Best read of the day: Roger Ebert muses on mortality.
I don’t expect to die anytime soon. But it could happen this moment, while I am writing. I was talking the other day with Jim Toback, a friend of 35 years, and the conversation turned to our deaths, as it always does. “Ask someone how they feel about death,” he said, “and they’ll tell you everyone’s gonna die. Ask them, In the next 30 seconds? No, no, no, that’s not gonna happen. How about this afternoon? No. What you’re really asking them to admit is, Oh my God, I don’t really exist and I might be gone at any given second.”
Me too, but I hope not. I have plans. Still, this blog has led me resolutely toward the contemplation of death. In the beginning I found myself drawn toward writing about my life. Everyone’s life story is awaiting only the final page. Then I began writing on the subject of evolution, that most consoling of all the sciences, and was engulfed in an unforeseen discussion about God, the afterlife, and religion.
I like that bit about the consolation of evolution — I feel it too, that having a connection to both our long history and our future is really the province of evolution, and that this is where we can find deeper meaning.
The thought of dying any time is real, too. In my case, it’s the awareness that I’m only about 4 years away from having outlived my father (although he also suffered over a dozen long years of heart disease, a history I’ve avoided so far). We could any of us go at any time, and as godless folk, our only relief from melancholy has to be in the taking of joy in reality.
At age 61 I’m fully aware that I’m closer to my death than to my birth. That’s okay, I’ve lived a good, happy life. As for what happens after I die, I take consolation in the words of Napoleon: “Fame is fleeting but obscurity is forever!”
It is different for everyone and strangely, I don’t find evolution consoling at all. I find meaning in a lot of things, some cliché and some not, but strangely, I don’t see why we need something consoling to help us face death. I want something consoling not for me but for others who will remain after me.
Regardless, this is a nice post. The topic of death is something that even freaks out the most religious ones. Clearly, some part of their brain never buys the delusions of eternal life.
I was just at the doctor today checking up on some blood work I had done a few months ago. It didn’t really ever occur to me before, but my mother has Type II Diabetes, which may partly be just because she’s closing on 60, but also means that I’m at risk for having it too–not aided by the fact I am overweight.
Which of course lead me to think about my mortality, and how I could have ended up dying a Diabetes-related death without realizing I had it if it hadn’t been caught because I had high blood pressure and mentioned my mom took Glucophage (which, now that I think about it, makes it pretty damn obvious based on the name of the medicine).
Given, I don’t actually have anything life threatening at the moment, but it certainly did make me think about how much it’d suck to die at 22.
It also makes me realize that not once did “Will I go to Heaven or Hell?” enter my mind, because that’s an entirely alien concern to me. Which makes me happy.
I actually feel better knowing that this one chance is all you get than I did when I thought there was some kind of vague afterlife. (Not heaven, surely!) It kind of pushes you to say the things you should say and do the things that you want to do for yourself and others before it is too late. Wish I had realized it sooner. Of course, just don’t let me go in the next 30 seconds; there’s so much more.
Hey, did any of you check out Chris Matthews grill Mike Pence on evolution and science in the Republican party. Check it out, it was on his show today.
Reality. Be there for it.
I don’t think we get any deeper meaning from evolution, and I think the reason death came up when he considered evolution was because people see evolution as a threat to religion.
My sense is that evolution tends toward the idea that there are no deeper meanings, or at least that we don’t have much to do with these “deeper meanings.” We’re just an evolved species headed toward extinction or possibly significant change, and nothing especially speaks of meaning to us–beyond normal everyday meanings.
There may be consolation in that, since we don’t have to live up to some ridiculous “meanings” that we really don’t know. Nevertheless, we’re a transition to nothing very much, except that annihilation will almost certainly take all life from this universe eventually.
This short warm moment can and “should” be enjoyed for what it is, conglomerations of matter that basically came to an amazing moment of cognition, in spite of the manner in which we were configured not to natively understand science, but rather to understand life phenomenologically or “spiritually.” We find it exhilarating, yet we know that it ends in death, and in final extinction.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Lotharloo,
Not so. I know two in my church with the big C. Neither is freaking out. And those are but the latest two of many examples.
LtStorm,
That’s exactly what my friends would say, too.
“Consoling” – Ha!
“Reality” – ??? I admire your simple faith. This circus is way too bizarre to take anything -even observeable data- at face value. I remain skeptical. I don’t believe in reality.
One of my favorite Daniel Dennett quotes applies here, I think, on his attempt at a useful definition of “spirituality”:
This is why I live every day like it may be my last. Conversely, I think it’s the same reason that Christians say they “know” there’s a Gawd. When I was religious, it was the most impressive thing in the world for me to hear someone say they really weren’t scared of death, because they new what was going to happen to them when they die. So I guess even self-imposed ignorance is bliss.
just finished reading this on ebert’s blog, only to find that you also appreciated it. i hope i can remember that ability to appreciate life whilst i have it.
