When did you realize you were old and not immortal, and how did you deal with it?

Age is just a number. i must admit that your outlook on life sucks. pardon the expression, but i call it like i see it. i am 66 and my outlook on life is great. i am thankful for each morning that i wake up and have made it another day. so what if you lose your hair. shave it all off or buy a wig. your lifes party should be in full swing, not dabbling in self-pity. i wish i was 28 again. you have to live each day to the fullest. i wake up at 5 am and go to bed at midnite. i stretch each day as though it were my last. its your life and you have not even made it to the halfway mark. what will you be like by the age of 40?

I’m 62, as far as I can tell, I am immortal. I also know that bullets cannot touch me. I have been in situations where people on all sides of me were wounded, nothing touched me.

Ron c…..you truly must be an immortal man. hey, we both are in our 60s and this guy is squabbling about feeling old at age 28. we definetley must have been born under different astrological signs. whatcha think?

I haven’t realized I’m old. I’m 18. I’m invincible.

:P

It was at about your age that I realized that I could probably rule out “brain surgeon” as a career choice. It’s not so much that I felt old, but that I smartened up and realized that I was not the exception to the rule, and that if there were bad consequences, the odds were, they would happen to me. The fact that a significant number of people (31) in my high school graduating class were dead by the time we had our 10 year high school reunion, most from accidents or drugs.

At first it was a little freaky, but then I adjusted to the fact that I needed to be responsible, and that my choices were becoming constrained. Going to college again, or moving with a job, was hampered by being married, my husband’s career, etc.

Belief is an evolutionary process, and I’ve evolved my thinking many times, going from how my parents raised me, to seriously doubting, to raising children in a religion, to an agnostic hodge-podge that works for me.

@john65pennington You make a fair (but somewhat harsh) point, and i agree with the whole “carpe diem” thing although i sometimes feel as if the concept sort of sidesteps the problem. I don’t really have an issue with the hair, it’s just something that prompted my realization that “wow, maybe this won’t go on forever”.

Facing and understanding mortality is something i want to do to live a more truthful and rational life, and hopefully for that reason value each day more. Hence the question, i’m sorry you percieved it as being complaining, it was not my intent.

@john65pennington we immortals don’t bother ourselves about astrological signs. After all, I fully expect to be around to see the fizzle out. I remember when I was in my 30’s and fully expected NOT to live past 50. I actually planned projects not to last past my 50th birthday.

I took a lot of ribbing but still waited until I was 51 to realize that I can’t die. Like I said, I’ve had horrific accidents, been shot at, electrocuted, I always come back. I expect that if I do die the only emotion I will have is surprise.

I was getting my hair cut and the barber trimmed my eyebrows. I didn’t even realize it had happened until after it happened. That’s when I realized I was starting to get old. Then when my wife unceremoniously yanked several hairs out of my ear. I am still reeling.

nisse….........my answer was a bit harsh and in a way i was hoping it would be a wakeup call for you about life. nothing personal at all. john

Ron C…..have you ever wondered why you survived all those incidents?

@john65pennington None taken, I think your answer may have had some of the desired effect.

@john65pennington nope, just accepted my immortality. (had to edit, got immoral and immortal mixed up)

Sometime in my 50’s I realized with a shock that there wouldn’t be enough time for me to read all the good novels ever written. And that was when I knew I was going to die someday.

About 200 years ago I started knitting. Now my whole house is covered in Macramé.

Old? A nine hundred year old tree is old. As for me, well I take issue with your assumption that death and immortality are at odds. I will pass from this world like any other and my body will nourish the earth but I fully trust that my consciousness or my true self is immortal and what you call death is simply an illusion of the body. Like a hermit crab who leaves his shell for a new one, I’m just renting this form for a few years.

I had the same epiphany my second year of college at 18. I do not believe in God or afterlife either. I think the most plausible explanation for what happens after death (although we won’t really know for sure until we die) is that we simply cease to be.

At first this was a major bummer to me. My main focus at the time was building a career, and for a while I thought I’d just be a bum on a beach somewhere for the rest of my days because working so hard to make a living and a contribution to the world seemed pointless if you one day cease to exist.

But then, I figured there is nothing I can do to affect the outcome so I should just stop thinking about it. What ever happens at life’s end happens, the focus should be on the time between then and now… on living. Life is quite short and I think it is important to know what you want from it, get it, and that is all that really matters.

The laws of thermodynamics tell us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed so we simply are converted from one form of energy to another. The idea of reincarnation is interesting to me but I have not explored it to come to any decision about it.

I plan on reading:

The Compass of Zen
Tao Te Ching
The Selfish Gene, and
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

Interesting question. I’m 65, so I have definitely stared into the jaws of death during my lifetime. I know all too well that someday those jaws will clamp down on me.

My symptoms of aging are now manifold. What I used to do all night now it takes me all night to do. I can’t productively pull an all-nighter any longer to get a big crunch of work done. At a certain point, I must either sleep or just sit like a zombie wondering what it is aI’m staying awake for.

I work out every day, alternating between areobic workouts on odd-numbered days and free weights on even; so I am a lot more muscular than I was in my younger years. But I used to be able to go through the holiday season slacking off and pick right back up where I left off in the new year. No more. I need to be pretty diligent about not missing a day now or I pay for it in workig to get back to my usual pace.

I’m agnostic. You might define me as an atheist because like you, I think the liklihood of an invisible man in the sky who makes a list of who is naughty and nice is about equal to there being a Santa making a similar, if different intentioned list. But I am not so quick to dismiss spirituality altogether.We are very complex beings, and our ability to think goes far beyond simple problem solving. The universe if far, far more complex than us. It may iteslef be sentient in some way. It may be God.

Even though we have built supercomputers cap[able of performing a 1.75 million-trillion Ploating Point Operations per second (1.75 petaFLOPS) and we can network them together so as many as we can build can interlink and use access to the Internet as a knowledge base, they still don’t even begin to think in a sentient manner. That begs the question, just what is self awareness. What possesses a thinking organism to suddenly move beyond its instincts and realize it can DECIDE what to do instead of just react in a programmed fashion?

Could it be we each have a soul—some thing that is not simply neurons interconnected, but it the awareness of being aware? I can’t prove that is so, but I got to that possibility using a very logical path of deduction. It definitely could be so. It’s far mor likely than the Santa Claus myth turning out to be true.

And so the truth is that while none of us really KNOWS that there is a God and you are unwilling to believe in one without proof, it is also true that none of us really KNOWS what comes after the death of this body we currently inhabit. If you are unwilling to believe in God without proof, why then believe in the corporeal end being the absolute end without proof?

@ETpro I agree the concept of a soul is very interesting….

@lilikoi
The laws of thermodynamics tell us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed so we simply are converted from one form of energy to another.
Yes and consciousness is the most powerful form of energy. With it we create something from nothing. So it stands to reason that it would be converted. Perhaps with a complete forgetfulness of what we perceive of as self.

@ETpro, @lilikoi I belive the likelihood of an immortal soul existing is very slim.

If you are unwilling to believe in God without proof, why then believe in the corporeal end being the absolute end without proof?

Occams razor. It’s the simplest explanation. All appearances and evidence point in the way of our consciousness being put out when we die. An immortal soul presupposes an entire framework of things that need to be in place, none of which are provable in any way, and for that reason in my mind seems alot less plausible.

I can give you very concrete proof that we do not keep our conciousness after we die, just look at a dead brain in a PET-camera.

