Death

What do you think of death?

I think death is the end of life here, but a beginning in a different place.

Tell me your thoughts.

- kit22

i think death is needed for the human race...to make us value life more hee hee thats about it

i think death is merly the begining. on one hand you have eternal paridice. on the other is eternal sufering. the coices you make during life on earth decide which you sall spend the rest of eternity in. i dont fear death only what it could bring if i make the wrong choices.but i am a fairly religious person. i go to church i try to be nice to my syblings and other people. all i can do is have faith that my good choices will outway the bad and i will be in eternal paridice.

I am a re-incarnation freak myself. All the wrongs we do now, we go back and try not to do them again.


UT

people's perception on death relies mainly on their religios beliefs and values...

i think death is the end... you cease to exist... your body goes back into the earth... and that is that...

i'd rather be cremated then rot in a coffin... although i heard that they cremate a whole bunch of bodies together and put some ashes in an urn the say its you...

- funkyhorror -

the death question is one that i would kill to know the answer to, if i knew it i would be able to do what i like in this life. for example if there isnt some eternal torment for your wrongs then i could do as i liked. i think that death is just the beginning, but if there is something there id like to know what it is.

i agree with that but not with fh. its hard to imagine ceasing to exsist. it cant happen that way. not only have there actualy been tests that prove people have souls, but i have too much faith to believe that.

Originally posted by funkyhorror
people's perception on death relies mainly on their religios beliefs and values...

i think death is the end... you cease to exist... your body goes back into the earth... and that is that...

i'd rather be cremated then rot in a coffin... although i heard that they cremate a whole bunch of bodies together and put some ashes in an urn the say its you...

- funkyhorror -

totally agree. i dont see why everyone is so negative to that philosophy. the end is the end. you ceased to exist before you were born, you will cease to exist when you die.

to those who believe in "heaven", i have this to say. if you stay alive as a soul forever, then at one point, you will wish you were dead. eventually you will run out of will and want it to end. living forever in clouds sounds like hell to me. i would rather be free and finish.

Originally posted by us 1.0
i agree with that but not with fh. its hard to imagine ceasing to exsist. it cant happen that way. not only have there actualy been tests that prove people have souls, but i have too much faith to believe that.
where is this proof? I see people's beliefs in life after death as an excuse or reason for not accepting the fact that there really is nothing after you die... and if there is... then i would be wrong... but i have heard/seen nothing to convince me otherwise...

- funkyhorror -

death is our purpose. we live then we die. what happens after that is a mystery to me.

I think that when you die, your body simply stops functioning. Unless you believe in a spirit or soul and are religious, that is all you need to know. I believe that coinciousness, or the feeling of being alive, is simply a complex system designed by your brain as a survival mechanism. For if you didn't realise you were alive, there would be nothing to protect your wandering body.

I consider death the moment the brain stops functioning. Your heart and breathing may have stopped, but if you can still think you are still aware of your existence. Death is not so much an 'end' as a pause. You wouldn't notice you are dead, if fact you would be completely unaware of this. Well, of course you will be unaware if you have no longer have a brain to even think this thought.

Take this hypothetical situation - you die and you are frozen. So let's say you have just went brain-dead and get frozen, presuming this were possible. After 100 years people remember you when you were alive and visit you in this frozen tank. Nice. Where have you been? Have you been to heaven, - or hell? Have you been reincarnated or perhaps you died and that is simply that.

But now let's say that another 600 years pass on and they are starting experiments on reactivating dead synapses. They take your frozen dead body and rebuild your brain's structure using sythesised neurons. Then they activate you. After all this time - finally you are back! Your lifeforce has been restored. Totally hypothetical.

But wait, to you, only a second ago you were dying and now you are 700 years in the future. Time meant nothing to you, you simply skipped it. Here comes another problem when you decided whether the exact copy of your brain is actually you. It thinks and feels like you - but is it? I won't go into this but I will say I use this as my personal proof that conciousness must be all be an illusion. So now let's say you weren't frozen but were cremated after you died instead. To you, nothing is different this time. Your paused lifeforce is still skipping time but since you have no brain, your lifeforce is skipping infinite time.

After an infinite amount of time, everything will happen an infinite amount of times, including the eventual end of the universe. You won't be alive now, but neither will anything else. Matter will cease to exist. Reality will have to change it's format as the dissapated energy has to have went somewhere. After an infinite amount of change, a reality will eventually be created which allows restoration of your life, in some way or another. Repeat. It's a big cycle.

There is no end. For what ends the end?
.

