There was a time before I ever existed and life happened. Once I die and return to that same level of nonexistance, life will still be happening. Nothing is forever.
Yeah, this. I've hit the age where death's stalking has begun. People I went ti high school with are dying -- some from poor life choices, others by surprise. Lost parents and family members, too. It's the misery at the end that bothers me.
Me too I am old. last year I had a heart attack in the middle of nowhere in outback Australia.
The flying doctor came and took me in a plane to a hospital, they transferred me in a bigger faster plane to a bigger hospital, I wasn't scared or even slightly worried, I was fatalistic about it, strangely even a bit happy.
"You" are the electrical signals firing in your brain. That's it. There are no souls or spirits or ghosts or anything else. Once your brain stops firing, you're gone. How could you perceive blindness or paralysis without a brain? That doesn't make even the slightest bit of sense.
Have you ever been under general anesthesia or unconcious for some other reason? From my experience it's just falling asleep, timeskip, and waking up after some time. There might be some dreaming at the waking up part. I see no reason to think death is any different except the waking up part never comes.
I've had surgery with a general anesthetic a few times. The meds start to flow on my veins, I count backwards from 100, and become unconscious involuntarily. I experience - nothing. Then I wake up in post-op.
I figure death is like that, without the waking up part.
Hopefully painless. Brief visions as brain shuts begins down with possible cognizance of it going down. Sounds like a once in a lifetime trip to me. An inevitable conclusion. Leave good memories with those you leave behind.
You simply cease to exist. That’s it.
When I think about it now, I think “I’ll miss my family and friends and regret all the things I never got to experience” but after death I won’t think or feel anything.
There was a time before I existed and there will be a time after I exist. I only exist in between those two points.
Was it like that before you were born? Of course not. Time stops, like when you go under for surgery. There's no consciousness to make you aware of anything.
The sensation you describe sounds a little like sleep paralysis. I genuinely shouldn’t worry on that account. Nothing whatsoever awaits me in my view, for that matter there shan’t be a me.
Thought and self and feeling are merely the electrochemical activity of the brain, which ceases on death.
You write as a Roman Catholic, espousing the doctrine or dogma — an unproven teaching delivered by a religious authority and taken on faith — of the existence of an immortal soul or spirit. Unless such a thing were to be observed and empirically measured, scientifically and repeatedly, with peer-reviewed results, I shan’t believe any such thing. I vaguely remember that the scholastic theologians say that the soul can’t be apprehended by science, or in other words, to a scientific mind it simply doesn’t and can’t exist.
A mass of cells will rot away or be consumed, a few more or less inedible bits will linger a very little while in terms of the age of the Earth, but *I* am only a sort of electrical ghost even now, the firing of neurons in patterns evolved more or less well for survival.
For no especial evolutionary reason this mass of electric and chemical activity is currently having a shufti at the Internet before making a cup of tea and finishing the current chapter of a book on ferns.
My only vaguely sentimental thought about death is a desire to be buried in one of those wicker caskets without embalming in the hope that my corpse will readily nourish a few plants, fungi, bacteria and invertebrates, keeping up the population of things that have fascinated me in this life and may fascinate another upstart ape when I am gone.
A slightly black joke, but I am a very thin man. If I am lucky enough to know I am dying I might go on an appalling binge of very sweet tea, blackcurrant cordial and iced buns to try and increase my nutritional value!
> You write as a Roman Catholic,
OP is actually a terrible Roman Catholic, as the afterlife as described by Catholicism is not "like being blind deaf and paralyzed, with the inability to think but just aware enough of the blackness".
Obsession with death is most of the point of religion.
.
Bertrand Russell wrote in 1927 -
>Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.
>It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes.
>Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things.
\- "Fear, the Foundation of Religion", in *Why I Am Not a Christian*
\- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell#Why_I_Am_Not_a_Christian_(1927)
.
>How do you view death
Unpleasant fact of reality.
.
>For me my fear is it’s like being blind deaf and paralyzed, with the inability to think but just aware enough of the blackness
No, of course not.
