Do you believe we have souls and there's a life after death?

What is a soul?
If by a soul you mean some sort of magical energy cloud that persists in some sort of magical realm after the physical medium ceases to exist, then no, I do not.
When I die, my consciousness will cease to exist, just like the data on a hardrive ceases to exist once you completely destroy the hard drive.

Being a totally rational and skeptical atheist, I feel like I ought to believe that we don’t have souls, that our existance ends with the body and we just rot away. But I have some strange memories and strange experiences (including some that have been independently verified) that I can only explain with a belief in reincarnation. I can’t explain why or how it happens, but until I find a better explanation for my experiences, that’s what I’m sticking with.

Yes…..& no! Well, i’m an agnostic. I’m being consistent at least.

Yes.

No. I hold to a strict materialist theory of the mind, and I cannot fathom what exactly would survive after death. Every organic substance undergoes some sort of decomposition following death, and is no longer said to exist, and I see no reason why humans would be any different in this. I think tales of an afterlife are the inventions of people too scared to die or too scared to accept that their dead loved ones are truly gone, and they are such an appealing notion that they have gained widespread acceptance – but that does not make them any more true.

@FireMadeFlesh

There are more things, Horatio, than are drempt of in your philosophy. : )

I do believe in the after-life. I can’t picture what it would look like, but it would be better than what we have now, in environment and society.

Energy goes on forever, once created it cannot be extingushed only absorbed or reflected. So yes in one aspect we will go on for eternity.

Well in my religion we die and go to Heaven. I believe in this wholeheartedly.

@CaptainHarley Certainly, but I see no reason to believe in ideas that are speculation at best.

Yes,and you can’t stop me ;)

No. Death is oblivion. The good news is that it is something we all are familiar with since, within the limitless expanse of time, it is how we spent most of our time. This little moment called life is a brief alternative to your normal state.

@FireMadeFlesh

All scientific theories ( and many scientific facts ) were at one time “speculation.”

@CaptainHarley
And they have all been corrobated by evidence over time, or discarded due to contradicting evidence.
Where is yours?

I suspect that we do have some kind of permanent essence that will persist after death, which also pre-existed before birth. As for ”..what..happens..?”, we can only speculate.
Time will tell though.

My imagination cannot wrap itself around the thought that there might be some afterlife and believe it. I would feel vain to think that only humans live on and not the other creatures on the planet, much less anywhere else in the universe.

I do like to think about it, and thus appreciate this question and the responses. For now though, I’d have to say no to both.

Yes.

Yes, I do. I believe that something survives us after death and that it goes to a place different from what we have here. It undergoes a review of the life lived and what it learned during that life. It then waits to be reborn into another life for more learning.

I don’t have all the answers. I don’t think there’s anyone on Earth who really does. Still, I’ve seen too many utterly unexplainable things to account for with a purely materialistic world view.

I believe we have souls & I think when our physical body dies, that our “souls” are reincarnated into a new person. I think we have to keep coming back until we get the “living” right. This means a lessened emphasis on material things & a greater emphasis on helping all of mankind live better, safer, happier lives. Once this is accomplished, I think that our souls become part of a universal collective that can, if one can figure out how to connect with it from our earthly plain, give us a great deal of information that will allow us to live better lives.

No, in my opinion, the only thing that happens after death is our bodies become one with the soil over time.

Definately yes but not like any religion teaches in my opinion.

@CaptainHarley True, but at that stage I would have had no reason to believe them. An idea doesn’t need to be believed to be investigated.

Oh yes there absolutely is life after this earthly death.

I am an athiest (or agnostic – whatever) and I do believe in life after death. I believe I existed before I was born, and will continue to exist after I am dead. I couldn’t explain how that happens, but it is a belief of mine and has something to do with a natural process that we don’t yet understand. Something to do with energy as @thekoukoureport and @lloydbird have said.