Whoa that's pretty heavy stuff. I think I understand your thing about being frozen: it's similar to the 'transporter' fear. Also: the end of time thing is a big thought, but rather insignificant when we should be more concerned with considering a scale relevant to our lives. Namely, their ends. But what the hey.
For me? Death is a rude end. The Final Frontier. It's the ultimate spoilsport. It leaves a million questions unanswered and worse: prevents you from searching out more. No way to put it lightly: even reincarnation is a death, since the old you is gone. It's becoming more like the biggest nuisance to me more than the biggest fear. You can't travel too fast in a plane: you'll pass out and die. You can't take your time studying the cure to AIDS: you'll die somewhere in the hundreds of years needed. Yada yada yada.
It's just...I feel cheated to begin the great journey of Life only to have the end looming somewhere along the line, you know? Too many things have been created out there that we have only one life to see.

Death is just a part of life the way I see it

You make a number of points here, Qwertez, not all related to each other. Though I too believe in the cyclic nature of the Universe [~>Big Bang~>Big Crunch~>Big Bang~>Big Crunch~>], I do not feel it is proven, supported or related to life. Life, as you stated, is, in my opinion merely a biological 'fact'. Something is either alive, or dead, and this is dependant on whether that something is still capable of action. As soon as a something is no longer capable of action, I deem it dead. Note that I consider brain activity an action as well.

Now, you asked, whether hypothetically, you would be you if you were, in a way 'cloned'. I believe that if someone made an exact replica of me, while I am dead, I would be the replica. I do not believe I would no longer be me.

This, I base on existance itself, and the definition thereof. I usually use the Pizza example, as that was the example that was used when I was first told about this :). A pizza is basically some dough with some vegetables on it. Some dough is no pizza, and some vegetables is no pizza. However, at some point, when the two are combined, a pizza suddenly exists, and the vegetables and dough seize to exist. Their matter still exists, yet they have been assimilated in a bigger whole, into a pizza. Now, when we leave the pizza for a couple of weeks, the pizza will slowly decay, untill it will no longer be recognizable as either a pizza, or as seperate vegetables, or doug.

Memories are formed, in our brain, by various cells creating a 'network', and releasing, in a certain patter, neuro-transmitters. It is all very complex, but what I am trying to relay is simple. If you see something you have never seen before, your brain will change, and you will indeed be different from what and who you were before you saw that something. You are no longer Qwertez of five minutes ago, but a new Qwertez. Still, we view you as Qwertez, because the largest part of you is, and remains to be Qwertez. This, I believe, is why one will still view himself as himself in such a situation :).

Mr U

To me,Death defines life.How would you know what life is,if you didnt know there was death?
Death to me is like a dreamless sleep.You only know what happened when and if you wake from it.

all the Qwertez said.



In all the current major monotheist religions,there is first the judgement day,before anyone is sent anywhere,heaven or hell.That,to me ,clairly states that,if you die before that judgement day,then you're just dead.Nothing,nada,rien.You're dead,thats it.Then on the judgement day,all these joly people are brought back to life in order to be judged(duh!!) and sent to heaven or hell.In your hypothetical situation,all you'd be doing would indeed be bring a dead person back to life.What happenned?Where was he?He wont know.He'll just remember the last things he saw before he died.This kind of situation would simply be similar to a dreamless sleep.Did that ever happen to you?Now if it did,you know that,the last thing you will recall is 'trying' to go to sleep(because you'll never know WHEN you fell asleep),and then you're up.You wont know how much time went by,nor have a clue what happened while you where sleeping. .
When you die,you are dead.It doesnt get any simpler.:D

What makes you,you are your memories.Any duplicate of you with the exact same memories will swear that it is you.You'll swear that you are you,only based on the fact that you remember your childhood,you family,your friends etc...Question being,how do YOU know you're not a copy?

Time to bring this back to life, I do declare.
Now, that's an old, and favourite question about originality, Ilavos. In fact, one possible solution to time problems in travelling the stars was to clone the crew that started the journey, at the journey's end, to carry on their duties.
What sets a clone apart from the real person? Nothing, EXCEPT what happens after the cloning. It's not really important. If we forgot exactly who was the clone (say, the guy who did the cloning died in some freak accident before he could identify the clone), both are equally the same man of that point. However, both are also different men from that point on. Simply put, if I were to realise now that MacLeod of MH died when MM was formed and I continued in his name ever since, I don't see how I'd really feel inferior in any way. I am, quite simply; MacLeod. What's in a name? A constantly changing, though familiar, personality.
Who is Ilavos? ;)

This thread is sounding more like the 6th Day rather than judgement day with every post. Rubbish film with very little to do with this I must say. By what a lot of people have said, it would be alright to copy you, kill you, and then recreate you. But from the original person's perspective he (..or she) would die and have no way of knowing whether the clone was created successfully and from the clone's perspective, what if the original copy did not get destroyed?

You can't be in two bodies at once. Or can you? Agent Smith sure found a way around this. I wonder if his bodies were all linked to an individual mind or whether they were all unique. I like to think he only had one mind and that is the reason Neo can fight his clones when he has to split his mind between 67 Smiths.

Or maybe when somebody finally finds a way to clone us, we can microchip our all of our brains and switch our conciousness between remote bodies at distant locations. That would be nice.

