If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

[Excited Penguin]

I'm not trying to argue with you, EP.  I am actually seriously considering your assumption.  Did I not make that obvious?  I think it's very likely that if we could "solve" the problem of old age and disease a great many more people would be happy to live on forever.  I would put myself in that category in fact.  The idea of ceasing to exist someday horrifies and terrorizes me on a regular basis.  But, I'm not operating on any assumptions, to be clear.  All I'm saying is that generalizations about feelings and motives like, 'no one ever feels' or 'no one ever wants', are meaningless unless you have some amazing ability to live the entire life of every human who has ever, or will ever be born.  

I admit that my feelings about 'being dead' have changed considerably since I was deeply sedated on an operating table for nine hours. It seemed like no time at all had passed, I closed my eyes and opened them somewhere else. There was nothing in between. I was truly unconscious. I knew in an intellectual way that death is nothingness, like a light going out; but 'experiencing' nothingness robbed me of all fear of it. I've got things I want to do first, and I wouldn't want to die painfully (or expensively), but my caring about anything stops the instant I do. The only thing I can leave behind are my footprints, and when the universe is an ever-expanding realm of photons flying ever farther apart, there won't be a detectable trace that I ever existed. But I did, and it meant something while it lasted.

I don't fear death itself, myself, rather I simply want to live instead.