Sure you could redefine it as some immortal soul not part of the brain, but that would make you a dualist, and dualism has in my mind been blown to smithereens as a concept. I tend not to believe ideas for which there is no possible evidence that could prove them wrong, that there is some other ethereal domain besides the physical realm that we cannot see or measure, that is inhabited by our souls, is one of those ideas.

The whole idea of an immortal soul feels really shaky to me, and i am pretty confident that once i die that will be it.

You mean…I’m old and I’m not immortal?

@nisse
Then remain with your smug and satisfied self until you become worm food in a handful of years.

@nisse My position is the same as yours – that once you’re dead you’re gone, period. But, I like to entertain other possibilities (without dwelling on them) because you never know when someone will discover something new. I still need concrete proof in order to believe anything but I also acknowledge that other possibilities exist, some that we have not yet thought of perhaps or that we cannot yet prove.

I realized that science itself is an evolutionary process and we are far from having all the answers to how this world works. My concrete proof that this is so came from hearing physicists discuss additional dimensions beyond three – we cannot see or otherwise sense these additional dimensions (if they do exist) yet it is a real possibility that they are there. See this talk if you’re interested.

@seventhSense I’m sorry, this question must really have hit a sore spot as people seem to be really offended by everything being said. Why the sad face, i’m just trying to argue my point hoping that someone can show me where i am wrong. I think @ETpro started down a great path, so i thought i’d share my point on what he was saying.. What was the big problem with that?

I realize that I am older than I once was, but I do not yet think of myself as old even at 55.
I try to live my life a day at a time and try to find something meaningful or of value to do each day.

Someday my body will cease to function and I shall die. I hope that day will not come soon. I do what I can to eat properly, take care of this body as well as I can given my disabilities.

While it would be pleasing to find that after my life, my sense of self might persist, I don’t spend my time or energy pondering such things.

My grandmother is 102 and still in possession of her sense of self and her memories. She still finds some joy in her life although at birth her life expectancy was 50.5 years! She feels that she has lived too long, having outlived all her contemporaries.

My only fear of death is that my dear wife, a few years my senior and a smoker will not be with me all the rest of the way on this journey.

Having been married several times before, I have no interest in trying to find someone else with whom to share my life.

@nisse Don’t be offended. I think this discussion is great.

@lililkoi I’m not offended, and i will definetly watch your talk :)

@nisse
No it’s cool. And please don’t take differences of opinion as offense lest you prematurely remove yourself from the dialectic. I think that it’s just incredibly depressing to imagine your viewpoint.

And as to your point that the electrical activity of the brain stops. I agree of course, but I don’t think the body is what is what has continuation nor the electrical impulses of the brain, nor the self, nor the ego. There are countless examples of near death experiences and of persons outside of their mortal body observing minute details of themselves in surgery etc. This can’t be a coincidence. Science has proposed multiple universes and dimensions and still a continuation of consciousness is a sticking point for some people. I believe it springs from a fear of losing control. There’s a constant desire to contract into the knowable and shun the unknown.
The fact of the matter is is that we are all making all of this up all the time. What is real is the imagination that each one of us possesses and the inherent energy that is interdependent is our co arising thought processes. There is no independent arising of this thought anymore than there are any independent thoughts. They have a interdependent quality that is beyond quantification. In the Dark Ages they believed the sun revolved around the earth. They were wrong, but the wonder is not that they were wrong, but in that they were able to work out a completely workable order for the universe with this imagination. Whatever it is we can make it work simply by the power of our collective energy and agreement.

The mortal frame decays and the brain withers but this is not the repository of the Collective Unconscious. Consciousness can not be housed within this frame. It is too vast. Nuclear fission is a reaction but it pales before the energy that is inherent behind the thought that dreamed it up.

I barely remember how old I am. Not because I’m senile, but age has never been something that’s concerned me.

Immortality is something reserved for the gods of Olympia and science fiction writers…nothing I’ve ever bothered to give a second thought to.

@nisse Explaining human existence with Occam’s Razor would probably fail since there is no simple explanation for it. Nor is the simplest explanation always the right one. The simple idea of the earth being motionless in space and the heavens revolving around it turned out to be flat wrong. Even understanding gravity and the heliocentric solar system turned out to be inadequate. It was more complex, and the general and special theories of relativity showed.

When you think about it, “God created the heavens and the earth and all that lies therein” is pretty darned simple. It beats the daylights out of “In the beginning there was nothing, then it exploded” in its simplicity. Please don’t lapse into a debate about the proper understanding of the big bang and the existence of time outside it. I am using this phrasing to be concise and inject a bit of dry humor, not to explain literal cosmology.

We probably don’t have much to debate, you and I. I am far from convinced there is a soul. I’m just unconvinced there isn’t any such possibility, or that dualism is dead. Hence my agnosticism whereas you chose to self define as an atheist. you are easier to convince things are impossible than I am.

So if you don’t like my possibility of a soul explanation of why to not worry about death, then let me offer this one, which is probably closer to the truth I operate by, and which passes muster with Occam. What are you going to do about it—kill yourself to prevent worrying about dying?

I suggest you reconsider the God thing.

I believe that one has mortal parts and immortal ones, and that one must sort out the final destination of the latter.

I think I was 4 or 5. And the thought that I would never be conscious again gave me the willies and would cause me to stay awake at night until I realized I still had 50 or more years to go before I had to worry about.

Now I try not to think about it.

One has to realize that these questions will always have inherent within them the inherent nature of dualism. It’s inseparable from discursive thought and that’s a good thing.

3 months ago and scared the shit out of me!! Pay attention here….life is too short and don’t wait as long as I did to admit it!! Live each day like there is no tomorrow!!!

I am 23 i still don’t feel old : ) just older

@nisse Here’s one you can cut into with Occam’s Razor. The human brain has an estimated 100 billion neurons in it. With that many electrical connections, we are capable of self awareness and sentient thought.

As of late 2009, the world’s fastest supercomputer was the Cray XT5 Jaguar system which networks 19,000 computers and 224,000 AMD architecture processing units each having about 300 million transistors per core. So that one supercomputing network at the National Center for Computational Sciences has 12.7 quintillion transistors (neural connections). To make that number more comprehensible, it’s 10 million times more connections than our brain’s neural network has.

The XT5 Jaguar is connected to the Internet, which gives it access to all human knowledge and fantasy. Through its Internet connection, it can “see” everything any Network connected camera sees, and “hear” anything any internet connected microphone hears. But it doesn’t think. Why?

For that matter whales, orcas and elephants all have far more neurons in their brains than we do. They are relatively smart as animals go, but show absolutely no sign of self awareness. They are stuck in their instinctual programming, unaware that they could step outside it and rewrite it as they please. Why?

What is it about man that lets us step outside our programming and think how we wish to rewire ourselves? What is it that lets us use such a relatively small neural network to carry on this conversation about thought, when all the world’s supercomputers networked together couldn’t touch the topic given a million years?

I got my first “fine line” next to my eye. I spent all day mourning the loss of my youth. I know it sounds mighty shallow, but I think there’s something about seeing signs of deterioration in your body that make you realize that instead of “growing up” you’ve just begun to “age.”

For me, this was an easy one. First there was Vietnam, which taught me I wasn’t immortal. Then there was a near-fatal parachuting accident, which taught me that I was breakable. Then there was the cancer from Agent Orange exposure, which taught me I was very mortal. Now there is God, who teaches me that none of that matters in the long run. : )

I’ve never been that conscious of my age and often forget how old I am when asked but one day a few years back, I suddenly became aware I was an a full fledged adult, without question. That was a new feeling, to notice I was no longer the youngest person in a room or at work. Panic attacks consumed me as I struggled to get up enough confidence and leave a empty and bleak-futured relationship I’d been floundering in for several years. An intense drive came over me to get busy and do something I’d always wanted, often talked about but didn’t really thing I could actualize. Two years later I did it all and I have few regrets. I’m agnostic and value my remaining years since I believe this mortal finite life is the only one I’ve got. This focus and new appreciation for life has helped me become healthier and more positive even though it also forces me to face a lot fears and try new things. Life is pretty damned awesome sometimes.

