Your views on Death.

[Monkfish Acc.]

I am apathetic towards it.
I mean, it's inevitable either way. No point getting freaked out about it.

 

[Korolev]

When you're dead - you're dead. That's it, end of the line. A person is merely a biological organism, our consciousness a function of our brain. When your brain stops working, YOU STOP WORKING. You ARE your brain - all your mental faculties, all your memories and even your personality have been PROVEN to be stored in your brain.

And when that goes, so do you. It's really not that scary - sure death would be unpleasant because you can't do things when you're dead and I like doing things, but death is nothing more than nothingness. No pain, no fear, no happiness, no joy, nothing. Imagine the time before you were born - can't? Well that's because you didn't exist before you were born - and being dead is EXACTLY like not existing.

I suppose if the cylical universe theory is true, then maybe after a bazillion, gatrillion, frigillion re-iterations of the universe, you might be born again, because eventually the circumstances leading to your birth would re-appear in the gabillionth re-iteration of the universe. So we might all be destined to be reborn again and again, but with ga-tra-faba-gabillion years in between each "rebirth". But since your dead, all those gazatrillifrillian years will pass by instantly.

So my view on death is this:

1) You either basically just...... cease to exist forever or
2) You will be perpetually reborn, it will just take almost forever and a day for it to happen each time.

 

[Ginnipe]

Many cultures beleived that one person would never die, instead they would be reinchanated as a new person. Many cultures also beleive in a afterlife sort of thing.

Personaly I don't know weather each are right or wrong. But I'm swayed to beleive the reinchanation one.

PS. I belong to no religion, although I have studied some.

 

[Duck Sandwich]

There are times when I can face my view of it, with cool disregard, and other times when it induces a momentary hysteria where I want to destroy walls with my fists and claw at the very fabric of existence.

Meh, I'm fucked up.

Same here. It usually happens to me at night. I sometimes think to myself "oh fuck I'm gonna die someday, FUCK." Then I eventually calm down, fall asleep, and everything is fine the next morning.

I have grown accustomed to this game of life. I find it to be sheer bullshittery that when the game ends, your save file is deleted, and you can't start a new game.

To this end, I work to stave off death for as long as possible, by physically leveling up.

 

[Kriptonite]

I know to start off that there have been a few recent death threads but this one is and I assure you different. I am asking about ANY views at all you have on death. No restrictions(except language, please be considerate) just anything.

This thread is also sparked somewhat by 'On A Pale Horse' by Piers Anthony. It deals with Death as an office that is held by a person. It's really quite an amazing book. If anybody AT ALL has read any of the 'Incarnations of Immortality' series please let me know.

Read all 7 when I was still fairly young. Just looked and saw they have an 8th now from a couple of years ago about Nox I'll have to check out. Death and War were my favorite books even though I would have assumed Death and Time would have been - Time was interesting but War was much more amusing. Using Musashi's strategies to fight your way out of hell is pretty amusing. Also killing war with world peace is just hilarious. I liked part of the hell book but the heaven book was just plain boring and preachy- he seemed to be coasting on that particular novel. Overall, it was a great series and I thought the subject matter more clever than Xanth, though when I read them both were great fun.

Yes indeed, I did not care as much for Xanth but did like the series. Time was a great one, although a bit tough to fully understand the first time reading it. On a Pale Horse was by far my favorite.

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Eh, it doesn't make sense for it to "end" at death. The only reason we think it ends is that we can't see beyond that point. Exactly how we thought the world "ended".

What do you mean, it "doesn't make sense?" It doesn't make sense to say that there is life beyond death either. All the evidence we have collected would lead one to believe that a physical brain which can hold the pattern of electro-chemical impulses that make up thought is necessary for life, so the death of the body would be the death of the person. You are right to say that we can't know for certain. We do have one useful tool, however, Occam's Razor. It is easy to ditermine that life ending at death is more plausable than death (because it requires less ad hoc assumptions), so what "doesn't make sense" is to declare absolutely that life goes beyond death.

