Intellectual Justifications -- accepting death

What are some intellectual justifications for death?

The following explanations for what happens after death are well thought out. While religious answers to the afterlife question are common, more intellectual metaphysical explanations are instructive in understanding how humans face likely death.

Certain explanations can be quite ingenious, yet all seem impossible in light of a determined universe. Nevertheless, I've chosen to research how a few objective philosophers answer the dilemma.

For most, contemplation of death is easily dismissed and avoided in everyday life. Electronic gadgets, food, instant communication, and a myriad other distractions provide our mind a quick out from the dilemma of thinking about life and death. However, there are groups that take it upon themselves to discuss the prospect of death with amazing clarity and depth. One such group has sprung up from the voluminous writings of Ayn Rand, called the Objectivist Center. The following is my paraphrasing and clipping from an article which may be found HERE. I hope this provides the reader with a few insights into rational minds, yet deeply troubling in that they look at death as inevitable.

Let's start with Ayn Rand... Host Tom Snyder during his 1979 television show mentioned to Ayn Rand how he took comfort in the idea that people enter an eternal realm after death, "that we're not just corpses in graves when we die." Rand's rejoinder: "But we aren't corpses in graves. We are not there. Don't you understand that when this life is finished, you're not there to say, 'Oh, how terrible that I'm a corpse'?"

Also, when Ayn Rand appeared on The Phil Donahue Show in 1980, Donahue asked her whether, given the death of her husband, she hoped for a reunion with him in an afterlife. "I've asked myself just that," she replied, "seriously. And I thought if I really believed that for five minutes, I'd commit suicide immediately… to get to him."


Ayn Rand
Feb 2, 1905 -- Mar 6, 1982
http://www.aynrand.org/

Todd Goldberg, an Any Rand supporter concurs: "Death can't be a bad experience, because it's a void, a non-experience."

Similarly, Will Thomas says, "I am with Rand in thinking that death is not a state we enter. We aren't there when we are dead, so we cannot prepare for it—only for its consequences for our loved ones and important projects. We prepare for unexpected death simply by living well and without regret." Can a rational philosophy help us do that? "Objectivism allows one to face death clear-eyed and make the most of the time one has left. But because it recognizes that we have only the here and now, it doesn't make any less of the loss that death is."

Two Ways to View Death

"I think of death from two different perspectives that are not always easy to integrate," says . "From one perspective, life and death are opposites, posing an alternative we face on an ongoing basis. This is a familiar perspective to Objectivists because our entire moral code is based on this alternative. From this perspective, we see death as a disvalue, a threat we confront in the form of the risk of illness or accidents that can kill us. If you value life, death represents the ultimate failure. From another perspective, however, death is a part of life. We all know we will die at some point, no matter how rational, productive, virtuous, or fortunate we are. In this sense, death cannot be considered a failure, unless and until we discover some way to extend the lifespan indefinitely. Most people, Objectivist or not, seem to integrate these two aspects of death perfectly well in a practical sense. We try to avoid dying before our time by minimizing risks [Perspective #1], but we also prepare for the time we know is coming [Perspective #2]. The harder task is integration at the emotional level. How can the love of life that is so characteristic of Rand's heroes, and that we seek to cultivate in ourselves, accommodate the acceptance of death as an inevitable fact?"

It's interesting to note, that many psychosomatic and psychological problems stem from the fear of death... while it's impossible to know for sure how many suffer from this problem.. Nathaniel Branden addresses this fear of death in his book Honoring the Self: The Psychology of Confidence and Respect, in a chapter entitled "Death Anxiety." Branden suggest that patients 'face their fears' and accept death as a part of life.


With a Ph.D. in psychology and a background in philosophy, Nathaniel Branden is a practicing psychotherapist in Los Angeles
http://www.nathaniel...net/fs/new.html

Again, in his book Honoring the Self, Branden writes, "I do my best to stay connected to my mortality and that of those I love, and I find that it is not a morbid thought, but an enriching one. It is an awareness that increases my appreciation of the preciousness of life. If we are to live fully in the present, we need the context of our mortality. We need to remember that we do not have unlimited time. The ticking of the clock is not a tragedy. It is essential to the meaning and excitement of life, to the intensity of love—indeed, to the intensity of any joy. The glory life is inseparable from the fact that it is finite."