I just turned 65 and it is just one of those things. There is absolutely nothing I can do to stop it, so I have decided to just ignore it. The main thing I notice is that I can’t bend as well and my skin doesn’t fit as well as it used to. Really there is not much that I did at 20 that I still can’t do and in a lot of cases do better!

You know that line in the Serenity Prayer, “accept the things I cannot change.” It’s a good prayer even if you don’t buy the god thing.

I do kind of like the idea of reincarnation, do you have to believe in a god for that one???

@rooeytoo Welcome to 65, an age I’m enjoying since last March. I’m as agnostic about reincarnation as I am about a supreme being, so yeah, you can believe in that without accepting the God thing. In fact, Buddhism isn’t about a supreme being letting you into heaven, it’s about self growth and aelf awareness growing till you reach oneness with everything that is. So if the Universe is God, then all those souls who have grown to the point of seing that are one with it and are God.

Only on my death-bed did I realize that I was old, immoral, and mortal. But that was an eternity ago, in another life altogether.

@ETpro – Thank you, I think that is what I will believe henceforth!

@ratboy – your new avatar is darling, you do have a warm fuzzy side!

Lot’s of great discussion here. Ill start with adressing @seventhsense

@SeventhSense I won’t, i know that you are a respected poster here and i value your opinion, i got a bit flustered by your comment. It was more confrontational and less of a proper debate than i’m used to see from you. Your follow-up was alot better however, and I hope me giving my point of view on it won’t spark an equal reaction.

I would love to imagine God and an afterlife, or an immortal soul, or me continuing as an energy pattern or something akin to the idea, believe me i would, it would make dying and all that just so much easier. It’s just that i can’t bring myself to believe it, it all seems to reek of such wishful thinking that i wince at the smell of it. Everything i see, live and hear, everything science and skeptical thinking is tellling me is that these ideas are false. I just cannot honestly convince myself the proposition of afterlife is probable.

The thought of unexistence is so scary, and grasping for whatever convenient explanation is lying around (god, energy patterns, unknown properties of the universe) is so alluring, which is exactly why i think we humans are so prone to rationalize about death and dying.

Adressing some of your practical points:

And as to your point that the electrical activity of the brain stops. I agree of course, but I don’t think the body is what is what has continuation nor the electrical impulses of the brain, nor the self, nor the ego.

So you are basically saying there is something else to consciousness than just electricity in the neurons, which basically amounts to dualism, which i do not agree with for the aforementioned reasons.

There are countless examples of near death experiences and of persons outside of their mortal body observing minute details of themselves in surgery etc. This can’t be a coincidence

I don’t presume this to be coincidence. The near death experiences you claim to be evidence for the afterlife (i’m assuming you are talking about light tunnels, moving towards the light, wintessing your body in surgery from above etc.) just doesn’t cut if for me. I don’t see how these things are impossible to explain from a realist point of view, explain to me why these experiences are not just normal functions of a brain in distress, and about to shut down. We all know the human minds frailty under stress, that’s why the police can’t trust a single eye-witness as conclusive evidence, they know under stress we fabricate and distort everything we see, that’s a well researched and established fact. Imagine that distortion under the ultimate stress when you think you are dying and the brain is not getting enough oxygen and is about to shut down. How can we possibly trust these accounts.

Science has proposed multiple universes and dimensions and still a continuation of consciousness is a sticking point for some people

I don’t see this as non-rational. How does the mathematical notion of multiple universes help me if i am living in this universe?

I believe it springs from a fear of losing control. There’s a constant desire to contract into the knowable and shun the unknown.

I believe you are half right, the fear of losing control is so overwhelming, that the allure of a consolating explanation is extreme, that’s why i think many choose to resort to magical thinking instead of trying to deal with the harsh reality of mortality. I don’t think there is any shun of the unknown, for example religion and heaven is the prime example of what has been used as concolation in the past, most rational people now choose not to believe in those concepts. The unknown cannot give me any explantion or concolation until it has been made known, and for that to pass it has to be understood. Yes there are lots of unknown things in the universe, but what i’m witnessing is that life is short, brutish, random and often unfair and the universe seems pretty oblivious to our petty existence. In short, the unknown universe cannot give me any meaning to my life. Everything stable, secure and fair in my world has been brought about by human endeavour (housing, food, law). I don’t belive the universe cares about our existence. It would wipe us all out in a nano-second and go right back to drinking tea.

Whatever it is we can make it work simply by the power of our collective energy and agreement.

I think you are confusing matters by mixing the two meanings of energy (physical energy such as electricity or momentum, and mental energy such as stamina and resolve), for me these two concepts are different.

The mortal frame decays and the brain withers but this is not the repository of the Collective Unconscious. Consciousness can not be housed within this frame. It is too vast.

Carl Jung proposed a collective consciousness in psychology, that idea is pretty much frowned upon by current research. Explain to me why you think there is a collective consciousness, as i can’t see anything pointing to that being the case.

Nuclear fission is a reaction but it pales before the energy that is inherent behind the thought that dreamed it up

Sure, human beings can do amazing things, but i still think you are mixing the concepts of physical and mental energy. To me this is a false analogy and misuse of language, there are many differences between mental and physical energy. You can’t use mental energy to power your car. Explain why you think physical and mental energy are the same.

@ETpro

Explaining human existence with Occam’s Razor would probably fail since there is no simple explanation for it. Nor is the simplest explanation always the right one.

You are right, Occams Razor is a poor guide for establishing the truth, simplicity is not always the case. I withdraw that argument.

When you think about it, “God created the heavens and the earth and all that lies therein” is pretty darned simple. It beats the daylights out of “In the beginning there was nothing, then it exploded” in its simplicity.

I disagree, “God created the heavens and the earth” is not really a simple explanation, it just begs the question “what created god?”, and creates an infinite regress. But ill try to stick to the original question, the origins of the universe is certainly pertinent to the question at hand, but i am not sure anyone has a satisfying answer (nethier religion nor science).

What are you going to do about it—kill yourself to prevent worrying about dying?

Nothing of the sort :) I’m don’t have a problem with worrying about dying. In fact i think it’s one of the most important things to face death with open eyes, and something i am trying to get better at, instead of trying to weasel out of the rational consequences of the fact that one day i will cease to exist.

I think it’s one thing to say “i’ve faced my mortality” but another thing altogether to have truly internalized the concept and consequences of death and being aware of it and accepting it (as i suspect perhaps some of the war vets that have posted previously have done) .

That’s what i’ve realized lately and i think i am starting to slowly wrap my head around the concept, atleast i’ve had a few wakeup calls, although i suspect i will never fully understand it. I was hoping someone who had gone through a similar process of maturation as i am doing now would see the similarity, and either give me a kick in the butt (like @john_pennington) or spark some more ideas about death that i haven’t thought about (like you, and others in this thread).

What is it about man that lets us step outside our programming and think how we wish to rewire ourselves? What is it that lets us use such a relatively small neural network to carry on this conversation about thought, when all the world’s supercomputers networked together couldn’t touch the topic given a million years?