Well, it all depends on whether someone believes in a soul. In my belief, that does not include a soul, it's perfectly possible for two people to live next to each other, with the exact same memories and personality.

Cloning, however, does not have this effect, as cloning techniques, that I am aware of, do not have the capablitity of generating something as complex as the neural patterns in the brain.

Maybe some day in the future... ;)

Mr U

Do you really think that would be a good thing?

They'd start selling famous clones off over at eBay. But what about clone rights??
Will someone please think of the clones!

Why would they sell clones of eBay? Why would they do that anymore than they do now with children?

Do you really believe people will want a famous baby 'clone', rather than their own flesh and blood? And besides, if that indeed happens, I presume that those people who do become famous will have such positive genetical properties that they will enhance the human race if there are a lot of them.

'Every bad thing has it's good side.'

Mr U

Do you really believe people will want a famous baby 'clone', rather than their own flesh and blood?

Yes, of course they would. Not everyone of course, but enough that somebody could make a good living out of the market. You think the photofraphers are bad....imagine guys stalking famous people to try and get their blood.

???

Anyway back on topic...I think that death is the end of emotions, after death is the nirvana of life.

Yes, of course they would. Not everyone of course, but enough that somebody could make a good living out of the market. You think the photofraphers are bad....imagine guys stalking famous people to try and get their blood.

Frankly, I believe the amount of people that we are talking about is a limited number. Also, trying to get their blood? Come on, we both know that according to the law, this is illegal. I doubt people would start luring celebrities into robbing their blood..

Apart from that, is it really that unethical for people to decide what appearance their children should have? I'm not too high on ethics myself, but I don't see much of a problem in people making at least some decisions in the looks/stats of the child. A common boogieman I have often heard that people will create some kind of 'superman', a person who is superior to us, some kind of supersoldier. This has me wondering whether it is not in fact our duty as a technologically sophisticated race to create such supermen/soldiers. Sorry if it puts you out of a job, TheDon ;).

Mr U

OIC....because something is against the law it wont happen. Of course. It is not hard to imagine people having designer children. I dont know so much about a super race, but I suppose that once you start down the path of trying to achieve a genetically perfect child then that isnt too far off. I think this would be more for sports and purposes like that. The military is making a major push to remove humans from the battle field as much as possible. It is unlikely that they would invest heavily in a super soldier unless they proved so much superior to anything else that the chance of losing them in combat was still worth the price. Honostly, I wouldnt mind being out of a job. I like what I do and I am glad that I got to serve in Iraq and would certainly go again if they would let me. That being said, fighting, killing and watching people die isnt an enjoyable experience.

The military is making a major push to remove humans from the battle field as much as possible. It is unlikely that they would invest heavily in a super soldier unless they proved so much superior to anything else that the chance of losing them in combat was still worth the price. Honostly, I wouldnt mind being out of a job. I like what I do and I am glad that I got to serve in Iraq and would certainly go again if they would let me. That being said, fighting, killing and watching people die isnt an enjoyable experience.

Point taken.

If it's against the law, many will be frightened off. Sure, there will still be people who do it, but there is also a market for Snuff movies.

Now, I'm not the right guy to defend ethics. I'm all for choice, and if people want a kid that looks like Tom Cruise, than so be it. I just doubt many will, because I believe most people will be too emotional and want a kid of 'their' own flesh and blood.

Mr U

I can agree with that aspect of it. I sometimes forget that other people have those nagging emotional attachments to things they dont really own. I propose that we pool our resources and make this a reality. Then we can conduct an experiment to see which one of us is right.

What exactly are you proposing to do, the don?

p.s life sucks then you die, then you get reborn, and life still sucks, then you die again, and the process goes on and on and on untill someone buys me some cigarettes

What exactly are you proposing to do, the don?

That should have been obvious....but allow me to break it donw Barney style, just for you.

HU and I will concentrate all of our funds and knowledge to start our own lab where we can clone humans. A poll will need to be conduced to determine which famous individuals would most like to have as children. We will then obtain DNA samples from the top vote getters and, upon producing viable samples, see if we can sell them.

Then we can conduct an experiment to see which one of us is right.

interesting... barnification wasnt needed, i understood, i just wanted to hear the plan from you straigh and simple. i think you could get some cheap cloning equipment from the raelians... theyre always up to something that involves duplicating people. as for the blood, i know you can buy Arnold schwarzeneggars chewing gum on Ebay... DNA is in saliva right?

Its hard to wrap your head around this subject. It doesnt make any sense that we just die and thats it, because consciousness cannot be erased! Where would it go? Once you die, how will you know when you don't exist? It just cant happen. You cant just disappear...so I think there is SOMETHING afterwards...maybe we all return to the source or something, heck I dunno

Just because you cant grasp or dont like the idea of simply blinking out doesnt mean there has to be something waiting for us when we die.

Its just a good thought to have something waiting for you besides an eternity of nothingness