And for those who haven't gathered from reading what I've said, I do believe that in all likelihood we do "end" at death. I find it more likely that all our beliefs of an afterlife have spawned from a combination of memetic and genetic vestigial remnants, and from wishful thinking.

This raises a good counter argument above "hah, you're stupid" so I believe that it deserves a refute. I agree, the human body ceases to be livable and inhabitable, however I do believe in a metaphysical plane of existence, I have no idea what it is, but I believe there is something of that general idea. True there is no science that proves it but a thousand years ago we didn't have the science to test the space frontier. You may say its impossible to test the frontiers of the metaphysical, but they said that about space 1000 years ago. Now don't get me wrong, I'm totally a pro-logic person and trust science almost fully, I would take Doctors advice over a priests on disease any day. However I think its naive to think that we in the 21st century have found out all there is to know.

And to all those agree with me, it's nice to know that you do.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

Eh, it doesn't make sense for it to "end" at death. The only reason we think it ends is that we can't see beyond that point. Exactly how we thought the world "ended".

What do you mean, it "doesn't make sense?" It doesn't make sense to say that there is life beyond death either. All the evidence we have collected would lead one to believe that a physical brain which can hold the pattern of electro-chemical impulses that make up thought is necessary for life, so the death of the body would be the death of the person. You are right to say that we can't know for certain. We do have one useful tool, however, Occam's Razor. It is easy to ditermine that life ending at death is more plausable than death (because it requires less ad hoc assumptions), so what "doesn't make sense" is to declare absolutely that life goes beyond death.

And for those who haven't gathered from reading what I've said, I do believe that in all likelihood we do "end" at death. I find it more likely that all our beliefs of an afterlife have spawned from a combination of memetic and genetic vestigial remnants, and from wishful thinking.

This raises a good counter argument above "hah, you're stupid" so I believe that it deserves a refute. I agree, the human body ceases to be livable and inhabitable, however I do believe in a metaphysical plane of existence, I have no idea what it is, but I believe there is something of that general idea. True there is no science that proves it but a thousand years ago we didn't have the science to test the space frontier. You may say its impossible to test the frontiers of the metaphysical, but they said that about space 1000 years ago. Now don't get me wrong, I'm totally a pro-logic person and trust science almost fully, I would take Doctors advice over a priests on disease any day. However I think its naive to think that we in the 21st century have found out all there is to know.

And to all those agree with me, it's nice to know that you do.

My problem isn't that I don't think there's more out there that we don't know. I think there's a lot out there that we don't know. One could speculate that there might be a metaphysical plane, that I could understand. What is beyond me is the assumption that there must be a metaphysical plane. It's possible, but it's just highly improbable. A more probable solution to the question of "what happenes after we die" is that our thought processes terminate.

Let me speak of the evidence here. You see, we know for a fact that the brain is responsible for how someone thinks. We know this because when the shape of the brain is changed, the personality of the person that brain belongs to is changed. We have case studies of people who have lost parts of their brain, survived, but acted like completely different people than they were before. We know that as people age, and the synapses in their brain start to fail, their thoughts slow. This is to be expected if we say that thought is manifested as electrochemical impulses in a physical brain.

But if we were to say that humans had a metaphysical soul that could survive without the body, this isn't what we would expect. We would expect that who that person is was contained in the soul, so physical damage to the brain, which should not be able to affect the metaphysical plane, would not affect the nature of an individuals thoughts. It means that no matter what happened to your brain, you would still act like the same person. We know that this is not the case. You could try to make a case for the brain being some sort of conduit between our physical plane and the metaphysical plane, but again, you're still just making a lot of ad hoc assumptions, and even those don't make much sense, and should be removed with one simple slice of Occam's Razor.

And if the "soul" is not the source of our thoughts, the house of our memories, what does it mean if it lives on anyways? If the "soul" is just some sort of "life energy," what difference does it make if it lives on? It's like if you melted a great painting, and said that because you had all the melted paint in a bucket, it was still the same painting. It isn't, the pattern which made it unique and beautiful is gone, even if the paint (or life energy in the metaphor) is still there. If I leave behind a shapeless mass of life energy after I die, what difference would it make? It wouldn't be me.

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Eh, it doesn't make sense for it to "end" at death. The only reason we think it ends is that we can't see beyond that point. Exactly how we thought the world "ended".

What do you mean, it "doesn't make sense?" It doesn't make sense to say that there is life beyond death either. All the evidence we have collected would lead one to believe that a physical brain which can hold the pattern of electro-chemical impulses that make up thought is necessary for life, so the death of the body would be the death of the person. You are right to say that we can't know for certain. We do have one useful tool, however, Occam's Razor. It is easy to ditermine that life ending at death is more plausable than death (because it requires less ad hoc assumptions), so what "doesn't make sense" is to declare absolutely that life goes beyond death.

And for those who haven't gathered from reading what I've said, I do believe that in all likelihood we do "end" at death. I find it more likely that all our beliefs of an afterlife have spawned from a combination of memetic and genetic vestigial remnants, and from wishful thinking.

This raises a good counter argument above "hah, you're stupid" so I believe that it deserves a refute. I agree, the human body ceases to be livable and inhabitable, however I do believe in a metaphysical plane of existence, I have no idea what it is, but I believe there is something of that general idea. True there is no science that proves it but a thousand years ago we didn't have the science to test the space frontier. You may say its impossible to test the frontiers of the metaphysical, but they said that about space 1000 years ago. Now don't get me wrong, I'm totally a pro-logic person and trust science almost fully, I would take Doctors advice over a priests on disease any day. However I think its naive to think that we in the 21st century have found out all there is to know.

And to all those agree with me, it's nice to know that you do.

My problem isn't that I don't think there's more out there that we don't know. I think there's a lot out there that we don't know. One could speculate that there might be a metaphysical plane, that I could understand. What is beyond me is the assumption that there must be a metaphysical plane. It's possible, but it's just highly improbable. A more probable solution to the question of "what happenes after we die" is that our thought processes terminate.

Let me speak of the evidence here. You see, we know for a fact that the brain is responsible for how someone thinks. We know this because when the shape of the brain is changed, the personality of the person that brain belongs to is changed. We have case studies of people who have lost parts of their brain, survived, but acted like completely different people than they were before. We know that as people age, and the synapses in their brain start to fail, their thoughts slow. This is to be expected if we say that thought is manifested as electrochemical impulses in a physical brain.

But if we were to say that humans had a metaphysical soul that could survive without the body, this isn't what we would expect. We would expect that who that person is was contained in the soul, so physical damage to the brain, which should not be able to affect the metaphysical plane, would not affect the nature of an individuals thoughts. It means that no matter what happened to your brain, you would still act like the same person. We know that this is not the case. You could try to make a case for the brain being some sort of conduit between our physical plane and the metaphysical plane, but again, you're still just making a lot of ad hoc assumptions, and even those don't make much sense, and should be removed with one simple slice of Occam's Razor.

And if the "soul" is not the source of our thoughts, the house of our memories, what does it mean if it lives on anyways? If the "soul" is just some sort of "life energy," what difference does it make if it lives on? It's like if you melted a great painting, and said that because you had all the melted paint in a bucket, it was still the same painting. It isn't, the pattern which made it unique and beautiful is gone, even if the paint (or life energy in the metaphor) is still there. If I leave behind a shapeless mass of life energy after I die, what difference would it make? It wouldn't be me.

I agree that science as we know today strongly suggests there is no metaphysical plane. However we would need to be able to test the bio ethereal spirit or "soul" or, if it does not exist which would be almost impossible to prove, at least find at why we lose an amount of weight at death. (it's not bowel movements or anything like that, many believe that this weight is your bio ethereal spirit leaving the body). And since we don't have that technology it seems moot point to use facts to argue what happens because we don't have the facts and most likely never will.
This is probably vastly irritating as I refuse to accept fundamental facts.

