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Death: Your Views
Rym claims to have some interesting views on death. Funerals=bad. What else? What about you?
I have no idea, I am hopeful for some afterlife or even reincarnation but then I'd need a soul and all that crap. Woo heaven.
I have no idea, I am hopeful for some afterlife or even reincarnation but then I'd need a soul and all that crap. Woo heaven.
Comments
As for funerals, they are a nice ceremony to help people deal with death emotionally. Other than that, whatever.
Personally I choose to follow my natural insticts to want to live, here and now (for the most part) but I wouldn't mind becoming a hardcore catholic when I'm 80.
Death doesn't bother me in the least. I don't fear it. I never mourn the dead. Funerals should be a celebration if they're anything at all. I expect to die one day, and in many ways look forward to it out of sheer curiousity.
That is not to say, however, that I seek death. To put it simply, it is my understanding that death is, for all intents and purposes, irreversible. Were this verifiably not the case, I would indeed seek it out in order to experience and understand it. As it stands, this would be foolish. I will die someday no matter what. Death being irreversible, I would thus logically wish to extend my life for as long as possible, as I will experience death at some point no matter what regardless, and this extends my experience of life as well.
Philosophically, I cannot conceive of my own conciousness ceasing to exist, nor could I know if such a thing happened. Thus, I must assume that my conciousness is immortal. There is no "life" or "afterlife:" there is merely my conciousness.
Even from a young age, I found the mere idea of "Heaven" to be ludicrous. I was chastized in Catholic school for stating that "heaven sounds boring and doesn't make sense." (I also got in trouble once for asking why Jesus would send me to hell for all eternity just because I didn't want to waste two hours of my life every Sunday morning, but that's another story ^_~).
Now, Scott states: "But if there was an afterlife, then that removes all meaning and purpose from the present life."
Why do you say this? What if existence is a stream of "lives" or "worlds," one after the other? How does having another invalidate the previous?
Edit: forgot to check the HTML radio button -_-
The only judgement I can make on the experience of death is based on my experiences of sleep; it's the closest to a state of oblivion I've ever come. On the other hand, I often don't realize I've gone to sleep until I wake up, which makes this comparison somewhat useless in the absence of resurrection. One can't experience oblivion, by definition, so perhaps consciousness drags itself out for as long as possible, such that in one's last moments of life one might dream a whole series of afterlives.
Personally, I know I won't experience everything there is to see in my lifetime, so the best afterlife I can conceive of is staying on as a ghost to wander about more. Failing that, I'll seek immortality wherever possible. But oblivion after death is the more likely result. Given that, and given that (as Rym said) death is irreversible according to all evidence we possess, there's much to be gained in clinging to life and possibility.
Sorry ^_^
Actually I nearly completely agree with Alex's views on life and death.
So, I've had a lot of experience handling death, and I can say that I echo Rym's sentiment to a certain degree; to be frank, I had always had a similar sentiment before I experienced many deaths, and those that I've experienced have mostly reinforced my sentiments.
I personally dislike funerals, at least the way American culture does them. The standard open casket memorial has a lot of problems, foremost being that the whole affair represents a gross inability to let things go. A funeral parlor goes through great pains to make the deceased look as alive as possible, in an act that represents an almost unhealthy attachment to life. It seems as though many people are uncomfortable with the idea of life ending, even though it happens to everyone. We all die, at some point, so one needs to learn to cope with that idea.
However, I recognize that mourning is a very personal affair, and some people seem to want the classic funeral. In my experience, of course, I say they're vulgar and backwards, but not everyone thinks the way I do. I personally prefer the old Viking funeral, because it forces the mourning to, on a philosophical level, accept the fact that someone is truly gone and not coming back. Graveyards and caskets are some of the most regressed ways to deal with death that I can imagine; we put the dead in the ground because we can't bear the fact that they're gone.
I say, from experience and intellect, that one must learn to accept death and cope with the fact that it occurs. This is not to say that one shouldn't mourn, or be sad, or that one can every truly not feel upset by the loss of a loved one, but that one must simply accept what happens, and continue on in life.
As for an afterlife, I say believe whatever you want. There's no way to ever find out any sort of objective truth about it, so pretty much any belief is as good as any other, as long as its one that you're comfortable believing.
On Rym questioning why I said this life has no meaning if there were an afterlife, I was referring specifically to the christian afterlife. The belief in a single eternal life after this one removes much of the meaning of the current life. It in fact, reduces the meaning of the current life down to a test for the next life. Other possible afterlife scenarios have differing effects on the meaning and worth of the current life.
An afterlife, in and of itself, doesn't cheapen life as such, necessarily; if one's belief system forces one to keep one's behavior in a certain way in order to guarantee the afterlife, however, that's a bit different.