What's probably more facisinating is Branden's explantion of why he does not want to sign up for cryonics: "Quite a few people have tried to get me interested in cryonics over the years, but it's never interested or tempted me. I don't know whether it's scientifically valid or not, but the whole project is not one that arouses my interest. I'd like to live a long, long time, but once I'm dead, don't bring me back. I want undisturbed rest. No wake-up calls."

Objectivism offers a sound philosophy of life. It also contains the potential for someone to provide an objective perspective for taking the prospect of immortality seriously, one that provides inspiration for taking up the quest for immortality.

It wasn't so long ago that the promise of technology to make this quest a neverending one was absent. That's an observation, not an excuse. A stubborn resistance to the pursuit of immortality (even among Objectivists) is an utterly fascinating topic.

Too many people today expect to go somewhere when they die. They have no incentive to take the prospect of immortality seriously, no incentive to examine advances in technology in light of the quest for immortality. That must change.

Relatively little pockets of activity dotting the cultural landscape in the modern world (via extropy, transhumanism, immortalism, the singularity) are not good enough. Against the current of history in the present, they are but specks of hope in a rising tide of change.

If religion and ideology are not challenged and corrected at its roots, we are all headed for oblivion.

I find world religion interesting because so many people are drastically influenced by it rather than reasoning that much it might be fiction; a practical joke and a prank for Christ's sake, and the best one ever (with the exception of Discordianism). Religion has caused a lot of followers and apathetic secularism. The truth is that we don't KNOW diddly squat about what happens when we die. Lot of people here are atheists, but are not our bodies more than mere raiment. Do we not exist, purely exist, and permanently, whether we like it or not? Is empty space existent? Only It knows. I made Itism as a mere theory mind you about the nature of the fabric of existence and as a leap to more intelligent religion. It solved a lot of confusion and fear for me. Maybe death is a higher state of evolution: becoming the earth or even the universe. Corpses do become earthen. We don't KNOW if the psyche lives on or not. We don't KNOW that the brain and body is the only conscious self-being, and not the entropic compost it becomes. Humans are very vain to think that they are the only conscious and thinking being. Why, trees and bugs and dirt are in some ways more intelligent than us because they are harmonious about nature. And the beforelife, well that was the parents, and who knows if the big bang was the beginning of everything or whether everything is eternal. Remember, just yesterday the sun revolved around the earth and the day before that the earth was flat. I don't know with any certainty the truth about life, the universe, and everything, which is why everything, even science, is taken on faith. Unlike many here, immortalism is not something I look to as a realistic ideal, though life extension is a terrific goal.

It be with you.
-Tav

Edited by Tav, 21 May 2003 - 01:06 AM.

Hi Tav,

Immortalism is the path (the ideal), life extension is the way (the realistic expression).

I do consider atheism to be a faith, because it does represent a dogma.

"Intelligent Religion" - nice oxymoron True intelligence is the ability to give up all dogma, not to create new ones.

Trees, bugs, and dirt, have far less organizational complexity than a human being, and therefore have far less information flow than a human. Harmoniousness has never been a definition for intelligence and humans are a part of nature, so we are by definition harmonious with it, we are one with it. Disharmony would imply we are outside of the system of nature, which we are not. Suggesting that less complex organisms are more inline with the "plan" of nature is like suggesting that quarks are more harmonious with nature and are more "intelligent" than protons and neutrons. Locally, we are the most intelligent system around, but that won't last forever

Science is never taken on faith, at least not by scientists. The heart of scientific thinking is being able to say I don't know and to constantly question all of your assumptions. Science is an anti-faith. Dogmatic clinging to earlier scientific models for any particular system is not science, it is just human stubborness.

Best,
Peter

Yeah. Well our intelligence may be our demise unless we get smart enough to do a fast cure on the pollution of industry. I'm keeping Itism filed on the internet despite your opinion. Maybe It'll convert a few of them Christian and Muslim heathens.

Edited by Tav, 21 May 2003 - 04:38 AM.

I think that the only possible intellectual justification for death is that the whole population of the world is one huge organism and that is what we should be trying to help live longer and more healthily. The ordinary person you ask is so deprived in terms of what I like to call "fundamental thinking" just makes up something like God or similar. I don't know what causes this, are they afraid to think... but why? Maybe we should make a list of all the possible reasons.

Interesting idea, explaining death. I have a theory. I've probably expressed the theory elsewhere, but I like it so much I'm going to do it again! So there! [tung]

E=mcsquared suggests to me that our concepts of time and our passage through it are connected to our pysical mass.

While we are physically alive and have a mass, we travel through time at a particular 'speed'. We can therefore communicate and interact with others who are travelling at this same 'speed'. This communication includes talking to others and stubbing toes on rocks. (Stubbing the toe on a rock isn't really communicating with it in a human sense, but on a physical level, we have interacted!) Its a bit like the fact that those travelling by foot have a hard time communicating with those travelling at light speed.

But when we die, we cast off the physical body, and its mass. We are then dissconected from the 'mass base' (or universe, if you like!) we were in before, rendering us unable to to communicate with the 'mass base' we were in before death. Perhaps we go to another sort of 'mass base'? And perhaps this other 'mass base' operates in a different time phase.

Or, even more interesting, perhaps we then exist in a "base" where time doesn't exist at all! In this separate plane, perhaps we have to go through birth and development just like we did here, but without time. Get your head around that one, if you can!

Even more interestingly, perhaps the reason we don't hear from the dead could be that the referential time frame of this possible 'next step' operates so differently to our current one that the first living creature that ever lived and died in this current plane is only just recognising their existance in the new one!

Or, maybe, nothing. It's all just conjecture. Think I'll stay here as long as possible!

Dave

Listen everybody. I'm having my body frozen

That's nice to hear, onsre.

I think that it is better to have your body frozen when you die. That way you don't have to worry about the soul or anything else. You only have to wait for a scientist in the future to be clever enough to bring you back to life and then all your problems will be over. You won't have to worry about those troublesome questions about death, the soul and other levels of existence.
True immrotalism is continuity of existence after death. What's the point of enjoying this life to the full if you're going to become food for worms one day.
You might believe in an afterlife but nobody has ever proved that there is heaven or hell. No one has ever come back to tell the tale. [:o]
[lol] [ang] [ang]

Edited by onsre, 17 March 2004 - 01:43 PM.

ocsrazor:

Immortalism is the path (the ideal), life extension is the way (the realistic expression).

This is a great way of putting it!

I do consider atheism to be a faith, because it does represent a dogma.

For atheism to be a faith, wouldn't it have to assert something? But, it does not! Logically, atheism cannot assert, as so many suppose it does, that "God does not exist", because to assert the "non-existence" of anything would require the "proof of a negative", which is logically impossible. That was one of the keystone discussions in "Basic Principles of Objectivism" that I found most valuable.

So, all that atheism can "do", so far as I can understand, is demand that any statement made in a absolute "take it or leave it" way (in other words, "dogmatically") be demonstrated to be correct scientifically, or be assumed to have no significance. Atheism "challenges" dogmas concerning God to offer convincing evidence of such an entity, but nothing more. More on this below, re: "science"!

"Intelligent Religion" - nice oxymoron True intelligence is the ability to give up all dogma, not to create new ones.

Again, this is a great statement, I feel. Why doesn't Mensa devise a test that would incorporate this criterion into its framework of reference, along with the abilities (usually tested in determining 'IQ') to catalog and retrieve "facts", perform elementary logic and solve relatively simple mathematical puzzles, all very quickly? This, if it could be done, would demonstrate a great deal of "intelligence" on the part of Mensa's leadership.