Certainly an interesting question that i’ve been studying pretty intensely lately (AI and stuff, i am a computer scientist after all). The fact that we have yet to invent a thinking computer makes it obviously clear that consciousness is something more than just raw processing power. I currently belive that consciousness has something to do with the ability of a system to do self-reference. Otherwise any old feedback-loop could be called conscious (for example the floater in your toilet).

I believe consciousness is not an on/off proposition, but rather that there is a continuum of varying degrees of consciousness, from a simple feedback loop like a toilet floater on one end, up through mosquitoes, fish, farm animals, cat’s and dogs, babies and at the pinnacle full-grown human beings (atleast some of them).

I think one could surely say that some of the computer programs working today (for example the programs spidering the web, or the face regocnition in your digital camera, or the soccer playing robots built in campuses around the world, are atleast as conscious as a mosquito. So i have think we will see computers slowly moving up the scale of consciousness, but i don’t think there will be a threshold where we can say “this computer is conscious”.

Something is sparking the ability for self reference in humans, and my current belief (though far from conclusively proven) is that once a feed-back system gains the ability for rich representation of both itself and the world around it, we will see something akin to or very similar to human intelligence.

I digress, we have come far from the original question. If you are interested in my take on consciousness and AI i recommend the books “Gödel Escher Bach” and “I am a strange loop” by Douglas Hofstader.

@everyone
The major categories of answer to the problem of aging, death and unexistence so far seems to be (a tad simplified ;) ):

a) Resort to magical thinking. Take the (in my eyes) cheap road and convince yourself of a a benevolent god or some other unprovable explanation. Ignore what you think is real and true. You will be better off from it. – This feels inauthentic to me, i refuse to ignore what i think is real without being convinced of something else being the case. I don’t think being deliberately irrational moves humanity forward one iota.

b) I don’t believe in an eternal soul, but i am keeping my options open (because of how little we know about the universe). I still secretly harbour hopes of life after death, but i don’t rationally believe the arguments for it. – This to me is not accepting the logical consequences of what you think is true, and is for that reason irrational.

b) There’s nothing you can do about death, so pretend it doesn’t exist. Don’t think about it and please don’t make me think about it by bringing it up on fluther – This also feels inauthentic and unsatisfying to me. Putting your head in the sand doesn’t make reality go away (unless you’re a relativist who believe that you create reality by percieving it).

d) There’s nothing you can do about death, have the serenity to accept the things you cannot change. —This is the in my eyes most rational answer so far, but it leaves out how and where you found the serenity you are talking about. You provide the end destination but you fail to provide a description of the route. Did your serenity just pop up on it’s own, or did you do something to find it? If you haven’t found this serentiy yet how do you know that it exists?

@nisse Regarding I disagree, “God created the heavens and the earth” is not really a simple explanation, it just begs the question “what created god?”, and creates an infinite regress. But ill try to stick to the original question, the origins of the universe is certainly pertinent to the question at hand, but i am not sure anyone has a satisfying answer (nethier religion nor science).

You and I both realize it begs that question, but shhh Those who rely on belief in God to stave off the fear of death refuse to think that far.

Regarding Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid I’ve read it and throuoghly enjoyed it. I highly recommend it. I have yet to read Hofstadter’s other book. Thanks for the recommendation.

@nisse
I don’t think that there is a satisfying response to this question that would suffice for you.
for example religion and heaven is the prime example of what has been used as concolation(sic) in the past, most rational people now choose not to believe in those concepts.
This is a false statement because most people believe in these things if you look at the nation and the world statistically. “Nearly nine out of 10 people in the United States say they believe in heaven, according to a recent ABC News poll.”
Dec 20, 2005 ABC NEWS
This is the problem of moving in small circles and imagining that the world is populated with 1’s and 0’s. Perhaps you are you proposing that the vast populace is non rational? I can understand that as your opinion but it is certainly not the vast opinion.

Heaven, notwithstanding, the basis for your distrust is that there is not quantifiable nor observable phenomenon to back up claims of an afterlife but simply extrapolation based on billions of agreements? You believe in galaxies and stars quadrillion and quintillion light years away by calculations that I guess that you can not perform? Do you find this to be incredulous to the average person whether or not it is true?
Why because likewise there is not quantifiable nor observable phenomenon to back up these claims but simply extrapolation from other calculations.You find that the genetic code of DNA is the only basis for the intelligent rational thought that presupposes one individual from another? A code written into tissues at the cellular level? Show another instance of code where there is no author?
The question is not whether there is an intelligent design it’s the fear about the nature of the designer. Look in the eyes of a child and it will tell you all that one needs to know. I admire science and the scientific process is integral to the development of man but the limitations of science are clear. Imagination is more important than intelligence as Einstein said and that is the true nature of the species.

P.S.- my other favorite Einstein quote, “God doesn’t play dice”.
Also my previous statement “Then remain with your smug and satisfied self until you become worm food in a handful of years”, you found harsh? If you can not accept this then perhaps your position is not as clear as you imagine. I can accept this personally. I can comprehend of my flesh rotting off the bones and the calcium in my bones rejoining with the earth but I don’t believe this is the whole picture.

The real basis of your argument is arrogance plain and simple. It’s the foundation of your argument. Billions of people are ignorant and really have no idea that they are in the dark and woefully ignorant and pitiful creatures. All of the trillions of pages of print about the nature of man, his place in the cosmos had no basis other than to show that this moment in time…there it is…no now it’s gone… has been to point out the supreme thought of the hour. Which will of course be overturned tomorrow by a more precise “reality”
Putting your head in the sand doesn’t make reality go away
Again how did the people of the Dark Ages have a working system if not for your “reality”? Can you imagine a world that has no familiar touchstone but works. This continually comes back again and again to a so antiquated idea of observable phenomenon as being the basis of “reality”. Has not quantum theory put the nails in this coffin? And again were the people of the past living in reality? Is any age living in reality? If knowledge is never complete can there ever be an age where people are said to be living in reality? And if there is nothing but agreement and complicity in a never ending transformation of events on the most minute of molecular level , then what is more real then anything but consciousness? Whatever that happens to be or whatever you wish to call it. It’s the one thing which can not be broken down further.

Further evidence of your arrogance:
Everything stable, secure and fair in my world has been brought about by human endeavor (housing, food, law). I don’t believe the universe cares about our existence. It would wipe us all out in a nano-second and go right back to drinking tea.
That to me is ungrateful and more evidence of an attitude than a reality. We have been inhabiting what appears to be the only habitable corner of our galaxy for millions of years. The nature of life and energy of life again and again shows us that life springs from the devastation of earthquakes, famine, volcanoes and Ice Ages from blades of grass to micro organsisms. Today we spew mercury, PCB’s, non degradable plastics, have plastic garbage patches swirling in our oceans the size of countries ravage the land and still it is forgiving and adapts. People ravage their bodies with high fat diets with every indication of a desire to snuff out their life and the mercy of life is to supply a few more years.
“The sun rises on the good and evil alike”

@SeventhSense
I love the fact that you provide a viewpoint clearly very different from mine, i hope you dont see my irreverence as a problem. I am merely interested in testing my own ideas and hoping someone can refute them convincingly. :)

Now, let me adress your argument:

I don’t think that there is a satisfying response to this question that would suffice for you.

I’m not really looking for an answer to the meaning of death or on how to handle it, and i don’t think there is one as otherwise we would probably have heard it already. Such an answer is also probably by necessity an oversimplification.

What i was looking for was:
a) Experience from someone who have had the same realisations as me, and has made the same conclusions that i have, and have moved on. I want to know how to move on from where I am at now (or reading tips on philosophers who have had the same realisations).
b) Discussion with viewpoints differing from my own (such as yours), who can show me where i am mistaken, or where my agument is weak.