I won’t make this about me. No one needs to hear about it and I have no need to shout it to the world.
I want to talk about Roger Ebert. I have been impressed lately by a few of his writings. He can be thoughtful and inspiring. He is much more complex than he used to project. His post is well written and shows his struggle for knowledge and understanding – that is what life should be about; that is its meaning.
I’ve been wrestling with my depression lately and I needed this. Thanks!
Actually I have a bad feeling that I may just go in the next 30 seco…..
(Rolling a fattie.)Gawd you guys are deep.
Nicely said. I do find many joys in evolution and science in general. It is very fascinating and makes me realize that although I’m not special in any way, I’m at the same time very special in every way. That we came to this through natural processes is quite an amazing thing, much more amazing than some sky dude waving a finger, I think.
It’s a great piece and a wonderful reminder of why I like Ebert, and all but totally erases the feeling I have for his giving four stars to “Knowing.”
The only thing that ever makes me a little sad about evolution is the realization that because of the fact that I’ll never have kids (my life is too damaged) that I am the dead end of my particular branch of the tree of life. I feel like I’m kinda letting down all my single-celled and multi-celled ancestors who worked so hard for billions of years to get me here. Something about being an evolutionary dead end doesn’t help my low self-esteem.
Glad you’re still here, PZ :) Hope you stick around for a long time, the world is richer with you in it.
I’ve always thought Epicurus got it right about death.
Just as Terry Eagleton is not right about anything.
It’s not death that concerns me (although I would like to be around to see mankind’s progress), it’s the manner of death that gives me pause.
I like this exchange from the Drew Carey show;
Drew: “You die like you’re born; cold, naked, and screaming.”
Ryan: “…No you don’t.
Drew: “You do if you plan it right!”
The day (long, long ago) I graduated with my Ph. D., my advisor was a bit more quiet than might be expected. A colleague asked if anything was wrong; “I just realized that I am now older than either of my parents ever lived to be. They both died before I was seven.”
*Awkward silence, especially at a graduation reception*
Me: “So… you were, what, raised by wolves?”
That was very well said, P.Z.
Rage against the dying of the light. Once it goes out, getting it turned back on seems to be a rather difficult trick.
My mom passed two weeks after I graduated high school in 1976. She was 36.
I am now 51, shorter of breath and one step closer to death.
Enjoy.
his struggle for knowledge and understanding – that is what life should be about; that is its meaning.
If that works for you, fine. But ice cream or getting an all-time high score on a videogame is just as good. On a cosmic scale of significance everything humans do is very very very small, so the difference between one human accomplishment (say, “conquer Europe”) and another (perhaps “I’ll have another beer, plz.”) is pretty small. In fact, since they’re both meaningless, they are equally meaningless, therefore it’s nonsense to try to order one ahead of the other.
Speaking of beer…
They both died before I was seven.
Cue obligatory Tom Lehrer: “It’s sobering to think that when Mozart was my age he’d been dead for two years.”
Evolution gives us a perfectly good explanation for 2 things that religion mangles so badly:
1) how we got here
2) why we die
That’s pretty consoling in my mind. Although it does put a certain emphasis on procreation as well, it seems like it would be easier to feel ok about dying once you’ve passed on your genes (mission accomplished!)
As non-believers we (at least I) think life only has the meaning that we assign to it. There is no external meaning. What consoles me is my children, and the hope for a better future they represent (they are all smarter and better looking than me. Punctuated equilibrium? ).
Frankly, people who do not think they are dead after they die are insane, in a literal sense, and scary. They are so disassociated from reality that they are capable of anything, with no thought for the consequences.
Oh – and I got an “A” shirt for my birthday. I live in the south and no one tried to beat me up. I guess thats a good sign…
Not only can you go at any time, but you will go at any time. Your death will be here just as sure and as real as two seconds from now will be here.
What’s that? The clap?
I plan on living forever……so far, so good. :)
My sister just died of metastasized (sp?) breast cancer. She knew she was in her last year and did a pretty good job of filling in her “to do” or “bucket” list.
rather than waste a minute on religious memorial bullshit, we gathered in her favorite park and told stories about her.
If there is meaning in life, it is found on the day you are missed after you are gone…
My sister just died of metastasized (sp?) breast cancer. She knew she was in her last year and did a pretty good job of filling in her “to do” or “bucket” list.
rather than waste a minute on religious memorial bullshit, we gathered in her favorite park and told stories about her.
If there is meaning in life, it is found on the day you are missed after you are gone… …
“. . . death comes yet man lives each day as if he were immortal.”
Krishna’s advice to Arjuna in The Mahabharata.
Sorry for your loss Scott from Oregon. I am sure you are missing your sister plenty.
SfO,
My condolences.
Scott, that sucks. I’m sorry.
Interestingly put. I like that.
