Sta.sh
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When discussing religious matters, regardless of the religion, the concepts of death always seems to be the determining factor of why someone believes or not. Most religions have some sort of afterlife, from the ancient Greeks' Hades, to the Heavens and Hells of monotheism, to the endless reincarnations of Buddhism. All of them have one thing in common - They want ones life to continue for eternity.
As I grew up, the first thing I dropped from my list of believes was an afterlife. For some reason, this the concept of an everlasting life after death seemed completely bogus to me. There are obvious reasons; I don't know of anyone that has died and come back to life, nor does anyone else (regardless of what they claim). The whole notion of life after death seems like an irrational mix of contradictions; like "Square circle" or "Everlasting Moment" - how can death and its antithesis, life, exist together? I've lost any belief, and thus the fear of, an afterlife since I was 12. When I went to church with my friends and I hear the pastor preach that those who distance from God would burn in an everlasting hell, it became somewhat of a silly joke. I didn't make myself heard of course, it was still a period of time where I still actively sought approval from others. I didn't really want to get myself shunned by others at that time, because of what I believed; which is something that seemed rather irrelevant and cowardly nowadays.
But personal stories aside, what are your thoughts about life and death? Do you believe in life after death, why?
Answer the following questions:
1) Define what you believe to be "life".
2) Define "death" in the same manner.
3) What are your believes about life, death, and if any possible afterlife. How do you derive meaning from these believes.
4) If you fear death, why? If not, Why? Do you fear non-existence?
5) If you believe in an afterlife, why and do You fear what can happen during that phase? If you do no believe in an afterlife, why?
6) What are your thoughts about what other people believe about the concept of life, death, and afterlife.
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1) Life, at it's bases, is a chemical process. Energy is pour into a living system to counteract the nature of entropy. We eat for this reason; not just to replace or repair what is damaged. Without energy, chaos will ensure in a system and irreversibly destroy it's intricate processes. While a single process can be fixed, because life is a dynamic balance and interaction between the mechanism maintaining that balance and the effects of the balance has on the mechanisms, when this dynamo is destroyed, the living system is irreversibly destroyed. This is of course, just the very basis of life, down the the cellular level.
Of course, I believe life to be much more than just simple mechanisms driving the functions. Although the mechanisms allows us to live, is the the memories, feelings, choices, and personalities that is derived in response to the environment and in response to one's own thoughts that makes a person. I believe, and known to a large extent, that all of these are stored in the electrochemical machinery of the brain. What I am, and my consciousness are a result of the trillions upon trillions of connections of my neurons, and the chemistry that occur at every moment between them.
2) Death would be the opposite - the cease of the chemistry that allows the basic functions of life to occur, the irreversible destruction of the machinery that would allow the chemistry to take place, as well as the inability to rearrange raw material back into the same places that would allow such functions to occur ever again. Since The machinery of life affects the chemistry of life, and vise versa. when one topples, the others do as well.
As for the death of the person, it is the physical degradation of the brain where the physical stores of memory and personality are destroyed. These are complex conditions built over time that is thermodynamically unfavorable. When no energy is poured into this system to maintain order, entropy takes over and the system is irreversibly destroyed. All of what I might call "self" goes when my body goes.
3) My believes about life and death are completely physical and derived from demonstrable facts. I have no notion or believe or concept of an afterlife. Nor it is something I need to make my life meaningful. In fact, the ability to die irreversibly allows my life to have meaning, and can only have any meaning in the long term if death is permanent. When Death is permanent, time during life becomes valuable. What I do and how I do it becomes paramount in the course of my life. Misuse of my limited time have irreversible consequences and thus I have reason to avoid wasting time, doing stupid things, and other activities that waste my life away. Life, of those and of my own, thus becomes valuable, because it is short and rare. Experience becomes exhilarating and meaningful, and people I meet have value.
