Where do we go when we die and are you afraid?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

How many people have given serious thought about their funeral?


I have made my wishes clearly known:-

The doctors should be given the opportunity to use any part of my body for transplants, research etc.

The cheapest coffin/body bag available (no point wasting good beer money feeding the worms or the flames)

At the funeral there should be no priests, vicars, ministers, shamans, witch doctors or other peddlers of superstitious nonsense.  

It should also be made clear that I am DEAD.
I am not sleeping.
I have not passed.
I am not resting.
So please, no wimpy euphemisms, face the reality of death.

Now go and have a drink, think nice things and enjoy your life as much as I have enjoyed mine.

I have a living will and am an organ donor. I’m to be cremated, the disposition of my ashes left up to my wife (if she predeceases me, to my sister in the US). 

No funeral, no memorial service of any kind.

Boru

[polymath257]

I wanted to address the 'fear of death' thing. Every atheist has to come to grips with their inevitable death in their own way, we don't usually have a place to go to on Sunday to give us a doctrine on what we should believe that's about. I think some of us hash it out on discussion forums. Most atheists I encounter have made their peace with it, but occasionally I run into a newbie atheists who is stressed about it.

I'm afraid of dying painfully, or very unpleasantly. I'd like to go peacefully in my sleep, and if a nice morphine drip is needed for that, I'm okay with it. Actually being dead doesn't bother me. As Sam Clemens pointed out (paraphrasing very roughly), not being alive up to the moment of his conception inconvenienced him not at all, why should not being alive after his death do so? When I'm dead I won't suffer, or have to deal with millennia after millennia after eon of some sort of afterlife that never, ever ends; I'll just be gone. But nothing will ever change the fact that I was here while I lasted. That's eternal, even if no one will know in a lifetime or two.

Another aspect of this that is rarely discussed is the absolute horror of living forever. Sure, a few thousand years might be nice. Maybe, if conditions are really nice, even a hundred thousand years.

But such time periods are *nothing* compared to an actual eternity. For myself, I would expect to start going insane before 100 million years was over. Around a billion years, and death would be a wonderful reprieve.

But even *that* is nothing compared to eternity. The prospect of a googol years is withering. Of a googolplex years unimaginable. And, how about Graham's number of years? And even that doesn't touch an eternity.

Many people want eternal life, thinking about it like an extension to what they know. But they never imagine the infinite horror of an actual eternal, conscious, life.

[Ranjr]

Rush fans know the horror of immortality from Farewell to Kings and Neil Peart's take on Coleridge.

https://www.rush.com/songs/xanadu/

[purplepurpose]

72 virgins. Hopefully Allah will bless me with enough health to make those women happy.

[polymath257]

72 virgins. Hopefully Allah will bless me with enough health to make those women happy.

I'd prefer half as many women who know what they are doing.

[zebo-the-fat]

72 virgins. Hopefully Allah will bless me with enough health to make those women happy.

72 virgins, why? 5 or 6 women who know what they are doing would be better. What do the women get in paradise 72 virgin boys?

[onlinebiker]

72 virgins. Hopefully Allah will bless me with enough health to make those women happy.

Got to be virgins, huh?

Why?

Ill prepared? Ill equipped? No imagination? Is beige your favorite color?

And why 72? You think you are impressing anyone? Unsatisfied women are sad to see - not impressing. And they WOULD be unsatisfied. You are delusional as fuck thinking otherwise.
...

Given a choice I'd rather have one nasty woman who knows what she likes and knows every trick in the book - and few extra.

[Gwaithmir]

72 virgins. Hopefully Allah will bless me with enough health to make those women happy.

72 virgins, why? 5 or 6 women who know what they are doing would be better. What do the women get in paradise 72 virgin boys?

I'd settle for Liv Tyler.

[Shazzalovesnovels]

Shazza. You know that your divine ONE TRUE GOD™ is strictly a geopolitical decision, right?
It's just by sheer luck that you were born where you were, otherwise you'd be swearing black and blue that Allah is God. Or Vishnu?

But be grateful that you hit the jackpot and are worshipping the correct ONE TRUE GOD™! because the other 4 billion pilgrims devote their lives to false Gods. And die for him. And kill others for him.
How lucky are you!

Sorry matey, your indoctrination has tied your logic circuits in a knot. True story™.

I have thought about that. My God has certain values that I believe are correct to follow.  I don't know what else to say.

[no one]

Instead of saying, why don't you try thinking?