5 ms·

No, I mean something more practical, not based in religious reasoning. If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you a

• sharkmerry 7y ago
  why is death a "threat"? im not sure what you are intending to say. Epicurus said death is the end of body & soul, therefore not to be feared. Im not sure I agree with that nor the inverse, if god exists, death is to be feared? Why?
  • yters 7y ago
    The notion of God and and eternal reward or punishment are quite often tied together. It is hard to see one without the other. Hence, if God exists and there is eternal punishment, that is a little bit scary.
    • RaceWon 7y ago
      > The notion of God and and eternal reward or punishment are quite often tied together. It is hard to see one without the other. The most brilliant marketing plan ever devised. It just awes the salesman in me... Brilliant!
      • yters 7y ago
        It is strange that a creator would understand the motivations of his creation.
    • sharkmerry 7y ago
      >Hence, if God exists and there is eternal punishment, that is a little bit scary Eternal punishment only exists if you arent a good person right? Heaven isnt eternal punishment?
      • outworlder 7y ago
        > Heaven isnt eternal punishment? It could be. Think of all the boring people that would supposedly be in there. Now think that you get to spend infinity time with them.
        • NateEag 7y ago
          Newton and Pascal are boring, I suppose. Certainly one wouldn't want to live in a place where J. S. Bach got to write music for eternity. Imagine the torture.
          • humanrebar 7y ago
            Also MLK Jr., Mr. Rogers, and Teddy Roosevelt. Very boring.
      • yters 7y ago
        According to Christianity (and a number of other religions), no one is good enough for heaven. We have to be perfect, and no one is perfect. So, if Christianity is true, one cannot be a 'good atheist' and hope to get an eternal reward, i.e. being a 'good atheist' is not a loophole that works in both worldviews.
• m0zg 7y ago
  You can't think "rationally" about death. It's literally incomprehensible to a human mind, when the object of death is that mind itself.
  • asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    What do you mean when you say you can't think about it rationally? There are enough survivable experiences physiologically similar to death that we can make some pretty good guesses as to what the experience leading up to it is like. And it would be incoherent to talk about the experience of being dead, because it is no experience at all (as before we were born). We know quite a bit about what happens when we die, and we have literally billions of exemplars of the event. I would say in almost every meaningful way we can think about it fairly rationally. (Whether we choose to is another question.)
    • m0zg 7y ago
      But they aren't "death" death, like Whoopi Goldberg would say. You can't comprehend something that requires your consciousness to cease to exist in order to fully comprehend it. In other words, "we" have some abstract ideas about what happens when "we" die, but it's fundamentally impossible for you, the individual, to imagine what happens when _you_ die.
    • coldtea 7y ago
      >What do you mean when you say you can't think about it rationally? There are enough survivable experiences physiologically similar to death That makes no sense. There are some experiences of coming close to death, or what doctors consider death -- which is the mind/organs shutting down, etc. There is (and can't be) no experience of actual permanent death though, nor has a dead person recounted their experience while a dead person. The ones retelling the experience are always alive when they do it.
      • asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
        Of course. But I would think the experience of falling into a coma after a hypoxic event would convey all the same conscious experiences of death. That would be what it would feel like, until you were unconscious. Then, by definition, you would feel no more.
• coldtea 7y ago
  It was pointed out, but it was always a cheap parlor trick. "You cease to exist after death, so what's to fear?" "Well, my fear is that I will cease to exist, Einstein!" Fear doesn't have to be with something in the future being painful. We also fear something not being how we want it to be (in this case, we want to continue existing, and death prevents that). >since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything That's an argument about we wont feel fear after death. It's not an argument about we can't fear death itself...
• dragonwriter 7y ago
  > If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything. That is exactly the threat of death, if, while alive, you value your ability to continue existing and caring about things. Threats inherently operate by reference to your preferences before they are realized, not your preferences after they are realized. Once you have the post-realization preferences, it can't be a threat any more, because there is no longer a possibility of not realizing the consequences. If death is non-existence, you can't be threatened after death, but death can still be a threat. You can't use the complete indifference that comes with non-existence to say that death is not a threat: it is only not a threat if you are indifferent to death while alive, which is possible (as is it's opposite) whether or not death is non-existence.
• Shorel 7y ago
  Yes, but this reasoning seems to put too much value on the last moments of your life and the actual act of dying. I would say it's all the other moments that make life valuable, not its end.