I always thought the idea of Heaven was cheating. The teachings of Christ said that you should be good to people just for the sake of being good to people; however, it was muddled up with all that "heaven" crap, so it now teaches you to be good to people so you'll get something in the afterlife. Big difference there.
Or maybe I'll leave my bones to an artist who'll do something interesting with them.
There's something worthwhile in the old pagan (Norse, Greek, and others) belief in being remembered for one's deeds. That's certainly more important than honoring the corpse or its location, and I think the world would by and large be better off if people tried to act in a way that would make them be remembered well.
I want to die to further the glory of Mankind, to have my blood act as the lubricant upon which the Human Machine will use to crush the obstacles in our path. It matters not whether my name is remembered for generations to come, like the death of Kiguchi Kohei (more often remembered as Shirakami Genjiro), or forgotten like so many of the soldiers who have naught but a listing in a muster list from long-past wars.
But, what of using the last remaining seconds, those few precious moments, to be baptized in the hard radiation of the Holy Atomic Flame? Would it not be wonderful to be bathed in the scintillating light of Cherenkov radiation, to see that effervescent blue within the depths of a cooling pool? With my last act, under my own volition, my sins shall be burnt away by the heat of the sacred nuclear pile; my flesh cleansed as it is vaporized by the raging fires of a nuclear pile. I shall ascend to the infinite void, lifted upon the wings of seraphim, burning with the light of a thousand man-made suns!
Or is it that I seem to hold such zeal for the Holy Atomic Flame? Are you afraid because of the near-religious fervor that I express regarding the churning themonuclear chaos which erupts forth from a human-crafted vessel of uranium and plutonium?
On other matters, I have to agree with Rym's point about the christian heaven seeming boring. So much of our lives has been growth and change, what about us fundamentally changes when we die that we be content to live in stasis for all eternity? I think that if this life is a test, it has no solitary answers, and your score is based upon the amount of joy you get from your choices. We don't know what comes afterward. We can't, at least right now. The best we can manage is to speculate upon the purpose of the universe, and hope that if we find a reason for the universe, we might figure out what to do with our lives at this level.
I think, in this world, that's all that matters about you in death. Not whether you went to Heaven, Hell, Valhalla, or Mechanus, but what you did in life and how you are remembered. Maybe that's why we created afterlives in the first place, to instill, on a deep level, the idea that the purpose of life is to do good. But it seems that the meme has more strength then its purpose, it has become a bludgeon to hit people over the head with.
Edited to better respond to Katsu
Now for my view. I do believe in an afterlife. I do believe in Heaven and Hell. I do believe in Jesus. I call myself plain Christian. I have not yet found a church I fit in beliefs, but I have found churches where I fit into communities. However, I will state right now that I do not believe everything in the Bible for three reasons:
-The Bible was written by people who claimed to hear the voice of God, which of coarse, not all people are honest about that.
-The Bible has peribles, like Noa's Arc, which make it difficult to decide what was intended to be thought as history and what was intended to be thought as a leson.
-The Bible was translated from text thousands of years ago. That's like trying to translate the original Shakespeare scripts into Spanish without loosing it's original content after thousands of years from now, which would make it even more difficult for the average person to read if it were thousands of years old rather than fourhundred years old.
Also, I'd like to say that there were times where I didn't know if I believed in God or not, but eventually that all ended after I hear his voice. So my views stand as:
-I believe in God and think of myself as Christian.
-I do not believe everything in the Bible.
Editted: I'm interested in hearing if any of you disagree with me and why, so be open with me.
As for Jesus, that argument requires some clarifications. I accept that there may have been a man by the name of Jesus living in approximately that time period, who may have called himself the Son of God and a prophet.
I do not accept that such a man was truly the Son of God and a prophet, without evidence to support his claim. I will require large amounts of scientifically sound, statistically significant evidence to accept such an extraordinary claim.
As for there being no evidence of an afterlife, that can sometimes very from person to person. I strongly believe in the afterlife for basically one reason. I heard the voice of God, which took a lot of faith for me. As for everyone else, they they either believe in the afterlife strictly on faith or don't at all.
Every person I know who has strong faith in God had a point in their life have doubted His existence or didn't believe in him at all at one time, myself included. I guess that's a necessity to the word faith, basically not completely knowing if He's there.
I can say this much though. If you look deep inside your heart, you'll hear something that is trying to tell you something. Different people interpert it different ways. I chose to think of that as God. Others may choose to think it's their subconscious or something else that's different.
