Is Death the End?
- Thread starter fourtwentychat
- Start date
Amaximus
Well-Known Member
donkeyshow
Well-Known Member
I spent a few years exploring for myself what both life and death meant. Religion wasn't the answer, I tried. Eventually I came to the realization that we are each given life on earth by chance and that prior to conception we did not exist, and after death we will again cease to exist. At first I was depressed, I'm not going to lie IT SUCKS. Like everyone else I would love to be able to live forever, maybe not here on earth but in a spiritual or physical form. My family, my friends, all those who came before me and all those who will come after me are all doomed to the same fate.
Eventually I accepted that someday I will die and as I've gotten older time has really started to fly by. It changed the way I thought about things in many ways. For example, that guy cutting you off on the freeway might just be in a hurry to get home and see his family or do something that he wants to do. Can you blame him? He only has a limited amount of time to live as well. It left me wondering what in life is really important? Society tells us that we need to get an education, we spend 12+ years in school here in the states. We all need to work so we can have a house, a car, and someday support a family. We all need to have kids, and get married. Those things that society tells us will no doubt take up a huge chunk of "our time". Are they important to you? Cool, so do them! Are they important to the bum that just wants to get trashed every night and sleep under a bridge? Probably not so don't knock him for spending "his time" however the fuck he wants.
Anyways.. I could go on for days, plus I'm stoned as fuck.
Life is short, do something you love. Try not to worry to much about death because once it has happened... YOU WON'T KNOW
Eventually I accepted that someday I will die and as I've gotten older time has really started to fly by. It changed the way I thought about things in many ways. For example, that guy cutting you off on the freeway might just be in a hurry to get home and see his family or do something that he wants to do. Can you blame him? He only has a limited amount of time to live as well. It left me wondering what in life is really important? Society tells us that we need to get an education, we spend 12+ years in school here in the states. We all need to work so we can have a house, a car, and someday support a family. We all need to have kids, and get married. Those things that society tells us will no doubt take up a huge chunk of "our time". Are they important to you? Cool, so do them! Are they important to the bum that just wants to get trashed every night and sleep under a bridge? Probably not so don't knock him for spending "his time" however the fuck he wants.
Anyways.. I could go on for days, plus I'm stoned as fuck.
Life is short, do something you love. Try not to worry to much about death because once it has happened... YOU WON'T KNOW
Miyagi
Well-Known Member
Try Salvia. My first proper salvia experience left me feeling ready for what was to come. I have reported on that journey many times so I won't bother here but suffice to say I could have curled up and left the earth that day and been ok with it for the first time in my life.
pacificarage
Well-Known Member
I will disagree with the concept of death being the end. Human beings are such beautifully designed creatures. Way too much thought was put into us to just be alive for a while as carbon carriers. We have a purpose...
InCognition
Active Member
Nobody you know has come back from death? Doesn't matter, so what's your point?....
Plenty of people have died and come back from death. If you want to ignore it that's fine, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
I personally know people who have died and "come back", and they've seen stuff while "dead". Whether it was a chemical reaction, in their still-intact brain, we don't know right now. The fact is, it's very possible something exists beyond this realm of what we call "reality".
The Hadron particle collider is on the brink of breaking the laws of physics as we know it, and in some sense, it already has. They've found particles that do not exist in our reality or current laws of physics. Explain that... the scientists can't....
The 1800th century speak, you talk of, is infering reincarnation. Who's to say reincarnation is the only option... it's not. The simple fact is that energy cannot be created or destroyed, so where does our energy go? The energy within a human body is scientifically proven to exist, and thus it must go somewhere. To say it just goes into the ground and rots is naive, because this planet will one day, cease to exist. Where does it all go? Nobody knows, and to assume that your consciousness just rots in the dirt, is just as asinine as believing that a religious figure will save your soul or lead you to an afterlife.
ANC
Well-Known Member
Technicaly you come back from death about every 20 micro seconds. Contiousnous is not a continuous stream, due to the pulse/wave like workings of the brain, you literaly reboot many times each second.
Either way, what I wanted to say, was you only have this life to do something about this life. For those of use with religious beliefs it is a little easier makeing the sacrifices.
Either way, what I wanted to say, was you only have this life to do something about this life. For those of use with religious beliefs it is a little easier makeing the sacrifices.
Capt. Stickyfingers
Well-Known Member
We were not "designed" and no species of any kind put any "thought" into the creation of humans. Life just happens. Like watching mold grow on a piece of bread. Earth is the bread, we are the mold. Conditions are right for life here, so here we are, with all the other animals, bacteria, mold, bugs, trees, and so forth. If we were designed it would have to be by another living being, right? Or are you suggesting that some figment of magic star and pixie dust miraculously appeared out of nowhere, made earth and humans and everything else, then disappeared into space? Where it watches over us and hears our prayers? Lol. Living being or mystical being, it's horseshit.
Capt. Stickyfingers
Well-Known Member
Lol. Best post in this thread.
Zaehet Strife
Well-Known Member
+ Rep.
It is sad to me, that so many fear death so much... they find the psychological need to tell themselves they will continue to exist forever.
InCognition
Active Member
It's sad to me, that people somehow rationalize putting a dead-absolute stamp of approval, on the theory that "nothing happens beyond this". As if they speak some sort of absolute fact. They find a psychological need to think their correct about what cannot be understood right now.
Stating that "there is nothing after" as an absolute, is just as crazy saying "there is absolutely something after". Neither can be rationalized.
Zaehet Strife
Well-Known Member
I agree, i am comfortable with this answer-
I don't know. (but i highly doubt existence precedes death)
If only theologians/spiritualists/metaphysicians could be honest and say. I don't know. (but i highly doubt death is the end)
Zeplike
Active Member
touche sir, valid point. I even agreed with Strife's comment until you pointed that out..
but does that just lead back to an agnostic view that God or heaven cannot be proven or disproven either way?