Trees, bugs, and dirt, have far less organizational complexity than a human being, and therefore have far less information flow than a human.  Harmoniousness has never been a definition for intelligence and humans are a part of nature, so we are by definition harmonious with it, we are one with it. Disharmony would imply we are outside of the system of nature, which we are not.  Suggesting that less complex organisms are more inline with the "plan" of nature is like suggesting that quarks are more harmonious with nature and are more "intelligent" than protons and neutrons.  Locally, we are the most intelligent system around, but that won't last forever

This discussion probably draws upon something said earlier that I missed, about harmoniousness being closely associated with intelligence. It seems as if the definition of "true intelligence" offered above (dogma avoidance) would put any who had it in a more harmonious state with respect to their thinking, than ones who lacked it and engaged in endless quarrels over "who was right", but perhaps that's not the issue addressed here at all?

Science is never taken on faith, at least not by scientists.  The heart of scientific thinking is being able to say I don't know and to constantly question all of your assumptions. Science is an anti-faith. Dogmatic clinging to earlier scientific models for any particular system is not science, it is just human stubborness.

All of this fits the way I tend to think of atheism, but perhaps that is not the way atheists in general are perceived? Meaning, perhaps too frequently those who call themselves atheists seem to attempting to offer proof of a negative (thereby "shooting themselves in the foot")? If this describes the average atheist, then I'm forced to agree with how ocsrazor has put it!

boundlesslife

Boundless:

While Atheism cannot logically assert Gods non existence, it does this regardless, by definition, as it means disbelief or denial of Gods existence.

Agnosticism describes one who is unsure of God's existence, typically since we cannot falsify such a theory upon observation at this time. That is what you are looking for, and that is what I am, and also what any objectivist should be if they utilize logic effectively.

While Atheism cannot logically assert Gods non existence, it does this regardless, by definition, as it means disbelief or denial of Gods existence.

Atheism has nothing to do with human belief. It resembles the heliocentric theory of astronomy, in that it makes a statement about the contents of reality. Even if the human species went extinct so that no one could form an opinion about either astronomy or the existence of gods, both heliocentrism and atheism would remain true.

Agnostics, by contrast, assume a position that you would laugh at if applied to Santa Claus. What would you think of someone who went around saying that he lacked belief in or withheld judgment about the existence of Santa?

Edited by advancedatheist, 27 February 2006 - 04:45 AM.

I think that it is better to have your body frozen when you die.

Agreed. Doing so any sooner would would only accelerate the inevitable. [tung]

Accepting death is justifyable from a psychological perspective. Humans are highly emotional and severely affected by the grief of lost loved ones and probably one of the few species that understand that death in currently inevitable and that, outside some major breakthrough, it will indeed happen to all of us. Finding a way to accept death is important for mental health IMO it as loved ones around you will all die and you will too. Overcoming the loss and grief of loved ones is important so you can continue your own life and contribute to others'. If the pain of death was impossible to overcome and cumulative then I suspect we would become disfunctional as a species over time.

Hi Tav,

Immortalism is the path (the ideal), life extension is the way (the realistic expression).

Trees, bugs, and dirt, have far less organizational complexity than a human being, and therefore have far less information flow than a human.  Harmoniousness has never been a definition for intelligence and humans are a part of nature, so we are by definition harmonious with it, we are one with it. Disharmony would imply we are outside of the system of nature, which we are not.  Suggesting that less complex organisms are more inline with the "plan" of nature is like suggesting that quarks are more harmonious with nature and are more "intelligent" than protons and neutrons.  Locally, we are the most intelligent system around, but that won't last forever

Peter,

I get a lot of what you're saying, but I'm not sure I grasp your view of nature. Harmony, in a non-musical context anyways means congruity, balance, and possibly a natural unity of sorts, to me. I agree totally that harmoniousness is not a definition for intelligence, it may even be the opposite, greater harmonies in nature may of existed before the dawn of man's intelligence.

Do you feel that life extention, and thus, immortality is natural by any regards, and is not disharmonious? Would we not be supercharging one spectrum of this harmony (man=immortal, rest of biology=mortal), thus creating conflict in at the very least, a theoretical sense? By using technology and overriding nature to give immortality, that would be placing us outside of nature.

I am in no way a religious zealot, or against basic life extension practices, I am just curious as to your thoughts as I think of this often

Boundless:

While Atheism cannot logically assert Gods non existence, it does this regardless, by definition, as it means disbelief or denial of Gods existence.

