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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2013 14:04:29 GMT -5
I'm certainly not a particularly spiritual person - I'll leave that to Don  - but as I get older I get to wondering. I've stated many times that I'm ready to go anytime and I've meant that. My wife gets upset with me when I say that but it's true. If I were to get ALS or some other type of debilitating disease that could take years to kill me, I'd do it myself quickly. I have no intention of lingering and dragging down the family. So I was wondering what it felt like to be dead. Stop and think about it. You're essentially dead when you sleep. Aside from dreams and nightmares, you don't know or feel anything. Is that what death is like? How would you know? |
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Post by Sir John on Jan 9, 2013 15:07:13 GMT -5
To BE dead??
I had this discussion way back when I was a teenager, and moving rapidly towards atheism.
We decided that the best word for it was 'oblivion'. Total, dreamless, sleep, forever. There is NO 'feeling' involved in the situation.
We are not different to any other living creature on this planet, and when we die we ROT! simple as that. In a few years we are just bones in the ground, and in a generation or so we are even forgotten by family, or maybe just a genealogist or two.
JMO
SJ
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Post by Swampy on Jan 9, 2013 19:30:20 GMT -5
I've read of two versions - one group says they saw and felt nothing, and the other says they were floating above and saw their own bodies.
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Post by Sir John on Jan 9, 2013 20:42:05 GMT -5
I think that is the event and process of dying.
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Post by dontom on Jan 10, 2013 0:02:59 GMT -5
I'm certainly not a particularly spiritual person - I'll leave that to Don - but as I get older I get to wondering. I've stated many times that I'm ready to go anytime and I've meant that. My wife gets upset with me when I say that but it's true. If I were to get ALS or some other type of debilitating disease that could take years to kill me, I'd do it myself quickly. I have no intention of lingering and dragging down the family. So I was wondering what it felt like to be dead. Stop and think about it. You're essentially dead when you sleep. Aside from dreams and nightmares, you don't know or feel anything. Is that what death is like? How would you know?
I am a VERY BIG supporter of Dr. Kevorkian. IMO, we need thousands more Kevorkians.
"Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good."
--William Mitford
"Death--the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening."
--Walter Scott
-Don Quoteman
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Post by dontom on Jan 10, 2013 0:15:52 GMT -5
I've read of two versions - one group says they saw and felt nothing, and the other says they were floating above and saw their own bodies.
They installed a sign, facing up, in large letters, that only a couple of people knows what it says. Many have said they floated well above the sign and claimed could clearly see everything (not even knowing there was a word above this object). When such people are asked about the sign, not a single one was able to say what it said, yet they all claimed they could clearly see everything going on in the room from above that point.
I saw this on TV several years ago on a documentary about life after life. Seems no real evidence.
However, think about this. . .
Time is infinite, right?
Can somebody please tell me the mathematical odds of us being alive right now, or even for this year or 90 years or whatever?
-Don- |
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Post by dontom on Jan 10, 2013 0:36:06 GMT -5
I'm certainly not a particularly spiritual person - I'll leave that to Don - but as I get older I get to wondering. I've stated many times that I'm ready to go anytime and I've meant that. My wife gets upset with me when I say that but it's true.
"I don't care, you may flush them down the toilet".
She got very upset with that.
BTW, Tom and I went to his wedding in 1975 (well before he had <CLL> leukemia). They married in their own back yard, them both agreeing that it would have nothing to do with any god being mentioned.
Mark was an atheist. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. I consider myself agnostic about how many gods exist but pure atheist with the countless religions man has dreamed up over the years. Or any of the gods in any of those regions. I think of believing in a religion as some type of very common mental or emotional illness. Not that I believe myself or anybody else is perfect.
BTW, I can't say if Mark is still an atheist. RIP Mark.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
- Joe Ancis
"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."
--Clarence Darrow-Don Quoteman
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Post by bluejay77 on Jan 10, 2013 5:31:53 GMT -5
I've read of two versions - one group says they saw and felt nothing, and the other says they were floating above and saw their own bodies.
They installed a sign, facing up, in large letters, that only a couple of people knows what it says. Many have said they floated well above the sign and claimed could clearly see everything (not even knowing there was a word above this object). When such people are asked about the sign, not a single one was able to say what it said, yet they all claimed they could clearly see everything going on in the room from above that point.
I saw this on TV several years ago on a documentary about life after life. Seems no real evidence.
However, think about this. . .
Time is infinite, right?
Can somebody please tell me the mathematical odds of us being alive right now, or even for this year or 90 years or whatever?
-Don- No, to the knowledge of modern physics time is not infinite. Theoretical physics says that time started 13.7 plus/minus 0.2 billion years ago with the Big Bang, according to the most modern astrophysical theories. What the future of time will be, physicists do not know. It depends on points such as the curvature of the universe. |
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Post by bluejay77 on Jan 10, 2013 5:40:25 GMT -5
As to how it feels to be dead -- I think that after Douglas Hofstadter we perhaps should unask the question. Hofstadter is one of my favourite authors, and he is uncannily fond of Zen philosophy.
After the individual is truly dead, there is no one there to feel anything. So no deed, act of feeling anything at all happens. It is like asking, how a computer program will behave after termination.
Perhaps we should simply answer to the question that it does not feel anything at all to be dead. A slight consolation is that one will not suffer, and there is no one there to feel very, very bad and depressed about having died.
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Post by dontom on Jan 10, 2013 8:30:47 GMT -5
No, to the knowledge of modern physics time is not infinite. Theoretical physics says that time started 13.7 plus/minus 0.2 billion years ago with the Big Bang, according to the most modern astrophysical theories. What the future of time will be, physicists do not know. It depends on points such as the curvature of the universe.
"A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future."
IOW, if there are no "events" there is no time.
But otherwise, I don't buy that time can be all that complicated. IMAO, time was here for an infinite time even before the Big Bang. IMO, before any matter existed there was time. Before any events, there was time, Before any anything, there was time. At least that's the way I will continue to see it until well proven otherwise and I doubt that will happen in my lifetime. And I mean proved in such a way that even I can understand it. ;D ;D
Besides that, figure the odds of us being alive now, even within the limited amount of time you speak of. Then mathematical odds of us being alive right now are almost zero anyway. Unless we've been alive many times before that we cannot remember. IMO, life is impossible no matter how we look at it, but here we are. The only thing I can think of that's less likely to exist than human life is a god.
-Don- SSF, CA |
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Post by dontom on Jan 10, 2013 8:35:29 GMT -5
It is like asking, how a computer program will behave after termination.
-Don- [/size] |
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- but as I get older I get to wondering. I've stated many times that I'm ready to go anytime and I've meant that. My wife gets upset with me when I say that but it's true. If I were to get ALS or some other type of debilitating disease that could take years to kill me, I'd do it myself quickly. I have no intention of lingering and dragging down the family. 
