2010-01-10, 11:23 AM
Well for me personally it's quite easy, after death your consciousness "returns" to the same state is was in -before- you were alive, as before you were born.
Have you ever wondered what happened to your consciousness all those billions of years before you came alive? It wasn't really boring as far as I can remember. Just eternal peaceful nothingness!
Also yeah, all the atoms and energy of your body will remain in the universe, they will never go away. You're correct about that! Matter and energy can never be destroyed, they can only switch states (matter <-> energy).
The only possibility of "rebirth" is that the universe will one day be pulled together again by dark matter / dark energy and during another "big bang" some of your atoms / energy will end up on a planet that can sustain life, and those atoms / energy become part of a living organism once again... Since this (in theory) can happen infinite times, you will become alive one day... but saying that, it's also possible that we have been alive already, some infinite times ago!
.
This theory only works when the universe will collapse on itself again somehow, the problem is that at this moment it seems that the universe is expanding at an expanding rate, so there is no sign that it will ever collapse on itself again... If that is the case, and the universe will never collapse on itself again, we only have one life, and when we die, there is this eternal peaceful nothingness, just like we remember it from -before- we were born...
It's the best I can come up with, as a "technical" explanation.
Have you ever wondered what happened to your consciousness all those billions of years before you came alive? It wasn't really boring as far as I can remember. Just eternal peaceful nothingness!
Also yeah, all the atoms and energy of your body will remain in the universe, they will never go away. You're correct about that! Matter and energy can never be destroyed, they can only switch states (matter <-> energy).
The only possibility of "rebirth" is that the universe will one day be pulled together again by dark matter / dark energy and during another "big bang" some of your atoms / energy will end up on a planet that can sustain life, and those atoms / energy become part of a living organism once again... Since this (in theory) can happen infinite times, you will become alive one day... but saying that, it's also possible that we have been alive already, some infinite times ago!
.This theory only works when the universe will collapse on itself again somehow, the problem is that at this moment it seems that the universe is expanding at an expanding rate, so there is no sign that it will ever collapse on itself again... If that is the case, and the universe will never collapse on itself again, we only have one life, and when we die, there is this eternal peaceful nothingness, just like we remember it from -before- we were born...
It's the best I can come up with, as a "technical" explanation.