I would like to think that after we die, we have to atone for our bad behavior during our life time. For example, if you always butted-in at lineups you would have to stand in line for like 50 years, and if you were stupid you would have to watch only comedies without laugh tracks until you got the jokes. After you had paid for all your past indiscretions there would be a big party, kind of like a cross between a retirement party and a wake, but with way more booze and good food and lots of fun. During the party there is a big screen showing a film of your life (with a soundtrack of your favorite music) but it somehow has a happy ending. Then, at the end of the party you get a framed certificate and a shirt that says "I lived my entire life and all I got out of it was this stupid tee-shirt" and then you get to give a speech and thank who you want to and tell off who you want to as well but everyone just laughs. Then you get into your favorite car (or truck or motorbike or whatever) and ride off into the sunset.
If I was betting, however, I would bet that we just die and that's it.
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Originally Posted by peter12
Of course, if you don't fear death, then what is the point of being alive except to lapse into hobby after hobby? One day an investment banker, the next a film student.
People on their death beds will often say they should have done this and should have done that. Regret causes people to fear death as they want more time to do the things they didn't do.
There's a quote from Morrie Schwartz that I like that says "When you learn how to die, you learn how to live." Morrie is a former university prof who was dying from ALS (Tuesdays with Morrie)
Quote:
Morrie says this on the fourth Tuesday in response to Mitch's question about how one can prepare for death. He responds with a Buddhist philosophy that every day, one must ask the bird on his shoulder if that day is the day he will die. The philosophy serves as a metaphor for his awareness that his death may come at any moment. The bird itself is symbolic of Morrie's consciousness that his death is fast-approaching, and his readiness to accept it when it does arrive.
He hopes that Mitch will realize that this bird is on everyone's shoulder at every moment of their lives, despite how young or old they may be. When he tells Mitch that one must know how to die before one can know how to live, he means that one must accept the possibility of one's own death before he can truly appreciate what he has on earth, as the sobering awareness that one day, it will all be out of reach, prompts the urge to appreciate and value what one can have only for a limited period of time, and to use every moment of that time doing something that one will not regret when the bird sings its last note.
Of course, if you don't fear death, then what is the point of being alive except to lapse into hobby after hobby? One day an investment banker, the next a film student.
Love, hate, cry, laugh, travel, love, learn... We have this one amazingly rare opportunity to have been born and be around to even ask these questions as sentient beings pondering the great questions.
To me the idea of heaven and people expecting this 2nd life takes away from the short time we have on our earth. Imagine those nuns, monks, Mormons, Scientologists, Jehova's, etc.. or the more radical religious believers filling their lives doing what they think they must do, what they will miss out on, often being a source of harm in their own life following ugly dogma.
Of course many religious live a great life of love and joy, without hate and judgement, but if there is nothing after you are gone, and you spent your entire life living around a lie, that to me is very sad.
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Location: A simple man leading a complicated life....
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Originally Posted by Thor
Love, hate, cry, laugh, travel, love, learn... We have this one amazingly rare opportunity to have been born and be around to even ask these questions as sentient beings pondering the great questions.
To me the idea of heaven and people expecting this 2nd life takes away from the short time we have on our earth. Imagine those nuns, monks, Mormons, Scientologists, Jehova's, etc.. or the more radical religious believers filling their lives doing what they think they must do, what they will miss out on, often being a source of harm in their own life following ugly dogma.
Of course many religious live a great life of love and joy, without hate and judgement, but if there is nothing after you are gone, and you spent your entire life living around a lie, that to me is very sad.
Even if it turns out to be a lie these people were still living a life that brought them joy and happiness. We all do different things to bring purpose and meaning into our lives. We should be happy for them.
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You are being held accountable: you are what you do, and your actions continually impact the lives of those around you.
Why do you feel the need to be judged? And why would said judge (who assumedly, can create universes) care one tick how you behaved during your one, infinitesimal spin through the cosmos?
And if "life can't be just this", what does that mean for all the other animals? Are humans more important? Do the other animals get to come back as humans at some point? Are they here just to make life more interesting for humans?
I am not trying to attack you here, I am merely asking questions that I believe follow from what you have stated and asked. I am genuinely curious.
Many Christians would tell you, that is the beauty of being a Christian, being loved by the creator of the universe, when you're right, why would He care about an insignificant human being in such a vast universe.
In fact His love is so great , that He would take on the punishment due us to atone for our sins.
I appreciate that you are not attacking, and it is just a discussion. In fact it is not a need for judgement; I see as necessary or just step in accountability, of what I did with this precious gift of life.
Funny things is, or rather sad, is that most Christians don't look any different or live their lives any different than the rest of humanity, when in fact they act in quite ugly ways.
Gandhi once said, "I like your Christ, I just don't like your Christians"
Yep, I only feel sad if their religion has harmed their life, with hate, intolerance, or the many ugly sides to belief. I know plenty who live great lives, who I feel zero pity for, its the brainwashed ones who live ugly lives.
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Of course many religious live a great life of love and joy, without hate and judgement, but if there is nothing after you are gone, and you spent your entire life living around a lie, that to me is very sad.
But if there is nothing after they die, and they died believing in an afterlife, then it's not actually a lie to that person. They will have died believing they were headed to heaven, and there will be nothing after their death that can take that from them.
Does that make sense?
I don't believe in an afterlife, personally. I wish I could, but I am not able to choose what I believe in. I couldn't just decide tomorrow, I believe in heaven now because I want it to be true.
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Of course many religious live a great life of love and joy, without hate and judgement, but if there is nothing after you are gone, and you spent your entire life living around a lie, that to me is very sad.
