Of death.
I've been thinking a lot about death lately, and another forum I read every so often had a thread conveniently on the subject that sums me up fairly well.
So I've been thinking a lot about death lately. I'm not religious in any way and what I basically believe in is when you die it's all over. You don't go to heaven/hell or become reborn or whatever. To me this is the worst thought imaginable. It scares the [censored] out of me, not like you're scared by a horror movie, this actually makes me sad. Knowing that you're never going to be able to think again that it's just all over. The universe will keep on going in eternity while you're just dead. No thoughts, nothing. Just eternal blackness. A part of me says "this can't be it, there should be something more, life is pointless. ". I overhead two classmates talking about this some months ago.
Non religious guy: "Even though it's sad, I think death is the end".
Religious guy: "But if death is the end what is the point?"
Non religious guy: "Just life, having fun".
I think to myself, "wow this answer is total [censored]". How can it be the point if it's going to end. If all good things come to an end it's just sad.
I'm like 99.99% sure death is the end but actually hope I'm wrong and death is not the end. Even if this means Im going to hell I would still prefer that. Not having consciousness scares the [censored] out of me.
If I could press a button that made me religious and really believe in it I would do it immediately even though I think a lot of it is total [censored]. Having a reassurance that there's something more would be so nice to have. Even though there isn't. But Christians never find out that they lose. They think they go to heaven but they don't. Therefore they are the winners.
Have any of you had the same thoughts? If so how do you counter them?
All day at work today and many days recently it's all I can think about is dying. It's awful.
You know, I am right with you on this one. For some reason death terrifies me. I know people will say it's a natural process of life and all that shit, but honestly the whole idea of your body just shutting down and stopping it something I really don't want to experience. Maybe it's because I feel like there is so much more in life I need to accomplish. Maybe my feelings will change once I am older and have lived out a (hopefully) successful life. But right now if I ever have a moment where I think of death I can picture myself lying there in an immense amount of pain, not being able to take another breath. It paralyzes me. I try to move on and think of something else.
I'm an atheist, but death doesn't really bother me on a day to day basis. Look, whatever the reality of the universe is... afterlife, no afterlife, etc... nothing you think, believe, do, or say will change that reality.
So don't sweat it. Either there is an afterlife and you're good to go, or there isn't and you can't change it so just enjoy the nice things in your life and appreciate what you have.
[shrug]
There is an interesting episode of Star Trek Voyager where one of the Q tries to commit suicide. He is miserable because he has eternal life. He has literally done, thought, and experienced every possible thing you could ever do, think, or experience. There is literally nothing left for him to explore, do, say, feel, or whatever. He has tasted every aspect of the universe and now he is so bored that he is in tortuous agony and wants to explore the last remaining mystery: death.
Anyway, who knows what happens after death? I have a feeling that if anything happens at all, its some kind of weird, higher-dimensional thing that is WAY beyond our current ability to understand. If there is a god and he explained to us what happens after death, we would likely understand it about as well as my cat understands calculus.
Honestly, try not to worry about it War Lord. It's one of the few things that are unavoidable, so worrying over it will just take away from your life here and now, which, Ironically, is the thing you want to cling to.
...any reason these thoughts spiked? Did anything happen that might have made you think a lot about it?
I don't see what people have against nonexistence. I spent most of the past ~13.7 billion years not existing, and I don't have any complaints about it.
Time flies when you don't exist...
Have a kid, then your genes will be alive much longer than your body.
Although if you think about it you'll realize that all humanity, life, and the entire universe will 'die' eventually. Just take comfort in the fact that it can all be started up again randomly in another Big Bang. In fact, in an infinite amount of time, the Big Bang is guaranteed to happen an infinite number of times.
Death is exactly like blacking out, except you don't wake up later and use the ability to remember things such that you can account for that period of unconsciousness. Or at least that is what I conjecture it to be.
That said, I imagine dead to be pretty nice in that you're not living. And its living that gives us the ability to suffer or feel pleasure. However, the process of dying scares the ever loving shit out of me. It is my one great hope in .. life I guess to die peacefully in my sleep.
Because my death will otherwise be a completely pathetic and cowardly battle that I am totally unprepared to bear with anything remotely resembling dignity. Chances are when I die, the voiding of my bowels won't take place, because I made sure to piss and shit myself empty before the cold hands of death squeezes the life from me.
I been having the same thought complex lately...