EDIT: A lot of people argue that one believes in an afterlife out of fear, that's not true at all. If there is absolutely nothing, there would be no consciousness to register such nothingness and it would be irrelevant. Its not as if we'd just sit in a gray dimension forever trying to think of new mind games to play with ourselves.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

I believe death as being an inevitability, and that it is the end. It is the only logical way for me to think, under the belief that everything changes and nothing lasts forever. Thinking that everything is eternal, it just doesn't make sense for me. Everything must have a beginning and an end, for living creatures, the end is death.

As for my opinions on it, I don't know. I don't fear it currently, as it isn't something that faces me yet, but I don't know how I'll feel once I'm 80 or something, when that inevitability is much much closer to me, and the prosperity of the end is in sight. I have no idea what to feel about that. I have no idea what to come next. I don't believe in an aterlife but at the same time don't think the idea of laying consciouslessly in the ground as being that believable either. I choose the most logical option for me that it is an end and is inevitable, yet death isn't logical. How can life end, just like that? Do we have a spirit that keeps on living? Energy keeps us alive but evergy doesn't die, so do only our bodies die and our selves live on as energy? It's something I'll probably never be able to understand in my life, and something that I have really started to think about after entering this thread.

 

[Spacelord]

Death'll kill ya.

 

[BardSeed]

?Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather."
? Bill Hicks

 

[Kpt._Rob]

Eh, it doesn't make sense for it to "end" at death. The only reason we think it ends is that we can't see beyond that point. Exactly how we thought the world "ended".

What do you mean, it "doesn't make sense?" It doesn't make sense to say that there is life beyond death either. All the evidence we have collected would lead one to believe that a physical brain which can hold the pattern of electro-chemical impulses that make up thought is necessary for life, so the death of the body would be the death of the person. You are right to say that we can't know for certain. We do have one useful tool, however, Occam's Razor. It is easy to ditermine that life ending at death is more plausable than death (because it requires less ad hoc assumptions), so what "doesn't make sense" is to declare absolutely that life goes beyond death.

And for those who haven't gathered from reading what I've said, I do believe that in all likelihood we do "end" at death. I find it more likely that all our beliefs of an afterlife have spawned from a combination of memetic and genetic vestigial remnants, and from wishful thinking.

This raises a good counter argument above "hah, you're stupid" so I believe that it deserves a refute. I agree, the human body ceases to be livable and inhabitable, however I do believe in a metaphysical plane of existence, I have no idea what it is, but I believe there is something of that general idea. True there is no science that proves it but a thousand years ago we didn't have the science to test the space frontier. You may say its impossible to test the frontiers of the metaphysical, but they said that about space 1000 years ago. Now don't get me wrong, I'm totally a pro-logic person and trust science almost fully, I would take Doctors advice over a priests on disease any day. However I think its naive to think that we in the 21st century have found out all there is to know.

And to all those agree with me, it's nice to know that you do.

My problem isn't that I don't think there's more out there that we don't know. I think there's a lot out there that we don't know. One could speculate that there might be a metaphysical plane, that I could understand. What is beyond me is the assumption that there must be a metaphysical plane. It's possible, but it's just highly improbable. A more probable solution to the question of "what happenes after we die" is that our thought processes terminate.

Let me speak of the evidence here. You see, we know for a fact that the brain is responsible for how someone thinks. We know this because when the shape of the brain is changed, the personality of the person that brain belongs to is changed. We have case studies of people who have lost parts of their brain, survived, but acted like completely different people than they were before. We know that as people age, and the synapses in their brain start to fail, their thoughts slow. This is to be expected if we say that thought is manifested as electrochemical impulses in a physical brain.

