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[slit]

The sleep analogy doesn't really work. When I sleep my mind is still active. I dream up thoughts, emotions, and environments. Even as a kid that explanation made no sense to me.

 

[DBT85]

Yeah, I don't disagree, but I think objectivity alone is boring. For me it's not about faith or afterlife, but more viewing it as a potential adventure, however unlikely it is.
Doubt for me is preferable to pretending I know.

Science, understanding, theorising and experimentation is the adventure, and you get to enjoy it while you're here, even if only vicariously through news sources and discussion.

When I die, my heart will stop beating, my brain will stop functioning and I shall be dead. Friends and family will be sad that I died but hopefully will be celebrating my life, not mourning my death.

I go nowhere, I become nothing. I shall simply cease to be.

Spoiler

Unless I learn to ascend in which case I'm totally saving humanity and defeating Anubis and getting kicked out of ascended land, it'll be worth it.

 

[jesu]

The sleep analogy doesn't really work. When I sleep my mind is still active. I dream up thoughts, emotions, and environments. Even as a kid that explanation made no sense to me.

Do you have those thoughts, emotions, and environments for the whole 8 hours (or however long) you sleep though?
Death is like the bits in between, that you don't remember.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

But memory is not "you." Thats appearances and impressions in awareness.

I will definitely check out your meditation link, but your post got me thinking that from an historical and evolutionary perspective, the self may have been a necessary and inevitable construct.

For example, how would our ancestors have transitioned from hunter-gatherers, acting only on their most immediate desires, to farmers, capable of planning months ahead, without forming a mental connection (and indeed a contract!) between their current state of existence and a future one?

 

[Osahi]

The sleep analogy doesn't really work. When I sleep my mind is still active. I dream up thoughts, emotions, and environments. Even as a kid that explanation made no sense to me.

Death is like the period before you were born is a way bettee analogy imo .

 

[FinaruDensetsu]

Death is death and you only get one short life. That's why you live your life to the fullest and try to make a positive impact in as many people's lives as you can. That's how I've always been raised.

 

[Lucumo]

Czech person here. The country is quite non-religious. Death is sad because that's that. Nothing else to say about it. The only approach to a kid freaking out about death is to tell them something along the lines of "you're so young. You don't even have to worry about that."

Pretty much this. Also, I wouldn't try to explain the concept of death to kids unless I had to (they are asking me). And even then I would be vague since it's obviously impossible to say anything definitive (at least as an atheist one can say that one will end up as simply just a rotting corpse).

 

[slit]

Do you have those thoughts, emotions, and environments for the whole 8 hours (or however long) you sleep though?
Death is like the bits in between, that you don't remember.

Yes, there are no gaps. The brain is always active and thinking. You may not remember everything but the brain doesn't stop and therefore those "bits" don't exist.

 

[Foffy]

I will definitely check out your meditation link, but your post got me thinking that from an historical and evolutionary perspective, the self may have been a necessary and inevitable construct.

For example, how would our ancestors have transitioned from hunter-gatherers, acting only on their most immediate desires, to farmers, capable of planning months ahead, without forming a mental connection (and indeed a contract!) between their current state of existence and a future one?

That's an interesting view, and one I can grasp. Perhaps the self is a survival mechanism of the brain. After all, you need something to be self-referential to navigate the world, to know to not burn your hand again after touching the stove. This is absolutely okay, and there's no issue.

The mistake, of course, is assuming this navigating mechanism, this "troubleshooter" is really what we are out of anything else in the organism, as if this process is an entity like a heart or liver. There's nothing there to assert it as such, and meditative experience shows you can change the way in which the brain reacts to actually decondition a great deal of the self-referential patterns. Gary Weber talks about the default state being "blah blah blah" which is the self-referential, but experienced meditators enter a "now now now" state, where the self is seen as an image, and one has more presence to be embodied in the present moment. It's the latter state that helps deconstruct the narrative of "me vs not me" and helps showcase the boundaries are conceptual, not actual. The former state shows us what we usually do which is be lost in our heads talking to ourselves about everything we see. Just who are we informing when we do this..? Who needs to be reminded of yesterday as you clearly repeat it in your head? By repeating it you know it, and there's no vacuum that needs to be reminded, for example.