Don't take this personally but I could say the exact same the other way. If there is some sort of afterlife and we chose to ignore it, we may not see how awesome life really is. For example we may be angry that a loved one was taken from us and don't understand why. We may hold on to anger or resent not understanding why things happen the way they do. What if it turns out there is some sort of afterlife and you didn't live life to the fullest because of it?
Nobody freaks out about what was happening before they were born. Only what happens after they die.
Personally I think after I die it'll be pretty well exactly the same as the time before I was born. I didn't exist.
Doesn't mean the sentimental side of me doesn't wish I would get to live on in eternity with all my loved ones. I do wish that were true. But rationally... no. After death there is nothing.
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Don't take this personally but I could say the exact same the other way. If there is some sort of afterlife and we chose to ignore it, we may not see how awesome life really is. For example we may be angry that a loved one was taken from us and don't understand why. We may hold on to anger or resent not understanding why things happen the way they do. What if it turns out there is some sort of afterlife and you didn't live life to the fullest because of it?
If there is an afterlife and I live a good life yet do not get in, then there is something immeasurably wrong with that God. I could of course ask, are you sure you selected the correct religion to get in to heaven?
At least if its Valhalla I'm in good, I think if there is a Christian God of the old and new testament I'd rather not hang out eternally praising him anyhow, I could always move to North Korea to experience that
Of course I don't take it personally, its all fun to think about.
We go back to where we came from, the universe. How privileged are we? We came from star dust, we live, we love, we laugh, we cry, we mourn, we wonder, we hate Edmonton. I find it mind boggling, we are the universe and the universe is us. The universe found a way to form life that could actually investigate, discover and wonder about itself. That is amazing. In the end we eventually turn back to star dust as the sun consumes the Earth. Dying is just a fact of life with our current technology, I don't claim the same for future generations though. My atoms in the end will be spread across the Earth, breathed in by billions of people, eventually scorched by the sun. Hopefully spread across the galaxy to be a part of a new star and planets. Part of me may end up in some future Solar System that achieves more than we do. Who knows. I can't think of a greater privilege than being alive.
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You know all joking aside, we all have our concerns about death, sure we can be externally cavalier about it. There's nothing after life, we return to the soil, we live, we love, we die, we fade from memory and then as the others around us go, we vanish.
One morning we all wake up and we look at the road behind us, and then turn and look at the road ahead of us and realize that there are more miles behind us then ahead of us. Then we take a look at that road, is it strewn with wreckage, the bodies of people that we've wronged? Or is that road clear? What's on the road ahead, does it end with a huge black abyss, a vacuum that eventually sucks you in and crushes you with the gravitational forces of oblivion? Or does the road branch off and when we go, its like turning off of the interstate and travel in another direction? Or does it end at a truckstop where we stop and have a piece of pie served by a waitress named flo, and we sit back, relax and look at the journey behind us?
I don't know, all I know is at some point we stand at the edge of that abyss, and wonder if that's it, we fall into darkness.
Because to be honest, except for a select few, the billions or trillions that have died since man rose out of the primordial muck and picked up a stick have faded, its like they never existed. Maybe they lived a good life, maybe they lived a life full of evil, but at the end, they're dead, and we don't know their names, or their parents, or for the most part their descendants.
And its easy to simply say, we die, we're dirt, that's it, but merely accepting that end of the journey goes against human nature which is defined by one question, "Is this all there is?"
And if there's nothing, then why do we have a sense of fair play and compassion, and good versus evil. If there are no consequences then why not f%%k everyone over, steal, cheat, lie and kill, at least that way you wouldn't fade and be forgotten.
I look at the mass shooting in Orlando, and the Sandy Hook Killings and other ones, and it makes sense. You see, you can lie to a person and say, kill as many as you can for a righteous cause and you will go to paradise, hell maybe your victims will go there too because they're innocent and victims, and maybe that makes you feel better. But I believe that these psychos do it because it becomes impossible to forget them, someone will remember that person for years and decades as the person that snuffed out your mom or dad or grandparent that you never met for example.
We all strive to make a difference, good or bad, that's our legacy that maybe makes it easier to die and go nowhere but the dirt. We all ask the same question, who will be saddened by our loss? Who will take a lesson from how I lived and how I died, and then you face the inevitable, that in 4 or 5 years, unless they walk by your grave or see your picture, or hear an innocuous comment that stirs a memory, that it will be as if you don't exist.
I remember reading a biography about Stalin, and the prevailing theory is that beyond an apparent sociopathic mental illness, Stalin like all of the hardcore communist dictators believed they had to attain maximum change in their lifetime because once they die, they're dead and their works will be all that you remember them by, and that's their reward for a life of ruthless change.
I also remember watching a movie once that described hell not as a fire filled pit with demons dismembering you daily but as a place in the shadows where you are denied love from god and denied love from anyone else, a solitary confinement where all you can do is face your sins and beg for forgiveness and have nobody there to absolve you of your guilt, whereas heaven was love and where you have no ability or need to look behind you and feel guilt about anything in your live.
But to me the sobering thought when you stand at the abyss at the end of that road and stare into the blackness that if you haven't made a mark, none of this really matters.
Its all just darkness, and while your dead and if there's nothing you don't care, when you're alive you should care.
So at the end of a long rambling post when I say that this life is literally hell, it is because of how we march towards the inevitable oblivion and most of us fade into the piles of dead people that nobody remembers or cares about, we become a marker in the ground and over the year the fancy inscription fades, and the weeds grow because it's not tended to.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 06-18-2016 at 12:52 AM.
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