However, what if the universe is cyclical, as in a big crunch happens and then another big bang? All of its energy would be centrallized in one place, explode again. Perhaps after googols and googols of years, the same energy and matter would be in the same general area, and the chance of the same soul living would exist?
Being a semi-religious man myself, I have posed this to friends of mine who are athiest.
Look at the universe from a strictly scientific standpoint. It's ten billion light-years across, millions of galaxies, with hundreds of millions of planets, and God knows how many forms of intelligent life. Now, imagine how all of this came to be. What is outside our universe? Are there others like it? If there are, what holds them all together?
Religious or not, one must realize that something so unbelievably complicated and outside human understanding cannot simply come about by chance. There must be something more to it, something outside what we smugly call reality. Whether there is or not, we'll find out, won't we?
callitaday wrote:one must realize that something so unbelievably complicated and outside human understanding cannot simply come about by chance.
Why?
Because you can't imagine it happening? Are your powers of imagination now the limiting factor for the universe's complexity?
callitaday wrote:There must be something more to it,
Why?
Beldaran wrote:Why?Because you can't imagine it happening? Are your powers of imagination now the limiting factor for the universe's complexity?
Why?
No, they're not. But what do yours tell you?
Would that we could all live to see that. It's the best merging of science and philosophy.
I am reminded of Conway's Game of Life. I don't know if anyone's heard of it, but it's a simple cellular automata deveoped by John Conway. Basically, you have a grid with cells. The rules are simple - any cell with two our three neighbors lives. Less than two or more than three, the cell dies. If an empty spot has exactly three cells, a new cell is born.
The thing is, those simple rules have given rise to all sorts of incredibly complex structures. For instance, this one is called a glider gun.
It shoots out a never-ending stream of gliders, small configurations of cells that glide across the board. The point is, when Conway developed the rules, he hadn't done so with the intention of creating a universe in which these complex structures could arise. He had no idea, when he first made the rules, that these sorts of things were even possible. Just because a certain result arises, doesn't mean that the conditions that created that result were intentionally set up to create it. In other words, there's no reason to assume that the rules of our universe were designed specifically so that galaxies, stars, planets, and us would arise.
everybody dies... screw it...
just live your life be happy, and be proud of the choices that you make!
I'm not afraid of death. If I die, I die. I'm more afraid of the process of dying painfully. I have so much more I want to do with my life that I drive myself every day to keep my life going. I constantly think of suicide, but there are more important things in my life...people I couldn't let down even if I wanted to. I love my wife, family, friends, and my life more than anything. When I think I can't bear the strain of things any longer, I think of my wife, and the kids I may one day have, and I drive on. That, and knowing my clumsy ass, I'd screw up killing myself and it would hurt like a bitch while I died a slow death.
Um, this is off topic and makes no sense but anyone but me. I'm not suicidal.
Love life and disregard death. You aren't nearly old enough to die of old age yet, and you have plenty of time to change any habits that you have that would kill you sooner, so take charge of your life and quit worrying about the unknown. Life is way to short and sweet to waste it by dwelling on such depressing things.
Zank_Tripper wrote:Have a kid, then your genes will be alive much longer than your body.
I'm with Zank on this one. Life is amazing, no doubt about it, but really, it's just genetic replication. I see and hear my parents in my sister and myself all the time. They'll die in a while, but when they do, there will still be copies of their genes ready to reproduce in both of us. I also see my now-dead and dearly beloved Grandpa Pete in several of my family members. That's several Petes! I grant that it's not exactly the same thing, but my point is that life is very strange in that it masks its purpose, which I take to be genetic replication. So have children, and live your life in a way that will help ensure their success in the future on this planet.
People often talk about how greatly one's perspective changes when one is old. You start to realize that you've done your duty on Earth, and it's okay for your job to be over. In fact, that one has worked hard and deserves a rest is a common attitude, and one that I hope to take up myself eventually.
Finally, re: non-existence-- our views are centered around existence. There is no such thing as a person who does not exist (tautologically); hence, we have an immensely difficult time imagining non-existence. (That we have the cognitive capacity even to consider such a thing is truly marvelous.) So since I have no way to tell what it's going to be like (and, in fact, it will necessarily not "be like" anything at all), I have no reason to assume that it will be negative in any way. It's just going to happen, and I hope I've had children and made a positive difference in the world by then.
I think burning or drowning would be the worst way to go on this one. Maybe it's not death that's so bad for everyone. Maybe it's just the actuall dying. Expect the worst hope for the best.
Several years ago my grandmother died and I was really upset about it and got scared about death for a short while. Those fears faded as I got busy with stuff. II know what you mean about work though. Many days I just hate work and feel like I'm wasting my life, but then I tell myself that my job is not my life.
Do I seriously need to come pick you up in a rental car and have danielle drive us around town while we chill in the trunk?
Think about how much more it would suck to live forever. Humanity isn't going to last forever, and at the most extreme end you're either going to be extremely lonely in a 'burnt out' universe or your perception of time will end in the big crunch. Even if you could somehow 'escape' the death of the universe or if humanity itself became immortal, you would eventually wish you were dead from the eventual boredom that seeps in.
As for death itself, I do my best to stay alive, but I am not afraid of death, more of the extreme pain that probably accompanies the transition between the two. If your perception of time can have a beginning with birth, what's wrong with having your perception of time end in death? It'll suck, but it won't matter to you, because you'll be dead.
I don't necessarily want to live forever, but I think it would be fun to live a very, very long time. You know, I'd go for a sort of quasi-immortality situation, wherein I could live as long as I wanted, but at any point, I could simply choose to die.
If I had that situation, though, rock_nog, I'd probably have a very hard time finally pulling the plug, so to speak. I mean, what if something really cool happens tomorrow? I'd have died just beforehand. How tragic.
The way I see it, there are three kinds of people. There are religious people, who can't accept death and see that there has to be a god. There are aitheists, who accept death and see no need for there to be a god. And then there is a third group, people who can't accept death but can't accept god either.
Being in the religious group myself, I strongly encourage you to accept Christianity. Before a flame war starts, just look at it this way: If there is no god, you're in the same position you were before. However, if there is, death is nothing more than passing out and waking up in paradise. War Lord, just think about it. Consider it. Look at the pros and cons. That's all I ask.
Just look at it my way. I don't fear death. Well, I'm afraid of a painful death, but normal death doesn't scare me, because I'm sure that death isn't where life ends. Just think about it. Please.
And to all others, I ask that you not flame me here for my personal beliefs. If you wish to flame me, take it to onther forum.
russadwan wrote:If there is no god, you're in the same position you were before. However, if there is, death is nothing more than passing out and waking up in paradise.
Can we please keep this nonsense out of this thread? Pascal's wager only assumes two possible outcomes and does not account for any of the other thousands of religions out there. Mathematically, he is no better off believing in Christianity than he is in Zoroastrianism, and this doesn't even account for the deities that don't even reward worship.
Using game theory to attempt to convert people over to your religion is intellectually dishonest, and you should know better than that. We are all better off simply picking a belief system that most closely coincides with our morals and what we are most comfortable with.
Not to mention that if he's just making a philosophical bet, then he doesn't REALLY believe it, does he?
Don't you think I'd RATHER know for sure that I'm going to heaven? It fucking sucks that I'm probably just going to die and that's it. But that doesn't mean I can just pump my brain full of laughing gas and start believing in magic stories just so I can sleep better at night.
I could no more easily start believing in god than I could start thinking 1+1 = 35. My brain just knows better.
Beldaran wrote:Not to mention that if he's just making a philosophical bet, then he doesn't REALLY believe it, does he?
Such is his burden.
Don't you think I'd RATHER know for sure that I'm going to heaven? It fucking sucks that I'm probably just going to die and that's it. But that doesn't mean I can just pump my brain full of laughing gas and start believing in magic stories just so I can sleep better at night.
Human beings are irrational creatures. If believing that there is an afterlife helps them sleep better at night, then I find nothing wrong with that.
I believe that God created us with a need for Him. Some people just don't want Him. They search for excuses to convince themselves that he doesn't exist. But that God-shaped hole in us will still remain, no matter how facts we stuff in it. The hole that makes us fear death, without any hope of life going on. That would be my explanation for fear of death.
Some people accept that God created us this way and choose to follow him. Others, like you Beldaran, simply cannot. You think only in terms of what your mind can comprehend. You cannot comprehend God any more than you can comprehend 1+1 being 35, so you come to conclusion he must not exist.
But that God-shaped hole is still there. You can choose to ignore it. But if an alarm went off, would you ignore it? Why should this alarm be any different?
russadwan wrote:words
Did you actually read a word I said, or are you copy-pasting something your youth pastor told you.