Nevermind afterlife, even if my life was everlasting, most of the meaningful things I hold dear now would completely lose their importance. Why do X today, when I can do it tomorrow, or any of the infinite number of tomorrows I would have. What value does a close friend have if i could lose him/her, and eventually have the time to find one just life him/her to take the place. Why bother doing good, when I have have infinite chances to start over even if I screwed up today. For these reasons, everything I do have reason because I die permanently.
4) I do not fear death, especially what's after it. I have no rational fear or death, although I have fears of what's to happen just prior to death. I can fear a painful death, but I do not fear death, but rather the pain before it. I can fear dying a hated man, but I don't fear death, but rather fear being hated. I fear a death that would cut short my activities, but I don't fear death, but rather the inability to do what I want before dying. Death, in my mind, is the ultimate end. The end to existence itself. it is the one thing I do not have to fear, because it is by definition nothingness - how can one fear nothing?
I certainly don't fear an afterlife. No one has ever convinced me of an life after death. And the whole concept is, IMO, a bunch of shenanigans made up by fearful people. Since I'm set on that what I am is in my physical body and nowhere else, when I die, my body dies, and I die with it. Without the sensory mechanisms that allow me to detect the world around me, nor the machinery to interpret that information, what is there to fear? When I cannot feel touch, why fear pain? When I cannot see, why fear what is before my eyes? When I cannot hear, how can I fear sounds? In fact, how can I ever fear when the part of the brain that induces fear, the amygdala, doesn't even exist anymore. How can I grasp fear when my frontal cortex of my brain, responsible for thought, doesn't exist. The hole notion of fearing life after death is thus is the one thing I have no fear over. Hell, I fear speaking publicly more than I fear death. Don't get me wrong. It certainly doesn't mean I like dying, I don't. As mentioned, life is only meaningful with death, and although I always wish to have more time, I can only regret dying, and no fear it.
I certainly do no fear non-existence. Aside from the physical impossibilities of how that is, why fear it? There have been billions of years prior to my birth that I did no exist. I don't fear time before birth, then why fear time after death? And if one was to ponder on this deeply, a constant "self" is but an illusion to me. Some of what exists as "me"now didn't exist yesterday or might not tomorrow. Ten years ago, I had a set of believes, hopes, feelings, that I do no have today. What made me what I am then, certainly doesn't exist anymore aside from a handful of choices I force myself to hold over time. Hell, even now, as I write, my thoughts would have changed ever so slightly, rendering what I was a second ago non-existent. How can I fear non-existence when ever moment of my life is made up of parts of me vanishing, and new aspects taking it's place? Change over time is what makes life interesting, it allows me to look back and go "man, I was stupid" or "I went wrong here". If self was constant, this is not possible. Thus I have no fear of non-existence. And besides, it's awfully narcissistic to feel that the universe would somehow become less without me around.
5) I do no believe in an afterlife because I see it as a intangible fantasy that people make up to scare each other and themselves. It is also a feeble attempt at holding onto the ephemeral moment that our life is in the grand scheme of the universe. For no times than once, as afterlife been used to justify and promote ones believes beyond the life that is now, in an attempt to give it a false mystic allure where there is none.
Nevermind an afterlife in the heavens or hells, the only time I've even seen anyone coming back to life was in Zombie movies. Certainly, aside from fantasy, no one has comeback from what I defined as death - the total destruction of the body's physical processes. There is a difference between "legally dead", "medically dead", and "dead-dead". I might believe in an after life, if someone was to rot for months, then stop, and then magically just healed their bodies and got back up to tell me "oh man, the afterlife is far out! There are fine chicks everywhere! I came back just to tell you that!". Even then I would still try to exhaust all natural explanations before jumping into "this guy is the real deal!". As far as I know, no one has done this outside of anime.
6) I share little in common with the majority of people I've met, which are religions or just somewhat superstitious. Death is something they fear, while I only fear life. It is difficult for me, after years of pondering on this issue to get to this conclusion, to understand where they are even coming from sometimes. More often than not, every time someone talks about afterlives, it's to scare me into converting to their religion. Which never made sense to me, why would you want to spread your irrational fear to everyone else? It's like me trying to spread my fear of sponges (trypophobia).
