So finally, you DO agree with me that all pain, physical and emotional goes away only when we die?

Uh, no.

I’ve had pain. It’s gone away. Other kind of pain, that too has gone away (see my questions about hemmoroids and fissures). Emotional pain, but feeling great right now, thanks.

I gotta disagree.

Feel better.

@zen_ lucky you! Hope none of it comes back.

I never disagreed with you for a moment.

@ducky_dnl you’d better not have!!!!!!

I’m with @zen_ on this one. I’ve experienced different types of pain over the years and they’ve all gone away. New pains will come and hopefully they will go away as the others have.

it’s all temporary.

For some people physical pain is chronic but emotional pain comes and goes. For me, even the worst emotional pain has responded to time.

On one level, I agree with @zen_. I’ve had pains and illnesses and suffering and I have gotten better or gone through it to come out the other side feelings good. On another level, I agree with @ZEPHYRA. Life is suffering, and we are always in some kind of pain even when we feel like we are on top of the world. Nothing can be perfect.

However it does all go away when we die, I believe. We have no more consciousness and the consciousness will never come back. It’s over. No happiness. No pain. No nothing.

Depends upon what you think awaits us after death. I hear that Hell is a pretty damned painful place to be. I’ve also heard that God is sorrowed by those who turn away from him.

I also know that I’m only a couple of martini’s away from feeling absolutely no pain right here and now.

I spend about half of a given day free of any pain whatsoever. Thanks to fallen arches and crappy work shoes, a few hours on the floor will fix that. But even then, I get caught up in my work and so only notice the achy feet when I think about them.

@wundayatta really? that is a very bold statement, i wasn’t aware consciousness had an off switch.

@ZEPHYRA you must be sorely afflicted if you are in a continual state of pain, pain isn’t a constant, suffering isn’t a constant.

@mammal I disagree with @wundayatta‘s assertion that there’s nothing after death, but I would like to point out to you that concussions have been demonstrated to be highly effective at turning off consciousness, albeit temporarily.

Pain happens, suffering is optional.

@Nullo true, but the assumption that Death is like, or the same as, unconsciousness, sleep, severe concussion or a general anesthesthetic is understandable, comforting, but not necessarily true or verifiable, by science, psychology, philosophy or even from hearsay.

Not if you believe in Hell…

@mammal Neither is it a view that I hold. I was referring to unconsciousness on this side of the Jordan. Thump and off you go.

@mammal Bold? Hardly. There is no evidence to suggest that consciousness transcends death in any way, shape or form. It seems to me that either consciousness transcends death, or it doesn’t. Since we have no verifiable evidence that consciousness transcends death, it seems to me that the reasonable hypothesis is that there is no evidence because consciousness ends at death.

In order to hypothesis a continuation of consciousness, you would have to have some hardware for the consciousness to “run” on. Where is this hardware? What could it be. Even if there were some hardware to run on, I wonder how a person would make sense. Our lives are completely tied to our corporeal existence. Without a body to gather information about the environment, it seems to me very unlikely that consciousness could exist.

Even if it could, the shock of switching hardware seems like it must destroy consciousness anyway. I’ll grant you that anything is possible. You can’t prove a negative. But is saying something doesn’t exist a bold statement when there is no evidence that it does exist? I don’t see how it is. If people were in the habit of running around acting as if things that no one can perceive exist… we’d have a lot of dysfunctional people. It would be like if everyone got rabies at the same time.

Many things that people think exist but there is no evidence for are somewhat benign. The concepts seem to help people regardless of their physical truth. Metaphorical truth is enough. But the more of this stuff you espouse, the crazier you seem to other people.

It hardly matters what we think happens at death. It won’t affect our lives at all (unless you believe in time travel or reverse causality). And yes, it is somewhat comforting to think that your pain will be over when you die. Surely people who kill themselves believe that.

I have no desire to get to the end of my life. None at all. So I am grateful that when I get there, I won’t know it. Can’t prove that. And if other evidence came along, I’d change my mind. Right now, that seems like the most likely theory, as far as I can imagine.

@wundayatta You neglect the soul, which many treat as a sort of plug-and-play “self” that moves out of the body upon death.

Some find pleasure in pain. I certainly do at times.

@Nullo What’s a soul? How can I detect it? How can I detect its behavior upon death?

Some pain goes away, some doesn’t. The same applies to mental pain as well as physical. There is acute pain and chronic pain. Some can be relieved and some can’t. But to be pain free would mean you couldn’t feel anything at all. Pain is an important and valuable thing – it is a sign that something is doing damage.

If you put your hand in a fire, it burns and it hurts, so you move your hand away from the fire.

If something is causing you emotional pain, why do you not move away from it?

@wundayatta

I propose that Soul and Mind are synonymous. One term from science, the other from religion. Both pointing to the same agent.

I propose that Spirit and Thought are synonymous in the very same manner.

Many spirits build a soul, just as many thoughts build a mind.

I can’t show you a soul any more than you can show me your mind. They are immaterial agents. They cannot be seen in physical form.

However, they can be detected. Although I cannot see your mind, I can see the words of your comments which infer the existence of a mind. I know those words represent your thoughts, but they are not your thoughts in and of themselves. I also know that your words could not possibly have assembled themselves by accident.

They way that you arranged those words to represent your thoughts is unique only to you. You don’t even realize it, but plug your sentence into Google and try and find a direct match out of the millions of web sites out there. It seems so simple and mundane what you said and how you said it. But it’s not. It is a true representation of your Soul and yours alone.

@wundayatta To paraphrase Lewis (I think), you aren’t a body that has a soul, but rather you are a soul that has a body.
Send me a postcard when you die and let me know what happened. :D

I think that soul can be a useful term. I think that similar to “mind,” these words are symbols that are supposed to stand for something. Symbols that stand for concrete objects or actions are much easier to understand than symbols that stand for abstract concepts.

The problem is that we try to take abstract concepts and treat them as if they are physical objects. They ain’t.

For me, soul is a metaphor for this essence of the person we are thinking about. That essence is made up of all that we believe we know of that person. It is a precious and unique thing. But it’s not an object thing. It’s an idea thing. An abstract thing.

It’s an interesting idea that an abstract idea could have reality; especially if that reality allowed it to stick around after death. But, of course, if it is an abstract idea that is used to convey the idea of a person, then when the person is no longer alive, neither is the soul.

Except for those who take the soul literally, and imagine some kind of ability to transcend death. But even that is another metaphor. It’s about wishing not to die. It’s about wishing to be remembered. But, yet again, once an abstract idea has been around long enough, people forget it’s abstract, and start to think of it as a real, physical thing.

It’s good to see you thinking about these things and talking out your thoughts @wundayatta.

I enjoyed that.