Agnosticism describes one who is unsure of God's existence, typically since we cannot  falsify such a theory upon observation at this time. That is what you are looking for, and that is what I am, and also what any objectivist should be if they utilize logic effectively.

Atheism does not deny the existence of God, rather it refuses to 'accept' the existence of God without convincing evidence or argument that it would make sense to do so.

The agnostic wavers between belief and disbelief, neither position having sufficient compelling force to help the agnostic weigh them against each other in a decisive way.

More to the point, faced with having no "hope of a hereafter", the agnostic elects not to be "hopeless".

Immortalism represents "hope" that there is a way around (otherwise) "the "nevitability of death in the short-term". It is a rational goal, vs. an irrational belief based on a blind rejection of "hopelessness" as an acceptable mental state.

Elsewhere on this board, I've voiced some degree of skepticism that additional evidence that suspended animation may be workable will mark the turning point of human attitudes toward cryonics, specifically because most of the world is still bound by mysticism as an "alternative to hopelessness".

Mysticism "offers" the idea that no matter what happens, you "survive", "somehow". It does not have any limitations such as the way you die, or whether a rescue team can reach you promptly, not whether your organization can survive, etc.

You just "believe" and clutch your "warm blanket". That's all that's required.

Cryonics only appeals, strongly, to people who believe it's "the only game in town". Otherwise, why not gamble on "effortless immortality" via mysticism?

It's like playing the lottery. You don't need much of a chance to win, to get excited about it, especially if the ticket is free, and you don't have to worry too much about complexities.

There is an interestingly similar broadening of perspective if you take cryonics from the viewpoint of identity being a piecewise-continuous spectrum of information, vs. an absolute "it wouldn't be me unless..." way of thinking, a very "black and white" alternative, in which people argue endlessly about "whether a duplicate would be me...", etc.

In one particular short story, a long time ago, Thomas Donaldson "put his finger" on the whole question of identity, in such a way as to generate an entirely new perspective, from my way of thinking. I still go back to it, from time to time, to reflect on this.

The name of the story is:

Travelling

An article, some time ago, titled New Directions in Cryonics, addresses the question of identify as a piecewise continuous function of preservation technology and reanimation technology, with limits placed on the capacity of reanimation technology to restore identity due to lack of structure that was preserved.

It's on-line at the link given in the above title.

boundlesslife

I have viewed religion and politics as the same. In fact the king and the church have had a long history as adversaries, being the same thing or working together.

In the past I view that religion has helped a lot. Honering people, not just killing everyone because of fear of the the almighty and caused many humans to risk their lives for the sake of religion such as exploring new lands (perhaps too quickly for us)...in any event..now it appears religion is slowing us down'

This post, is in response to a lot of the previous posts here, and not just specifically about death.

My own opinion about god... in our universe, something does not come from nothing. Every effect must have a cause(and thus we can use logic)

Yet the cause, and the cause before that, and the cause before that, up until the Big bang... and before that... there is no cause. There should be no original cause for the universe to exist, and yet it does.

It's interesting really to note that logic, cause and effect are not the true nature of things, as our existence proves.

SO what was the first cause, the cause without a cause of it's own? Something very unusual one must assume. That first cause, that can maintain itself, that exists without the support of anything else, is called god... Just a name really. It's not like we can understand a being that is basically outside of logical modelling.

The Christian, Muslim, Jewish gods, all seem to me to be very human. The only religeons i know of where god isn't human, would be Buddhism, where there really is no god, though you seek to attain the state of undefined-ness.. beyond logic.
Which is essentially similar to the concept in yoga... where you also have Ishvara. The Unaffected One, the unchanging one... the being outside of time and cause and effect.

If i had to place a bet, i'd say that the original cause is something like this Ishvara construct.

---

Then there's human consciousness. As a Comp Sci person, my opinion is that no AI you could ever develop would have a consciousness of it's own. It may seem to behave intelligently and you may assume that it's alive, but that's just a mistake of making a judgement based on generalizations. In the end, inside of the computer, it'll still be one instruction being processed at a time(more or less).

... So it should be with humans. The chemicals moving around and interacting should not create a consciousness, they should just keep on working, and we should be a form of organic machinery.

