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> In a tragically comic way, this was a depressing realization when I was considering blowing my head off or getting run over. Damnation! No guarantees. Deat
by Dewie3 11y ago
> In a tragically comic way, this was a depressing realization when I was considering blowing my head off or getting run over. Damnation! No guarantees. Death and taxes, yes, but not a breezy afterlife.
Well if the afterlife is terrible, you're going to end up there at some point anyway. So unless your religion says that suicides are punished, I don't quite see the argument.
Pascal's Wager can be used as an argument against any practice that some religion frowns upon, for that matter. If you accept his argument (I stopped doing that many years ago).
EDIT: and though we, in this realm, have no definite knowledge of what the Afterlife (if any) is, there is no guarantee in the Afterlife. So maybe you'll end up betting on Pascal's Wager through all such realities, indefinitely. And who's to say that, even if you have a wider and "higher" perspective, that you can ever be sure of the true nature of reality, and that there is nothing "above"?
- Inception 11y agoThe argument is that a breezy afterlife is not guaranteed, so killing yourself isn't necessarily an escape from pain.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Inception 11y agoLet me rephrase that: an afterlife is not guaranteed; therefore a breezy afterlife cannot be guaranteed. None of us know what is going to happen when we die. There are many beliefs, but no guarantees. The original statement was a reminder to think twice if you are contemplating suicide because whatever you think is going to happen after you die might not actually happen.
- koonsolo 11y ago> None of us know what is going to happen when we die. If you know the basics of the human body such as the brain, hormones, etc, I think it's pretty clear what will happen when you die. It's the same thing what happens to a computer when you shut it down. Do you know Occam's razor? Anyone can believe what they want of course, but it won't impact reality.
- patrick73 11y agoYes, it would impact reality. Beliefs such as comparing life with computers DO have an impact on reality.
- o_____________o 11y ago> So unless your religion says that suicides are punished Most of them do in one form or another, especially the Abrahamic tree.
- Dewie3 11y agoAt least religions like Buddhism don't punish you for an eternal afterlife. At worst it's just "bad karma".
- Mikeb85 11y agoNo, but there are hell realms in Buddhist mythology, which can be the result of 'bad karma'. They're not eternal, but they don't sound particularly pleasant either.
- Dewie3 11y agoBuddhists bet their horse in one particular lifetime on eventually escaping suffering by following Buddhist teaching/philosophy. Some suicidal people bet their horse on escaping a more immediate suffering. Other than the immediacy of the suffering, their both existential "bets" from the perspective of the author, and so I don't see a great distinction between either strategy.
- Mikeb85 11y ago> Buddhists bet their horse in one particular lifetime on eventually escaping suffering by following Buddhist teaching/philosophy. Not actually true, otherwise all Buddhists would become monastics, which they don't. Buddhists believe that positive karma is accumulated over many lifetimes, and negative karma is extinguished after periods of suffering. In Buddhist thought, it's often enough to simply live a reasonably 'good' life, then you'll be reincarnated into a heavenly realm, or possibly another human body, etc... There are degrees of everything, and very few Buddhists (if any) believe they're going to achieve liberation after only a single lifetime. Even the Buddha was thought to have lived hundreds of lives, eventually culminating with his miraculous (by traditional accounts) life 2500 years ago...
- whybroke 11y agoPascal's Wager would also imply you may as well invent as many religions as you please each requiring the thing you want to do as its dogma. Since each such religion has an equal probability of being right in his formula, in this way you can quickly overcome any inconvenience an established religion presents to what it was you wanted to do.