknown, no matter the claims of certainty. Of that I'm quite certain. "Militant agnosticism". But that's why the religious have faith. Faith doesn't require empirical proof of the afterlife, but those with faith can be quite certain of what awaits them.

GeistInTheMachine · 31-35, M

@SW-User Yes, I've heard this counter-argument too, but some NDE's seem to be neutral.

But yes, DMT is often brought up as an explanation. I'd be interested in hearing if there is a counter to this counter-argument.

SW-User

@GeistInTheMachine Well, the counter is that it hasn't been proven or tested at all. It's simply a guess, no better than any other. Very difficult to test such a thing since NDEs can only be "observed" in retelling. We can't see someone else's NDE, so we have to trust their recounting of it, a recounting that is necessarily colored by interpretation.

I think the DMT angle is interesting. Many people who take DMT report seeing "elf" like creatures, which leads to two possible explanations: there really are elf-like creatures that people contact when taking this drug or the drug produces a certain kind of hallucination in most people who take it, and "elves" are the closest thing the rational mind can come to describing what it's seen. Is something similar happening with alien abduction stories (descriptions of aliens often have round heads and big black eyes--is this another abstract hallucination that the brain interprets as "aliens"?) A similar process may occur in NDEs which may be why there are similar elements even across cultures (a "bright light", for example).

All conjecture, of course. But something to think about.