death

[d63]

Anyway:

more beer, a walk in the fresh air,


then I'll be able to carry out my diabolical plan to take over the world.


(should say "love ya, man!"


but I'm not sure if I'm done yet.

[Selah7+]

What god?

Indeed. It is estimated there may well be millions of planets in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that harbor intelligent life forms. And throughout the universe there may well be billions of civilizations. And all of them will have the capacity no doubt to ask, "why are we here?...what's all this mean?"

And I suspect that every single one of them will insist it is their God [and only their God] to go to for the Answers.

Me, I believe we invent Gods because we can invent them. We are hard-wired to reason why and to connect those dots that sooner or later take us to the biggest "Why?" of all.

Then again why is this hard wired in us at all? Maybe somethings trying to tell us something...or not

But mostly I believe we invent them because it comforts us emotionally and psychologically to imagine death is not the end of life but merely a crossing over into paradise. And that there really is a devine justice in the end. I know this because I once believed it myself.

A pleasent afterlife isn't necessarily tied to worshopping Gods.

In any event, the existence of God has never interested me nearly as much as how folks can bring themselves to actually worship and adore Him as Loving Just and Merciful in this world!

Though, of course, I would too if I could.

So, okay, convince me.

As people have stated before it's highly likely that God isn't really knowable and our conceptions of God are wrong, but that doesn't mean the're "all" wrong.

But i've never had much interest in converting people, i find it more ineresting to state my beliefs and why and have someone else do the same and then allow them to make there own decision on the matter.

Who truly understands God? He IS who He says He IS. It is only the the power of the Holy Spirit that the hearts of men can be converted from their rebellion. We love our sin, it's comfortable to us because it is what we are. We all understand that, even if some of us don't want to admit it. Iambiguous, you walked away from God, He didn't leave you. Stoic, only a relationship with the [Creator of all life] can give you the pleasant afterlife you seek. I will try to convince you, too, but, ultimately, only God can draw you. I will use scripture to back up my responses as much as I possibly can because it is not my words that will convince you, only the Word of God is that powerful. Hebrews 4:12 = "For the Word of God is Living and Active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

[Selah7+]

Robert C. Solomon from "Death Fetishism, Morbid Solipsism" in the anthology Death and Philosophy:


What is seriously wrong about the whole [death is nothing] argument, from the ancients to the New York and Parisian moderns, is that it really evades the poigancy, if not the point, of the question. The question, not 'what is death?' but 'what is my death to me, and why should I fear it?' gets reduced to nothing.

What happens, particularly in the contemporary Anglo-American attempts to argue that 'death is nothing', is that the natural perplexity and confusion surrounding the question is supposedly resolved by 'clarifying the question'. Indeed many philosophers I know would say that the whole business of philosophy is to clarify confusing questions. But some questions cannot and should not be clarified, and this is one of them. What we see here is an analytic philosophers trick: First, eliminate everything that isn't death as such, for example, the pain and suffering of dying, all questions about how one dies, where and with whom, elininate all consideration of future potentialities [since, once dead, the person no longer has any such potentialities], remove the fear of death and any hopes of an afterlife [no matter how conceived] and---Bingo!---there's nothing left. Death is nothing. One would like to say, 'this misses the point', but a 'point' is precisely what is not there. There is rather a network of concerns and confusions, not only about the possibility of an afterlife but about the life that is brought to an end in death.

Why should we fear death? If we start by taking the analytic, reductionist route, we will end up with such a thin concept of death that, by necessity, it will come to nothing. Let's look instead at the equivocation and confusion the question engenders. Looking at death as an event, as a moment, as merely 'the end', belies the place of death in a life. We do not think of our death that way, nor can we, except perhaps as philosophers. Death is bound up with dying and being dead, which in turn are comprehensible only in terms of life and the living of it. It is our concept of ourselves as persons, as students, professors, lovers, husbands, wives, friends, parents, children, grandparents, citizens, authors, authorities, athletes, gourmets, property owners that informs our concept of death. Camus and all of the others are just plain wrong when they suggest that death is the same for all of us. Like Tolstoy's unhappy families, all of us, doomed livers, have our different stories, and it is in terms of these individual stories that death must be understood.


The irony here [for me] is that if you pruchase this anthology you will find any number of essays that seek to analyze death as though it were an element on the Periodic Table. The point seemingly being to grapple with and to name its properties. And then to differentiate it from life as one might differentiate copper from helium.

And yet if you were to interview people about death and dying [their own] you would get reactions that range from abject horror and stark terror to an intense longing to end it all here and now. And, of course, "I will soon be with God".

What then is the philosopher to do when confronted with this? Are some of these people right, while others are wrong? Is there a way to analyze the responses rationally and distill them down to the optimal reaction? Can we know what that is?

Philosophically speaking, there is no such thing as Death. There is only my death and your death and his death and her death. And the extent to which we can communicate this to each other is, to say the least, unimaginably problematic.

What is the point of lving? What is the point of dying? Your guess is as good as mine. But no better. In the end there is just the naked fortuity of having been born...the reality of the life you have...and the inexpressible inevitability of having to die. And like the man said in the movie, you're either busy doing one or the other.

Unless, of course, you just can't quite make up your mind. And that has more or less always been my own story.

Selah= We were created to worship God. Ecclesiastes 12:13&14 = "This is the end of the matter, all has been heard, Fear God and keep His commandments, for THIS is the Whole Duty of Man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil." Death comes to all of us...sometimes unexpectantly. Which side do you find yourself on? There is a remedy for all of us as long as we are still on this side of [death], but after [death], comes the judgment. Isaiah 55:8 = "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways."