Are you afraid of dying?

Thorn Bird said:
so how have you come to the conclusion that you're coming back? can you be thorough? i'm interested in the theory. :)
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Simple answer:taoist
Longish answer: if you can explain to me how millions upon millions of souls through out all of Humanities existence are dead and gone yet thier "souls" still live on either in hell or heaven and none of them are getting recycled?

Theory: souls are recycled on a constant basis. Wiped clean and reinserted back into fresh bodies. the vauge memories of a past life are the remenants of an incomplete wipe. built up karma during each reincarnation determines the quality of the life then next incarnation recieves.
it's as valid a religion as any other.

I forsee the "end of days" as it were as not a great purge but the eventual shutdown of a machine that has span eons past that is recycling said souls for a greater unknown purpose.

in any case untill someone goes outside of existence and comes back to tell the rest we are all either right (in our various religious beliefs) or utterly wrong.

we could be the particles of sand in a immense ant farm of this dimension. who knows?




the shadow knows!!!!
 
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FlamingGlory said:
Let's start this again.

1) You said there is no "truth" to existence, i.e. everything is meaningless. Or to put it another way 'the meaning of everything is without meaning'.
2) I said that to accept the Truth of existence as the abscence of a Truth [of existence] is a fallacy because by accepting your Truth you have admitted there is a Truth.
3) It is a classic liar's paradox, i.e. 'This statement is not true.'
4) Since we arent using paraconsistent logic here it is inherently false.
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For the sake of clarity, let's refrain from gratuitous philosophizing. Philosophy is really nothing more than a tool to spin any conversation at all into obscure and completely irrelevent tangents, which instead of lending any kind of 'enlightened truth' to anything simply clouds even the most well thought out argument until you're left with a group of people sitting in silence thinking "What?"

I'd rather focus on the issue in a very basic and logical way.

I said nothing makes a difference. And in truth, nothing makes a difference. No matter who you are, what you do, or what you belive, the same horrible shit could befall you as the next guy. Conversely, the same fortuitous things could befall absolutely anyone as well. Which would make it appear as though there is no God at all, since regardless if I believe in and follow him or not there is really no indication that I am favored, protected, or better off than the heathen or savage drunken transient in the gutter.

Whether I pray or curse I could win the lottery, fall in a hole, get laid, be loved, be hated, find a job, lose a job, be mugged and shot, raped, etc. Do you see what I'm saying? The variables are infinite, and the common denominator is the fact that absolutely nothing is certain.

I guess my questions are:

1) Why would the creator of earth and the father of its children be so stand-offish?
2) Where was God before the first Abrahamic monotheists decided to declare his existence and worship him? Was he ignoring us or waiting until we had "advanced" sufficiently to announce himself (and through people, not even his own mouth), and if that's the case why doesn't God like simple people? Does that mean he dislikes people who are mentally retarded?
 
Onnotangu said:
that is about as indepth as you will ever see me on religion.
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well, i appreciate the information. i love learning things and hearing ideas new to me. thank you for giving me food for thought! :heart:
 
FlamingGlory said:
We are making statements of absolute fact now? Wow.
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No im not making an absolute fact, and im not saying that there is a not a god, but im more than happy and understanding of the fact that there is very likely nothing after death and that in the end your life likely didn't make a worldly difference.

The fact that most people waste their life by not taking advantage of what it has to offer, or even trying to be good because of what may occur after death is sad to me. Do good because you want to and you believe its right not because "if you dont you will go to hell" follow whatever religion you want and ignore the people who think that their religion alone will be the only people in Heaven on judgement day, dont get upset and try to scare people when others go another path be it another religion, or no religion at all and just live life because its what you have now and likely all you'll get.

Besides, if you did live somewhere for eternity would you really want to once you realize how much time you pissed away during life knowing that was all of that you were going to get?
 
Hmmm... me?
Afraid of death? No.
Afraid of struggling to survive? Perhaps.
Afraid of being terribly mangled after a horrendously painful and tragic accident or disease, only to live on in suffering? Perhaps.

Death is an extraordinarily important function of life. It is the programmed death of cells in our bodies that allows for cancer-free living. Death of organisms allows for all evolutionary and adaptive processes to take place, and for appropriate balance within ecosystems.

I feel quite strongly that it's safe to suppose that death means gone. Do we have any evidence to the contrary?

It's an interesting anecdote that Alfred Russel Wallace, the man whose independent theory of natural selection prompted Charles Darwin to rush into publishing his own, later reversed trend a became a spiritualist. He made grand promises that when he died he would make some sort of an appearence, direct or indirect, that would confirm his existence in the afterlife. In fact, when Wallace died, nothing was ever heard from him again.

On the subject of God, I am drawn to the so-called ignostic stance: that the question of whether God exists is much like asking what color Saturday is. The question is nonsense. The concept of an all-powerful and all-knowing being is in direct violation of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem by my reasoning. Imagine saying to God: "You can do anything, right? So make something more powerful than yourself...or invent an action that you can't do." The concept of God allows for such absurdity. It doesn't make sense.

Here's also an interesting thought: to us, any sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial (or other) intelligence would be indistinguishable from omniscience. Think about it and it's true. Assuming ominscience were actually possible--and it's not according to Godel--we wouldn't know the difference after a certain point.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong in interpreting Godel here.
 