This is a false statement because most people believe in these things if you look at the nation and the world statistically. “Nearly nine out of 10 people in the United States say they believe in heaven

You are right offcourse, most people are religious in some way. I come from a small and secularized northen european country, where in fact most people are non-believers. But in the world seen as a whole, i have no doubt that you are right. That offcourse is no argument either for or against the validity of my other statements. My math teacher used to tell me that “the majority is always wrong”. It doesn’t quite hold but i think it’s good to keep in mind not to accept an idea or a viewpoint just because the majority of people believe it. The majority of people used to think that women should not be allowed to vote, or that negroes were no better than animals but happily we have left those ideas behind us.

This is the problem of moving in small circles and imagining that the world is populated with 1’s and 0’s.

That’s why i’m here on fluther testing my ideas with you guys :) I also like to travel alot just to meet more people from different parts of the world who can enrich my set of ideas and beliefs.

Perhaps you are you proposing that the vast populace is non rational? I can understand that as your opinion but it is certainly not the vast opinion.

I am proposing more than that. I am proposing that everyone everywhere is behaving and thinking irrationally most of the time. Humans aren’t exactly truth seeking missiles. There are plenty of psychology books describing the irrational behaviour of humans in a multitude of situations. Here are a couple of experiments proving my point, there are plenty more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

Heaven, notwithstanding, the basis for your distrust is that there is not quantifiable nor observable phenomenon to back up claims of an afterlife but simply extrapolation based on billions of agreements?

I am distrusting heaven because of the lack of observable evidence backing up that theory, yes. An extrapolation of billions of agreements? No, i belive the idea of heaven has simply been fabricated as a story, and has spread around the world like a meme. Somewhere someone started threatening someone that if they didn’t do what they wanted, god wouldn’t let them into heaven. It worked so well that the story stuck and that’s the path we’ve been on since.

You find that the genetic code of DNA is the only basis for the intelligent rational thought that presupposes one individual from another?

I don’t exactly agree with this, i think there are lots of other factors such as upbringing and environment and possibly other biological evolutionary processes at work here too. But let’s not get dug down.

[DNA] A code written into tissues at the cellular level? Show another instance of code where there is no author?

Ah, a creationist argument, i love it :)

a) If i found another instance would that prove or disprove gods existence? If i found another instance of code in nature would you not also say that some divine creator made that code aswell. Exactly how many codes in nature would i need to find before you would abandon the idea that it was created by something intelligent?

b) The idea that codes store information coming from another instance is but one popular meaning of the word. A code can also be a description of what’s there. Information is not only something that has been put for retrieval (the engineered type of codes). It is also how the structural bits of reality themselves are interacting under observation, as information. DNA in this sense is the second type of code.

P.S.- my other favorite Einstein quote, “God doesn’t play dice”.

You should read up on the circumstances of this quote. Here’s the short version: Einstein was actually referring to the consequences of the theory of quantum physics. Einstein was reluctant to accept the quantum theory as true, the theory in this form (the Copenhagen interpretation) is now a well accepted theory of physics. In short, Einstein was dead wrong.

Also my previous statement “Then remain with your smug and satisfied self until you become worm food in a handful of years”, you found harsh? If you can not accept this then perhaps your position is not as clear as you imagine. I can accept this personally. I can comprehend of my flesh rotting off the bones and the calcium in my bones rejoining with the earth but I don’t believe this is the whole picture.

Well to be honest it seemed more as an attempt at being rude than a statement of fact or an argument. My whole argumentation up to this point has been to establish exactly that: we die and then that’s it. And the original question i had is if wether you are comfortable with that being the case, and if so how can you feel comfortable with that without believing in something supernatural. So i must have misinterpreted your statement somehow.

The real basis of your argument is arrogance plain and simple. It’s the foundation of your argument.

Arrogance towards whom? God? The universe? The people of earth? You? Who am i being arrogant towards by stating my opinion on how i think the world works and asking an honest question on how to deal with what i believe in day-to-day life?

If i am being arrogant towards God, the universe or the people of earth, i am pretty certain that they don’t mind. Please show me what my arrogance consists of.

Such an answer is also probably by necessity an oversimplification.
The most profound is often the most simple.

@nisse
That’s awfully patronizing, don’t you think?
@ETpro
“What created God?” is perhaps best answered by saying, “Nobody, God is”, since we all know that infinite regression is trouble. God claims omnipresence and is unaffected by time, it seems reasonable to suppose that He exists and operates outside of space-time. God has the same sort of timelessness as the Laws of Nature have in-universe.

Your tests-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy reflect mostly the complicity of human agreement and social nature which is as I stated. And ironically these authorities were all scientists. What about a study where the character administering the test was a religious figure, an average Joe and a scientist to compare findings. Ironically also as I mentioned systems work that are by nature “illogical” and have for centuries. I have no doubt we could formulate an entire framework of thought based on any set of parameters we agreed upon.

Arrogance towards whom?
The human race. The basis of your argument is not that you doubt a God, but that you are infallible in your supposition that there is no God which assigns to you godlike authority not unlike the authority figures you decry.

@Nullo I can just as easily and provably postulate that the universe has always existed and that it moves through cycles of big bangs. Saying God created the universe solves nothing. It is beyond our knowledge. That is the only possible honest answer. Any other explanation is pure conjecture.

The fact that somebody wrote your conjecture down in a book thousands of years ago and you read it does not stop it from being a tautology. Somebody also wrote in a book that the moon is made of green cheese. You could read that in the book, and proclaim, “Aha! I know what the moon is made of. It’s green cheese, because the great book says so.” But we have now been to the moon and brought chunks of it back. They simply aren’t green cheese. This is why tautology is a fallacious form of argument.

@ETpro
I try to show you how others think, that other people operate on different basic paradigms, and you lash out at me. Tsk tsk. Not a good way to make friends and influence people!

@Nullo Son, if I ever lash out at you, you will show the marks of having been lashed. I don’t dish out verbal abuse often, and certaily not here. But when I do I can dish it out deep enough to make a drunken sailor blush. Reread my answer. There isn’t a single insult or slur there.

I was simply trying to have an intelligent debate about the topic with you. If the only way to do that is to agree with everything you say, then let’s just agree to disagree and not chat with one another in the future.

@SeventhSense, @Nullo

Ok. Look. I definetly didn’t want to turn this thread in to some sort of theist bashing or atheist circle jerk, i value both your inputs.

I really didn’t think my atheist viewpoint would be so controversial on an Internet forum, but apparently I was wrong. In restrospect a better title for my question might have been “Atheists: How do you deal with death being final?” or something similar and maybe you could have been spared from being offended by my viewpoint, as you would not be in this discussion at all, and we could focus on what I am really interested in which is how to handle the finality death when you are a non-beliver.

Apparently my retoric seems offensive to you, but as i’ve said before i welcome you to show me where I am wrong. I truly believe this is how the world works, and before you dub me arrogant for the umptieth time, no I am not dead sure that i am in possesion of the final truth, but it’s not reasonable to suspend judgement on everything just because you are not dead certain.

Hell I don’t know for certain, without a shred of doubt that brushing my teeth every night prevents tooth decay, but I brush my teeth every night anyway, and i bet you do too, because it seems logical that the dentists are right, and nobody has given me good reason to doubt the veracity of their claims. If you gave me convincing reasons for why brushing my teeth is bad, i would stop.