The issue of self really is the issue of dualism, and for wherever we assert divisions, conflict and suffering fill the holes. It's one thing to have a reference point to help navigate the earth, but it's another altogether to feel as if you are the driver of your organism, and what doesn't drive with you is a type of husk. The issue of death appears at becomes a concern for the void, for so long as many think of themselves as experiencers in addition to experience, the idea of blankness and "subtraction" from reality seem deeply plausible. We don't feel like emergent/dissipating processes in reality, but instead addition/subtraction processes. It is the latter that asserts a type of isolationism and thus feeling like a "surfer" to the "wave" if I can hit the ocean analogy again. Where does a wave go when it smashes into a rock? It changes in reality. Where does a surfer go when it smashes into a rock? We think it is removed from reality. These are crucial distinctions.

Things as they appear are seldom what they are, and unfortunately, we don't grasp this. Consider how we feel standalone with very little connection to evolutionary ancestors, for example. We feel like "just this" with only an intellectual understanding that it goes with something else. This is a mind in division.

 

[jesu]

Yes, there are no gaps. The brain is always active and thinking. You may not remember everything but the brain doesn't stop and therefore those "bits" don't exist.

Yeah it's the bits you don't remember.
Everyone knows your brain is still working lol

 

[slit]

Yeah it's the bits you don't remember.
Everyone knows your brain is still working lol

So what does sleep have to do with it then? Do you remember every single moment you have ever had in your waking life?

 

[jesu]

So what does sleep have to do with it then. Do you remember every single moment you have ever had in your waking life?

It has to do with the sleep analogy that you mentioned, remember, when I quoted you.

 

[slit]

It has to do with the sleep analogy that you mentioned, remember, when I quoted you.

Right? Which I said makes no sense if comparing to physical death. It's not even close to the same thing.

 

[jesu]

Right? Which I said makes no sense if comparing to physical death. It's not even close to the same thing.

The bits you don't remember, the bits where you aren't feeling anything, the bit where you aren't aware of anything, the bits where you don't remember anything.
Those hours of each night where your consciousness isn't recording.
That's what death is like.
That's the sleep analogy.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

Celebrate life. Live it to the fullest. Love, laugh, forgive, because nothing lasts forever.

this is hard to do but yes it is something to strive for if you are not into the spiritual afterlife thing

 

[chromatic9]

This has never been an issue for anyone I know (all atheists). I don't remember having any big discussion about it or whatever, I think children are smarter than you give them credit for and they understand the concept of death from a very early age.

Yes. My dad just treated us like adults and we respected that.

 

[slit]

The bits you don't remember, the bits where you aren't feeling anything, the bit where you aren't aware of anything, the bits where you don't remember anything.
Those hours of each night where your consciousness isn't recording.
That's what death is like.
That's the sleep analogy.

Riiiiiiight? Which once again I'm going to say your consciousnesses doesn't record everything in your waking life either otherwise you would remember everything. Is this the circle you going to keep going in? Was I aware in the moments I was awake but don't recall now?

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

That's an interesting view, and one I can grasp. Perhaps the self is a survival mechanism of the brain. After all, you need something to be self-referential to navigate the world, to know to not burn your hand again after touching the stove. This is absolutely okay, and there's no issue.

The mistake, of course, is assuming this navigating mechanism, this "troubleshooter" is really what we are out of anything else in the organism, as if this process is an entity like a heart or liver. There's nothing there to assert it as such, and meditative experience shows you can change the way in which the brain reacts to actually decondition a great deal of the self-referential patterns. Gary Weber talks about the default state being "blah blah blah" which is the self-referential, but experienced meditators enter a "now now now" state, where the self is seen as an image, and one has more presence to be embodied in the present moment. It's the latter state that helps deconstruct the narrative of "me vs not me" and helps showcase the boundaries are conceptual, not actual. The former state shows us what we usually do which is be lost in our heads talking to ourselves about everything we see. Just who are we informing when we do this..? Who needs to be reminded of yesterday as you clearly repeat it in your head? By repeating it you know it, and there's no vacuum that needs to be reminded, for example.

