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How did you come to terms with Death?
June 7, 2011 at 11:33 pm
For atheist and non-afterlife believers alike. How did you come to the terms that death is truly the end all of all? Did you take it lightly? Hard? If you came from a religion to atheism how did feel when you knew that when you die it would be the END?
As a person who believes in a afterlife I can't seem to wrap my head around this idea. Maybe some atheist here can enlighten me on the subject?
And in heaven is your Sustenance, as (also) that which ye are promised - Surah Adh-Dhariyat
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RE: How did you come to terms with Death?
June 7, 2011 at 11:40 pm
I found it quite liberating, actually. No more worrying about being good to get an afterlife, no worrying that if I was "bad" I'd be cast into a lake of fire. Once I put away my foolish belief and realized that I didn't have an invisible person standing over me waiting to bash my head in with a bat, I felt, for the first time in my life, free.
Nothing is your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull. - George Orwell
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RE: How did you come to terms with Death?
June 7, 2011 at 11:49 pm
Solon is reputed to have said "count no man happy until he is dead." I think that death is not really to be come to "terms" with unless you are encountering it directly. We can say that we have dealt with it ahead of time, but, being the unknowable (we cannot know non-being), it remains enigmatic and non-graspable.
I'm happily ignorant of it at present.
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RE: How did you come to terms with Death?
June 7, 2011 at 11:49 pm
But what about realizing you would never see your loved ones again?
And in heaven is your Sustenance, as (also) that which ye are promised - Surah Adh-Dhariyat
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RE: How did you come to terms with Death?
June 7, 2011 at 11:52 pm
(June 7, 2011 at 11:49 pm)Eternity Wrote: But what about realizing you would never see your loved ones again?
I won't know because I'll be fucking DEAD.
See? That's the part that you are having trouble with. The DEAD part.
You aren't going to see your "loved ones" again, either. Because you'll be DEAD, too.
I don't care what 'allah' tells you.
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RE: How did you come to terms with Death?
June 7, 2011 at 11:55 pm
(June 7, 2011 at 11:49 pm)Eternity Wrote: But what about realizing you would never see your loved ones again?
Again, the issue is strictly in anticipation of not seeing them. You would never actually know that you were not seeing them any longer. By the time death rolls around, I think most of us should be happy to end, but a lot of suffering tends to precede it, hence the anticipation. If you die suddenly, I doubt you would have much trouble with death at all, and certainly no time to feel any loss.
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RE: How did you come to terms with Death?
June 7, 2011 at 11:57 pm
(This post was last modified: June 7, 2011 at 11:58 pm by Rhage.)
(June 7, 2011 at 11:49 pm)Eternity Wrote: But what about realizing you would never see your loved ones again?
Once your neurons stop firing, it kinda makes it hard to care about anything. Look, my dad is dead. I know he's a pile of bones in the bottom of a dirt pit, it doesn't help me any to have some sorry notion that I'll see him again just to make myself feel better.
Dead still equals dead, no matter how you look at it.
Nothing is your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull. - George Orwell
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RE: How did you come to terms with Death?
June 8, 2011 at 12:17 am
(June 7, 2011 at 11:33 pm)Eternity Wrote: For atheist and non-afterlife believers alike. How did you come to the terms that death is truly the end all of all? Did you take it lightly? Hard? If you came from a religion to atheism how did feel when you knew that when you die it would be the END?
As a person who believes in a afterlife I can't seem to wrap my head around this idea. Maybe some atheist here can enlighten me on the subject?
It was soooo easy to accept when I realized the answer was found in another question: Why would I want to live forever in heaven???
Really, have you ever really thought about what it would be like to live FOREVER! I don't care how big your heaven is or how many relatives you truly love or how much gold you walk round on. Worshiping jesus for an eternity in between having coffee with my family members sounds like the most horrible thing in existence. 100 Trillion years of spending time with my wife and my dad and whoever ... only to realize that that time period was like one second of eternity. You can have it.
Deist view: Whatever my God has in store for my "soul/life essence/energy", whether it be the grave or otherwise, is fine by me.
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RE: How did you come to terms with Death?
June 8, 2011 at 12:28 am
(June 8, 2011 at 12:17 am)Cinjin Cain Wrote: (June 7, 2011 at 11:33 pm)Eternity Wrote: For atheist and non-afterlife believers alike. How did you come to the terms that death is truly the end all of all? Did you take it lightly? Hard? If you came from a religion to atheism how did feel when you knew that when you die it would be the END?
As a person who believes in a afterlife I can't seem to wrap my head around this idea. Maybe some atheist here can enlighten me on the subject?
It was soooo easy to accept when I realized the answer was found in another question: Why would I want to live forever in heaven???
Really, have you ever really thought about what it would be like to live FOREVER! I don't care how big your heaven is or how many relatives you truly love or how much gold you walk round on. Worshiping jesus for an eternity in between having coffee with my family members sounds like the most horrible thing in existence. 100 Trillion years of spending time with my wife and my dad and whoever ... only to realize that that time period was like one second of eternity. You can have it.
Deist view: Whatever my God has in store for my "soul/life essence/energy", whether it be the grave or otherwise, is fine by me.
Have you ever heard of the Idea that everything in heaven would be like that first time you saw something amazing. Only that you relive that feeling over and over again. I fine it funny that you can come to grips with being nothing for a eternity and not being with God for eternity. Who would really trade the latter for the first?
Also heaven is beyond your imagination. It isn't like the world where you play a game and after while you get bored. There is no boredom. Therefore you wouldn't have anything to worry about.
And in heaven is your Sustenance, as (also) that which ye are promised - Surah Adh-Dhariyat
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RE: How did you come to terms with Death?
June 8, 2011 at 12:34 am
(This post was last modified: June 8, 2011 at 12:36 am by Cinjin.)
(June 8, 2011 at 12:28 am)Eternity Wrote: Have you ever heard of the Idea that everything in heaven would be like that first time you saw something amazing. Only that you relive that feeling over and over again. I fine it funny that you can come to grips with being nothing for a eternity and not being with God for eternity. Who would really trade the latter for the first?
Also heaven is beyond your imagination. It isn't like the world where you play a game and after while you get bored. There is no boredom. Therefore you wouldn't have anything to worry about.
See this once again is the arrogance of religious people.
You can't possibly know ANY of those supposed attributes of heaven. Most of that isn't even in the Bible (I doubt it's in the Quran) and even if it was it's all been prefabricated by men.
I understand that you have to believe in that stuff, but I do not and I think anyone who does, puts FAR too much weight in the words of his or her religious leader.
Oh and when you use the word god, I know you're referring to your god and I've read all about your god ... I don't want to be anywhere near that blood thirsty, bigoted asshole for an eternity.
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