I go with what i belive is true, until you show me where I am wrong. That’s why i’m arguing with you, if i was dead sure at my beliefs there would be no reason to have this discussion at all.

I respect both your positions, but with that said i reserve the right to adress what i see as holes in the logic of your beliefs. If that means i’m being arrogant towards the people of the world, then so be it. I’m sure once the people of the world have dried their teary eyes they will forget about my infringements and go right back to business as usual.

I have no intention of “tippy toeing” around religious beliefs, just because you hold them as sacrosanct. Withholding the belief that there is a God, when the lack of evidence and the contradictions and swiss-cheese logic of the proponents is so overwhelming is nothing short of irrational. If you dislike me trying to find holes in your theories, this is not the place to post them.

If I claimed that the reason we are here is because of Smurfs living in the core of the earth, i’m sure you’d ask me how i came to that conclusion. If i failed to produce a convincing reason, you’d probably dismiss me as a crazy person. Now imagine the Smurfs being God, and there you go.

Belief in a higher power may be excellent at bringing you (and the people of the world) consolation but that does not make it true.

@Nullo
God claims omnipresence and is unaffected by time, it seems reasonable to suppose that He exists and operates outside of space-time. God has the same sort of timelessness as the Laws of Nature have in-universe.

Explain to me why it would not be more reasonable to suppose that God does not exist, and does not operate anywhere or claim anything. When you have a theory, and the theory leads to infinite regress, that means it’s something wrong with it.

I could just as well claim the universe was created by a meatball, but that the meatball operates outside of space-time so we cannot observe it. My meatball theory would be impossible to disprove, and for that reason it teaches us nothing, except that it is a poor theory.

@SeventhSense

.. I have no doubt we could formulate an entire framework of thought based on any set of parameters we agreed upon.

Surely we could do this, but what would be the point if nothing of what our framework said could be verfied in reality.

Arrogance towards whom?: The human race. The basis of your argument is not that you doubt a God, but that you are infallible in your supposition that there is no God which assigns to you godlike authority not unlike the authority figures you decry.

I am not, nor have i ever claimed to be, infallible. Even if i had claimed to be infallible, i would not be (nobody is), and it would not bestow me with any godlike authority. If i need to qualify every statement i make, this will become an unbearably long discussion. From now on just assume that every statement i make is prefixed by “I believe it to be true that..” and perhaps you will not be offended by my viewpoint.

Nor is my argument based on me being infallible. My argument is based on the premises i have proposed earlier in this thread. If you think my argument is weak, please attack those premises, or the logic connecting those premises to my conclusion, and don’t make up straw men.

@nisse
but i still have trouble dealing with the concept that one day there will be no more me, i will just be nothing.
Of course you have to accept that there is the distinct possibility that this isn’t true and not just a primitive resistance to non existence. And the scientific understanding that nothing is ever lost but just changes form is certainly in my mind as equally true with consciousness as anything else in the universe. We all need to find a workable solution to this dilemma or we squander the limited time we have in this life so it’s in our best interest to do so.
Surely you can run rings around me in a contest of mathematical computation and I have to concede that some of my position is probably just rhetoric to you. But it’s a fundamental subjective difference and we both imagine and view the world and all it’s processes from a different frame no less so then if I was wearing yellow sunglasses and you were wearing blue but regardless I wish you peace in your endeavor to find solace.

If you unplug a toaster and it no longer toasts bread, it’s because the energy that runs through the toaster has been cut off. It’s not necessarily that the toaster’s consciousness has escaped from its toaster body and gone to small appliance heaven – it just doesn’t have the juice anymore. I believe that when I die, since the blood is no longer bringing fuel to my cells, it’s as though the electricity is cut off and I cease to operate. I don’t believe I have a separate consciousness that goes anywhere. It can’t “change form” any more than the electricity that’s missing from the unplugged toaster “changes form,” because it’s not a thing to begin with.

I have no good reason to believe that any deity exists, especially not one that I see as being created largely as propaganda, such as in the Bible, Koran, etc. If there is a divine being out there somewhere, I can’t see it being contained neatly in any one human philosophy – we are like dust in the universe, ants on a crumb (as it were). The universe moves with or without us, and just like big rocks hit our planet from time to time, another could hit and do us in as the dinosaurs were done in. And it would all keep spinning.

So I guess you could say I’m an atheist. :)

Now, how do I deal with death being forever and that’s it? It does make me wish from time to time that I could come back and see how our childrens’ childrens’ ...children are doing, or see how the current problems that we don’t know the answers for eventually get solved. I did the math one day and figure that if i am very lucky and live as long as one might expect, not being cut down prematurely, I would see the year 2060 at most. That was a real stomach-clencher, to think that when they talk about comets returning in 2070 and such, I won’t be here to see it. Things like that are simply not within the window of time that I’ll inhabit here, alive.

However, I garden. I eat what I grow. I see it sprout from a seed, I see it prepared and eaten, and I see (to put it gently, what comes out. And at the end of the season I rake leaves and put them in with the garden chaff and compost it and grow rich wonderful food next year in the compost from what lived this year. I believe that my nutrients (if I can avoid being buried in a modern, sealed-shut-so-I-turn-into-human-soup casket) will follow the same path of return and renewal that I see in my garden. Even if my consciousness is shut off, my atoms and molecules will return, over and over again. In some way, maybe part of me will see a comet return in 2070, even if I (as me) don’t know it.

That is how I deal with death being forever – because it is only forever for me, not for everything. We are all part of this grand parade of life. It may well have been a freak chemical accident that started things in the primordial soup, and it may well be that we don’t have any idea what came before the Bang, but it also may be true that we just don’t know it yet. Without an invisible God to orchestrate, we have to come up with our own meaning and purpose, and only because our big primate brains grew too big for our own good. I think we’re a failed experiment of nature, really. But as long as we’re here, we might as well be excellent to each other, try to reduce some suffering, and thereby gain purpose. And someday, after the parts of me have lived a thousand more times, in plants and animals and maybe even your kids’ kids, we probably will be smacked by some big rock from far away. And the cycles will continue as they always have.

@laureth
If you unplug a toaster and it no longer toasts bread, it’s because the energy that runs through the toaster has been cut off.
To follow the analogy, where are we plugged in if we cease to be and where does the energy originate? Life is still a mystery.

The energy originates as the sugars and other nutrients that are in the food I eat and oxygen from what I breathe, much like the electricity that runs the toaster starts out (around here) as coal.

Tell me the next time you resurrect a body on that syrup.~

Tell me the next time you resurrect a body on prayer. ~

The point is that apparently it’s more than tissues, fluids, proteins, carbohydrates, RNA etc.and you can’t say what it is. :P

And my point is that it’s not more than that.

@laureth
Then if it is only that which you say, The energy originates as the sugars and other nutrients that are in the food I eat and oxygen from what I breathe that animates the body then there should be no problem extending or reanimating the form with this understanding. That’s not the case, so apparently there is something more.

@SeventhSense Would you then deem that jellyfish have a soul? Because when they expire, no addition of sugars and oxygen to their dead form will resurrect them either. Do the Buddhist have it right that souls slowly work their way up the chain of reincarnations till they eventually become enlightened to the fact that it is all an illusion anyway?

In school I asked a Zen Buddhist professor, a very respected PhD teaching comparative religions how come life has been expanding on earth over the eons and there are many billions more life forms today than when life first began. Where do the new souls come from? He went away to ponder that question and hasn’t gotten back to me in 40 years.

I don’t know what your religious beliefs are, but if you do believe all living things are endowed with an immortal soul, perhaps you have a postulate on where the soul factory is.