But, in response to the bolded, and assuming I have understood you correctly, consider a student reviewing for an exam: The student repeats certain facts and ideas to himself, so on the one hand clearly he knows them at the present moment. But on the other hand he also knows he is liable to forget some of these by the time of the exam if not for repetition - so once again he has his future state of existence in mind rather than the present one. And furthermore, he is aware that without this repetition, pointless though it may seem in his present state of existence, the facts and ideas currently stored in his brain may decay and fragment, even disappear entirely. In this sense there exists a process responsible for constant maintenance, combating the natural rise of entropy which can be defined as equivalent to death. This constant process of maintenance might as well be called the self, may it not?

 

[jesu]

Riiiiiiight? Which once again I'm going to say your consciousnesses doesn't record everything in your waking life either otherwise you would remember everything. Is this the circle you going to keep going in? Was I aware in the moments I was awake but don't recall now?

yeah you really are missing it.
those bits when you are sleeping, when nothing happens.
that's close to what death feels like

Or perhaps you can describe how you felt in those moments?

 

[slit]

yeah you really are missing it.
those bits when you are sleeping, when nothing happens.
that's close to what death feels like

Or perhaps you can describe how you felt in those moments?

This doesn't occur during sleep. That's what you don't seem to understand! I can't recall how I felt during certain waking moments of my life either. The sleep analogy fails unless you are saying death is like September 15, 2005 too because I don't remember what happened on that day either.

 

[jesu]

This doesn't occur during sleep. That's what you don't seem to understand! I can't recall how I felt during certain waking moments of my life either. The sleep analogy fails unless you are saying death is like September 15, 2005 too because I don't remember what happened on that day either.

explain to me what you you remember during last nights sleepy bit that you don't remember.

 

[Parch]

Atheist societies? I thought part of the benefit of being an atheist was so that you could avoid being part of a group.

That's immediately what I thought. There is no "atheist society".
There are no atheist churches. There are no atheist priests or leaders. For the most part, there are no group gatherings to discuss atheist dogma. It's just a default belief system that isn't taught or preached and people deal with their personal beliefs individually.
If you're looking for an atheist society to target, you're not going to find it.

 

[slit]

explain to me what you you remember during last nights sleepy bit that you don't remember.

I will when you explain to me what you were doing on November 25th 2008 at 3:45 pm and what you were feeling.

 

[Foffy]

But, in response to the bolded, and assuming I have understood you correctly, consider a student reviewing for an exam: The student repeats certain facts and ideas to himself, so on the one hand clearly he knows them at the present moment. But on the other hand he also knows he is liable to forget some of these by the time of the exam if not for repetition - so once again he has his future state of existence in mind rather than the present one. And furthermore, he is aware that without this repetition, pointless though it may seem in his present state of existence, the facts and ideas currently stored in his brain may decay and fragment, even disappear entirely. In this sense there exists a process responsible for constant maintenance, combating the natural rise of entropy which can be defined as equivalent to death. This constant process of maintenance might as well be called the self, may it not?

Interesting question. The point I was making was a bit different than retention, so I have a hard time answering the nuance of your question. To give an example, think of rain, and then the thought "oh, I hear the rain." Didn't your ears hear of it before the thought? We think it starts with the thought, in most cases, that without that impression there's a type of "blindness." This sounds very loose and odd, but if one meditates and studies the mind, you see how this becomes an issue. I am probably very awful at articulating the nuance here, so I apologize if I am appealing to those in "authority." I think Jiddu Krishnamurti covers the point I was trying to get with greater detail, so I'll just quote him directly.

Is there any relationship between the thinker and his thought, or is there only thought and not a thinker? If there are no thoughts there is no thinker. When you have thoughts, is there a thinker? Perceiving the impermanency of thoughts, thought itself creates the thinker who gives himself permanency; so thought creates the thinker; then the thinker establishes himself as a permanent entity apart from thoughts which are always in a state of flux. So, thought creates the thinker and not the other way about. The thinker does not create thought, for if there are no thoughts, there is no thinker. The thinker separates himself from his parent and tries to establish a relationship, a relationship between the so-called permanent, which is the thinker created by thought, and the impermanent or transient, which is thought. So, both are really transient.

Pursue a thought completely to its very end. Think it out fully, feel it out and discover for yourself what happens. You will find that there is no thinker at all. For, when thought ceases, the thinker is not. We think there are two states, as the thinker and the thought. These two states are fictitious, unreal. There is only thought, and the bundle of thought creates the 'me', the thinker.