Sarcasmo said:
For the sake of clarity, let's refrain from gratuitous philosophizing. Philosophy is really nothing more than a tool to spin any conversation at all into obscure and completely irrelevent tangents, which instead of lending any kind of 'enlightened truth' to anything simply clouds even the most well thought out argument until you're left with a group of people sitting in silence thinking "What?"
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I thrive on that though. Science itself is based on a line of pure philosophy. Everything you've ever learned started in the begining with someone sitting and thinking "Why?". If you cant follow it just say so.

I'd rather focus on the issue in a very basic and logical way.
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Logic is the foundation of philosophy...

I said nothing makes a difference. And in truth, nothing makes a difference. No matter who you are, what you do, or what you belive, the same horrible shit could befall you as the next guy. Conversely, the same fortuitous things could befall absolutely anyone as well. Which would make it appear as though there is no God at all, since regardless if I believe in and follow him or not there is really no indication that I am favored, protected, or better off than the heathen or savage drunken transient in the gutter.

Whether I pray or curse I could win the lottery, fall in a hole, get laid, be loved, be hated, find a job, lose a job, be mugged and shot, raped, etc. Do you see what I'm saying? The variables are infinite, and the common denominator is the fact that absolutely nothing is certain.
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By saying nothing you do makes any difference you are saying that you have no free will. That is all events are already determined by preceeding events. You also say that events are infinitely random, that certain events are inexplicable. Those are mutually incompatible doctrines...

I guess my questions are:

1) Why would the creator of earth and the father of its children be so stand-offish?
2) Where was God before the first Abrahamic monotheists decided to declare his existence and worship him? Was he ignoring us or waiting until we had "advanced" sufficiently to announce himself (and through people, not even his own mouth), and if that's the case why doesn't God like simple people? Does that mean he dislikes people who are mentally retarded?
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Since by asking these questions you havent denied the existence of a metaphorical God:

1) You mean unfriendly? I don't know where you get that from. The fact you exist and can think these thoughts is by His will alone.
2) Multipart:
a) The concept of Tetragammatron has been around since the dawn of time. Further back than any written record.
b) Grace. Works and deeds do not specifically make you 'good' with God. You are loved by his Grace alone. Alternate explination to the above.
c) The rest of your question is just baiting.
 
Epididymis said:
`snip`
I feel quite strongly that it's safe to suppose that death means gone. Do we have any evidence to the contrary?

It's an interesting anecdote that Alfred Russel Wallace, the man whose independent theory of natural selection prompted Charles Darwin to rush into publishing his own, later reversed trend a became a spiritualist. He made grand promises that when he died he would make some sort of an appearence, direct or indirect, that would confirm his existence in the afterlife. In fact, when Wallace died, nothing was ever heard from him again.
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Do you really want me to get into the lack of evidence is not evidence of absence again?

On the subject of God, I am drawn to the so-called ignostic stance: that the question of whether God exists is much like asking what color Saturday is. The question is nonsense. The concept of an all-powerful and all-knowing being is in direct violation of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem by my reasoning. Imagine saying to God: "You can do anything, right? So make something more powerful than yourself...or invent an action that you can't do." The concept of God allows for such absurdity. It doesn't make sense.
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For Godel, not quite. I had it at 'just because you cant prove something does not mean it isnt true.' The second theorem was a little more complicated but I was under the impression that they supported the existence of unknown unknowns. Provability is weaker than truth etc.

Your simple analogy of God creating something stronger/more perfect than himself is quite fallible. If an omnipotent being created a situation it could not handle, not being bound by consistency, it can handle situations it cannot handle. :)

Here's also an interesting thought: to us, any sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial (or other) intelligence would be indistinguishable from omniscience. Think about it and it's true. Assuming ominscience were actually possible--and it's not according to Godel--we wouldn't know the difference after a certain point.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong in interpreting Godel here.
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Which book on Godel did you read? I'm familiar with the First Order logic but not with the general philosophical applications.
 
ChikkenNoodul said:
I'm afraid of dying in my sleep or some crap like that

It absolutely terrifies me
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Not drowning in a cave?

My first thread on this forum was about how you are afraid to die.
 
FlamingGlory said:
For Godel, not quite. I had it at 'just because you cant prove something does not mean it isnt true.' The second theorem was a little more complicated but I was under the impression that they supported the existence of unknown unknowns. Provability is weaker than truth etc.
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Yes, after reading some more about this, I feel this was a misapplication of those theorems. Among other things, there appear to be a number of problems in showing that a being such as God could be a consistent closed system, which is necessary for Godel's theorems to apply.

Your simple analogy of God creating something stronger/more perfect than himself is quite fallible. If an omnipotent being created a situation it could not handle, not being bound by consistency, it can handle situations it cannot handle. :)
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Here I disagree. In order to resolve the paradox in this way, you have to abandon logic in your own reasoning. I don't buy it. Either an omnipotent being can create a situation it cannot handle, or it cannot. If it creates such a situation and then handles it--regardless of its own ability to transcend logical boundaries--it is still false to our reasoning that the being could create a situation it cannot handle, unless we wish to be unbound by consistency ourselves.

To be fair though, philosophers still debate this paradox. It looks like there are multiple complex ways of defining omnipotence, which makes this really not such a simple analogy after all.
 
By the way, when I die, I want to be stuffed and mounted. I think that I'd look good in one of two situations: 1) my head on a plaque as a mantelpiece, or 2) my full body as a positionable foyer coat rack.

Come to think of it, these two options are not mutually exclusive. And notwithstanding my head on the wall, my protruding spine would still make an excellent place to hang one's hat after a long day's work.
 
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