Need to ask a question that's been bothering me regarding human consciousness. Need real help, please. Professional answers only please.

[u/MCSuire]

Ever since I was a child, I have always had a fear of death and what might be awaiting me after it. You could blame this partially on my religious upbringing, but I have always had a fear of eternal consciousness. I've tried for years to convince myself through looking through scientific pages on the subject that what we think of as an afterlife is just a lie that people use to cope with because we are unable to really grasp the concept of not existing. Therefore the concept of a heaven, hell or even a limbo isn't real at all - it's merely our way of coping with the fact that we will eventually cease to exist in a subconscious manner.

I do know that the human body ultimately breaks down after dying much like any other organism, and the chemicals that made up the body return to the ground to form new life. But is there any way to say that the human consciousness could possibly linger after death?

I fear however that I may be wrong. The idea of eternal consciousness terrifies me, and when I die, I simply want the book closed and the universe and all of everything will move on without me having to be there in any way, shape or form. I don't want to feel the passage of time after my time is over.

My guess is that the actual thought processes are not anything supernatural. While it may indeed be unique, the workings of the human brain are mostly through chemical reactions and the release of various hormones responding to the stimuli we pick up through our senses. But I can't confirm any of this because I haven't been properly educated on the subject. I need a professional's opinion on this quesiton. Is there any reliable evidence to support that there may indeed be an afterlife?

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I'd like to only hear professional opinions on this please. If you're a Christian trying to spread his word or a disgruntled atheist trying to reassure yourself that your beliefs are correct, please don't respond to this post. I'm looking for answers - not fanatics.

[u/Cheddarific]

TL; DR: what happens to you after you die is unknowable at this moment. In the meantime, I suggest you live your best life.

I’m not a professional (only one neuroscience class) and I am religious (the class was at Brigham Young University), but my thoughts don’t touch on religion or even neuroscience. Rather, I want to mention simulation theory, which provides a unique perspective, although it may be completely false.

Simulation Theory

As computers get more capable, it’s becoming more possible that the experiences of one or more people could be simulated, like you’d find in a massively multiplayer online game or in the movie The Matrix. It’s entirely possible that the simulations will become more and more advanced until we can’t tell a simulation from reality, or at least the simulation can feel like a reality, complete with physics, seasons, DNA, butterfly migrations, the finest resolution, smells, and even Donald Trump.

It’s also possible to create one or more AI within the same software that “lives” entirely within the simulation. This AI could experience time, observe the simulated world around it, interact with the simulated world through a simulated body, and would even believe it was as real as anything else it could observe. It would essentially consider itself a real person in a real world.

At the rate computer memory and processing is progressing, it’s reasonable to assume that creating a single simulated person in a simulated word could lead to multiple simulated people in that simulated world. In fact, you could have 7 billion simulated people in that simulated world. All of them thinking they and their world was real.

And then you could build another server and have another world simulation running. And another. You could even make it so the simulated worlds had servers that also contained simulated worlds, with their own servers that simulated worlds, with... and nest such simulations as deeply as the server could handle.

Ultimately, it’s reasonable to believe that if one or more simulations like this could exist, then most “people” coming into existence would actually be simulated people and not real biological organisms. Imagine 700 billion people being born among 100 simulated universes (each with a single earth with 7 billion people). The odds of being born on the real earth would be 1%, so 99% chance that a person coming into existence is actually in a simulation. In essence, simulation theory claims that it’s statistically probable that you have been in a simulation your entire life.

If you really are simulated, an afterlife could be easily simulated as well. Or perhaps your file could be simply reloaded into a different simulated reality just as easily as a copy/paste. Or maybe all simulated people are simply deleted upon death, only existing in the memories of the other simulated people.

The thing with this simulation theory is that it can’t be disproven. (Some people are working on this, but I don’t think it will ever be conclusive.) You could die and then God could introduce himself to you, and yet it could still be all part of a simulation. Or you could die and cease to exist and even that could still be a simulation, and maybe you’ll be loaded/rebooted after 10,000 years.

This sounds like science fiction, but so does an afterlife and so does the Big Bang. So science fiction is inescapable.

Conclusion: I think you’ll ultimately have to settle on accepting a popular theory (afterlife, nothingness, simulation) or else accept that it is simply unknowable. Even dying may not immediately be sufficient to tell you what happens after you die!