Curse

Jenn · May 08, 2009, 11:16 AM // 11:16

People just need to accept that there is nothing magical or supernatural about us, just creative and awesome. We are a process, a part of this Earth, and subject to the same formation and extinction of a species as is any other life form. After our individual expiry, we become a part of the Earth again, but no, we have no "soul" that goes anywhere. We are just finished - with our last breath comes our last bit of existence.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

I mean if you look at the best scientific rationale for the creation of the universe they can only get up to the big bang and not before. If you think about it, the big bang itself is just a fancied up retelling of the first day in Genesis, but without God in it. Who's to say it wasn't God who made the big bang and fashioned the fundamental laws of physics?

I find this a perfectly acceptable rationale. Atheists are as equally sure of a lack of god as are theists of the existence of one.

My only issue with theism is that a lot of people inject religion into it, and to me that is the weak and embarrassing part. I am sure of god existing as I am that a god believes we should all live our lives according to some religious text.

A conscious being - rather than some natural force - creating the universe is all well and dandy, but it doesn't mean that they "oversee" our species, or that they are aware of our worship, or even believe we owe it to them.

Etta · May 08, 2009, 11:24 AM // 11:24

^ pic or it never happened.

people take life way too seriously.

Apoc · May 08, 2009, 01:13 PM // 13:13

Being an atheist/freethinker, there's nothing in post-life.

Etta · May 08, 2009, 01:37 PM // 13:37

I used to think of myself as an atheist until I realized it was a belief as well.

Apoc · May 08, 2009, 01:47 PM // 13:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Etta

I used to think of myself as an atheist until I realized it was a belief as well.

Is "not collecting stamps" a hobby?

Etta · May 08, 2009, 01:55 PM // 13:55

yes it is .

exploiter · May 08, 2009, 02:05 PM // 14:05

oh, i have a millions of hobbies then

Painbringer · May 08, 2009, 02:23 PM // 14:23

Since we will never know till its too late

What about absorption into Mother Earth. No bells or whistles here just absorbed and thats it

Snow Bunny · May 08, 2009, 02:59 PM // 14:59

death sucks.

People would want to die if it didn't suck.

Bobby2 · May 08, 2009, 05:00 PM // 17:00

It's just because the unknown sucks. People have always feared the unknown, and Death is the ultimate example. We all have to face it some day, yet none have been able to explain what it's like.

I don't think I'll be able to care about anything when I'm dead. Until then, cheers.

Master Fuhon · May 08, 2009, 07:51 PM // 19:51

A long time ago, people put study into questions about ‘why things are’ and ‘what are the purposes of things”. Even though the people who studied these things ended up becoming the creators of modern technology and theory, none of them could get anywhere for thousands of years by tackling these questions directly. After that point, people gave up and only dealt with the easy questions about the world around them, or they elaborated on the questions that had already been answered. For that reason, most of the knowledge base on human life and death is thousands of years old and undeveloped.

I would guess that life and death cannot be studied directly, based on the previous work by others who know more than me. We cannot understand life when everyone assigns a different purpose to it. We cannot understand death when most of our learning comes from assumption, trial, and error. When it comes down to it, we cannot understand human beings; we are too fascinated by strange things that we don’t look at what’s in front of us. A human being can see himself in the mirror and assume he has complete mastery over what he sees himself controlling when he doesn’t. The only time we ever find anything out about human beings is when it can be done by looking at something that appears foreign and strange. Early civilizations were the first to study the skies and perform in depth studies on astronomy and the heavens, so they didn’t do it either. There are many blind spots to human understanding.

Death is at least part bad, because it can be understood as an ending of a previous thing. Some endings have good aspects, but that does not change that they are also bad. It doesn’t make a difference whether it is the end of a stage or the end of all. A belief system that assigns minimal purpose to any stage, or life itself, is a complete liability to be around. If you spend childhood, adulthood, or retirement waiting for the next stage to happen, you certainly won’t fulfill most of the things you can do in the present.

Aside from that, I can only understand fear of death. Those who have no fear of death at all are living without a basic indicator that a situation that can produce death might be near. Those with extreme fears of aging and death are going to have the most miserable experience out of living, making the experience miserable for others who are around them. There appears to be a comfortable middle ground of fearing death only enough to continue avoiding it.

therangereminem · May 08, 2009, 09:32 PM // 21:32

death is just another beginning, start of somethign new!!!!

everyone should agree with that.

as far as what i think when you die you go back to the start, if you are good enough you will come back a better person/thign with a better life. if you dont you come back as something worse. as for knowing which is better or worse to live through, it a matter of never knowing.i dont belive in god nor anythign of its sort, earth is hell and thats the end of it nones perfect so thats why we all come back to earth after we die. to try to be

ps.. take the red pill

Earth · May 08, 2009, 10:27 PM // 22:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by therangereminem

death is just another beginning, start of somethign new!!!!

That is true. It is the start of your body being either burned/buried/whatever, slowly rotting away (or burning away fast).

As for an afterlife? I don't care. If there is, hooray, if there isn't, it's not like I'll actually care about it, huh?

Mars Dragonblade · May 09, 2009, 10:53 AM // 10:53

I've often wondered if it'd be possible to ask people who've had alleged "out of body experiences" while they're on the operating table or something what death is like.

Silvance · May 09, 2009, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Quote:

For that reason, most of the knowledge base on human life and death is thousands of years old and undeveloped.

This isn't exactly true. Existential Psychology is relatively recent (1920s-30s). Nobody really wants to listen to them, however, because they don't like what they're hearing.

Quote:

Aside from that, I can only understand fear of death. Those who have no fear of death at all are living without a basic indicator that a situation that can produce death might be near.

I think you're talking about a fear of dying more than a fear of death. I feel there's a distinction. This quote explains fear of death:

Quote:

“For a more serious example, that all men die is a truth; and to say that such and such a percentage die at such and such ages gives a statistical accuracy to the proposition. But neither of these statements says anything about the fact which really matters most to each of us—namely, that you and I must alone face the fact that at some unknown moment in the future we shall die.” ~ Rollo May (The Discovery of Being)

As for my personal feelings, I feel that death is as sacred as life. Death is intimately intertwined with life and their separation has caused untold problems. We live with a terror of death ingrained into our being so well by our society that we refuse to recognize it as such. Death is, therefore, not a bad thing, just another part of life's journey. There's a life/death/life cycle at work, if you recognize it. And no, I don't necessarily mean a physical life/death/life cycle.

I'm of the opinion that my mind is more than just the neurotransmitters in my brain, that my mind is akin to a form of energy that will continue to exist after a physical death. What this means for an afterlife, I don't rightly know. I'd like to think that my consciousness would still be aware of itself and that I could go and do anything I had the will to do. At the same time, decaying back into the earth wouldn't be so bad, either.

Master Fuhon · May 09, 2009, 10:09 PM // 22:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silvance

I think you're talking about a fear of dying more than a fear of death. I feel there's a distinction.

Yes there is a distinction, but I'm cautious about changing the statement.

My original statement required an assumption (making it belief based); but the new statement requires assumption as well. It was a statement too much about fear, and not enough about death. I don’t know whether you have answered questions about what emotions are, whether fear is felt towards the known or the unknown, and what role fear plays in everything. Fear causes people to take action that changes what the future would have been had action not taken place. Fear does its work of prediction by relying on a previous storage base of information and trends. Through this kind of work, a person can form an interpretive base of knowledge on the unknown out of what fear presents to them. I call this unknown, because fears do not predict future events accurately in all cases. There is a further distinction between listening to fear, and doing as fear expects.

Knowledge related to fear is helpful in understanding which object to assign fear to. Death is on a black or white spectrum with life, and dying was a recent modification of the spectrum utilized to prevent death. But by definition, I classify dying as part of living. It looks like a more convenient definition of fear when you don’t include death within it, because it restricts it to the living domain. I don't know whether fear should be separated from death.

Fear does have an effect on things. Sometimes you can change angle of approach by characterizing a non-entity (it doesn’t always work out properly). I guess I was viewing fear as a stage of paralysis a predator utilizes to finish off prey. Based on reports of near death experience, some people recognize a feeling of calmness prior to preventing completion of the dying process. Here we have a presence of dying, but calmness and a final result of no death. In other cases, you might have resistance to fear and future survival. Fear is known to be based upon interpretive capabilities, and it has a capability to cause the fulfillment of its own expectations (i.e. Fears of failure). I can’t claim that fear itself is not utilized to produce the death that occurs as culmination of the dying stage. I don’t know whether all people who reproduce the exact same dying stage will end up in death (can't really produce this experiment with fear as the variable anyway).

If anything, I see more people enter into the dying stage from a previous state of no fear at all. When you really fear something, you often expect it. Ancient belief was the first to tie fear and death together. Modern belief often only ties fear with life. But to explain why I gave the example: I was referring to the interpretation of reduced fear as being similar to the mental state that makes you oblivious to fear. Courage requires fear to produce a different reaction. Complete fearlessness leads to doing stupid things.

Edit: Correcting what I said in the last paragraph about where the beliefs came from. In Greece, Thanatos (death) was the offspring of night/darkness and brother of sleep. Phobos (fear) was the offspring of love/war, and brother of dread. As far as that goes, I do not see them tying fear with death, but I can't figure out where it came from.

Zamochit · May 09, 2009, 10:40 PM // 22:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by xNomaDx

If you're going to post your opinion on a strong subject, at least do it respectfully. You know what I mean? It's nothing personal Zamo, maybe you didn't even mean it like that. It's just something I see over and over in these discussions that's just wrong.

Okay fair enough, I see where you are coming from and it is not my intention to offend any person of faith on these forums. Faith is a wonderful thing when it gives an individual strength, or hope, or even when it helps them to live their lives in a more compassionate way. I do however believe that an inherent fear of death is often a trigger for people to *want* to believe in an existance after they pass away.

Zahr Dalsk · May 10, 2009, 12:04 AM // 00:04

Living forever would be awesome.

An eternity spent with fellow fa/tg/uys, HURRRR-ing at each other, fighting edition wars, complaining about Games Workshop, and talking about 40k. Sounds pretty awesome to me.

Hope I live long enough for mechanical immortality.

DreamRunner · May 10, 2009, 12:35 AM // 00:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illfated Fat

People just need to accept that there is nothing magical or supernatural about us, just creative and awesome. We are a process, a part of this Earth, and subject to the same formation and extinction of a species as is any other life form.

Nothing magical? We are a being that makes this world what it is as we grow out of this to more than what we just are, just like an apple tree makes apples. We are a being that makes peoples and we grow out of this world that makes this planet, earth or our galaxy, the milk way. Yet you accept subjectivity as being this very cool thing, yet deny other people subjective experience who see humans as being magical or supernatural.

Now, I am not denying we are a part of this earth, we are more than just a process on the earth and look a all of the things we can do. Human have done something that no other life form has done on earth as what we have created and accomplished over the years is amazing.

Kerwyn Nasilan · May 10, 2009, 01:23 AM // 01:23