After death.

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I like this a lot, thankyou. I would like to be buried, wrapped in cloth, under a tree, and become food for worms and new leaves in the spring.

Do you know of Chris Wood? I like this song of his:


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiVdtEWkqD0&feature=related[/youtube]

I don't know of any other suicides in my family, but I often think about my great uncle Frank. He was a teenager in the Great War, and experienced shell shock. He was never the same afterwards, and lived with his sister and in hospitals, until he died young. I don't know how he died, but I often think of him, as someone whose life was ruined by the events of history.
I had a friend at university whose father killed himself. He was a teacher, with three children and a wife. And I wonder how much pain he must have been in to leave his family behind. I think about him a lot too.

Does this apply if a person is very depressed, has disordered thinking, or is considered insane at that point in time? And what of the failed suicide attempt? If a person attempts suicide and fails, are they doomed to hell anyway?

Horse feathers! One still has to eat, drink and sh*t.

ruveyn

Suicide is a way to get to where god is real quick. Nearer my God to Thee and all that.

ruveyn

Clearly, you haven't bothered to look into this, or even think about my comment as having internally consistent logic. If you dismiss as delusional or a liar anyone who has had an out of body experience without leaving open the possibility that they are reporting their experience as accurately as they can, then you render debate pointless. Yoga (which includes more than the hatha yoga everyone knows about) claims to reduce the need for ego-gratification, as does spirituality. This type of behavior from the most vocal athiests and non-spiritual religious people suggests they could use some of that.

A question was asked, so I gave my answer, then tried to clarify it. Take it or leave it. I don't need to convert you to my beliefs. Yoga and meditation have scientifically demonstrable benefits, so try it or not on that basis.

Horse feathers, I believe you said. If you believe there is a god who thinks that way [and some do], go serve him. My God did not put us here to take shortcuts.

Evidence, please?

(btw ... read my sig line ...)

i have no religious propensity, but i am not "certain" (like atheists are) that consciousness is intrinsic to only our physical bodies, and therefore perishes at death.

i know that there are states of existence that are not materially manifest (like energy for example (i know that energy can be raveled into matter, but i am talking about energy that is unbound)). since i participate in material existence, then i may also participate in energetic existence.

as far as i can determine, my consciousness is a local bubble of consciousness that is the result of my illusion of separateness from the universe in which i am conscious.

i think "i am me and no-one else", and that may be my illusion of separateness. i can conceive that it may be possible that every consciousness (human or not) is a "tap" into the same pool of universal consciousness, so the "me" that i refer to when i say "me", may very well be exactly the same "me" you refer to when you say "me".

i can conceive that when i die, the bubble will pop, and i will, like a disintegrated soap bubble on the surface of a pool of water, dissolve and dilute and permeate through it, and my previous personal identity will be meaningless as it can never be retrieved from the pool.

i find it hard to imagine that separate entities could exist in a world where compartmentalization is impossible. "compartmentalization" is a product of logic that lives in living brains, and it disintegrates once the brain is lost. there is no notional boundaries or definitions when consciousness is pure and still.

what is the mechanism behind my original separation from the eternal ocean of consciousness in order to be born into a brain which thinks it is subjectively unique? am i a single bubble in a vast froth on the sea of consciousness that has been whipped up in some sort of temporal turbulence?
when i pop back into the sea i will lose my identity. it is like a glass of water. the water molecules in the glass are going to lose their relationship with each other when the glass is poured and the water is dispersed, and those exact molecules will never again be in each others vicinity.

all glasses of water are ostensibly the same, but the histories of each molecule of water (wow what a story if it could be told) would be unrelated before they arrived by fate into the same glass.

i think my consciousness (soul) can be thought of similarly. the molecules of "consciousness" (i am being figurative so save your keyboard) that compose "me" are only collected in "me" while i live. when i die they will just dissipate and become infinitely dilute within the endlessness of "consciousness possibilities" (sea of consciousness).

whatever. i will try to address your question using your own belief system.
if there is a god who is like a judge who deems whether you go to heaven or hell based upon your actions while you were alive, then it would have to be true that he is fair. if he created you, then he must love you, and he would not be merciless to you.
the fact that you do not know whether the sentence for suicide is "hell", means that you can not be held accountable to the degree that "hell" would be the verdict for your suicide.

i can not imagine a process of thought beyond that because i am not a philosopher.