There is a video out there where Homer Simpson “evolves” from a wiggly thing to Homer, fraught with trials, tribulations, near misses and maybe he ends up on his couch. I don’t recall the details but I’m sure it’s on YouTube.
So, I’ve thought about this having trekked to the Burgess Shale in 2006 and sat among the fossils there, including myself.
Somewhere in that shale was an ancestor of mine. A small, early vertebrate that survived. And one of it’s spawn survived. And one of its, and one of its and so on for 500 million years. Somewhere along the line an ancestor of mine survived being eaten, survived a plague, survived a war. All leading to me.
I exist because some ancestor of mine survived all the slings and arrows of predators, diseases, accidents and attacks.
I thank my ancestors every day for their heroic efforts to produce ME. And in gratitude, I, in turn, have let loose upon the World my contribution to the species, may they live long and prosper.
There is a video out there where Homer Simpson “evolves” from a wiggly thing to Homer, fraught with trials, tribulations, near misses and maybe he ends up on his couch. I don’t recall the details but I’m sure it’s on YouTube.
So, I’ve thought about this having trekked to the Burgess Shale in 2006 and sat among the fossils there, including myself.
Somewhere in that shale was an ancestor of mine. A small, early vertebrate that survived. And one of it’s spawn survived. And one of its, and one of its and so on for 500 million years. Somewhere along the line an ancestor of mine survived being eaten, survived a plague, survived a war. All leading to me.
I exist because some ancestor of mine survived all the slings and arrows of predators, diseases, accidents and attacks.
I thank my ancestors every day for their heroic efforts to produce ME. And in gratitude, I, in turn, have let loose upon the World my contribution to the species, may they live long and prosper.
What I find interesting is that many of us are so concerned about the years that will go by after we’re dead, but we never minded the years that went by before we were alive.
This puts me in mind of your essay about the proper respect for those who have gone before.
There’s more than one way to pass on part of yourself, Jafafa. Maybe volunteer on a suicide hot line – could make all the difference in the world to someone.
Even as a child, I thought the heaven with which my grandmother tried to bribe me into good behavior sounded boring. And hell even less likely than the stork who brought babies.
Not to mention that sacrificing everything fun, good, enjoyable and worthwhile in this life for the promise of eternity with even less chance of joy is a worse bet than an inside straight.
Fixed it. Oh and by the way, which one’s pink?
I think it is simply cool to picture myself being a bunch of atoms/energy entrained in a pattern of dividing cells, tissues, gametogenesis, symbiosis, and all that. While all the while weather cycles are happening, geological cycles, planets rotating and revolving. Picturing this all at once – evolution being part of all this stuff happening. The evolution of my brain that is picturing all this.
Don’t know that it’s consoling as much as cool, with no fears but of the mundane (pain, privation, rejection). Cooler than any supernatural imagining.
I couldn’t care less about being a leaf node on my phylogenetic tree. I’ve had memetic impact on others, and the idea that my own original thoughts triggered various trains of mentation in others is part of all that cool feeling mentioned above.
The article seems rational at first so why does he add this in?
I think I sense some postmodernism here, surely he must realize that something affecting things literally in the world of the wristwatch will have measurable effects and thus is accessible to science? He seems to try to escape this contradiction with the empty word that it;s on a different “level” but the fact is that his wife acknowledged feeling a connection to him, so it affected her thoughts which affect her behaviour, which could change a lot of very real, measurable variables. It’s odd he excludes theologians and psychics from his level because they would use similar terminology to argue the same thing, and that they have access to it. Other than that, I agree with Steve that it seems sad. I think that fits with the general mood of the article. It’s like rather than making any point or having a discussion he seems like he is just getting stuff off his chest… maybe that also explains why in amongst all his sense he has this “level”, hand waves away skeptical analysis but claims it is still somehow beyond the discourse of psychics and theologians.
Gawd had better not take me now, I just started a sweater in a purple that would make the pope jealous.
Sorry to heard about your loss SFO. That must have been a rough thing to go through.
In the horrible days following 9/11, I found myself fixated on the plight of the passengers on the planes, the ones who figured out the planes were on suicide missions and they would never be landing. (The media coverage didn’t help. The networks finally yanked the footage off the air, correctly realizing they were traumatizing the viewers.)
Thinking about those flights, I finally realized the kernel of truth behind the cliche “death is merciful”.
We are all hardwired to fear death on a visceral level, even if some of us have dealt with the idea at the intellectual/ philosophical level. And we all have to die. These are the facts.
As I watched the planes hit the towers over and over again in horrid replay mode, the truth of the cliche finally dawned on me- those people, as terrified as they must have been, only had to die once. It is the people who are left behind who have to bear all the pain and relive the horror.
And as fearful as we might be in our last moments, death steps in and does the hard part for us.
Looked at from that perspective, I found the meaning in the cliche, and it was strangely comforting.