... I have actually met some people who could not understand the concept of being able to know with surety that you are alive. That you don't need proof for it.
(very worrying, makes me wonder if they're soul-less )

Most science is a matter of making models and testing them against the environment to see how well they match. Nothing says that knowing 10 qualities of an object is enough to even make a good model of the object you're studying, except in a certain context... The model however is not the original object(despite our often acting as if it is so). Neverthless there are truths of sorts. Truths that need no proof, truths that exist... Like your knowing that you are alive.

Sadly, you can't prove that anyone else is alive, since you have no way of knowing that they have a true inner consciousness.

So this is merely an assumption.. that other people are alive. An assumption that we all make, and for which we have no proof at all... beyond having generalized our own individual self-experience, to all beings that seem physically similar to us.

Any decently logical person should consider these things. Yet we find no serious supporters/believers of such thought, unlike atheists.

IMO, atheists are more likely to be people who fear the concept of god, and would prefer not to believe it. And they turn that preference into a belief in itself(Some are quite violent about it .. not at all the logical people they try to portray themselves as)

-------

As for death, i believe that we are a part of the human race. A super-organism of sorts. Our desires(like sex) have no inherent meaning or worth beyond the survival of the species. Our logic is overriden by the desires that maintain our species(some people actually rebel against this ).
But really, that's what we are. We are not independent beings. We are parts of a whole.

What seperates supposedly good people from evil ones? The amount of importance they give to their own individual pleasures... Evil people being a defective type of humanity. Probably akin to diseases with respect to our body.
What does not help the organism as a whole, is obviously a problem(like cancer).

Anyway, regarding death, or at least aging. I think that our species' ability to adapt, is largely linked to it. A static type of humanity would be killed off quickly by more advanced diseases.
But also, our mental evolution, as a people would be impaired by too many primitive minded(by that time) people, still able to have a voice and try to enforce their views. Even scientists cannot easily give up their scientific faiths. Maxwell i recall couldn't fully believe in his own theories, because they contradicted what he was taught.... Who knows how far he could have gotten, even if he had lived a long time. The human brain is after all, more experience based than logic based.

Besides... what will you even do with immortality. We live for pleasure(let's ignore pain here). How long before nothing gives you any lasting pleasure or satisfaction?
.. and what are you really seeking, bodily thrills that have no meaning beyond what was accidentally left in us by our evolution?

Roller coasters for example, are fun. But should they really be fun? Does music really have any meaning. Our brains decide to derive pleasure from such things. Probably just a glitch in the system that's supposed to help us survive... That's what happens when you make a system incrementally, eventually an overly simplistic original design simply can't handle the greater requirements, and there's almost no way to properly add them while following the original paradigm... What is really needed is a redesign on the basis of a superior paradigm(but then, the new being wouldn't be human )

---

As for intelligence being the ability to give up all dogma. Not really. To have no beliefs, no existing models of reality to work with, would mean that you'd be analyzing everything from scratch, and just being able to take a step correctly(with correctly being redefined) might take days of reprocessing... assuming that the brain could actually manage that

Intelligence, is the ability to create models of the universe around you that match well with it, with respect to the paramaters you can use for testing. The models are inevitably lacking.

Great intelligence normally is the ability to either analyze and model quickly(as in the mensa test), or make large detailed models, when existing models are reanalyzed and found to be faulty or incomplete.

The reanalysis can't be done all the time though, so most of the time you're just using models for processing, no matter how unbiased you wish to be.


What is religous faith, but the use of a model, for navigating your life? Jesus may well have been able to raise the dead. It doesn't match any of our current models of humanity and what humanity can achieve(temporarily assuming he was human ), but you can't state that he definitely couldn't do it.

And if you assume that the history that came down to us is the truth as the people writing knew it(an assumption we make about most things), then perhaps he could.

---

As for Santa. It's more correct to say that we believe the likelihood of the existence of such a character is negligible. Practically nothing has a probability of 0.0. Since it seems extremely improbable, i choose not to believe that he exists.
(or the world could be filled with bad kids )

But still Santa doesn't seem like a good generalization for god. God constitutes a reasonable possibility for the kind of being that could be the original cause for the existence of our universe, since i seriously doubt that matter can create and then maintain itself(as in it's shape, since that too is a product of physics.. laws that seem to have come into existence for no good reason)

Edited by karsus, 14 May 2006 - 12:09 PM.

I'll certainly agree, that our brains experience pleasure entertaining fiction. Isn't that how we developed religions? Now, wouldn't a rational person ask, what is this thing identified by the word, god? Is it supernatural or is it something of nature? If a person claims it to be supernatural, then that means it is beyond nature and our ability to identify - thus, case closed. If on the other hand it is part of nature, great - show me.

We developed this supernatural idea as a sedative to help us cope with the issue of death. According to Rand (and Branden) conscious life should be ones highest value and reason the virtue used to obtain it (and preserve it). Then, you would have to say, it is not rational to reject any means for its preservation. Hell, yes! Wake me up. If I'm wrong and dead, then I'll never know it. But, it is here I will fight to stay!

Peter: Then, you would have to say, it is not rational to reject any means for its preservation. Hell, yes! Wake me up. If I'm wrong and dead, then I'll never know it. But, it is here I will fight to stay!

Ditto

We developed this supernatural idea as a sedative to help us cope with the issue of death.

Not only death but everything that is beyond - yet viscerally begs for - explanation. Probably the single greatest travesty of evolution is the development of a brain whose functional scope is several orders of magnitude above and beyond anything required for survival. With increased skills in hunting, tool making and socializing came a level of abstractive thinking that allowed the contemplation of self within a cosmic context. What evolutionary purpose would such an ability serve? It is something I find profoundly perplexing knowing full well how precisely and economically the processes of selection shape the phenotype.

Furthermore, it is not so much a sedative as it is a sensible framework for living life with a certain degree of confidence that all is in order and that there are benefits to conducting ourselves in an altruistic manner - absolutely essential for any civilization, particularly where disparity of resources exists.

Finally, it defends the mind from the colossally horrifying reductionist realization that there is really no purpose to existence other than the transient shuffling of some genes and the possibility that they may be passed on to the next generation.

That, above all, is what ensures that God remains man's greatest truth.

With increased skills in hunting, tool making and socializing came a level of abstractive thinking that allowed the contemplation of self within a cosmic context. What evolutionary purpose would such an ability serve? It is something I find profoundly perplexing knowing full well how precisely and stringently the processes of selection shape the phenotype.

It boils down to an evolved increased awareness of time which stems from an enhanced ability to remember the past and use those memories to predict outcomes of potential future survival scenarios. With this ability comes abstract predictive ability but also comes the awareness of a future where we will no longer be alive and thus is born existential angst and all religious thought. None of this of course precludes the possibility that we are running in a 3D virtual simulation.

Dear Prometheus,
I must sincerely and honestly ask, what god? I don't know what you are refering to. Once some kind of evidence exists for this "whatever" then and only then can we have a solid premise for discussing it as "man's greatest truth".

I certainly mean no offense by my question, again I don't understand the meaning of the word. Please enlighten me. Is this god, consciousness or is it a cosmic peeping-tom, or is it some other type of cosmic personality, or maybe just the forces of nature...?

I like what Kevin wrote of as "an evolved increased awareness of time..." The human brain has many ways of dealing with reality, religion being only one that provides irrational comfort in dealing with death. However, I believe we are not without the ability to solve the problem of death, that's why we have developed this evolved increased awareness of time, something that it is believed no other animal has. We can build altars to invisible gods or futher evolve our intelligence and ability to reason, thus discovering the solution to mortality. You can't look for answers in both camps at the same time.

If the lock on the door of death cannot be opened in our lifetime, then we must face a state of non-being. So, what's new? Each conscious moment, each full drink of this thing we call life, each breath we draw, each new throbbing as our hearts thrill at new discoveries. Yes, we have life today and life that can only be totally enjoyed with a conscious, rational mind and a creative, inquistive spirit! Give me more conscious intensity of this present moment and I will make time stand still. Death is a non-event - living is everything. Living forever is always better than dying, so... So, don't go to funerals, especially your own! In the meantime perhaps, we'll not have to. Either way, life is the issue.

The essence of Gödel's incompleteness theorem is that you cannot have both completeness and consistency. A bold anthropomorphic conclusion is that there are three types of people; those that must have answers to everything; those that panic in the face of inconsistencies; and those that plod along taking the gaps of incompleteness as well as the clashes of inconsistencies in stride if they notice them at all, or else they succumb to the tragedy of the human condition.

The first kind are prone to refer to authorities; religion, bureaucracy, governments and their own prejudices.  They postulate a Supreme Being that knows all the answers because everything must have an answer. With inconsistencies they deal by hopping over them, brushing them aside, sweeping them under a rug, ignoring them or making fun of them.  These people are unpredictable and exasperating to deal with, though often disarmingly charming.

The second kind are the more heroic and independent thinkers. They are not afraid of vast expanses of the unknown; they forge ahead and rejoice over every new question opened up by questions answered.  But when up against the walls of inconsistencies they go berserk.  These claustrophobics are in fact the scientific minds.

And then, finally, there are the ordinary humans who make do with both inconsistencies and gaps in their experience of life and the world.  Some of those, when driven to the brink of endurance by roadblocks of paradox and pitfalls of the unknown, go mad.

from http://www.edge.org/...hd06_index.html

I must sincerely and honestly ask, what god?

The one that untold numbers since time immemorial and have prayed, cried and cursed to.
The little flutter of hope that when all else fails even the most resolute of atheists will often allow themselves to feel, whether they care to admit it or not.

And just what did they receive from this idea that is void of all evidence?

We have heard the assumption parroted, "There are no atheists in foxholes." Yet, here again one has no evidence. Yes, when our life is on the line, I agree one will often hope against all odds. But, hope doesn't cook the rice, action by the individual does. On the battlefield, does the christian god beat up on the muslim god to prove to the atheist he exists? Prometheus, that "little flutter of hope" is not a god, it is only a wish. The same wish untold millions of people have in order to cope with their eventual demise. Isn't it time we let go of our security blankets and go to work on developing solutions to the disease of aging and death? Which do you think offers more promise, the mythical spook in the sky or hard core, reality based research?

I was thinking that maybe the thread was getting off topic but religion definitely plays a part in justifications for death. Pter mentioned the old line "there are no atheists in foxholes" and that reminded me of an interesting online book about god and atheism. The link goes to chapter 10 about battlefield prayers.

Relevant quote:

You may have heard that there are no atheists in foxholes. Before they died, we can assume that every single one of the 10,000 soldiers who marched into the ambush prayed fervently and deeply for God to spare his life. Despite those prayers, the enemy proceeded to attack with deadly force. 9,900 of those who prayed wasted their breath -- they died.

The 100 who return from the battle, however, feel as though their prayers were answered. They have been through a horrific firefight, and they are deeply grateful to have escaped with their lives. At the time they prayed, they were absolutely and totally terrified and desperate. To have survived seems like a miracle.

The 100 survivors fan out with their personal stories of answered prayers. They tell their soldier buddies how they prayed for their lives and their prayers were answered. When they arrive home they tell their families and friends about their harrowing experiences on the battlefield and how nothing but their prayers saved them. They give testimonials at church, give speeches in the community, write articles for magazine, etc. Millions of people are exposed to the positive, powerful, personal testimonials of the 100 survivors.

This is great advertising for prayer. And it works. People hear the stories of the survivors and they believe. The real power of this approach, however, comes from the fact that the 9,900 dead soldiers never get to tell their side of the story. Ninety nine percent of the soldiers died, and only one percent survived. Far more men prayed and died, but they never get to tell anyone about their disappointment.

So the 100 personal testimonials FOR prayer are strong, loud, frequent and compelling. Meanwhile the 9,900 personal testimonials AGAINST prayer are silent, because the dead soldiers never get a chance to speak. Therefore, to a casual observer, it appears that prayer works. Every story that you hear is positive. The reality is that 99% of the praying people died. It is another perfect example of God's Ratio (see Chapter 2).