Zaehet Strife
Well-Known Member
I don't tell myself i will cease to exist when i die, because when i am completely honest with myself... i always come up with the conclusion that i do not know. I merely find it sad when people tell themselves certainties in the absence of them.
For some odd reason i have this uncanny inability to be dishonest with myself... it's quite annoying at times.
For some odd reason i have this uncanny inability to be dishonest with myself... it's quite annoying at times.
I just can't swallow that its all just happen stance. The complexity of life and everything that encompasses us all here on this little rock in a big, suppesedly never ending universe from the sky the protects me from excessive uv light, to even just food how it sucks crap out of the ground and magically it turns into something I can eat.
Really, how the fuck does that just happen all by it's self, and in such a way that life can create itself and not just in some crude fashion, but in a very specific way.
The way I see it, life is meaningless without an afterlife. Really, wtf is the point and why continue making more humans just for them to fight through life to die and be gone forever? Why bother fighitng for a better life for those after us if they too are just going to die and cease to exist? Why not just end human life now and stop all suffering?
Everyone has their own beliefs and justifications, but life to me would be meaningless without God. Nothing else makes sense, and the science behind it can't prove the existence of God anyway as the after life is a world not of this one, but there are those who think what they find here for some reason translates into whats out there in the after life. To each his own I guess.
Really, how the fuck does that just happen all by it's self, and in such a way that life can create itself and not just in some crude fashion, but in a very specific way.
The way I see it, life is meaningless without an afterlife. Really, wtf is the point and why continue making more humans just for them to fight through life to die and be gone forever? Why bother fighitng for a better life for those after us if they too are just going to die and cease to exist? Why not just end human life now and stop all suffering?
Everyone has their own beliefs and justifications, but life to me would be meaningless without God. Nothing else makes sense, and the science behind it can't prove the existence of God anyway as the after life is a world not of this one, but there are those who think what they find here for some reason translates into whats out there in the after life. To each his own I guess.
Miyagi
Well-Known Member
That didn't all happen as an immense set of miracles and freak circumstances all at once just so you could have breakfast without getting a sunburn. There were a couple of freaky miracles and all of that is a result of a billion year battle to capitalise on those original freak circumstances
You are just a sequence of DNA in that battle that thinks it is better than it is
So smoke a blunt and spread your seed
Padawanbater2
Well-Known Member
First, GREAT posts, this is why this site is top notch!
I envy you. I wish I had that ability. To me, the end is the end. I know I've never been there, but I have no evidence to support the idea that an afterlife exists. I wish I could live to be 500, 1,000, 25,000.. but this is only a dream. Perhaps one day, when we've abolished the shackles of religion, the divisions and prejudice it creates, we can appreciate science for what it actually is, what it can potentially do. I'm accepting of the fact I'll be long and gone before this ever happens, but our species will live on, to ask and answer, to create and imagine.
This is enough for me. Maybe, one day, you, me, will exist in another form, another configuration, and maybe we'll even cross paths, if even on the molecular level. Maybe something will recognize that. Can you imagine the reunion?
What could be more beautiful?
Existence exists after life, I'm certain, though not as traditionally described.
Life is, in all intents and purposes, everywhere. Life, as you know it, covers the entire globe, including some of the most inhospitable locations on the planet. It's spanned an existence of 4.5 BILLION years. That is 4 thousand, 5 hundred million years. 4 thousand, 5 hundred million years ='s 16,425,000,000 days. That is 16 BILLION, 4 hundred and 25 MILLION days.
Well, what would be the point of living eternally? Why does life need to have a 'point'? To me, it would seem the 'point' is simply... to live. To exist. The circumstances that got us here are extraordinary. Our existence among a universe hostile to life is extraordinary. The ability to figure out what we are, how we are... who we are, is a gift of unimaginable proportions. We are the universe, figuring itself out, on a conscious level. That alone, to me, justifies existence.
I envy you. I wish I had that ability. To me, the end is the end. I know I've never been there, but I have no evidence to support the idea that an afterlife exists. I wish I could live to be 500, 1,000, 25,000.. but this is only a dream. Perhaps one day, when we've abolished the shackles of religion, the divisions and prejudice it creates, we can appreciate science for what it actually is, what it can potentially do. I'm accepting of the fact I'll be long and gone before this ever happens, but our species will live on, to ask and answer, to create and imagine.
This is enough for me. Maybe, one day, you, me, will exist in another form, another configuration, and maybe we'll even cross paths, if even on the molecular level. Maybe something will recognize that. Can you imagine the reunion?
What could be more beautiful?
Existence exists after life, I'm certain, though not as traditionally described.
What do you mean by "all by itself"?
Life is, in all intents and purposes, everywhere. Life, as you know it, covers the entire globe, including some of the most inhospitable locations on the planet. It's spanned an existence of 4.5 BILLION years. That is 4 thousand, 5 hundred million years. 4 thousand, 5 hundred million years ='s 16,425,000,000 days. That is 16 BILLION, 4 hundred and 25 MILLION days.
Well, what would be the point of living eternally? Why does life need to have a 'point'? To me, it would seem the 'point' is simply... to live. To exist. The circumstances that got us here are extraordinary. Our existence among a universe hostile to life is extraordinary. The ability to figure out what we are, how we are... who we are, is a gift of unimaginable proportions. We are the universe, figuring itself out, on a conscious level. That alone, to me, justifies existence.
I commend you for acknowledging the distinction. A lot of people can't. Faith, it seems, isn't understood by much of the faithful... Faith, by it's vary nature, can't be proven. It can't be tested. I believe it's a scapegoat to the demand "prove it". The faithful don't require proof to cement a belief.