I don’t really find evolution consoling, it just is. In fact, an immense number of creatures strived, suffered, and died in order for you to exist. But I suppose it would be consoling in comparison to a hell-bound, eternal torture mindset. Now, a shot of morphine – that’s consoling. Trust me.
Death,piece of cake, In terms of the human condition I was dead before I was born, can’t say it bothered me any.I’m gonna go right back to good ole mother nature, can’t get no freer than that!No concrete vault or pyramid for me.
It has long been my belief that religions has been so successful for so long because they promise the one thing everyone craves: to live forever. The fact that they cannot deliver hasn’t slowed them down one bit, they just continue refining their sales pitch generation after generation.
The genius of Christianity is that they use their spokesman–that superhero on a stick, Jesus himself–as a rousing example of someone who does live forever. He even died, then came back to life and escaped from a sealed tomb, just like one of them magician fellas! And it’s gotta be true, cuz it says so in the Bible!
And people continue to fall for that shit…
Josh Author @26,
A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend and I (we’re both in our mid fifties) were returning from a a 24 mile swim meet in Tampa bay, we were there doing kayak support for the swimmers and it was a very rough day on the open water with 4 foot swells our time on the water was about nine hours non stop and we were exhausted but feeling very much exhilarated and alive.
Before returning home to the west coast of Florida we stopped a few miles south to reconnect with an uncle of mine, he is a doctor and had just organized his annual medical conference, he happens to teach a course in ressucitation science.
We spent the day on the beach and enjoyed a very lazy day drinking beer and wine and listening to stories from him and other doctors recounting some very extraordinary events in both successful and also unsuccessful ressucitations.
What I found most reassuring was that none of these doctors, even after long careers, some were already about to retire, had become jaded to the point that they had stopped being in awe of the power and the will to survive. I saw tears welling up in some of their eyes as they told stories about successes and failures and what that had meant to their patient’s families.
The experience of witnessing their humanity and compassion made me a little more hopeful for the future of humanity on that day…
Then I had to drive home across Florida and I very quickly lost it all again :-)
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all togetha- ha…
bruthas. look to art for meaning. even when it’s possibly meaningless
“What I find interesting is that many of us are so concerned about the years that will go by after we’re dead, but we never minded the years that went by before we were alive.”
I spend a lot of time wishing I were able to explore the 1880s through the 1930s.
The Bells Of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling
Randy Pausch said it better than I am able, and lived as I can only hope to come close.
http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/
Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
‘Tis, that made my brain hurt. Targeted antidote?
Josh,
Here’s one from the same movie just for you.
The thing is, that when you ask someone whether they’ll die in the next 30 seconds, they understand that while their eventual death is inevitable, their immanent death is unlikely. Everyone knows that it’s almost certain that, at any randomly selected point in time, the chance that death will happen within a minute is extremely low. You only die once. So unless something is threatening you right at that moment, you’ve still apparently got as much time as you did five minutes ago.
The inescapability of death motivates us, but I don’t think it makes much sense to try to argue anything from the basis that people aren’t expecting to die at any moment. It’s just kind of cynical. You almost certainly won’t be gone at any given second, and so why would you allow yourself to be pushed into making such a claim?
Assume that you could stop time in your body, and effectively preserve the state of atoms in your brain, would you prefer it over death? Your “death” or, more like eternal sleep would become engineering problem, that most likely (I will use this optimistic view for now) will be solved and you could be woken up again given enough time.
How do I know? Well I don’t, but indefinitely is a long time for humanity to come up solution, which might be more trivial than we now think. Assuming that humans never ever could not master the atoms is too bold statement, after all we can observe and move single atom already, although moving many in organized way may seem like a inconceivable task.
Assume that you could almost stop time in your body, and effectively preserve the state of atoms in your brain, would you prefer it over death? …
Assume that you could with let’s say 1% loss of atoms (at some parts) stop time in your body, …?
…
We have moderately lossy way to do that already, who agrees that dying should not be mandatory, should really consider vitrification, state of the art body preservation we have now available.
Before you jump on your horses and start rallying how Cryonics is just waste of money, you should consider the ultimate goal it seeks: Preserving body as well as it can be done using most advanced scientific methods available. (Vitrification is rather advanced if you look it up, it has very little thing to do with naive view of “fellas in ice blocks” (ice is a bad idea, e.g. due to crystallization))
So my question to you is, how well preserved your body should be until you enlist for body preservation?
Arrrrrrgh.
*yells something in Vogon*
PZ, don’t die before there is at least 50% atheists in America.
For those of you who don’t see meaning in evolution, that’s kind of the thing. Meaning is really arbitrary, and anyone can assign any meaning they like. I myself am a lot along the lines of PZ. I see my life as continuation of other life, and the predecessor of life to come. It makes me feel good, but there’s no science or reason behind that feeling. In fact, everyone has feelings like this from time to time, I’d imagine, about many many things.