But if we were to say that humans had a metaphysical soul that could survive without the body, this isn't what we would expect. We would expect that who that person is was contained in the soul, so physical damage to the brain, which should not be able to affect the metaphysical plane, would not affect the nature of an individuals thoughts. It means that no matter what happened to your brain, you would still act like the same person. We know that this is not the case. You could try to make a case for the brain being some sort of conduit between our physical plane and the metaphysical plane, but again, you're still just making a lot of ad hoc assumptions, and even those don't make much sense, and should be removed with one simple slice of Occam's Razor.

And if the "soul" is not the source of our thoughts, the house of our memories, what does it mean if it lives on anyways? If the "soul" is just some sort of "life energy," what difference does it make if it lives on? It's like if you melted a great painting, and said that because you had all the melted paint in a bucket, it was still the same painting. It isn't, the pattern which made it unique and beautiful is gone, even if the paint (or life energy in the metaphor) is still there. If I leave behind a shapeless mass of life energy after I die, what difference would it make? It wouldn't be me.

I agree that science as we know today strongly suggests there is no metaphysical plane. However we would need to be able to test the bio ethereal spirit or "soul" or, if it does not exist which would be almost impossible to prove, at least find at why we lose an amount of weight at death. (it's not bowel movements or anything like that, many believe that this weight is your bio ethereal spirit leaving the body). And since we don't have that technology it seems moot point to use facts to argue what happens because we don't have the facts and most likely never will.
This is probably vastly irritating as I refuse to accept fundamental facts.

EDIT: A lot of people argue that one believes in an afterlife out of fear, that's not true at all. If there is absolutely nothing, there would be no consciousness to register such nothingness and it would be irrelevant. Its not as if we'd just sit in a gray dimension forever trying to think of new mind games to play with ourselves.

I guess I'll just beat my very dead horse one more time here. What I'm trying to say is that it seems to me that saying that we can't know if there is or is not an ethereal soul unless we test is like saying that we can't know if there is or is not an invisible dragon in my bathtub right now unless we can test it. In both cases it is true that we can't prove absolutely one way or the other, and in both cases it would be absolutely impossible to prove that there wasn't a soul or that there wasn't a dragon in my bathtub. We could say that the soul can't be detected because it doesn't exist on the physical plane, or the the dragon can't be discovered because it moves when we try to touch it and it's invisible. But in both cases it is more plausable to say that there probably isn't a soul, and that there probably isn't a dragon in my bathtub. Just because you can't prove something one way or the other doesn't mean that you can't ditermine one solution to a question to be more plausable than the other solution to the question.

As for the argument about people believing if there is an afterlife because of fear, I'm not sure what relevance the second part has. The evidence we have suggests that there is a physical plane in which we exist, and in which our consciousnesses exist. And it would not be hard in the least bit for a consciousness in the physical plane to speculate on a metaphysical plane. They couldn't speculate on a metaphysical plane after they had been terminated from the physical plane, of course, this doesn't mean that they exist in a grey nothingness, it means that they are nothingness after their termination. What I'm saying is that there is "something," but that something does not necessarily include a metaphysical plane.

 

[Azraellod]

i occasionally work part time as the reaper. it's a decent job. besides, i have a skeletal build, so that part isn't an issue.

i have quite a relaxed attitude to death. the concept just doesn't scare me.

i don't really care that much if there is an afterlife or not. my views on it are extremely inconsistent, and change around 2 or 3 times a day.

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Eh, it doesn't make sense for it to "end" at death. The only reason we think it ends is that we can't see beyond that point. Exactly how we thought the world "ended".

What do you mean, it "doesn't make sense?" It doesn't make sense to say that there is life beyond death either. All the evidence we have collected would lead one to believe that a physical brain which can hold the pattern of electro-chemical impulses that make up thought is necessary for life, so the death of the body would be the death of the person. You are right to say that we can't know for certain. We do have one useful tool, however, Occam's Razor. It is easy to ditermine that life ending at death is more plausable than death (because it requires less ad hoc assumptions), so what "doesn't make sense" is to declare absolutely that life goes beyond death.

