According to David Icke, death is a big con being played on us by The Powers That Be.
Death is impossible because we are made of matter. Matter is energy and energy cannot be destroyed. Therefore we do not die but continue on in another form.
(That’s about the only one of Icke’s theories I actually quite like. Not sure what it means in practical terms though, I have to admit)
Life, life is a brief interval between eternities.
My signature line says it all for me.
I really wouldn’t like never doing… anything… again. But if I’m dead, I wouldn’t be aware of that. I wouldn’t be aware of anything, and for that matter I wouldn’t even be.
What I am afraid of is the process of dying. To know that everything is over, and I am about to cease to exist, I think that would be horrible. That’s not something I want to experience, but it appears to be unavoidable.
I hope for alien abduction. They can make me immortal with their super powers.
I don’t believe in God or an afterlife. What’s to fear?
In a word…NO
Yes I’m very scared to die. I like life and have a lot to live for.
Anybody who says they are not afraid of death is either self-deceptive or trying to sell you on something.
Their continued existence proves this.
They are only here because they are colossalb badasses of evolution who’s genes have cheated death and sent countless millions of other genomes into oblivion over a billion years or so in a blind frantic struggle to survive at any cost no matter what.
Anybody with less commitment than that isn’t here.
Perhaps I’m being unkind. I’m sure lot’s of people don’t fear death because they think about as some future abstraction, or they lack imagination.
Put it to the acid-test. Take some guy who says he doesn’t fear death, kidnap him, beat him up or torture him a little bit to prove your serious. Then, take the guy to the river, tie a big rock to him and tell him you’re going to throw him in.
I got $50 says he displays serious anxiety.
Most of us don’t fear death because it’s not here yet.
When the fucker show up it’s a different story.
Yeah, that really proves your point…
You’re probably right, in a way. My biggest terror is *knowing * I’m about to die and having a few minutes to think about it. I’m sure I’d be a gibbering, sobbing mess.
However, the idea of a sudden, painless death isn’t frightening, if I don’t have time to become terrified. I guess I have a fear of fear rather than being afraid of death itself.
Of course people are always going to try to save their lives. That’s simple human instinct. While I’m not afraid of an instantaneous death, I’m certainly going to try to prevent it.
I’m not afraid of death but it’s certainly the very last thing I want to do!
Scylla, I’d certainly do a great deal to avoid it - but wanting to live is not quite the same as fearing death.
Dying is a worry, especially protractedly, with pain. But i can imagine that if I become very old, have outlived all my friends, am in great pain, and riddled with cancer, then I might well wish to die.
At sixty, I’m probably one of the oldest Dopers around. I was really afraid of dying when I was a younger woman. I didn’t want to miss it all! That was certainly reasonable. I thought that as I got older, I would be more afraid, but I was mistaken.
People that I have treasured all of my life, including some my age, are dead. That infuences my thinking a lot. As each passes, death becomes less threatening to me. That world that I loved so much as a young woman isn’t completely there anymore anyway.
Twenty years ago I experienced something very similar to what many describe in their near-death experiences – except I was fully alert and healthy. It blew me away and changed my perception of what perception actually is. No way to explain it. But I found out years later that my father had also experienced this. One of the first things to change is any fear of the state of being dead.
I still want to live. I love my family. It’s fun being the dowager and having grandchildren and a date with their granddaddy on New Year’s Eve. As a reward to myself for turning sixty, I’m planning to travel on my own again in Europe for as long as I can – one or two trips a year.
Zoe’s Farewell Tour begins in Paris in April.
Indeed, but I never said I was hoping for immortality.
Another possibility: We live our lives infinite times. A continuous loop.
After all, time is a subjective construct that is only relevant to life itself. When we die, time is no more. We can consider our subjective experience as starting all over again, since we only exist where time does.
make sense, huh?
Wish I said that 
It’s not the death part that would have me a miserable sobbing wreck…
It’s the fact that I am being abducted, beat up, tortured, tied to a rock, and thrown into the river.
It’s kind of like how I am not afraid to go to Canada, except when the means of transportation is being dragged behind the bus by a rope around my ankles.
Being dead SHOULD scare the turd outta you. And it does. Its scares every creature that crawls the earth and fights, at some point, usually the last, for its life, for one more moment of its existence.
Some folk might say “1000 AD wasn’t so bad, why should 3000 AD be any worse?”. Big difference. You had never lived before. But now you have tasted life. Can you really so cavalierly throw off your life?
Remember this: INFINITY
What’s half of forever? What’s half of that? What’s your life divided by forever? A friggin spot. Not even that.
And don’t believe that reincarnation nonsense. You think anyone says “Hey I’d like to give that whole poverty and pestulance thing a try?”
You gotta an eternity of “something” waiting for you.
Infinity…
plus one.
I am of two minds about death. First, intellectually, I see death as just the cessation of consciousness, like what I experienced (or more precisely, didn’t experience) when I was under general anesthesia. I was in no pain, had no dreams, no awareness of myself as I do have in normal sleep. I can intellectualize that death is like that. Nothing to fear there.
My intellectual self is satisfied that my existence is temporary, that there will be nothing else beyond what’s here (if, indeed, there is anything here beyond my own imagination). Intellectually I am not worried that some god that I have denied is going to torture me for all time to come.
Then my emotional self takes over and I am terrified at the idea of not being. I want to know. I want to know what happens after my demise. I want to know how the world will be. When I realize that I won’t know anything that realization shakes me up.
Then there is the superstitious “belief” that was drummed into my mind when I was too young to examine it critically and say, “bullshit!” You know, the one that says if you don’t follow a certain line you will suffer for all time. I “know” it isn’t true, but in my deepest mind I’m afraid that it might be. No way to shake that off. I can only shake my fist at whatever gods there are and say, I’m not backing down out of fear. If you really are out to get me, you’re just like any other bully. I’ve endured bullies before. I’ve taken some lumps, but never hollered “uncle!” (Damn, I’m tough! )
So my unequivocal answer to the OP is NO! . . . and YES!
We are all immortal.
You will be alive for the entire duration of your conscious existence. As far as you are concerned, there is nothing else. There is no state of ‘death’ possible for you, because once it happens you will be unable to perceive it. Your conscious existence is your personal universe, and you will always be in it.
I don’t fear death, but that isn’t the same thing as welcoming it with open arms. I don’t want to die, not because I fear dying, but because I want to live. Your acid test proves nothing.
Scylla:
Yes and no, I think. Given the boulder and the river scenario, yes, I imagine I’d be scared of death – as you point out, I’m bred for it. That, however, is an instinctive response that would be exceedingly hard to overcome in a few minutes.
On the other hand, if I were diagnosed with a terminal illness and had six months to come to terms with it, I honestly don’t think I’d have trouble overcoming fear of death (as distinct from sadness and the fear of dying painfully). After all, I currently suffer from the terminal condition known as “life” and, I gotta tell ya, sitting here right now, the idea of death just doesn’t bother me.
ChaosGod:
Depending on your conception of the “self,” you might not even have to wait a gazillion years. After you die, your component parts will be broken down and, eventually, become part of the earth, the air, and other living things. Maybe that’s what reincarnation is really driving at.
Of course, if you consider your self to be merely your conscious mind, then this is what happens to “you” after you die: