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can you live with knowing after death there is nothing

Or would life seem pointless if there was no sort of after life or heaven?

First let me say, Heaven would be boring. Everyone going about happy as a clam. That'd annoy me if there wasn't any other emotions or good things to be done. Personally it has bothered me to know/figure, that the end will be infinite darkness even though I won't realize it. It helps to also consider that the odds that you would be here experiencing consciousness is overwhelmingly stacked against you.
 
Some friends and i were talkin about this over a bowl one night. When they asked me where i thought i was goin to go when i died i thought for a minute and said. Idk...fuck it i guess. What happens happens.
 
years ago i used to say i hope i go to heaven as i don't want to go to hell,
IF heaven & hell exists and is as we believe how it is or made to believe how it is
heaven being all happy, full of non sinners, pure bliss, etc, etc
hell being full of despair , fire, torture, etc, etc
i would prefer to go to heaven
then one day while having a conversation with some friends about where we wanted to go one friend said to me
so you'd rather go to heaven with all the bible thumpers
than go to hell with all the tokers,etc,
i said well when you put it like that i would rather to go to hell, lol,
 
No. If it were provable beyond any reasonable doubt that there was nothing, ever again, after death, and that all I strove for and endured in this life would ultimately be for nought, I'd take my exit immediately.

Hm. The assumption that life is meaningless if there is no afterlife spurs some skepticism here.

It seems like it's hard for the human mind to comprehend intrinsic value in the here and now. Everything has to be goal-oriented... everything is a tool, a means to an end, always in the future, just out of reach. I, however, disagree. I don't think life is the brush and paint. I think it's the painting itself.


I'm perfectly O.K. with the idea that there's nothing after death, because there's a WHOLE LOT before it! :)
 
i reckon when you die thats it the end. no afterlife, no nothing. ive believed this for a long time. and after experiencing ego death on DMT i guess it could be something like that
 
thats why i live life to the fullest now, im preparing for the worst after i die
 
It seems like it's hard for the human mind to comprehend intrinsic value in the here and now. Everything has to be goal-oriented... everything is a tool, a means to an end, always in the future, just out of reach. I, however, disagree. I don't think life is the brush and paint. I think it's the painting itself.

To conflate 'afterlife' with 'future' is kind of fallacious to me, since I suspect that time as we experience it is largely a function of our present human incarnation, and hasn't much meaning once we've died and become something else. And don't get me wrong -- I'm all about seeing value in the present moment.

What I mean is that I'm not ready to accept this life as a fluke accident, the likes of which will never be repeated, and which means nothing at all in the greater scheme of things. This is why I don't attend services by religious Humanists anymore -- I simply cannot draw any spiritual guidance from such a bleak starting point, and really don't relate to those, deep down, who can.
 
To conflate 'afterlife' with 'future' is kind of fallacious to me, since I suspect that time as we experience it is largely a function of our present human incarnation, and hasn't much meaning once we've died and become something else. And don't get me wrong -- I'm all about seeing value in the present moment.

Agreed! I strongly believe this is true.
 
It seems like it's hard for the human mind to comprehend intrinsic value in the here and now. Everything has to be goal-oriented... everything is a tool, a means to an end, always in the future, just out of reach. I, however, disagree. I don't think life is the brush and paint. I think it's the painting itself.

Exactly how I have felt. More so than life not being just the brush and paint, the painting itself as the finished part of the journey is still missing that actual act of painting which brings joy. As a musician playing improv, the guitar and equipment is nice, the end of the gig is nice, but the journey of creating from that space of joyous inspiration seems most important. So the creating comes from that place of inspiration, not worry. Anything created had to at least be believed that it could be created or it wouldn't have been.

In other words, regardless of what people believe, being in the here now, and feeling the here and now, IS more important than what happens in what we look at as "later". It's all NOW that seems to count.

And as far as what MDAO posted I also do not see life as a fluke. Either everything is a fluke and has no purpose, or everything has purpose and is guided by choice. To me it is one or the other. Life is really set up beautifully if we think about it. :)
 
what if time is on a never ending loop and we are all destined to live the same life over and over for eternity without ever being aware of it?
 
what if time is on a never ending loop and we are all destined to live the same life over and over for eternity without ever being aware of it?

well that would probably be ok if we are not aware of it,
if we were aware then that would be a drag,
apart from the drugs, hehe
 
first things first...

can you live with knowing before death there is nothing
 
I should clarify my position on all this a bit.

In light of Jamshyd's posts. I could definitely live with eternal extinction after this life, if I were fairly sure that this was the best possible alternative, and that I had earned it, a la Buddhists and Hindus reaching nirvana and escaping the cycle of samsara. In other words, if extinction were a result of this life of mine having inherent meaning, and my lack of afterlife were part of a greater plan, then that's fine. I see a world of difference, however, between this and facing certain extinction because I've decided this life is a random accident devoid of inherent meaning or plan.

TheAppleCore, I don't really see any contradiction between being a goal and purpose driven person, and either valuing this life or living in the present moment. I can buy a ticket for a slow boat to China, and both enjoy myself on the cruise AND look forward to docking in Shanghai, no?

Materialists / naturalists waxing poetic about how the lack of a forelife, afterlife, or cosmic plan makes this one life more valuable, always gave me the same kind of feeling as getting handed a consolation prize, or falling for a bait-and-switch. I get the logical flow of the argument and wasn't asking for clarification, so please, don't try to reword it and sell it to me again, anyone. I'm just stating that it never 'scratched the itch' for me.
 
Just wondering as it is something that has never bothered me.
I kind of feel good about it knowing I will be putting something back into the ground that I have taken from my whole life, so having nothing after death is not something I am afraid of.
Just wondering if anyone else thinks about it that way, or is the need to believe in something that keeps you going, or keeps you sane.
Or would life seem pointless if there was no sort of after life or heaven?

I don't believe in an afterlife, because I have no reason to. I actually quite like the thought of non-existence upon death. It certainly beats all the shit that existence seems to entail. :)
 
but just think, the universe is really, really, really big, so big you might even call it infinite, and there may be other universes, maybe even an infinite amout of them all different and unique. this makes me think that there may be other possibilities of what happens when we die, after all, we are here right now arent we, why shouldnt we be something else after we die? for example, a life form made of gas on the other side of the universe.
 
Well before you were born you were nothing and had no problem with it because the meaning of nothing is a blank nothing'. If it were to be the same after you die, than i don't see how that could bother you.
 
Nothingness seems to me an impossible concept. Nothingness can't exist where there is something. So assuming everything and everyone that around you exists, then it will still be there when you die, so there will not be nothing. But can nothingness exist independent of something, or can it be perceived? Well if it is being perceived then there will have to be a perceiver, hence there is actually something.

It's a lot harder to imagine nothingness rather than something. Energy cannot be destroyed. We still don't understand consciousness's connection to the body. And nothingness is nothing to fear because you simply would not be there to experience anything. So all in all, death looks quite exciting.
 
You need life and consciousness to be aware of existing. Now theres another debate for another thread, that probably exists 100 times in this forum. Does consciousness exist after death in some form
 
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