A self, generally speaking, as if as you feel you are a subject in addition to processes, hence the thinker analogy. Trying to define a self is very difficult to do, because the self is a concept, not a thing. It's a think, a unit of thought. For this reason, I find it a bit hard to look at examples to say "is this a self?" because the question can be seen in a way to assert it as a thing. It being perceived as a thing is what gives it the illusory power ascribed to it, such as free will. One simply has to see how they're not in control to start seeing the image of the controller break down. Meditating and observing thoughts is an easy way to start.

Sorry if I didn't answer your inquiry clearly. It's a very fuzzy topic, as you can imagine. Even entertaining the self as a survival mechanism, it is a pattern and habit of thought and still not a thing.

 

[OG Shaka Zulu]

Haven't read much of this due to work but thanks for all the input so far!

 

[MattKeil]

So you're saying they don't?

Safe assumption to make until proven otherwise.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence was a great line from Hitchens, and I completely agree. My point is that we are dealing with different human interpretations of higher power in religion. Higher power by definition isn't something we are even capable of perceiving, and God isn't a singular entity but rather an abstract idea to me.

So then God is irrelevant to the human experience and not even worth considering one way or the other. You've essentially gone past "who knows?" and into the realm of "who cares?" by that point.

 

[Monocle]

and we have seen how the mind creates reality. how our senses can be altered by both internal chemistry of our brains and external factors. there have been scientific experiments in isolation chambers. we know that time can be distorted.

if we are hard materialists and think that matter creates reality (and not the other way around) then we must admit our matter is in a constant state of flux. reality is in a constant state of flux. as we age, we experience death often not as a sudden instant, but as a process of life. you die over your entire life, your cells die and are regenerated, the fluids and solids that comprise your body are ever-shifting. what holds it together is spirit. as the matter dies, the mind dies, the spirit dies.

i lost my grandfather to a stroke this year, and i spent an hour with him while he was alive, yet he could not swallow, he could not speak more than a word, he could look around the room, he could look at you with his eyes. that was it. but he was alive! earlier that week i was talking to him at a birthday party and now was living this disabled life. what was he experiencing? he was a Catholic, he had a church back at his home in Ohio, and he was involved with the community. if you spend your entire life with a culture, and there are these symbols and images and stories that you hear over and over, is it really that unthinkable that a person in such a medical state would experience a heavenly bliss? they say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. what else does? am i going to re-live going to see "Return of the Jedi" with my parents before they got divorced? anyways my family is atheist and we had a funeral sans body and priests w just family talking and sharing about his life. but my mom respected his community and his spirituality and also gave him a proper church funeral back home. it was important to the people who knew him. this is tolerance. death is a personal thing.

the (Western-written) intro to the Tibetan Book of the Dead says that whatever you were raised in as a child, that's what you will experience. if you are a Tibetan monk who learned about these deities and this cosmology, you will relive it. if you are a Christian, you will see that. and so on. it is a personal thing. Death is a personal experience. psychologically, as humans we tend to fixate on images and symbols, and these express the un-expressible on a cultural level. as an atheist i think it is important to read up on Jung and explore the concept of archetypes. he has written some interesting books on Christianity from that standpoint, from a psychological and cultural standpoint. imo Jungian archetypes are an open and rational atheist-and-religious-friendly interpretation of spirituality. it is a way for the atheist to understand the importance of religion's symbolic language.

These are falsifiable claims. As far as I know, there's no evidence for any of them. You seem to be working with an incomplete grasp of physics and supplying your own answers, sans any support.

 

[quesalupa]

Yolo

 

[grumble]

I told someone this once who asked me the same thing. They had recently snapped out of religion and were down about life and death. I told them this:

Billions of years ago, the universe was formed. Particles turned into hydrogen, and clustered into galaxies. Those clouds of hydrogen, so big that the mind can't understand it, collapsed into stars. Stars are huge too, with a power that is likewise hard to comprehend. Those stars fuse hydrogen into heavier elements, then, eventually age and sometimes explode. This scatters those elements across the galaxy, and eventually, that stardust formed our star, our planet, and, with billions of years of evolution, eventually formed you. You are a unique and unbelievable pattern, made up of stardust that came blowing in the wind across galaxies and eons. You are part of the greatest, most incredible, most humbling and majestic process that exists - the universe itself. You're born from it, and the stardust that makes you up will eventually move on, to create other wondrous things. You're part of the symphony of the universe, an incredible result of an awe-inspiring process, and you have the opportunity to change it, but a little bit. What you're made of will always change it too.