@ETpro
I believe the universe is expanding and everything in it. As far as we can tell there is no end to the universe in either direction. I never stated that I believed that there was an individual soul but an inseparable web of all things and an imprint on the collective of all things. The idea of individual is only at the level of the relative. At the micro and extending to the macro we can not say there is a clear distinction between anything. Even to the dividing of hydrogen and oxygen in our air, water, breath, cells ad infinitum.

Now also if the atheist is to be allotted the full measure of the length and breadth of science, I would ask that my ideas not be trivialized to take into any less account the full measure of scientific thought and not allow particular tropes of God, souls, devils, heaven, hell and magic to be a dismissive reflex. I do not feel that there is a god with a sex, magic throne, long beard or form at all. I don’t believe that there is any existential quality that can be said to be representative of the nature of God except life.

For example, in another thread expressing the collective mind of a flock of birds in flight. Scientists can understand this phenomenon and create a formula even, but there is really no explanation as to how the brains of tiny birds become a collective unit in their interaction and interdependence but just the observable phenomenon which of course is very useful. Especially in the flight paths of airplanes. But I actually think the idea of individual anything is the basis of the problem. This is a purely human response. I say yes, you say no. You say high, I say low. There’s the imagination of separation and an independent arising of thought. This is all simply imagination and so far our greatest knowledge is taking two ends of a fixed line and creating a formula about the nature of existence while ignoring the 360 degree web around us constantly interacting with that fixed line especially one with another.
P.S- Jellyfish go to the Great Sandy Bottom

@SeventhSense You and I may have found ourselves in a debate about how mush alike our thoughts of the universe are. Way up in this discussion, I mentioned that the Cray XT5 Jaguar computer has 10 million times more neural connections than the human brain, but cannot think in a self aware way. I cannot even calculate how many neural connections the entire Internet comprises. It obviously can’t think either.

We are a VERY complex organism, and we do think. Because we can think and enjoy doing it, we want to build machines that can talk intelligently with us.

The universe is vastly more complex than we are. Perhaps it wanted to build things that could talk to it as well.

@SeventhSense – Once something has died (and begins, even pretty slightly, to decay) the pieces are not in their original state and won’t behave like live cells and such would. Once Humpty Dumpty is broken, you can’t put him back together the same way.

Once you can reanimate the dead with prayer and show me that God does it for you when food and oxygen can’t, I’ll begin to believe that this is a valid argument premise. But if your prayer avails you not, I don’t see how you have a leg to stand on.

Interestingly, sometimes electrical jolts can reanimate the heart, get it beating again, and bring “someone back to life,” but that seems rather an earthly source of energy – an argument for my side, as it were.

I’ve never felt immortal – I remember my brother wanting to feel immortal and my wondering why would he need to be immortal here, in this dimension? I don’t usually remember how old I am except on my b-day…I know I feel young and that’s enough for me…but I know I can die at any time.

Not to interrupt, but to answer the question, I’ve done some (involuntary) practice-dying from time to time already. Practice for letting go when the Time Comes. The biggest example is when my husband died. I couldn’t imagine what he was up to – he’d been behaving one way and suddenly he behaved in other ways – threw his arms up, closed his eyes, and other stuff. I was completely confused. “What’s going on?” Naive? yes, but… death doesn’t actually make sense, emotionally, does it? The nurse who was in the room said, “It was his time, Susan.” But this wasn’t a concept I could possibly grasp. I was still here; we were practically the same person, on an existential level. “His time”? Wtf wtf wtf. I thought our “time” was identical.
It’s taken me many months to kind of grasp this. It’s too shocking, too unnatural. But, ALL RIGHT. Thanks for the EVIDENCE – I sure don’t see him around the house any more.
If what all these empirical people say is true – that he’s not coming back – then, the reality is that I’m halfway gone too.
I’m not complaining. I’m reporting. I know that this happens to other people besides me.

@susanc I send my sincerest condolences. I clearly remember the feeling when my only daughter died days after giving birth to her first child. I already had lost relatives, but certainly expected to go before I had to bid goodbye to one of my children. It took a long, long time of numbness to deal with that loss. And despite all the intervening years, I am crying like a baby as I write this.

the other day – I got lit; what else can you do?

Hmmmmm…well….I think you all just ramped up the aging process about 150mph with this in depth discussion. lol

I just turned 50, piece of cake, but 40 kicked my ass! lol

That was when my awareness of mortilty kicked in, not about death, but about LIVING!

This decade has been the best ever!

I do embrace the eastern philosophies, and, quite frankly, I could die tonight and honestly say I am at peace within and very content with what life I have enjoyed.

Just be here now. Thats all.

I don’t know who said it, but I really like this….

You don’t HAVE a life, you ARE life! ;-)

wintessing(sic) your body in surgery from above etc.) just doesn’t cut if for me. I don’t see how these things are impossible to explain from a realist point of view

Please do explain because most science has shown that the organism’s consciousness is with the physical body in the eyes brain and senses etc. and bound by them so observing that same body from outside of the confines of that physical body but that is exactly what has been reported even as far as describing details that doctors were performing on them as they were sedated. I also have had outer body experiences where I distinctly saw my physical body from a position above it. Without question the users of DMT and salvia express very similar but very subjective experiences and all with many varied theist and atheist backgrounds. Something is occurring here behind the scenes which is far beyond what we can imagine from our current perspective.

@seventhsense

There are many ways of explaining why not to believe out of body experiences. You bring up anecdotal and first person evidence to support them, which is the poorest form of evidence.

The claim that OBE’s are real (and by extension the claim that consciousness is separate from the body) would, as you also conclude, be something that contradicts the current scientific consensus.

When deciding wether or not to be persuaded by your claim that OBE’s are real, I have to weigh the probability of your claim being true versus the probability that science is wrong on this point.

In favour of your claim:
– Subjective experiences (albeit a lot of them).

Opposed to your claim:
– Known scientific consensus.

As you can see, i dont hedge the odds in your favour, but as I see it there is an even more severe problem with your claim, it can be logically explained without having to contradict science.

I don’t doubt that either of you felt that you actually had an OBE. The realist explantion of this is that an OBE is something that the mind can quite easily create the illusion of.

In my opinion it isn’t too different from dreaming – which is something we all do without having to invoke some sort of magical explanation outside of known science. Im sure your experience was “much more real than a dream”, and that you “saw things that happened that you couldn’t have known in any other way”. People report all kinds of wierd experiences, from UFO’s to werewolves, that’s why the police (and we) should be reluctant to take eye witness reports at face value. People lie, distort, make up and make themselves believe all sorts of things, this is not because they are bad people, but because the brain is great at making up imaginative stories and experiences.

This is also why scientific research demands double blind tests and results that are independently and reliably reproduced by others. They know that the mind’s ability to fool itself is immense, and try to safeguard themselves from it as much as they can. In other words, they are extremely critical towards their own minds and experiences. This is also why mind science is such a tricky area.

Your claim does not in the slightest consider the possibility that your own mind is deceiving you, and that others may be decieved in the same fashion.

With all this taken into account, I don’t see how you can’t question the reality of your own experiences. If I saw a flying pink elephant, I would not immediately conclude that pink elephants can fly. I would doubt the integrity of my own mind and seek alternative and more plausible explanations. I hope that I would still have the sanity to conclude that i had experienced a mental episode of some sort.

What we lose in form we gain in wisdom…and…..sooner or later you have to sacrifice your ass for your face! lolololol

@nisse
Nope. I’m not buyin’ it. Reason, logic and empirical objective evidence are affected by consciousness itself. If everything is subjective you have to conclude your own understanding is subjective as well. And you still didn’t answer my question but manufactured some red herrings about werewolves and pink elephants. Don’t look now but your bias is showing.