1) Abundant anecdotal evidence. A significant number of people, independantly of one another, go to and return from this afterlife,
2) Someone presents a scientifically validated mechanism by which a mind can exist without a body to support it. This requires, of course, first codifying mind and consciousness in some fashion, so I'll not hold my breath.
Until then, I'll act as if this life is all I have. If there is another, I'll find out when I get there.
You need to learn a lesson about burden of proof. If you make a claim such as "my toaster makes toast", that is not extroadinary. Nobody requires you to prove that. If you make a claim like "my toaster can sing showtunes" you need to provide evidence. That is an extroadinary claim which means it requires extroadinary evidence. I'll have to pretty much see that toaster sing with my own eyes and examine the room for tape recorders and such.Then I'll have to tear apart the toaster to make sure there isn't a radio in it.
You have an extraordinary claim, that there is a god talking to you. You have 0 evidence. By default you are false. If you really believe your claim without evidence then what we have here is a complete lack of logic and reasoning on your part. A big sign that someone is insane is when they can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Do you believe in dragons and faeries as well? Because you know, I have this invisible dragon friend. He talks to me. But I can't prove he's there. Do you believe my story about my dragon friend?
However, if you just have faith, and know that inherently your faith cannot be empirically validated, and believe anyway, burden of proof doesn't really apply, because you've already accepted that you can't be proven right. If someone accepts that principle, they should also understand that they can't force their beliefs on others, because their beliefs are as valid as anyone else's.
Now, if you claim to quite literally hear God speak to you, that's another matter entirely, and I feel it misses the point of faith. Faith isn't supposed to be something tangible that can be verified by science; if it could, we'd verify it scientifically, and wouldn't have to call it something else.
Someone who claims to hear God speak to them, literally, is a wackjob, and you can demand evidence from those people, because they're trying to say that their deity, which is nothing more than a name given to an idea, is a real being. However, if they're all faith, and nothing else, then leave them be.
Kamiccolo raises a good point; introspection tends to reveal a lot about oneself, and you are free to call the things you find inside whatever you want. Really, I think that's how the notion of gods arose in the first place; they were names given to ideas and notions found within ourselves, through introspection, not actual real beings that do things.
I'm going to shut up now, because we've already had one religion flamewar, and I don't want to start something at work. I do have actual work to do.
As for being on the receiving end of an insult, refer to the Star Wars kid rant. Any insult can either be true or false. There is no other possibility. If someone says something false about you, who cares? You know they are lying, why let it bother you? If someone says something true about you, own up to the truth. If you can't handle the truth, then perhaps you reget something which is true? If that is the case, then it is better to change yourself rather than blame the insulter. Feel free to insult me all you want; it wont bother me one whit. GeekNights is still eagerly awaiting its first hate mail :)
As for your specific case, I'll just repeat what I've said many times before. People are free to believe whatever they want, even if those beliefs are patently false. That's freedom. If you choose to believe things that can not be proven or disproven, then I'm going to ignore you. There isn't much you can say to someone with those sorts of beliefs, so I just lower my opinion of those people and move on. But if you are going to make a specific false claim, I'm going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.
Try to see it from my point of view. If a guy comes up to you on the street and says he has an invisible, intangible dragon following him around talking to him, what do you think of that guy? Think he's insane? I do. You are just like that guy to me. You come up and you claim some invisible sky-man spoke to you. I am not being sarcastic when I say that is truly frightening. I refer again to the insane serial killers who believe a god speaks to them.
You are free to continue believing whatever you want. Just know that my opinion of you as a person is affected by that. Also know that I am going to express my opinion. If your beliefs can't stand a little trial by fire, then maybe those beliefs aren't so strong after all?
Lastly, I do realize that having this attitude discourages people from opening up. Vulnerable people aren't going to bring their shields down if they know I've got a readied action to hit them in the face. It's actually dissapointing for me. Honestly, I really enjoy bludgeoning people with their false beliefs. However, I feel it is more honest to be up front about it. It just wouldn't feel right to trick people into bringing down their guard. Instead I stand, with no defenses of my own, welcoming all comers. And I say unto all: If you can not beat me, join me.
Again, I agree that someone who claims to speak to a god is a bit off, but someone that claims that same thing and then explains exactly what they mean by it is quite different from the truly insane.
EDIT: We also have a stripper factory and a beer volcano in our afterlife. w00t.
Edit:
This is obviously a generalization, and should be understood as such.
Paranoid schizophrenia is pretty much the defining "I hear voices" mental illness. Suffers apparently will quite literally hear voices with no source. Of course, they try to ascribe a source to the voice(s), something from their own experience. In a Christian culture, the prime canditates for a disembodied voice are often God, the Devil, angels, demons, and so forth.
So, yes Katsu, it's probably a cultural thing.