 

[Acorn]

The sleep analogy doesn't really work. When I sleep my mind is still active. I dream up thoughts, emotions, and environments. Even as a kid that explanation made no sense to me.

Dunno, I can't remember 90% of my dreams so it probably will be similar for me.

 

[Monocle]

I told someone this once who asked me the same thing. They had recently snapped out of religion and were down about life and death. I told them this:

Billions of years ago, the universe was formed. Particles turned into hydrogen, and clustered into galaxies. Those clouds of hydrogen, so big that the mind can't understand it, collapsed into stars. Stars are huge too, with a power that is likewise hard to comprehend. Those stars fuse hydrogen into heavier elements, then, eventually age and sometimes explode. This scatters those elements across the galaxy, and eventually, that stardust formed our star, our planet, and, with billions of years of evolution, eventually formed you. You are a unique and unbelievable pattern, made up of stardust that came blowing in the wind across galaxies and eons. You are part of the greatest, most incredible, most humbling and majestic process that exists - the universe itself. You're born from it, and the stardust that makes you up will eventually move on, to create other wondrous things. You're part of the symphony of the universe, an incredible result of an awe-inspiring process, and you have the opportunity to change it, but a little bit. What you're made of will always change it too.

Yep, that's poetic enough for me. And we know it's actually true.

 

[Chmpocalypse]

To follow up, my grandmother died a few hours ago.

There was no anger, no wishing for a deity to save her, no change in my understanding or acceptance of the reality of death and the cessation of existence. Just sadness, tears and loss.

Atheists are far stronger when facing death than many seem to believe. I wish those people could feel as I do at this moment, to understand what living on reality's terms is like. It's not scary, just heartbreaking at times. But we deal with reality as it is. There's your answer, OP, from at least one atheist.

 

[OG Shaka Zulu]

To follow up, my grandmother died a few hours ago.

There was no anger, no wishing for a deity to save her, no change in my understanding or acceptance of the reality of death and the cessation of existence. Just sadness, tears and loss.

Atheists are far stronger when facing death than many seem to believe. I wish those people could feel as I do at this moment, to understand what living on reality's terms is like. It's not scary, just heartbreaking at times. But we deal with reality as it is. There's your answer, OP, from at least one atheist.

Sorry for your loss.

 

[besada]

To follow up, my grandmother died a few hours ago.

There was no anger, no wishing for a deity to save her, no change in my understanding or acceptance of the reality of death and the cessation of existence. Just sadness, tears and loss.

Atheists are far stronger when facing death than many seem to believe. I wish those people could feel as I do at this moment, to understand what living on reality's terms is like. It's not scary, just heartbreaking at times. But we deal with reality as it is. There's your answer, OP, from at least one atheist.

When my dad died, my religious sister wandered around the house muttering "he's gone to a better place" completely unable to actually help my mother. Frankly, I think most religious people, deep down suspect that the afterlife is a crock of shit. They certainly act that way when someone dies, rather than rejoicing that they've moved on to a rewarding afterlife. I think we can feel our future non-existence in our bones, see the skull under the skin, and no amount of our parents, neighbors, schools, and offices telling us otherwise ever really convinces us.

Condolences on the loss of your grandmother.

 

[PdotMichael]

There is literally an infinity of things we can't prove, specially if you want to prove the absence of something. Atheism is as much of a hard line as saying ghosts and pink elephants don't exist.

That's not how it works.

Of course you can postulate things which operate outside of logic and natural laws but that isn't an argument against people operate within a world view based on those two things.

 

[toddhunter]

When my dad died, my religious sister wandered around the house muttering "he's gone to a better place" completely unable to actually help my mother. Frankly, I think most religious people, deep down suspect that the afterlife is a crock of shit. They certainly act that way when someone dies, rather than rejoicing that they've moved on to a rewarding afterlife. I think we can feel our future non-existence in our bones, see the skull under the skin, and no amount of our parents, neighbours, schools, and offices telling us otherwise ever really convinces us.

