Your views on Death.

[walls of cetepedes]

I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH DEATH. HE'S A DECENT GUY.

I, however, have a problem with ALLCAPS.
So please stop shouting.

Someone hasn't read any Discworld books.

Yup.

 

[Sun Flash]

I think Death is a pretty cool guy. eh ferries peoples soles to teh afterlife and doesn't afraid of anything...

...sorry, but I had to. Back to topic, death doesn't really bother me, we're all going to bite the dust one day, so no point in stressing over it. Just enjoy the ride foo'

 

[Redingold]

He plays a mean game of chess.

No, he doesn't. He can never remember how the little horse-shaped ones are supposed to move.

 

[Archaon6044]

if i'm brutaly honest, the idea of death is terrifying to me. people say "i don't fear death, i fear the dying", to them i say: "so you don't fear the prospect of oblivion?"

the idea of dying is scary, because you effectivly have to suffer your body shutting down and ceasing all functions, unless you're fortunate enough to die in your sleep, and who wouldn't be afraid of that?
the idea of being dead terrifies me, because no matter what religeon or belifes you may or may not have, you still have to face the oblivion that comes after.

some people who hold to the idea of reincarnation say that yound children are able to remember things or do things that they have never been told, or done or whatever, and that these memories come from their past lives. but if this is true, when they grow up; they can't remember, or lose this knowledge, so carry on like a normal person, but if this is true, then the person they used to be has been through the oblivion, and been lost.
my biggest fear of death, is losing everything that i am, effectivly being switched of. even if my "soul" goes through the recycling process, when i next get incarnated, then i won't be me, i won't be who i was, and i'll have to go through the whole experience again

 

[Nmil-ek]

Dosent bother me anymore, I die I loose conciousness one way or another whatever perception of fear I have would fade just as quickly as my life. Its actualy not all that terrifying ot me as I imagine it will be exactly like the time I went in for an operation anyone whos been put under heavy anesthetic will know what I mean slipping out of conciousness and then nothing it really wasnt that bad only no waking up the next time heh.

 

[uncle-ellis]

Ou You're all like "I'm not afraid of death" But I bet you wouldn't be like that if it was staring you in the face.

So yea I'm scared of death.

 

[similar.squirrel]

Oblivion sounds great.

 

[SultanP]

For me, death is a necessary evil. If no one ever died of old age, the planet would become hopelessly over-crowded and we'd die of war and hunger instead, and probably take the ecosystem with us.

But if no one died of old age, we would not reproduce at such a high rate. Our biology would have taken that into account.

Edit: On Topic: I hope it all ends at death. I am not into the whole spiritual thing, and it wouldn't make sense for there to be anything after death as we are all just clusters of atoms and chemical reactions.

 

[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.