And for those who haven't gathered from reading what I've said, I do believe that in all likelihood we do "end" at death. I find it more likely that all our beliefs of an afterlife have spawned from a combination of memetic and genetic vestigial remnants, and from wishful thinking.

This raises a good counter argument above "hah, you're stupid" so I believe that it deserves a refute. I agree, the human body ceases to be livable and inhabitable, however I do believe in a metaphysical plane of existence, I have no idea what it is, but I believe there is something of that general idea. True there is no science that proves it but a thousand years ago we didn't have the science to test the space frontier. You may say its impossible to test the frontiers of the metaphysical, but they said that about space 1000 years ago. Now don't get me wrong, I'm totally a pro-logic person and trust science almost fully, I would take Doctors advice over a priests on disease any day. However I think its naive to think that we in the 21st century have found out all there is to know.

And to all those agree with me, it's nice to know that you do.

My problem isn't that I don't think there's more out there that we don't know. I think there's a lot out there that we don't know. One could speculate that there might be a metaphysical plane, that I could understand. What is beyond me is the assumption that there must be a metaphysical plane. It's possible, but it's just highly improbable. A more probable solution to the question of "what happenes after we die" is that our thought processes terminate.

Let me speak of the evidence here. You see, we know for a fact that the brain is responsible for how someone thinks. We know this because when the shape of the brain is changed, the personality of the person that brain belongs to is changed. We have case studies of people who have lost parts of their brain, survived, but acted like completely different people than they were before. We know that as people age, and the synapses in their brain start to fail, their thoughts slow. This is to be expected if we say that thought is manifested as electrochemical impulses in a physical brain.

But if we were to say that humans had a metaphysical soul that could survive without the body, this isn't what we would expect. We would expect that who that person is was contained in the soul, so physical damage to the brain, which should not be able to affect the metaphysical plane, would not affect the nature of an individuals thoughts. It means that no matter what happened to your brain, you would still act like the same person. We know that this is not the case. You could try to make a case for the brain being some sort of conduit between our physical plane and the metaphysical plane, but again, you're still just making a lot of ad hoc assumptions, and even those don't make much sense, and should be removed with one simple slice of Occam's Razor.

And if the "soul" is not the source of our thoughts, the house of our memories, what does it mean if it lives on anyways? If the "soul" is just some sort of "life energy," what difference does it make if it lives on? It's like if you melted a great painting, and said that because you had all the melted paint in a bucket, it was still the same painting. It isn't, the pattern which made it unique and beautiful is gone, even if the paint (or life energy in the metaphor) is still there. If I leave behind a shapeless mass of life energy after I die, what difference would it make? It wouldn't be me.

I agree that science as we know today strongly suggests there is no metaphysical plane. However we would need to be able to test the bio ethereal spirit or "soul" or, if it does not exist which would be almost impossible to prove, at least find at why we lose an amount of weight at death. (it's not bowel movements or anything like that, many believe that this weight is your bio ethereal spirit leaving the body). And since we don't have that technology it seems moot point to use facts to argue what happens because we don't have the facts and most likely never will.
This is probably vastly irritating as I refuse to accept fundamental facts.

EDIT: A lot of people argue that one believes in an afterlife out of fear, that's not true at all. If there is absolutely nothing, there would be no consciousness to register such nothingness and it would be irrelevant. Its not as if we'd just sit in a gray dimension forever trying to think of new mind games to play with ourselves.

I guess I'll just beat my very dead horse one more time here. What I'm trying to say is that it seems to me that saying that we can't know if there is or is not an ethereal soul unless we test is like saying that we can't know if there is or is not an invisible dragon in my bathtub right now unless we can test it. In both cases it is true that we can't prove absolutely one way or the other, and in both cases it would be absolutely impossible to prove that there wasn't a soul or that there wasn't a dragon in my bathtub. We could say that the soul can't be detected because it doesn't exist on the physical plane, or the the dragon can't be discovered because it moves when we try to touch it and it's invisible. But in both cases it is more plausable to say that there probably isn't a soul, and that there probably isn't a dragon in my bathtub. Just because you can't prove something one way or the other doesn't mean that you can't ditermine one solution to a question to be more plausable than the other solution to the question.