Is "thou shalt not take a shortcut" one of the Commandments?

ruveyn

as a Christian, i believe that if you believe in God and accept Him as your Saviour and try to be the best Christian you can (this is a VERY gray term because it widely differs for different denominations and people) then you will go to heaven. but if you dont accept God as your Saviour, you will go to hell. harsh words, yes, but that is Christianity' blunt.

as for suicide, if you attempt it and you are unsuccessful, it doesnt count as suicide. just like thinking something possibly illegal or immoral. i could think about how i would kill someone or overthrow the government, but until i actually do it, its just a harmless idea.

and if you are a Christian and commit suicide..well thats debatable because no one knows what happens in that situation.
i've had mini discussions with people and some say you go to heaven because you are a Christian. some say its the worst sin against God and you go to hell. while others say that you go to heaven because you are not in your right mind when you are doing it.

they all make good points. but as for me, i dont really have an opinion because no one knows what exactly happens. but i for one, dont want to find out the hard way.

its just like the example i once heard someone say:

say you go through your life believing in God and following His word, and you get to the end and you find out there is nothing there. nothing lost.
but what if you go through your life NOT believing in God and doing whatever you feel like, and you get to the end, and you find out that there IS something after? then you are in trouble

same goes for suicide

as a Christian, i believe that if you believe in God and accept Him as your Saviour and try to be the best Christian you can (this is a VERY gray term because it widely differs for different denominations and people) then you will go to heaven. but if you dont accept God as your Saviour, you will go to hell. harsh words, yes, but that is Christianity' blunt.

as for suicide, if you attempt it and you are unsuccessful, it doesnt count as suicide. just like thinking something possibly illegal or immoral. i could think about how i would kill someone or overthrow the government, but until i actually do it, its just a harmless idea.

and if you are a Christian and commit suicide..well thats debatable because no one knows what happens in that situation.
i've had mini discussions with people and some say you go to heaven because you are a Christian. some say its the worst sin against God and you go to hell. while others say that you go to heaven because you are not in your right mind when you are doing it.

they all make good points. but as for me, i dont really have an opinion because no one knows what exactly happens. but i for one, dont want to find out the hard way.

its just like the example i once heard someone say:

say you go through your life believing in God and following His word, and you get to the end and you find out there is nothing there. nothing lost.
but what if you go through your life NOT believing in God and doing whatever you feel like, and you get to the end, and you find out that there IS something after? then you are in trouble

same goes for suicide

I thought you were up on this stuff. Take a look for yourself. You SHOULD be able to find the basic decalogue in Exodus, me thinks, with a recap In like Deuteronomy - or is it the Book of Jonah?

Or, less sarcastically [play nice, just because he's like that doesn't mean you have to be]:

Think a bit on Job.

Add in Saul, Jonah, and if you will go so far Judas and Paul [here Paul to distinguish him from the other Saul] [like what is it to you, do you disbelieve one book more than another?].

You might have to think but you do not have to work.

I would love to have had the patience to spell it out so succinctly, the bubble on the pond analogy is perfect.

peace j

I don't believe in death.

What are you - what makes you YOU, and not another person? Answer: your genes (your DNA) and your memes (your ideas). The rest - the physical body - merely regenerates. Most of your cells regenerate every few months. What we call death is just a stage in regeneration.

Your appearance changes completely from age 0 to age 1 to age 10 to age 20 to age 90. If you have children then your DNA continues regenerating through them. If you have no children then your DNA survives through your extended family. It's the exact same DNA, more or less (maybe 1% different, that's al). Some DNA is billions of years old and will continue indefinitely (assuming we colonize other planets before our species becomes extinct).

The same is true of memes. They are passed on and survive. Sure, they change,and bad memes are discarded, but that's healthy. Your kids keep the good memes and lose the bad ones, just as you rejected some of your own memes you had as a child and kept others. It's how we survive in a changing world. What we call death is merely a dramatic change, but no more dramatic than birth. No more dramatic than puberty, though a bit quicker.

Half the ideas in your head (like breathing or sexual desire) are habits laid down through millions of years of evolution, and half the things you remember are from the media, often from before you were born. We are billions of years old, we could easily outlast this planet, and Death is just part of our cycle.

It probably helps to understand this if we reject the idea that time flows, but that is a whole other topic.