OZ
Two thumbs way up.
Last year, when Tim Russert died, Hitchens posted an essay
about the memorial service, which he attended. Although the
day started off cloudy, the sun came out gloriously during the eulogies, & Russert’s son, a student at a Catholic college in the Boston area, began his speech by remarking
on the sunlight, then exulting ‘I don’t believe there are
any atheists left, after this!’ Hitchens reported, in his
Slate article, that he maintained a polite silence, but one of the commenters in the thread after the article said this: “It is not religion which gives meaning
to death; it is death which gives gravitas to religion.”
Death is the one undodgeable fact of life which we all have to come to grips with somehow. Religious rhetoric offers a cheap & easy way to appear to be treating it with the solemnity it merits, without actually having to think about it very much.
Rob @61:
I hate to be a pedant, but surely you mean “imminent”.
Ah, who am I kidding — I love it.
The thing about death is that so many people think it is the end…it is not, we never die, really. What we “are” will go on and on till today is no longer a inkling of a memory.
If you’ve lost someone, they are not really gone, they are still here in the air you breath, the wind in your face,the water in the falls.
The beauty of your loss only enhances the beauty all around you, we are part of this world, this system, this universe,it never ends…
You will become part of what you love so much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-3U52TcWmE&feature=relatedsolor
I have asked the husbeast if he would like me to throw a grand wake for him while he is still alive and able to enjoy it. He said it was not a bad idea, except for the fact that everybody might be disappointed if he didn’t fall off the perch within a suitable time afterward. This is fairly typical of our humor together, and is one of the things I shall miss most about him. Yeah, the fact that he is dying sucks, but it does not mean we sit around mourning prematurely. Heck, we just got back from Las Vegas; we were fortunate to have a group of friends who made it possible – husbeast needs to travel with a fair amount of medical equipment, and I do not have the wherewithal to do it all myself. So that is life – laughter, tears, friends, things to do that give you satisfaction. It is enough. Life is good. When it is over, it is THE END. Enjoy!
At 43 I have the privilege of being the second oldest living male in my family, going out several steps removed. The only older one is my father (65). All the rest bought their respective farms between 55 and 60. On one hand, they all smoked and drank, neither of which I do in any significant way. On the other hand, I was in the military on a heavy radar site and am a radio amateur, so i’m soaking up RF all the time. I fly a lot and I live under 500 kV hydro towers*. It’s likely I’m on the train to Leukemia City… time will tell for that.
Believe me, showing up at a family gathering really snaps things into perspective. Women in my family live forever.
This fact has dawned on my wife. I forget how she noticed it finally, because it’s not something we really talk about. I think it was the family reunion a couple years ago… “you have no uncles, no male cousins older than you, etc.?” If it wasn’t for remarriages, I’d have almost no male relatives at all.
What I sometimes wonder is… should I even bother saving for retirement? :)
* The radiation coming off 500kV towers is much less per day than a few moments in sunlight, but it sounds dangerous. ooo.
And remember… when you die, you can finally give your beau the diamond of her dreams!
http://www.lifegem.com/
I somehow survived the recklessness of my youth and wound up missing the opportunity to die young and leave a beautiful corpse.
If you’ve lost someone, they are not really gone, they are still here in the air you breath, the wind in your face,the water in the falls.
Silly woo BS. Their molecules circulate long before they die, but the specific molecules don’t make the person any more than the specific pits on a CD make the song. Unlike digital songs, people aren’t replicable; when they’re gone, they’re gone.
That is funny, I was just thinking along those same lines the other day. How even though I will die, as we all do, I am happy to have been a part of something much larger than myself, my species. I am filled with joy that not just my genes live on in my biological children but that the genes of my species thrives in he genes of my adopted children and all the human race. It was a very comforting thought. Evolution is the science of hope in many ways.
I really enjoyed a number of the enlightened responses on this thread and just wanted to say so. The Jewish concept of the “afterlife” – the traditional mythology I grew up in – is perhaps a bit different than the Christian one, but the fundamentals are still the same. Reward (throw the dog a bone) and punishment (smack the dog with a stick) is perhaps the crudest form of social manipulation. However, at least dogs are trained with TANGIBLE real-world rewards and punishments as opposed to the religious who simply base their behavior on some completely unprovable – i.e. imaginary – “afterlife” scenario. Perhaps our canine friends have something to teach us on how to deal with manipulation from on high … demand immediate rewards and punishments.
In the final analysis, if one rules out hypothetical “rewards (heaven) and punishments (hell), then one is confronted with the very real demands of being a decent person – one that will be remembered fondly by his or her associates in the future – all the time, in the here and now, in the real world.