As for the argument about people believing if there is an afterlife because of fear, I'm not sure what relevance the second part has. The evidence we have suggests that there is a physical plane in which we exist, and in which our consciousnesses exist. And it would not be hard in the least bit for a consciousness in the physical plane to speculate on a metaphysical plane. They couldn't speculate on a metaphysical plane after they had been terminated from the physical plane, of course, this doesn't mean that they exist in a grey nothingness, it means that they are nothingness after their termination. What I'm saying is that there is "something," but that something does not necessarily include a metaphysical plane.

The second part had no reflection on our debate, I should have made that more clear. But the "fear" argument was rather common throughout the thread so I just thought I should address it.

 

[Pink_Pirate]

My views on the afterlife are as follows: If you take any human concept or idea, like the idea of an afterlife, and theoretically trace it back through time, logically it would have a starting point. Someone somewhere at some point in time had to think it first "after I die my soul will live on". Looking at that from just a mathematical point of view, and looking at time as a linear dimension, the statistical probability that one human at some point in time had an idea that we live after death and was right is 1/infinity, a statistical impossibility. Of course if we don't take time as a linear dimension, it becomes 1/(every human who has ever been alive to this point), or to narrow it down more 1/(every human who has live long enough to develop abstract though), even if we take it just within the current time frame it becomes 1/6.7 billion... these are still ridiculous statistics. My point is that we can't possibly be right. And just to point out, yes I believe that every idea ever made by humans is most likely wrong, not definitely wrong because I believe in non linear time (of course the probability of that being right is either impossible or probably wrong depending on how you look at it). Example: gravity, a human idea thus statistically impossible that its right, but it has been proven to be true. However the context in which it has been proved is within our idea of the physical universe, using numbers (another idea)... it only exists as an idea within an idea proved by an idea... aka impossible. If this makes any sense then yay you!

 

[Del-Toro]

Eh, it doesn't make sense for it to "end" at death. The only reason we think it ends is that we can't see beyond that point. Exactly how we thought the world "ended".

I'm glad that someone else thinks that it just doesn't make sense to end at death.

Yeah I personally don't get where that came from, the way I see it that makes as much sense as anything else but not more, people can talk about the brain being everything and once it's dead there's nothing but how do we know it's not an anchor for the soul? We don't. As for death, it will come when it will come, it's probably worth it to try and postpone it, but sometimes we can't and that's that.

 

[Spoonius]

Being dead is just a loss of self-consciousness on our part, something that we cannot imagine while conscious. Our bodies cease to work, then we lose consciousness, and become unaware of ourselves and the environment.

In other words, WE'RE ASLEEP.

When in a deep sleep, we lose all sense of self-awareness, and of our environment. We go to sleep at a certain point in time, and wake up at a later point, having no recollection of the past few hours. Other than the dreams we experience, this is exactly what death would be like to the dead person in question. Obviously, they would not dream, and would never wake up, but would otherwise have lost any awareness and consciousness, such as we do during deep sleep.

So, in reality, death would not be unpleasant, as our consciousess would utterly cease to exist. This is excuding any mention about an afterlife, which is obviously down to the reader's beliefs and not mine. But to experience death would be to fall asleep and never wake up, without dream or nightmare to break the monotomy, as we simply would not have ANY perceptions of any kind.







I don't suffer from a fear of death itself, but a fear of ceasing to be able to live, if that makes sense... ;| The inability to live completely freaks me out. It's about the only thing I truly fear.

I hope to God that there is an afterlife of some kind, just so that I may continue to exist after my physical death. I can't stand the thought that my self-consciousness, my very perceptions and judgements on everything, will just stop.

