Yes but you know what I mean don't you? Our very personalities, I figure I'm still the same person I was last year, albeit with a few minor differences.

Oh, but that's easy...


...make his life worse than death. Duh.

Yep. And that's what I fear more than death - That my quality life has the potential to get as terrible as that.

I say as I spend most of my time sitting infront of the PC, don't eat properly and only exercise for about 2-3 hours every week on average... lol. Gotta look after myself better.

It's funny to think that while people debate the whole "grandfather's axe" idea of an object being the same thing despite containing none of it's original parts, it's something that happens to us that often.

I've always believed that after death there is nothing. So people saying that they fear it because it will be just void, are somewhat stupid, you don't have conciousness, it's just like being asleep, but it's a bit harder to wake you up.

On the other hand, I believe in the possibillity of alternate universes, therefore, even though it is immensely unlikely, I suppose there couls be... some sort of, heaven-type thing, by that I mean that when you die, your conciousness is wiped (of memories), and restored into a new universe. Call me mental, but it's a possibillity.

Also, for the record, I'd like to say now that I don't believe in any God, the concept is severely illogical.

If there was a heaven/hell thing (and there isn't), I would hate it. Think of all the people who have died (and animals) since day dot, it would be crowded as hell. Also I'd prefer to stay away from passed relatives. I have trouble talking to people now, so that would be awkward.

Finally, I want to say that death scares me in no way either, what scares me is how I will die, because like I said, after death, there is no conciousness, just a rotting corpse. I just hope to god that I don't drown.

I gave up believing you had anything interesting to say and stopped reading here.

Wow

Me too, same word and everything.

Sometimes death scares me, othertimes it doesn't. More worried about dying unfullfilled, I'd be extremely unhappy to die now, yet also strangely relieved. If it was for a worthy cause like saving a child or friend, I'd go knowing that I mattered. I'm disturbed to realise than in recent months my fantasies have changed from acheiving success to recklessly risking my life and not always coming out on top.

I've heard of no afterlives that are remotely enticing, except for one proposed by a friend in which she and I travel the universe in the TARDIS. It ticks all the right boxes.

What about living eternally as a sexless skeleton with Mictlantecuhtli?

Even though it's really scary to think of...nothing. :fuzconf: I agree with you. It's the most logical opinion. But how do we know? If there is something after death, we'll just have to wait and see won't we :p

...right.

I just wanna say.... Death is most likely not like being asleep.

I'll assume death is like being asleep. It may be an endless dream, you never know.

I hope so. Many times I'm having a great dream only to be woken up by an alarm clock. Or, having a nightmare where you can't wake up. Guess it's a double-edged sword in the end.

How can you dream when your brain rots?

In death you're not even doing nothing. You're just dead. That's why they call it death.

If you think death is like a big sleep and you take the piss out of theists for believing in something calming and pleasant after death... well then I have bad news for you.

I don't disregard life after death. Heaven and hell is too black and white for me. Should it be true, I'd say 80% or so of the human race is in hell. Commit one bad deed and be condemned to an eternity of torture? Uh...

Also, I said I assumed so. But Phylum pointing out about the brain-rotting makes that unlikely. I guess I'll go back to believing your life will just restart, hence the deja vu people sometimes experience.

Oh I wasn't refering to you specifically.

I also have no problem with believing in life after death, I'm just unable to because I lack faith in anything without two eyes, a uniform standard of between two and three holes and a physical brain.

Am I the only one who gets what Nepsotic is saying? It's like being asleep in that you're unconscious and not experiencing the external world or - if you're not dreaming/don't remember your dreams - internal mind.

And MA, honestly, you're supposed to be British. You're supposed to be fluent in understatement.

Sleep is defined by dreaming and/or waking up. Death presumably entails neither, so I honestly can't see any similarity whatsoever.

No, it's defined by being unconscious. Sure there may be brain activity, but since at least some people (including me) do not either consciously experience it or remember it, what's the difference for those people? The point is: there isn't an experience of void, there is no experience.

And we only know about it because we wake up. Sleep feels instantaneous inside the mind without dreams. It's nothing like what death will be like because we won't dream and we won't wake.

Is it still sleep when the physical brain has rotted away? I don't think something that isn't there can be doing things.

Fixed that for you, because you're starting to argue Nepsotic's point while pretending to argue the opposite. Because we won't wake up, there will, just like dreamless sleep, be no experience.

I don't think anyone's trying to literally say the two are the same. The point is the experience of the two are comparable, in that there is none.

That's incoherent.

Explain.

I don't really know what you're arguing for anymore.

I mean, my argument is simply that our experience of death will not resemble our experience of dreamless sleep because our experience of dreamless sleep is wholly interpretated upon waking. Dreamless sleep is characterized by a lack of experience, yes, but that lack of experience is defined by the lack, as black is defined by white. Death won't be some comfortable nostalgic feeling we have a fleeting recollection of because we'll never again be in a position of experience to interpret it.

Dreamless sleep is the temporary loss of experience, death is the cessation of all experience. And that's why it terrifies me. That's why I can't understand why it wouldn't terrify anyone else.

Thank you, I see what you're saying now. But I still don't see how that contradicts Nepsotic's point. We're not saying that experiencing the state of death feels like when we try to reflect on our sleep. We're saying it's like the state of experience-less sleep itself.

The main difference is that, for the majority of most people's lives, we know we stand a good chance of regaining consciousness after a period of sleep.

Well, my point was mainly to show that Nespotic is stupid for thinking other people are stupid for fearing death, that his analogy shows we should be more terrified of death rather than less.

I guess the mix up happened because I'm not generally very good at seeing the big picture in debates and end up arguing with what's directly in front of my face.

Oops.

I've heard people describe death like being in a dark room forever. The first time I heard someone say that was also the last day I had faith in humanity. I was 10 and I could see how fucking stupid it was.

Ah yes. I'd forgotten that part of his argument. On that count I agree with you entirely.