In the Judaic tradition, many prophets and leaders who carried out horrible acts against their fellow people are somehow “saved”; just as in the Christian and Muslim traditions many human monsters – the murderers and butchers of innocents – are somehow “saved.” Only sick and twisted minds can forgive the Israelite genocide of the Canaanites, the Crusaders pogroms throughout Europe and the Islamic butcheries of the Hindus based on the abstract notion that these people were acting “on behalf of God.” We Atheists are held to a vastly higher standard than any religiotard, in that we can seek no forgiveness from spooks in the sky, so we are compelled to act in ways that our fellow human beings will appreciate and respect with no “get out of jail free” cards thrown down by weird space aliens (God/s).
Quite simply, the Atheist is compelled to behave in the real world in a way that his human peers will appreciate and respect; whereas the religious “cop out” of decent behavior by pretending that their unseen, unknown, and completely imaginary space god will justify their hatefulness. Atheists deal with the judgment of the real world and of real people, while the religious reject reality and justify all atrocity in the name of some mysterious space god that simply doesn’t exist. Atheists, more or less by definition, must be more moral and conscientious than any religiotard; because for us this is the final test whereas for them human life means nothing as only the mythical “afterlife” matters.
Shalom – Peace – Salaam,
John in Bucharest
nothing’s sacred | May 5, 2009 11:50 PM
Your reading too much into it, all I said is that your particles aren’t destroyed, never said you could replicate dipshit.
“Their molecules circulate long before they die”
What the hell do you mean?
Forgive me for not remembering the exact details but essentially in a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon the question was asked ‘What if this is all there is?’. After an appropriate amount of pondering, the answer is ‘I’ll take it’.
Lee (#70) I wish you the best on your struggle. My spouse is essentially paraplegic and diabetic but otherwise essentially healthy as a horse. She’ll probably out live me (my liver will give out eventually).
My point being that for you to see the ‘joy in reality’ must be a day to day struggle.
OK, my apologies, this is WAAAAAAY to much of a depressing comment.
Carry On!!!
Doc Bill @ 41 & 32:
Darn. I’m late again. I was going to write exactly the same thing. Well mostly exactly.
Your sentiments are mine to a heartwarming extent. I have released two upon the biosphere and one has gone on to release three!
I have a large grin on my face just thinking about the long lived, constantly changing and spawning lineage of organisms (c’mon, critters) that I have discovered myself a part of, a link in and not missing. Yet.
I suppose each of us could picture themselves as a measure of success by those gone before and a measure of hope for those yet to come. Like running in a relay race.
That and the fact that our biology, physiology and perhaps even our druthers are expressed and constrained by the same possibilities and limitations of physics that have formed the universe at large work a strange voodoo on me. I like it. Thanks for voicing it for me and many others.
*no, this is not a Cumbaya moment but isn’t there a definitely, ahh, ‘cozy’ sensation that accompanies the conviction of belonging to a greater whole? It can’t be just me and Doc.*
#73
Calvin and Hobbes sitting against a tree
Calvin: What if ther’s no afterlife? suppose this is all we get
Hobbes takes a look around
Hobbes: Oh. What the Heck. I’ll take it anyway.
Calvin: Yeah. But if I’m not going to be eternally rewarded for my behavior, I’d sure like to know now
Calvin and Hobbes June 21, 1993
Assuming I make it till the end of July, I will have outlived Marilyn Chambers.
A very well-written and moving read, indeed
I have just walked away from running a failed resuscitation of a 51 year old man. He was one of our regulars, so it has a bit more impact than the majority of the deaths we see.
There is a calmness to death that is reassuring; as has been pointed out, it only happens once, and we are no different after death than we were before birth. I don’t want the dead to watch me living my life, and I do not want a death spent worrying about the living. The nothingness of non-existence suits me fine.
We fight for life, but we must also accept that it is all right to die, and forgive ourselves for the things we have done and the things we will leave incomplete. The time we have is not divided equally between each of us, and that is not fair, but complaining about it only spoils the time you do have.
I love that Babylon 5 quote where Marcus says something along the lines that the unfairness of the universe is reassuring – imagine how much worse it would be if we knew without any doubt that we deserved all the crap life throws at us.
#13: Sadly, Roger Ebert is mute. You can, however, correspond with him in writing. His email is all over the site.
I like what Carl Sagan said:
There is something awesome about knowing that my little bits and parts are 13.7 billion years old.
And I don’t look a day over 9 billion!
BobbyEarle, you beat me to it. For some reason, ever since I first learned that we were all star stuff I have always felt at peace with the universe and my own mortality. If I have ever had any concern it has always been the manner of the dying rather than the dying itself.
Hello, John!
You know, it the other way as well…those bits and parts will just keep going, and going.
I live in Reno NV., and in the Virginia Highlands (between Reno and Viginia City) you will find many wild horses. We scattered my father’s remains there, as it was his favorite place to hang out. During the scattering I remarked to my brother and mother that Dad was not really gone. My brother said “Bob, you are an atheist, right?” I told him “of course…you have read “Cosmos”, right?” He said yes.