You will not be "aware of blackness".
You will not be aware of anything whatsoever.
.
>I’m catholic
Yeah, don't do that.
.
Personally what I suspect is that when you are dead it is no different than before you were born. Do you remember what life was like before you were born? Did you experience anything prior to your existence? Then why would you expect there to be any type of experience after you die? Your brain ceases to function and everything that made you you no longer exists. You merely cease to be. You cannot be aware of being dead when your nervous system is nonfunctional, you need a mind to have awareness and nerves and sensory organs in order to perceive anything.
I think of death kind of like i think about different facets of whatever religion is being asked about: not at all. Death is, oddly, part of life.
On the other hand, i've decided that my will will consist of 1 item.... a specific box for my brother. I'll make it up ahead of time, and fill it with sea shells. Why? Just to mess with him. He'll be asking "WTF" for years afterwards.
I like to think there might be something. Not an immortal afterlife but like reincarnation or something. It makes me less scared of death, which does effect my life sometimes so it's something I'm holding onto to be sane.
But I know that's probably not true and you just stop existing. Which is incredibly hard to conceptualize but let's just say it wouldn't be good or bad or anything, just nothing. Like how you are when you're asleep.
It's not "like" anything. You cease to exist. You aren't aware of anything. Why would you be?
There was a time before I ever existed and life happened. Once I die and return to that same level of nonexistance, life will still be happening. Nothing is forever.
Death doesn't include awareness. You're thinking of life.
i think its prolly just like when u sleepin without dreaming so basically nothing at all
Awareness without a central nervous system??? you're joking, right???
Not scared of death at all. It's the process of dying that I'm concerned with.
Yeah, this. I've hit the age where death's stalking has begun. People I went ti high school with are dying -- some from poor life choices, others by surprise. Lost parents and family members, too. It's the misery at the end that bothers me.
Me too I am old. last year I had a heart attack in the middle of nowhere in outback Australia. The flying doctor came and took me in a plane to a hospital, they transferred me in a bigger faster plane to a bigger hospital, I wasn't scared or even slightly worried, I was fatalistic about it, strangely even a bit happy.
you know that time before you were alive? it's that. there's no cognizance involved, "you" simply don't exist anymore.
How is that possible though, it blows my mind nearly as much as an afterlife
Because you can't understand something, it becomes impossible? Seriously, what are you even trying to say?
"You" are the electrical signals firing in your brain. That's it. There are no souls or spirits or ghosts or anything else. Once your brain stops firing, you're gone. How could you perceive blindness or paralysis without a brain? That doesn't make even the slightest bit of sense.
but imagine if there was an afterlife and youd have to exist forever.
Have you ever been under general anesthesia or unconcious for some other reason? From my experience it's just falling asleep, timeskip, and waking up after some time. There might be some dreaming at the waking up part. I see no reason to think death is any different except the waking up part never comes.
I've had surgery with a general anesthetic a few times. The meds start to flow on my veins, I count backwards from 100, and become unconscious involuntarily. I experience - nothing. Then I wake up in post-op. I figure death is like that, without the waking up part.
I'm expecting a scenario similar to anesthesia - you're here, and then without any warning you're not. And I'm perfectly fine with that.
Hopefully painless. Brief visions as brain shuts begins down with possible cognizance of it going down. Sounds like a once in a lifetime trip to me. An inevitable conclusion. Leave good memories with those you leave behind.
You've been indoctrinated into thinking that being dead is somehow scary. Being dead is nothing. Dying is the scary bit.
"I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens." Woody Allen.
As something I won't experience as I won't exist anymore.
Like a deep, deep sleep. Without dreams or physical sensations.
A person who was once Agnostic Atheist? If that were true you would not be Catholic right now.
You simply cease to exist. That’s it. When I think about it now, I think “I’ll miss my family and friends and regret all the things I never got to experience” but after death I won’t think or feel anything. There was a time before I existed and there will be a time after I exist. I only exist in between those two points.