 

[Sovvolf]

Honestly from what ive seen of death, It just ends. My Aunty fell ill abit ago, and not long back she actually died, she was like that for a good few minuites before she was revived by paramedics, carnt remeber how long she was gone for but I think it was over 10 minuits, or it might just have seemed that becuase of the panic, but it was a long time. Any way, after the recovery I asked her what it was like, apprently it was just a flash, one minuit she was in the bathroom, the next the hospital days later with no idea how she got there.

This gave me the feeling that there is no celestial being in the sky that we see when its over, I think that once were gone were gone, it just ends and thats it, I dont like the idea of that but well thats probably the hard truth of it. I hope not, I hope that when you die you go above to the clouds so I can watch over my family.

 

[The Jackyl]

Eh, it doesn't make sense for it to "end" at death. The only reason we think it ends is that we can't see beyond that point. Exactly how we thought the world "ended".

Precisely this. It just doesn't seem right that we just "stop" at death.

Ah yes, the eternal arrogance of humanity. "Surely death can't be the end! I am much too important for the universe to let my life end for good!"

People convince themselves that there's life after death because the thought of ceasing to exist is terrifying. Don't kid yourself.

 

[Kakkoii]

Eh, it doesn't make sense for it to "end" at death. The only reason we think it ends is that we can't see beyond that point. Exactly how we thought the world "ended".

I'm glad that someone else thinks that it just doesn't make sense to end at death.

Lol? You two made me lawl.. Seeing as how millions of people have that same view, due to a little thing called "religion".

People not being able to accept that this is all there is to life has been one of the main driving forces behind the growth of religions for thousands of years.

a lot of people today in fact most people that i know and almost everyone i have spoken to on the internet doesn't believe in life after death due to a little thing called "atheism". but my response to the comment wasn't about religion it was about a gut feeling that death seems unnatural or wrong not that it doesn't happen or isn't the end. the majority of people religious people included except death as a natural inevitability or do you think that anyone other than the Scientologists think that their never going to die? maybe im not as smart as you think you are, but i'm not an idiot, i am able to except death as being the end, but then i am also "open minded" enough to understand that life after death is also possibility. we dont know what happens to consciousness when we die, and science still cant explain absolutely where human consciousness even resides. nevertheless im glad that my utter foolishness gave you a laugh.

I agree that on the Internet, the ratio of Atheistic people to Religious people is pretty close. But population wise, the last census done in the US showed Atheism as only being just above 20%. Which is still nice, since it's increased with ever poll over the decades.

Of course death feels wrong, I wasn't refuting that. I was replying to your comment about death not being the end. And I don't know where you get this idea that religious people don't believe in life after death, since that's pretty much the main driving force behind the whole freaking thing.

And science can explain consciousness pretty well actually, you just need to go out and search for the information, because it is very complicated and isn't usually something you pick up from forum discussions. Consciousness is mainly a function a brain develops from being aware of it's own existence. Some primates have shown behavior akin to consciousness, such as premeditated planning. Sure, our understanding of consciousness isn't 100%, but were getting pretty close as our technology advances and our understanding of brain mechanics increases.

Death truly is wrong, it's a genetic flaw that varies in severity from creature to creature.
Scientist's are working hard to find a way to fix our genetic self repair & protection systems so that we can live forever. It's truly very sound science, and in most likelihood should bring great developments within the next 2 decades. If your young like me, you very well could live long enough to receive treatments that would allow you to live on healthy for ages to come.

Ohh, and it doesn't mean I'm not "open minded" just because I don't believe in life after death. I'm merely rational. Yes, there very well could be life after death! But the chance of that being true is so small that it's like 1 in a bagillion. I could make up some other crap about things after death, like for instance:
"Oh, did you know that flying unicorns come down and greet you when you die, giving you a tour of the galaxy and then granting you 10 wishes for use in the afterlife?"

I have no proof of this, just like there's no proof of an after life. But does that mean I can disprove it? NO! But that doesn't make it a logical choice.