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can you live with knowing after death there is nothing

I actually find it very liberating, the fact (well, I believe it to be a fact) that there is no inherent purpose in life, and that there will be no afterlife. It means that what we are left with is like a blank canvas, something completely amorphous, that we are free to impose our own order on. Without God, or Heaven, our existence is like a block of marble that each of us must sculpt into something personally meaningful.

I can only hope for nothing after death. That would be spectacular.
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Is "spectacular" quite the right word? It seems to me to imply the existence of experience, and of a subject- which is obviously not nothing.
 
It would feel like how I seemingly currently think I felt before I was born, complete blackout. There wouldn't be a spectrum of emotions or an active stream of conciousness to percieve.

That is fine by me if that is the case honestly. Moar reality is something I like, though. (I can only think about this, though. I'm not the guy in charge of that one.)

Yerg said:
I actually find it very liberating, the fact (well, I believe it to be a fact) that there is no inherent purpose in life, and that there will be no afterlife. It means that what we are left with is like a blank canvas, something completely amorphous, that we are free to impose our own order on. Without God, or Heaven, our existence is like a block of marble that each of us must sculpt into something personally meaningful.
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The word God had connotations of a garbage can in my head up until recently due to influences of monotheism. (I'm not whining, it did confuse and scare me as a child enough to stress me out though.)

Even if I knew there was some incredibly impressive force behind the contraption of the universe, I would have said it pretty much like that.
 
I could live with death. I don't care what happens after death, I'm just glad we get death and be even gladder when mine gets here.
 
I guess that would be impossible. I am just glad we get to die. I'm looking forward to being dead.
 
all the crap about some sort of afterlife is a construct of man's fear .
you die, your carcass rots and what's to discuss, ponder or construct superstitious woo woo about .

do something well in this single life that we have .
 
hobhead said:
all the crap about some sort of afterlife is a construct of man's fear .
you die, your carcass rots and what's to discuss, ponder or construct superstitious woo woo about .

do something well in this single life that we have .
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Yeah, people who ponder on a subject for a bit NEVER do productive things in their life! :D
 
hobhead said:
all the crap about some sort of afterlife is a construct of man's fear .
you die, your carcass rots and what's to discuss, ponder or construct superstitious woo woo about .

do something well in this single life that we have .
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i personally fear eternity. its hard to comprehend non-existence though, not that its a bad thing.

i don't think being productive really means anything, happiness should be all that matters (unless the product is too a better world, i guess.)
though if productivity makes you happy then it should matter to the person that it does.
 
^

It's not too hard to comprehend non-existence. Because before existence you had to previously not exist. non-existence, existence, non-existence.
 
And when we die
Oh, will we be
That disappointed
Or sad
If heaven doesn't exist
What will we have missed
This life is the best we've ever had
 
I don't think there is a afterlife of any sort. I do not believe in heaven, hell, god nor the devil. I think that once we die that is the end of it. This is most of the reason why i think we should live life to the fullest as if we would be gone tomorrow.
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
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.
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I definitely understand what you mean when you say that you can't relate to others with radically different spiritual perspectives. Bonds with people are so much deeper if you've got a common spiritual ground.

And I don't think anybody should be "ready" to accept that idea -- there's simply no point. Once you say that life is an incidental fluke, there's no definition for "right" and "wrong", there's no basis for will, or action, and everything falls apart...

However, just because something has a clear beginning and an end, it's not necessarily meaningless. I sometimes think of reality as a single faceted crystal -- perfect, and finite.

MyDoorsAreOpen said:
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?
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Definitely in full agreement here. Not mutually exclusive in any way. But, I perceived you to imply that one could not exist without the other -- mutual inclusivity rather than exclusivity. That if you didn't place value in the after- (or "outer-", perhaps more accurately) life, value couldn't be found in the present. Which I was attempting to argue against. :)
 
Here's my position:

Is there life after death? Do you go somewhere when you die? No, both of these imply moving forward in time, which can only happen within the confines of a particular universe. If you try to track a consciousness forward in time, it will eventually lead you to a grave.

Does that mean our consciousness is extinguished at death? No, our consciousness is just a pattern of information, a class of algorithms that we can roughly identify with and which could exist in any interesting universe. Consider the first 1000000000 digits of pi, would they cease to exist if we forgot them forever?

I don't look forward to anything after death. I do believe that what I identify as my consciousness is independent of it's existence in this universe. I don't know whether to be comforted or terrified by this belief.
 
the worst possible scenario after life for me is that idea that I retain my consciousness (thinking self), but am entirely alone in matterless, dark (or light) place for an eternity.

i'd rather some form of hell where at least I'd feel something.
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You'd rather experience unthinkable pain and suffering than nothing at all?
 
The Great Nothingness. I really hope it does exist before birth and after death. I was really happy in 1839, thank you.
 
My take is that you can't exactly plan for something that no one understands, so you may as well enjoy your time here as much as you can. After that all one can do is to take it one step at a time. If that next step is missing, then so be it. That's out of our hands anyway.
 
Sweet P said:
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. :)
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Yup, I agree Sweet P. My parents beleive in afterlife and are very positive people, and say all the usual stuff like "make the most of life while you can, etc". Well why do you have to absolutely make the most of everything if you're coming back then, ha. I am open to some spiritual beleifs, but I have no reason to beleive I have been here before, so why would I be here again. I beleive you don't choose your birth and don't choose your death (unless you do so yourself of course). I also actually find it more comforting to beleive nothing after death. In the very back of my mind I always know there is a way out if needed one day.
 
Yerg said:
You'd rather experience unthinkable pain and suffering than nothing at all?
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Personally, I would answer this question in saying that, yes, being alive and suffering even to the most extreme degree is preferable to death. The claim that nonexistence is preferable to a suffering existence is equivalent to the claim that a suffering existence is actually a destructive presence. Human beings tend to view suffering as destructive, because it is generally correlated with destruction (injury to the body, injury to welfare in general) -- but death is the ultimate injury to body and mind.


Which is why I find it odd that there is a constant attempt to revise capital punishment methods to reflect more "humane" means of murder. Making an effort to avoid suffering in the total and complete destruction of someone's physical being seems rather silly IMHO.
 
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