Death

[peregrine]

Hi all
I posted this on my other debateing forum last week,were there is a high percentage of theist see here, http://forums.techguy.org/civilized-deba...death.html
May be worth a read to interested partys to see the different ideas some have about DEATH.

[Kyuuketsuki]

http://forums.techguy.org/civilized-deba...death.html

Oh I go there (as VampyreUK) ... for IT support that is but they're not the best, I prefer Woody's and Petri.

Kyu

[josef rosenkranz]

As an atheist how do you cope with death?
Does death challenge your views as an atheist?

The problem is not the act of death but the life after death.Have you thought where you will go: to Paradise or to Hell?
As an atheist I think for sure that I will go to Hell and therefore I have allready ordered a chair in Hell where it is nice and a hot so that I can burn for the next 100 millions of years.
Let's think ,if a person is going to be burned for a 100 million of years then every day it will suffer only of an infinitisemal small burning so that a lot of time your body will be even healthier then on Earth.
The pictors depicting the suffering of Hell as Michael Angelo's
paintings in the Vatican have not given a thought to this aspect, otherwise they would have depicted the souls going to Hell as laughing instead of the fear which is spread all over their faces.

Now seriously,to get out of the closet and to declare youself as an atheist,needs when you are in certains circle of your familly or friends, some courage.
To make macabre jokes as that above needs a little more courage because it plays on the deep fears of people from death, even yours albeit you are a convinced atheist.

[Giff]

As a person who see something scientific, does that not challaenge my view as an atheist. I will just stop exisisting, maybe a boring thing, but that what is the most logical things.

It's the same thing when you lose consuisness, except that you will never wake up. It won't be unpleasant nor pleasant, you will not be or feel anything. Hard to understand, but since there is not life after death is it just a permanent lack of consuisness.

[Kyuuketsuki]

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." Isaac Asimov.

Part of me also fears no longer being.

Kyu

[Eilonnwy]

When my mother picked me up from the airport on Sunday she told me my uncle was dying from liver failure. There's a chance. but it doesn't look good. Of course my mind is constantly on my uncle, I want him desperately to live, he's like a second father to me. I wrote a friends locked entry on my LJ and got a lot of concerned comments. As I read my most recent one it occured to me that non of my friends made any religious sentiments. I know a lot of my friends are believers and it makes me feel very happy that they must be considering my well-known religious views.

As for how I'm reacting? I'm hopeful that the doctors can help him. All my conern goes to my uncle but in no way do I feel a need to prayer or ask a nonexistant god for help. It's in the hands of the doctors and my uncle's will to live. He's an alcoholic, so he did this to himself.

This is the first time I've had a close family member this close to death, whom I'm not even certain will survive. I just thought I'd share my reactions with this apect of death.

[athoughtfulman]

Hell to one person, is heaven to another. Whoever said hell had to be flames? And unless someone has been to hell and back, no one can really say what it's like.

I am reminded of Harry Potter book 7, when Harry and Dumbledore are talking about death. Dumbledore says, "It’s the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."

When I read it, it rang true in so many ways. I knew that I was afraid of death, mainly because I had no idea what was beyond it. But if it's simply the unknown, why should it be feared? People try to calm their fears of the unknown in death with religion - it gives them certainty and a definiteness about life. Humans want certainty in everything, they want closure. Now, I try to let more things go, to not have to be sure about everything, and to never let my insecurity or inability to be completely comfortable with uncertainty get in the way of reason or logic. Now, I wouldn't say I'm afraid of death. It's the pain or the 'transition' as someone said which bothers me now.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Hell to one person, is heaven to another. Whoever said hell had to be flames? And unless someone has been to hell and back, no one can really say what it's like.

Hell ... eternity as a traffic officer with diarrhoea hock:

Kyu

[Mark]

As an atheist how do you cope with death?
Does death challenge your views as an atheist?

My fears concerning death mostly concern the welfare of those that I love and will survive me. I admit that I do not find pleasant the realization that some day, my mind and all of its perception, appreciation and hard-won understanding of this world will vanish into nothingness, but it is something that I accept. In an A.E. Housman metaphor, an entire universe dies with the death of its beholder. But I have the strong belief that the entire universe will not die with me, and that things will go on. That is a kind of comfort. Yet it remains a fact that in the current most widely accepted account, the Cosmos itself will eventually dissolve and burn out.

What anyway is the alternative, to take comfort in a fraudulent promise of immortality from an false religion?

I have a religious friend who says that she finds incomprensible the notion that she will one day not exist. I said, "What, do you find incomprensible that there was a time before this, when you equally did not exist? Why should the one be different from the other?"

[Edwardo Piet]

I don't fear DEATH itself....

I just don't like the idea of dying.

It depends how you die...but the process of dying must not be so nice....

Now with family and friends of course I would miss them....so that would be a lot worse.

With myself its just the matter of the process of dying...I don't fear death itself.

About others worrying about what it would be like without ME - I can't really think that far ahead... I think...

After I'm gone I'm gone. Before I'm gone its just the process of dying.

EvF