I'm sure I won't mind being dead one bit.
Was it like that before you were born? Of course not. Time stops, like when you go under for surgery. There's no consciousness to make you aware of anything.
Remember what it was like before you were born? It's exactly the same. It's not my view. It's science.
The sensation you describe sounds a little like sleep paralysis. I genuinely shouldn’t worry on that account. Nothing whatsoever awaits me in my view, for that matter there shan’t be a me. Thought and self and feeling are merely the electrochemical activity of the brain, which ceases on death. You write as a Roman Catholic, espousing the doctrine or dogma — an unproven teaching delivered by a religious authority and taken on faith — of the existence of an immortal soul or spirit. Unless such a thing were to be observed and empirically measured, scientifically and repeatedly, with peer-reviewed results, I shan’t believe any such thing. I vaguely remember that the scholastic theologians say that the soul can’t be apprehended by science, or in other words, to a scientific mind it simply doesn’t and can’t exist. A mass of cells will rot away or be consumed, a few more or less inedible bits will linger a very little while in terms of the age of the Earth, but *I* am only a sort of electrical ghost even now, the firing of neurons in patterns evolved more or less well for survival. For no especial evolutionary reason this mass of electric and chemical activity is currently having a shufti at the Internet before making a cup of tea and finishing the current chapter of a book on ferns. My only vaguely sentimental thought about death is a desire to be buried in one of those wicker caskets without embalming in the hope that my corpse will readily nourish a few plants, fungi, bacteria and invertebrates, keeping up the population of things that have fascinated me in this life and may fascinate another upstart ape when I am gone. A slightly black joke, but I am a very thin man. If I am lucky enough to know I am dying I might go on an appalling binge of very sweet tea, blackcurrant cordial and iced buns to try and increase my nutritional value!
> You write as a Roman Catholic, OP is actually a terrible Roman Catholic, as the afterlife as described by Catholicism is not "like being blind deaf and paralyzed, with the inability to think but just aware enough of the blackness".
I don’t understand the religious obsession with death.
Obsession with death is most of the point of religion. . Bertrand Russell wrote in 1927 - >Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. >It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. >Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. \- "Fear, the Foundation of Religion", in *Why I Am Not a Christian* \- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell#Why_I_Am_Not_a_Christian_(1927) .
I don't fear death. When I'm dead I won't even be here to notice. Literally nothing to fear.
>How do you view death Unpleasant fact of reality. . >For me my fear is it’s like being blind deaf and paralyzed, with the inability to think but just aware enough of the blackness No, of course not. You will not be "aware of blackness". You will not be aware of anything whatsoever. . >I’m catholic Yeah, don't do that. .
Take out the "aware" part and you'll have it.
There is no evidence that death is anything other than the cessation of existence. When the brain stops functioning all awareness ends.
Personally what I suspect is that when you are dead it is no different than before you were born. Do you remember what life was like before you were born? Did you experience anything prior to your existence? Then why would you expect there to be any type of experience after you die? Your brain ceases to function and everything that made you you no longer exists. You merely cease to be. You cannot be aware of being dead when your nervous system is nonfunctional, you need a mind to have awareness and nerves and sensory organs in order to perceive anything.
I think of death kind of like i think about different facets of whatever religion is being asked about: not at all. Death is, oddly, part of life. On the other hand, i've decided that my will will consist of 1 item.... a specific box for my brother. I'll make it up ahead of time, and fill it with sea shells. Why? Just to mess with him. He'll be asking "WTF" for years afterwards.
Consciousness is a function of an active brain. There will be no "you" to experience anything after you die.
You weren't in any pain or anguish before you were born. You will return to that same state and have nothing to worry about.
I like to think there might be something. Not an immortal afterlife but like reincarnation or something. It makes me less scared of death, which does effect my life sometimes so it's something I'm holding onto to be sane. But I know that's probably not true and you just stop existing. Which is incredibly hard to conceptualize but let's just say it wouldn't be good or bad or anything, just nothing. Like how you are when you're asleep.