Philosophy meets civil engineering. Engineering wins. Insurance rates go up for everyone.
I’m pretty materialistic in my beliefs, but I hold on to a perspective that Neil DeGrasse Tyson expresses beautifully.
When I die, my consciousness goes away. But what made me up doesn’t. My proteins, my water, my atoms–they just gradually join into new patterns. The pattern that was me changes.
I once was stardust. I will be stardust again.
It may not be practically useful knowledge, but it’s cool as fuck.
There is no afterlife. None at all. After death is utterly indistinguishable from before conception. Any belief to the contrary is nothing more than wishful thinking. That’s just the way it is, and pouting about it ain’t gonna change it. So enjoy the life you have now.
As the Catholics would say on Ash Wednesday: Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.
You may bury me…but you will inhale me and I will exist in your body! Billions of molecules of mine are, even now, incorporated in your body! I am in thee, and of thee! We are all each other! Universal cannibalism!
(So, brush yer teeth, would’ja?)
That’s truer than you think in Bangkok. When they’ve got the crematoriums cranked up.
At the risk of kicking this can down the road, it looks more like IMHO, to me.
Next stop . . .
Marketplace. Sell your soul if you have one.
Upon death, we become a bag of fertilizer: nothing more.
When we die we die.
That sounds like a bunch of shit.
I grok!
ok…good, lots of voices in here
but no colors, no size excess, not too many smilies…
Hope that is the only thing I do wrong!!
Kayaker: I dont like the C word anyway…can I smile here?
Quicksilver: Most likely
Donald Rump: yeah I thought that too until…
As far as my belief…and we are talking beliefs and not knowing what happens until I die, the light you see at death. its you being born again…
course you dont know who you were in a past life but…I dont want to be underground when I am dead so please dont bury me!
Reincarnation was given a nifty science-fictional treatment in the story “Plutonium” by Arsen Darnay. He turned it from a theological/mystical affair into ordinary biophysics…and also wrote a codwolloper of a moral exploration of the implications.
As a moral system, reincarnation has the flaw of separating knowledge of the action from its punishment. Say I’m the reincarnation of a Nazi war criminal, and my crummy life and poor health are the punishment for that. But I don’t know it! I have no way to know what I did wrong! Proper moral training entails knowledge of our responsibility for our actions.
Also: while most of us would take the position of being kind to the poor and ill, there have been some who hold that it’s proper to be cruel to the lowly, because that’s part of the punishment entailed in their reincarnation as poor people!
As a moral system, it’s poorly thought out.
That’s the Dogbert version of Karma.
[QUOTE=Dogbert]
I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it.
[/QUOTE]
Well I don’t know. My best guess(and hope) would be nothing.