religion and death

There is a hidden point here. When you have faith in yourself, your perception of causality changes. "God works in mysterious ways," "Allah wills it," etc. do not work very well for people who take responsibility for themselves in this way.

<Must remember to comment on this>

Good point Huns. I prefer the tried and true "shit happens."

People talk about "choosing to believe" something, but the reality is, you cannot actually choose your own beliefs. Either you believe something... or you don't.

All that's left to do is try to learn why you believe what you do, and to expand one's horizons so one has more chance of having beliefs that one could consider "objective".

Recognizing that shi'ite happens is not a pessimistic view at all. The first of the eightfold pathi n Buddhism is recognizing that shi'ite happens all throught life.

> Im convinced once someone figures out the exact 1-inch equational definition of our universe, something big will happen

I used to believe this, which is why I became a physicist.

There is however possibly a flaw.

What you are saying is: if we know all the rules that govern the low-level workings of the universe we can do what we want?

This is a little like saying that if we know how a neuron works (which by and large we do) that we know how the brain works (which, honestly, we do and dont; most people would say we dont; probably those who know most about human brains dont know very much about a neuron at all).

My vision was that it would be possible knowing the low-level rules of the universe to create a computer able to compute exactly what would happen in the future. Which could be fun.

The possible flaw is that the computer would most likely need to have the same level of complexity as the universe, and would run no faster than the universe itself.

Of course the computer is part of the universe itself, so you just doubled the complexity of the universe, and now you need to double the complexity of the universe...

Well, you could isolate the computer somehow from the rest of the universe, but then it's not very useful.

You could also postulate multiple universes and place the computer in another (or multiple) other universe(s).

The problem is that the moment that you feed information from any of these universes back to our universe you have the same problem that you no longer have a closed system.

So that's the end of that vision, for me, for the moment.

What am I waiting for?

This: http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html

I no longer believe in an afterlife and I've come to terms with it. Some have told me, "If there is nothing after death, then nothing matters." To which I reply, "If there is nothing after death, life is the only thing that does matter. Live it well."

You don't need faith or religion to live a good life, but you do need know there aren't answers for everything with out them.

I think brain chemistry plays a big part here. Unfortunately my brain chemistry seems to cause me to see the dark cloud before the silver lining, and though I can temporarily change my frame of reference through will or medication, I always revert back to seeing things as broken, corrupt, and hopeless.

This is partly why I recommend people of faith to hold on to it, because once you let go, you're risking falling in the direction of a hopeless life if you're not lucky enough to have the "faith in yourself" to give you the strength of will to get out of bed in the morning and do something with yourself.

I am perfectly happy being an atheist, knowing that when I die, due to old age or biological trauma or faliure, that my biomass will be broken down into basic molecular bits and globs and consumed to become a few thousand worms or what have you, which will eventualy die and be absorbed by a tree, shrub, grass whatever, and then eaten by a deer, cow rabbit, whatever which will be eaten/slaughtered and eventualy go to make up another human being. How does that make you not happy?? I am not pessemistic, its just inevitable, and what will be, will be, so dont worry about how you DIE worry about how you LIVE and dont think about it, its easy, just think about how you are going to get with that hot girl/guy you saw in the bar and pass on your genes, like a good carbon based life form, there-there, it will be ok

I don't like getting outta bed either. Bed is my 'safe' place. Depression sucks doesn't it? Weel, so does pretty much everything else.

I don't really think Religion is that important in the world..anymore. I've always been under the belief that Religion was simply a way for the people in power to help control the other people. It was also a way to answer question about the way things work, and how things are. Reading through the bible, and some of the research that was done by others, and my own research, I just can't seem to find the faith that i'd need to believe in something I can't feel, touch, see, hear, or taste. The research done by others seem biased by their faith in their religion, and they may be subconciously twisting the words to sound better, or taking them as some other meaning. But it may also have something..subconciously, to do with my trouble in believing in something I can't be sure of.

In fact, my Girlfriend, hearing from another source which I trust, has been thinking of breaking up with me because of my lack of religion. She is under the impression, apparently, that I can't hold her in a high regard, and that I can't be morally right because of my lack of religion. I think it's a big misconception about atheism, it's seen almost as atheists would be morally unsound. Quite a few philosophers have done studies on it, and all of them are biased because of their own beliefs. I'm an atheist, and I believe that I have a good grasp on morality, I'm nice to people, I help little old ladies cross the street. Not because i'm afraid of reprecussions from a "creator" that I can't see or hear, rather, because it makes me feel good, and I believe that as human beings we have to be good to each other to survive.

I'm perfectly happy being an atheist, i've done my studies, i've researched, i've read. I've done all that's possible to try and believe, and finally I decided to just give up, and wait. If there is a being out there, and he wants me to believe, then he'll have to show me something to make me believe, because I can't put out that blind faith that so many people want to.

I'm not trying to step on anyones toes, I think it's great that people are able to put their faith in something. Unfortunatly, at this current time, I can't, and i'm content with it. And if my girlfriend wants to break up with me over it, that's fine. I think it's a stupid reason, but it just means that it wasn't meant to be. One of my major concerns, why I don't speak up more about it, is the fear of breaking down someone else's faith, because it can be a good thing. It can give people that sense of meaning, that sense that there is a reason why they're there, and i'm glad that they are able to find that. I'm still looking, and I may never find a reason, but i'm ok with that. I'll live my life to it's fullest, and keep my eyes open, and if Religion tries to come into my life, I won't fight it, but i'm not making the effort anymore.

I don't think it's fear of death - more a fear of the unknown.

You don't know what comes afterwards -- I know I have trouble with the concept of nothing, a void..

And what we can't fathom, we fear.. A person of faith could see this as a vindication of their beliefs. There can't be NOTHING - and so there MUST be something.

I'm not one of those people, though I wish I was. And the thought of all this coming to an end can be (and for me was) alarming. It kept me awake some nights, and yes, I was very afraid.

But there came a time when it occured to me that every thing has an end. And it is out of my control - for better or worse I have very little say in it. So why waste so much of my time and energy on something I cannot stop or control? Why waste my NOW pondering it? Would I rather come to the end and look back seeing how I squanderend my time worrying about this final moment - or look back and see a life where I did as much as I possibly could?

I know what your going through and it's tough.. I think we all face that moment at some time of our lives. It's the final loss of innocence when we realise exactly how fragile and temporary we really are.

Don't fear this - embrace it.. See that regardless of faith or belief how precious each and every thing around you is.. How every moment NOW is important - as irrespective of belief it's the only now you have... Don't waste it. Do the things YOU want to do so at the end of the merry-go-round you can look back and have as few regrets as possible.

Siggy.

Kex,

What a sad posting, especially from someone as creative as you.

I have felt that way on those occasions when I have been very depressed, and the problem with that kind of perception is that when you are in the middle of that mental state, you just know that your view of the world is the correct one, and that things really are like that. Of course, when you come out of that state of mind you see that it was completely fallacious, but it doesn't help while you are there. The thing to do is to constantly tell yourself that in reality things aren't like that, despite the fact that you know they are!

Anyway, I do hope that as time passes things will get better for you.

Christopher,

While we might be able to measure and quantify that part of the universe of which we are aware, I think it would be a mistake to think that we can possibly ever know everything about everything.

The problem is that we are restricted by the capacity of our brains, in just the same way as every other animal on this planet.

My cats, for example, have brains which perfectly suit them for their environment. In fact they share a characteristic with humans in the sense that their curiosity is so strong it can sometimes get them into trouble. My cats recognise the different tins of food, and tell me when I am late feeding them. But if I were to take my cats to the cat food factory, and showed them the process, they would have absolutely no understanding of it simply because their mental equiment isn't good enough.

I think we are exactly the same. Our brains suit us for our environment, which includes finding things out about the universe we inhabit. But I don't believe that when a brain gets to a certain size or complexity it is capable of understanding everything.

I think that we not only can't understand everything, but we are even incapable of realising that there is a whole range of stuff we can never understand.

Much like a cat staring incomprehendingly as the cans of cat food come of the conveyor belt.

Is it just me, or is that about the sexiest thing a man can say? Okay, sorry, back to your regularly scheduled existential crisis!

Every achievement we humans have ever made has been due to faith in ourselves and even having faith in other people.

From something as simple as loving another person, to raising a child, to art and science, and even to the tens of thousands of people that have created religions over the millennia...

They all have had faith in themselves.

To Ryen---for what it's worth, my most humble suggestion:

Find the gentle people.

Find the people who don't hurt others.

Find the people who help other people because it doesn't even occur to them not to.

Find the people who laugh a lot.

Find the people who don't judge people who aren't like them.

The world is full of people like that. They're not always the most visible, the wealthiest, the best looking or the most "successful" people. But they're there. I promise you.

When I watch and listen to people like that I can "feel" their serenity, peace and joy. And then I feel better, just knowing that a life like that is possible. And I am inspired.

Maggie

I agree with you Remo, but I would wager that many of them didn't know it or attributed it to something else.

Ryen's crisis points out what I find to be an extremely corrosive and harmful aspect of religion. It ties self-reliance to reliance on God. It attributes success, happinness, good fortune, good health, love, and all good things to the blessings of God, and all bad things to lack of God. If someone is in crisis it encourages them to put their efforts into strengthening their religious faith so that God will look more favorably on them and once more bestow them with hope. In so doing it can discourage them from addressing the real issues and sources for their unhappinness or fear.
It can be a very unfortunate side effect of strong religious faith, and can have very harmful consequences when someone indoctrinated into the belief system starts to question it. I pesonally feel that this is by design, but it might just be an unfortunate byproduct of believing your fate is not of your own making.

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -George Bernard Shaw

"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create." -Vincent Van Gogh

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light." --Carl Sagan