And then he smiled.
The epigraph a another good Epicurean wrote for himself:
I have to say that the concept of a chain of life from the first organic chemicals to us makes for a far more awesome story than the fairy tales theists feel compelled to gobble up. One more example that “truth is stranger than fiction”.
Scott Kurtz (artist of PvP) posted an essay some years back. It fell off the net when he redesigned his site, but the Wayback Machine had it.
Here’s what he has to say about death:
Pretty much sums up my attitude toward life. Our afterlife is our legacy. A man remembered never dies.
Jafafa @ 19
I can not have children, so I understand what you mean.
However, I look at it this way, even though I can not directly pass my genes on, I can help my dad pass his on by helping to look after his descendants.
He has 3 cracking, happy little
monkeysgrandchildren, even though he is not alive to see them.Naturally I spoil them rotten.
Let’s try that again, this time without the overwhelming suck:
Scott Kurtz (artist of PvP) posted an essay some years back. It fell off the net when he redesigned his site, but the Wayback Machine had it.
Here’s what he has to say about death:
BEGIN BLOCK QUOTATION
When I sit and think about what will happen to me when I die, I try to become comfortable with the only form of immortality we can prove exists. We leave an impression on the world the moment we enter it. We touch people’s lives, we effect [sic] the course of history both broad and personal. We can become a thread in the larger tapestry. Possibly, that’s all we get. If I can become content with that possible outcome, why would I fear death? Certainly that’s as noble a legacy as basking in Jesus for eternity.
In Hollywood, they have something called “want, settle, get.” When you’re casting for a part you WANT Tom Hanks, you’ll settle for Tom Jane, but you end up getting Tom Sizemore.
When it comes to the afterlife, I want to travel the cosmos, experience the universe and touch the hand of God, I’ll settle for being a part of the greater tapestry and history of mankind. I have no idea what I’m going to actually get.
END BLOCK QUOTATION
Pretty much sums up my attitude toward life. Our afterlife is our legacy. A man remembered never dies.
(And please, Seeders, could you fix the parsing so that a second paragraph doesn’t end a blockquote prematurely?)
Contemplating the permanence of death can bring pangs of angst, but I find the idea of eternal life to be scarier. No arc of life, just an endless progression of time. What you do with this time doesn’t matter, because everything and everybody will always be fine. No point in any intellectual or scientific pursuits, because everything will be known and settled. No meaning to life and no way out. Like Ground Hog Day without the happy ending, or any ending. The best you can hope for is to achieve some kind of lobotomized state where you are like a dog, always excited about your next walk around the block.
I’ll take eternal oblivion. I tried it out before I was born, and it was OK.
Fortunately, my 5 year old and pair of 7 year olds have not yet experienced th eloss of a person close to them. However, our family dog died this year. I worried about how they would respond. Amazingly after telling them the news and a heart wrenching half hour of histerical crying – they have coped very well.
Some relatives tried to tll them that their doggy went to heaven. I did not make a point of diputing this but did agree that some people believe that when you or a dog dies you go to heaven.
I told them that this may be possible but I have not learned of any compelling evidence of this.
I told them that they should remember that their doggy will always live on in their fond memries of him. In how their wonderful times laughing and playing with him, learning new things because of interacting with him, caring for him, helped shape who they are today. So apart of their experiences with him has created the personality of who they are today.
(No mention was made that he probably passed on a lot of genes in his pre adoption days :)
I have been so proud of my children on how well they have coped. On several occassions they have commented on how much they miss him and recalled some fun memories. They have commented that they look forward to raising a new doggy some day so they can teach him what they learned from and taught Bailey. They have all one time or another remarked a long the lines of fully enjoying every day with everyone you touch because today it is the most important gift we have. Our nightly lullaby includes the phrase remeber yesterday, dream of tommorrow but live and seize today by loving, laughing and learning a lot.
“The topic of death is something that even freaks out the most religious ones.” – Lotharloo
Not so. I know two in my church with the big C. -heddle
How amusing that heddle undermines his own claim by being unable even to write the word “cancer”! BTW heddle, having cancer does not always mean death is imminent: Solzhenitsyn survived cancer in the early 1950s, and died last year.
I seem to recall reading recently on Pharyngula about some research on this, which found that the unreligious and the very religious were less worried by approaching death than those in between. This makes psychological sense – uncertainty is often troubling. But as I can’t recall the reference, I could have got the results wrong. Anyone remember?
However, at least dogs are trained with TANGIBLE real-world rewards and punishments as opposed to the religious who simply base their behavior on some completely unprovable – i.e. imaginary – “afterlife” scenario. – John in Bucharest
Yes, I tried telling my dog she’d go to hell for eating shit in the park, but she obviously wasn’t fooled!