@SeventhSense Out of body experiences in surgery can be very easily explained wouhout a shred of supernatural involved. Each of us knows exactly what our bodies look like. The brain can very easily form a picture of that. Moreover, the brain is not dead or shut down while you are anesthetized. It can pick up all sensory inputs except from the eyes, which are usually closed. So it can easily put together a narrative of what the operation looks like, what the Doctors and nurses are saying, and so on.

I’d love to be proved wrong and be able to experience OBE. But like @nisse my scientific mind is most sceptical of this. If it is real, it should be provable, testable, reporducable.

@ETpro

Not every experience is measurable on the scientific ruler.

Besides…so what?

If the experience FEELS real to a person, that MAKES it real.

Can you measure how sweet the chocolate tastes as it melts in your mouth?
Does than mean you are not tasting, or that it is not sweet?

I see no reason that there cannot be a blend of the scientific AND the mystical.

@Coloma Maybe there is. I just warn that trusting your feelings when they fly in the face of established scientific fact usually leads you down paths that are perhaps incredibly interesting, but end up being dead ends.

@SeventhSense Surely i’m biased (aren’t we all). I gave an honest attempt at trying to explain my position.

Reason, logic and empirical objective evidence are affected by consciousness itself

Well, they were discovered by someone who was conscious, if that’s what you mean.

If everything is subjective…

This is the dilemma introduced by Descartes. If we assume all our senses are constantly being decieved by an evil deamon, can we be sure of anything? Descartes answer was that the only thing we can be sure of is that we exist; “cogito ergo sum”, I think, therefore I am. Philosophy has yet to able to find a ladder up our of this Descartian pit (Descartes used the concept of “God” to lift himself out of the pit, but as I don’t believe in God this doesn’t cut it for me, so im still down there). This is a major problem of philosophy, if anyone has a good answer to how to lift ourselves out of the pit without resorting to magical thinking, i’d like to hear it.

…you have to conclude your own understanding is subjective as well

Yes. This doesn’t stop me from being curious and trying as hard as i can to understand how the world works. Just because my experiences are subjective doesn’t mean that they are entirely untrue or irrelevant for improving my understanding of the world. I trust claims that can be verified by repeatable, unbiased testing, and have undergone honest critical scrutiny by several others, more than claims that can only be supported by first-hand accounts (especially if there is an alternative explanation which fits better with previous knowledge).

And you still didn’t answer my question…

I tried to refute the position that “OBE’s are proof that there is something more than known science behind these experiences”. Perhaps you need to clarify your question, and i can try and provide a better answer.

…but manufactured some red herrings about werewolves and pink elephants.

They weren’t meant to be red herrings.

The statement about Werewolves was meant to support the position that “humans and their minds can fabricate all sorts of untrue claims”, and as a consequence “we need to be on guard against this”.

The statement about pink elephants was meant to illustrate that “we cannot fully trust our own experiences”. As i assume you will try to slippery-slope this argument, “we cannot fully trust our own experiences” doesn’t entail that “we cannot trust any experience”.

It means that when we have an experience, we should not accept it at face value. We should try to critically examine it in the most objective way possible, and if we find that there are other more plausible explanations for our experience, we should certainly accept those instead.

@nisse
if we find that there are other more plausible explanations for our experience, we should certainly accept those instead.
It’s the plausibility explanations I find questionable. They seem to require more elaboration then the event itself. Rather than accept the most plausible explanation that consciousness is not localized to a physical body you imagine that it must be by nature of a highly detailed hallucination. Perhaps they are both correct and the desire of the body to maintain a semblance of rationality in the face of its true nature causes it to be overwhelmed. But certainly the most plausible is that these things actually occurred just like they have been described for centuries by shaman. Imagining that because people held erroneous beliefs in the past and by implication saying that all widely held beliefs that have been passed down are erroneous is just being skeptical for skepticism’s sake. Skepticism has doubt as its motivation and can easily create doubt as a byproduct of its bias. Anything of consequence pertaining to the nature of man has always been as a result of imagination. And with it we create our world. There is really nothing else but imagination.

My knee is starting to really bother me. Its an old sports injury that acts up with a lot of running or when the weather gets strange.
I hate the idea of my body slowing down

But certainly the most plausible is that these things actually occurred just like they have been described for centuries by shaman

I find this viewpoint myopic.

If we dont accept any incorporation of previously acquired knowlege, I can look outside right now and conclude that the world is flat. Shamans have been saying the world is flat for tens of thousands of years. I can see the horizon, it’s right there and it’s flat, so the world must be flat. We know better because there is other evidence which weighs more than the fact that the horizon appears flat.

- There exist people who have traveled around the world.
– There is astronomical evidence that the earth is revolving.
– We have satellites and spaceships orbiting the earth taking pictures.

Added to this we also have a plausible explanation for why the earth appears flat: When we are low enough on the surface, the angle to the horizon is so small that the curvature isn’t visible to the naked eye.

These are typical examples of the types evidence that is pertinent to consider when drawing your conclusion. They are all independent, do not contradict each other, can be and have been reliably reproduced by anyone with the means to do so.

Before this is accused of being another red herring, In the case of OBE’s evidence of the same sort which is pertinent to consider is:

- Psychological studies of hallucinations.
– Reliability of first person witness reports.
– Studies of reactions of people under extreme stress.
– Mass psychology
– Peer pressure
– Historical studies of debunked misbeliefs such as which burnings.

Another example perhaps more close to home. When i was doing my millitary service, i once did a 48 hour march without food. We were then fed pancakes. Naturally I stuffed my face because I didn’t know when i’d be fed again. After setting out again in the dusk i started feeling a bit nauseous. Then the most wonderful thing happened, i looked at a couple of spruces on the side of the road, and all of a sudden instead of spruces, there i could clearly see three of my civilian buddies waiting for me holding Super Soaker water pistols. My first impulse was offcourse “What the hell are they doing here, and why the fuck do they have super soakers?”. Then i realized that it was dusk outside, and that i was perhaps not in the best state to judge the reality of what I was experiencing, so i kept walking, and sure enough after a while my civilian buddies turned back into spruces.

Following your logic, the best explanation of this event would be that my college buddies and some Super Soakers were actually magically transported into the forest.

There is really nothing else but imagination.

There are plenty of other things than imagination. I’d like to see a starving african trying to imagine himself out of his hunger, or a drunk driver trying to imagine himself out of a car crash. There is reality, and it is real.

I don’t contest facts or sound logic to back up science but I also don’t cling to them like a security blanket. Logically one can create multiple layers of collective illusion.
The fact of the matter is while humanity believed the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth the amazing thing was a workable world order was established. Imagination and collective agreement is all that is required for spruce trees to become your friends. Yes some collective imaginations have extensive and incredibly complex ramifications but they all spring initially from an imagination. Take for example your starving argument. An imagination on a very fundamental level that there is not enough of anything- resources, food, water or money drove some to create systems where some hoarded more and demanded all at the exclusion of others. Imaginations of fear of lack drove others to deplete their soils of resources. Imaginations of condemnation, superiority, inferiority, lack, judgment, need, conditionality all created and continue to create prisons of thought. Consciousness and the power of the imagination to alter phenomenon will be the next quantum leap. Keep looking for the solid ground of reality. Just don’t forget that it’s swirling atoms loosely held by covalent bonds
Interesting that both of your examples included death which is of course the ultimate illusion. The imagination that we can cease to exist. We are not the body.