A question that troubles me...

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Alternative, how many avvie changes have you had today? lol, I keep coming back to this thread (because I am not completely happy with what I wrote but can't think of a better way of putting it) and every time I see you have a different avvie I like your pink face one, but it may disappear

I think about this problems within the frame of evolutionary theory. I think life in its concrete manifestations of cells, plants, animals fungi and what not is dominated by the need to survive in some kind of struggle against decay into inorganic matter. Strategies for survival need constant renewal of life forms. Renewal needs change. The inorganic environment changes, so life forms must change and this is possible only through that kind of change that happens in birth-reproduction-death-birth an so on. In this fight to prevail on the inorganic decay there are two strategic directions: abundance and resilience. Abundance means that a fir tree in Norway spreads a billion or more of pollen grains with the instructions for the birth of new fir trees which may grow in such distant places as Anatolia or Morocco. Resilience means that each individual life form (an animal) must be equipped with a iron drive to persist. This means in turn that each animal must fear death, even if death is inevitable for the individual life existence. So we are all here to talk about death: why death, why not immortality?

Death; what a fascinating topic.

A customized version of Kali is among my personal pantheon.

A good death as the culmination of a good life is one of my highest hopes; "good" is as I define it, but part of this is that I must die unbroken. I wish neither to die in my sleep, or of old age or disease; I feel sorry for those who do.

I have little fear of death for my own part, but I worry about what would become of my autistic son if I were to die.

I do fear the death of others, friends, loved ones, and especially my son. The only dream I've ever had that I could rightly call a nightmare was one in which I accidentally killed my son.

Robert Heinlein's "Job: A Comedy of Justice" portrays an afterlife in which all of the various constructs humans have for what happens after death are in fact played out, and what happens to you depends on what you believe. In this vein, only Christians go to Christian hell, or Christian heaven, etc.. It’s a somewhat fanciful portrayal, but one that I do not dislike; for lack of anything better, I embrace a similar notion.

As others have already mentioned, we'll all get to find out anyway.

Good fortune,

- Icarus the Faithful