THINKING ABOUT THE END
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October 20, 2024 at 2:23 am #54961
It’s been a sad day for me. It started with watching Paulina of The Warning singing the song Breathe, which she has sung in public only once and probably will never do again. Obviously, it expresses a deep hurt we may never understand unless she someday feels at peace with it enough to talk about it.
Then, I started reflecting on a ride I was on yesterday where we passed a major graveyard and it brought home that life is a game no one wins.
Next, I got to thinking about the fact that the cosmologists, most of them, describe a universe on a terminal course toward one of two possible destinies, a hot one where the universe collapses and another cold one that involves the universe dispersing like an expanding cloud of smoke that eventually evaporates entirely.
Finally, I started thinking about what both of those possibilities meant. Not just no more people, which would happen fairly early on, but even the extinction of concepts like Love, Justice, and Truth, and most of all Beauty, which encompasses all the other ones if you stop to think about it.
The universe will no longer be a place with Beauty. It will no longer be a place at all.
October 20, 2024 at 8:20 am #54962Everything passes, everything comes to an end, all is temporary, all is change. How to deal with it?
October 20, 2024 at 8:48 am #54963How to deal with it indeed.
October 20, 2024 at 10:54 am #54964Could a future religion in which death is final create a real utopia?
From Sunday School today (landing soon)
October 20, 2024 at 3:43 pm #54968How to deal with it indeed.
I think the only thing to do is to live a good life: authentic and compassionate. Then, at least it’s not wasted. There is no cosmic significance of anything. The point is, what’s it like for you?
October 20, 2024 at 4:14 pm #54969How to deal with it indeed.
I think the only thing to do is to live a good life: authentic and compassionate. Then, at least it’s not wasted. There is no cosmic significance of anything. The point is, what’s it like for you?
Someone might say, “If the universe isn’t eternal, than the universe itself is wasted along with everything that was once in it.”
October 20, 2024 at 4:36 pm #54970If the universe isn’t eternal, than the universe itself is wasted along with everything that was once in it.
Wasted for whom? There’s nothing to feel a sense of waste. You could say it’s the existential dilemma of the atheist: uncomfortable impermanence vs. the comfortable eternity of the religious.
The only sense of waste is that we can feel while alive. If I think of the world going on after I die, does that mean my life feels like it will have been wasted? Presumably this is why people want to “make a difference” and “leave a legacy”. I know, I do.
October 21, 2024 at 12:36 am #54972Someone might say, “If the universe isn’t eternal, than the universe itself is wasted along with everything that was once in it.”
I disagree. Whatever was here before the ‘big bang’ is now gone. Was it wasted? Do we care if it was? No one, no thing will care when our universe is gone. No one, no thing will judge it as a waste.
October 21, 2024 at 2:57 am #54973There will be no note in a bottle telling whatever (if anything) comes after what our universe was like. That we beheld beauty.
October 21, 2024 at 8:53 am #54978I saw on Facebook recently that some people say that atheists are more likely to commit suicide than other groups. I don’t know if that’s true or not. If it is, then it could be for a number of reasons. Atheism is a nihilistic position in that, simplistically, it’s the “worship of nothing”. However, that’s for people who over-think things.
For me, atheism makes it more imperative to live a good and long life, since it’s all we have, assuming there’s no afterlife. Even if there is, it wouldn’t be a patch on actually living on Earth.
October 22, 2024 at 1:15 am #54982I agree with Sartre that suicide is the ultimate expression of one’s freedom. I live in Oregon, a state with legal assisted suicide. Which is kind of silly, in a way, since most of us have a way of doing it if we were to so choose. As a diabetic, I always have vials of insulin on hand. I passed out recently in a hypoglycemic crisis. Luckily, I managed to get a tablespoon of honey in me before I passed out, which saved me. I woe up after an hour and a half. Dying of hypoglycemia would be painless. I could do it intentionally anytime were life to become not worth living.
I choose to go on
October 22, 2024 at 7:29 am #54983Would you say that there’s something in atheism that makes people want to kill themselves? I don’t think there is, and I’ve never heard of that before. Atheism makes people want to celebrate life and make the most of it.
Maybe suicidal people gravitate towards it as a nihilistic position.
October 22, 2024 at 4:53 pm #54984Would you say that there’s something in atheism that makes people want to kill themselves? I don’t think there is, and I’ve never heard of that before. Atheism makes people want to celebrate life and make the most of it. Maybe suicidal people gravitate towards it as a nihilistic position.
“If there is no God, everything is permitted” — Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov
Atheists don’t see suicide as sinful or an instance of sloth. They may not feel, in some instances, that it’s anyone else’s business.
October 22, 2024 at 7:04 pm #54985Atheists don’t see suicide as sinful or an instance of sloth. They may not feel, in some instances, that it’s anyone else’s business.
You may be right. I wonder what the suicide rate is among the religious, who presumably see it as a sin.
In Switzerland, Spoerri et al. used census data (3.7 million adults) and death certificates (5,082 suicides), and found that crude suicide rates were highest among those with no religious affiliation (39.0 per 100,000, HR 1.37, CI 1.27–1.48), followed by Protestants (28.5 per 100,000; referent), and Catholics (19.7 per 100,000; HR 0.69, CI 0.65–0.74). Follow-up analysis accounting for age suggested that, compared to Protestants, the protective effect of Catholicism was stronger in older persons, and the hazard associated with being unaffiliated became stronger in older persons.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7310534/
October 23, 2024 at 3:41 am #54986used census data (3.7 million adults) and death certificates (5,082 suicides), and found that crude suicide rates were highest among those with no religious affiliation (39.0 per 100,000, HR 1.37, CI 1.27–1.48), followed by Protestants (28.5 per 100,000; referent), and Catholics (19.7 per 100,000; HR 0.69, CI 0.65–0.74 …
No idea if that is accurate.
Suicide ain’t a sin for Islamic death cultists when they can take out some innocents. Oh those tasty virgins who are so off-limits unless it is old men raping little girls or street gangs raping virgins. But ya know Allah needs men to insist on women in hot climates be completely covered and preferably in black so that the sun beaming down is torture and the stench of sweat is repulsive to would be attackers. Ya know even a flash of wrist or ankle and a male is gonna get a hard on and who knows what might transpire? But in the good place it is a free for all horny young male martyrs. Talk about leading with the carrot instead of the stick! But but what about the dignity of those virgins? Well they’re women, right, and Allah’s sentiments align perfectly with the contemporary mores of the 7th century.
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