Having read Ebert’s piece, I can’t say I thought much of it, particularly the woo about his wife “knowing” he was still alive. Still, everyone to his own goat!*
*Chacun á son gôut
PZ,
I hope that both you and Roger live for a long, long, long, long time (and me too ;)).
Live Long and Prosper.
Peace and Long Life.
Many examples? So, you’re telling us your church causes cancer? Must be all those asbestos-laced Eucharist wafers, I guess…
I don’t find evolution consoling, but I do find it liberating.
On the basis that evolution is a major collection of evidence that there need be no God, and there need be no grand purpose, I suggest that evolution underpins The Great Freedom(tm).
The Great Freedom is realising that you are not obliged to accept other people’s values, goals or purposes; you can, and may and perhaps should, for your own peace of mind, create your own.
My father just passed away on Monday. It wasn’t unexpected but it is still sad that I will not see him again. It’s sadder still my two children 7 and 4 will not see there Papa again. I too find consolation in evolution and the knowledge that his genes live on in me and his grandchildren and the thrill of realizing the DNA of our for bearers in Africa and beyond lives in us.
Night before last a car came off the offramp across the street from my place and hit a lightpole at fairly high speed.
I concluded that the person either passed out drunk or had some other debilitating issue, and the car, guided by the jersey barrier like a pinball in a game, was launched straight into the lightpole at the end of the offramp. The only person in the car, the driver, died as a result.
This brought the subject of death into my head, and with the added thing to ponder- you know those nights you have a few drinks and wake up in bed later and think “I don’t remember going to bed”?
… sometimes you have a few drinks, and never wake up again.
creeeeepy.
but then if we take Senor Ebert’s tack, you could just drop dead right in the middle of those few drinks, or while you’re on the way to get them, or even while responding to a someone’s blog po
Death seems less scary to me once I realized that once gone, I won’t realize how many things I may have missed out on. There will be nothing more to stress about. The only part that concerns me is how much pain I might have to suffer on the way to that death. Of course, once dead, I won’t much care about that either, but getting to the point of fully dead is most likely going to suck moose.
In response to this: The topic of death is something that even freaks out the most religious ones.
heddle piddled:
Not so. I know two in my church with the big C. Neither is freaking out. And those are but the latest two of many examples.
Is some atheist sock-puppeting as heddle to make him look even more stupid than he already is? Heddle claims to know two people in his church, and many more, not freaking out about the big C, so we all must conclude that the topic of death is not something that freaks out even the most religious ones. Does heddle know those people, or does he just know about them? Since heddle appears to be trying to claim no religious people freak out about impending death, I’ll provide a counter-example.
My mother, among the most religious people I ever had to deal with, just died of cancer a coupla weeks ago. The prospect of certain death left her repeatedly dreaming about the prospect of suffering an eternity in hell, as if she had already made it to the place. Last I heard she was a Presbyterian, and since the seventies, was certain that we are living in the end times. She hoarded food and money and, in the early 70s, convinced her husband to move to a dirt farm in West Texas to await the rapture because Orange County CA was too decadent an environment in which to raise up a fambly, and thereby subjected my younger brother and sisters to no fun at all (when my brother stole the family car as 16 to run away, it was to Kansas, that’s how awful it had to have been). Eventually returning to SoCal and, approaching 80, she spent more and more of her life frequenting some end of the world Church with increasing frequency. My sister recently told her mother that if she were to treat her children the way our mother treated all of us (for our own good, mind), she’d be arrested and her children taken away from her by the State. The response from my mother was that that was more evidence that the world was going to hell. When colon cancer took over her liver, she had a few very short months to contemplate her impending demise. She spent so much time in nightmares of being punished by demons in the fiery lake that they had to start sedating her so she could get some sleep, until one night a couple of weeks ago she leaped out of her bed in a panic from one of her fever dreams of hell, fell, breaking a hip, lapsed into a coma, and died a few days later.
Nobody misses her.
Apologies for the dump. I’m consoled by the realization that my mother’s fears of hell were unfounded, but sad that both the life she had, and the lives of those she touched, were poisoned by her religious beliefs. They did nothing to console her toward the end, indeed, they made her life increasingly miserable, and impervious to any sort of rational discussion or intervention.
Ken Cope, I’m sorry to hear about your mother, religion can be so evil.
Unrelated: I have known of several families whose parents gave their dieing assets to the “church” instead of to their needy offspring. It is hard for me to understand the mental delusion of the last days of the dieing, those who at the very end try to make amends with a creator with money.If I were a god that would really piss me off,
At 62 and not very active, I am closer than many of you. Strangely, when I was religious, the thought of death was kind of scary. Will I go to heaven? Will I like it? Will I know anyone?
Since I have become a non-theist, the thought no longer troubles me. I worry only about those I leave behind. But what is there to fear about oblivion?
I am also comforted that nature has arranged things so that it was an incredible, near-miraculous thing that I ever existed at all, and in a form that allowed me to appreciate the wonder of the universe and life itself.