I don't think anybody, from the Pope down really believes in religion. However it brings people comfort and having people reinforce the delusion through the same beliefs enhances that comfort further (trying to force people and indoctrinate children to add to your delusion is another story, but I digress).

Since I don't have that to rely on with my children, I have had to try to comfort them through science. Not that we know what happens when we die, but that we currently don't know what happens when we die, or indeed if we will discover some method in the future where you don't die, or your consciousness can be transferred or we work out that we are just projections into the universe or who knows what else is going on.

Then I point out for now the best thing to do is enjoy life as best as you can, learn, seek answers and maybe we'll gain a better understanding of things as we go forward. Even if we don't individually find those answers, maybe we can contribute enough to society to work towards that goal.

It comforts me. There can be a bigger picture without religion. It is just something that we do not fully understand yet.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

The idea of heaven should be terrifying to a child because it tends to come with the idea of hell. I find more comfort in infinite unconsciousness than the idea I could be infinitely tortured.

 

[Pusherman]

Another thread made me think of this. Just show your kids this video from Sesame Street. Such an elegant and completely irreligious way of teaching yours kids about morality.

 

[Midas]

I don't see the problem. It's not like it is a problem for you to be dead. You're gone, you do not exist anymore. It's just over. There's nothing to fear. But when it comes to talking to kids about it? You can be less nihilistic and let them know that no one knows what happens when you die.

 

[azyless]

That's not how it works.

Of course you can postulate things which operate outside of logic and natural laws but that isn't an argument against people operate within a world view based on those two things.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying to be honest. English isn't my first language so maybe I'm missing something.

 

[Randam]

The sleep analogy doesn't really work. When I sleep my mind is still active. I dream up thoughts, emotions, and environments. Even as a kid that explanation made no sense to me.

Most of the time, I can't remember any dreams.
So it would be like dying.
Started pretty early comparing dying to sleeping forever.

 

[Martian]

Let your children just believe what they want. If you ask them if your kids believe in heaven or hope that there is a heaven, let them believe.

Be honest and tell the whole truth

 

[iFirez]

I'm not sure whats so frightening to people about death. We are then we are not. Just accept that and lets move on.

 

[kinggroin]

There's nothing to tell. You die. Nobody knows what happens after.

Best answer. And be sure to teach the kid whatever it is they want to know or have questions about. Various points of view, what different people believe.

But ultimately, no one knows. So pick your poison and respect others' choices.

 

[kinggroin]

The idea of heaven should be terrifying to a child because it tends to come with the idea of hell. I find more comfort in infinite unconsciousness than the idea I could be infinitely tortured.

This is only true if you are specifically religious.

Religion and belief in an afterlife, heaven/hell or god are not mutually exclusive.

And I thought being an atheist meant no belief in God. What does an afterlife have to do with it.

 

[slit]

Most of the time, I can't remember any dreams.
So it would be like dying.
Started pretty early comparing dying to sleeping forever.

Understood but again, there are lot of things we don't remember when we are awake as well. If lack of memory = death then sleep doesn't tell us more than when we are awake.

 

[Kyzer]

Tell them we don't know what happens, its one of lifes greatest mysteries. Its true. Everyone saying you die and thats it, thats not even a known fact. Your brain could easily stay active for a few minutes depending on how you died, DMT dump, crazy trip, who knows

 

[Machina]

Understanding death as an Atheist is, not fearing it. It's getting it through your head that worrying about or fearing the inevitable, and treating it as threatening and scary as a result is just a massive waste of time. It's not threatening or scary, because you won't know it when it happens anyway.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

Yes, there are no gaps. The brain is always active and thinking. You may not remember everything but the brain doesn't stop and therefore those "bits" don't exist.

But you aren't aware that your brain is working. So it feels exactly the same as if it wasn't at all. It's just the easiest reference point for a child.

When parents say that they're not trying to explain how the childs brain is going to work when they're dead. They're just looking for the easiest, simplest, least scary way to convey that you won't be aware that your consciousness is gone.

 

[Majmun]

Your brain will not function anymore. Your conscience will be gone forever. Nothing is eternal except death. There will be nothing. Just accept it.