I wonder if you'll still be at peace with it when you take your last breath.
There's always heavy sedation.
Yes. The prospect of the inevitability of death does not create a desire to believe in everlasting life. I don't want to die this week. And I don't want to die slowly or painfully. But I don't need to imagine myself to be immortal.
@fmfsaid So all you were doing was asserting that your belief in everlasting life is right and my belief is wrong and indicating that this is what you think by calling me "shortsighted" and suggesting your belief is "farsighted"?
Here we go again. Time for FMF to start misquoting and mischaracterizing the intent of what was actually said.
@fmfsaid I think spirituality pertains to our capacity to speculate about ourselves given our faculty for abstraction and philosophizing a.k.a. our human spirit. I think religiosity is one of the products of this.
It seems you've compartmentalized spirituality into categories as an exercise in academic and intellectual ritual.
Your opening post betrays that. You're searching for meaning in death, but there is none. So you create in your mind an intellectual and ideological buffer by making the assertion, in the form of a question, "why believe in something awful...when you can believe in something wonderful?", because you long for faith, but need another word to describe it.
The operative word being "believe". "Believe" is a word of faith, especially in the context of your OP, since it strives to reconcile the inevitable death looming on the horizon with the cozy comfort of preciousness.
@secondsonsaid It seems you've compartmentalized spirituality into categories as an exercise in academic and intellectual ritual.Your opening post betrays that. You're searching for meaning in death, but there is none.
You're searching for meaning in death
My opening post is about the meaning of life. The OP is about not needing hope and speculation about everlasting life in order for life to have meaning.
@secondsonsaid So you create in your mind an intellectual and ideological buffer by making the assertion, in the form of a question, "why believe in something awful...when you can believe in something wonderful?", because you long for faith, but need another word to describe it.
From the OP: Catholic priest to his atheist friend "Why believe in something awful when you can believe in something wonderful?"
This creates no "buffer" for anyone, except perhaps for the priest. The "something awful" is the recognition that death is the end of life. The "something wonderful" is the belief that one lives forever in some form.
This thread is not about me "longing for faith" and if you actually think it is, then you have got completely the wrong end o the stick.
@secondsonsaid "Believe" is a word of faith, especially in the context of your OP, since it strives to reconcile the inevitable death looming on the horizon with the cozy comfort of preciousness.
Does not the belief that one will have everlasting life give "comfort" to those who believe it? Haven't you described death [without an afterlife] as abhorrent and awful? Death is inevitable, it's true, and that makes the opportunities it offers ~ to learn and to love and to share ~ all the more precious, regardless of any aspirations about immortality.
@secondsonsaid It seems you've compartmentalized spirituality into categories as an exercise in academic and intellectual ritual.
My belief that religiosity ~ and all spiritual pursuits ~ are an understandable upshot of the human condition and the human spirit in action is not a "ritual" in any way. It's merely a perspective. I am not sure what is gained by you describing this perspective as "academic and intellectual ritual".
@fmfsaid My opening post is about the meaning of life. The OP is about not needing hope and speculation about everlasting life in order for life to have meaning.
"The meaning of life"? Wow! So profound!
So what if someone can find meaning in life. Everyone is doing that, unless one happens to be one of the less fortunate whose only "meaning" in life is finding their next meal.
And so what if someone finds meaning in life through all the good things they can acquire to make them happy?
It'll all be gone as soon as they hit the dust, i.e., for them who believe they cease to exist upon death. What does their life mean then?
No. Eternal life is the fulfillment of all meaning, and to suggest that when one adheres to that belief they do so as a means of coping with death is pure unadulterated poppycock.
@secondsonsaid So what if someone can find meaning in life. Everyone is doing that, unless one happens to be one of the less fortunate whose only "meaning" in life is finding their next meal.
Well, I am not speaking on behalf of the person who can only think about finding their next meal, just as I am not speaking on behalf of you.
Your question: "So what if someone can find meaning in life?" is a bit odd. If they can, then they can. If they can't they can't. It's still a topic to contemplate.
If you derive meaning in life from your belief that you will have everlasting life, so be it.
But I am not sure why you would be both asserting that that is how you "can find meaning in life" AND asking "So what if someone can find meaning in life?"
@secondsonsaid It'll all be gone as soon as they hit the dust, i.e., for them who believe they cease to exist upon death. What does their life mean then?
What their life meant was perceived and experienced during the course of that life. Some meaning may outlast that to some degree in the memories of people who were affected by that life.
@secondsonsaid Eternal life is the fulfillment of all meaning, and to suggest that when one adheres to that belief they do so as a means of coping with death is pure unadulterated poppycock.
Do you believe you feel differently about death than I do?
Doesn't your belief in everlasting life affect your attitude to death?
"Why believe in something awful...
12 Jan '20 00:52
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