[Summiteer]

I've been thinking alot lately about death and dying and what lies beyond this realm of existence. Somedays I sit and think"Holy shit I'm 30 years already" If i'm lucky I may live another 30years. I've been getting the strong sensation that our lives are sooooo amazingly short hock: It may seem long,well not long but you know long enough to do what you need to do then get the hell out in 60years or less.I've recently been confronted with the deaths of 2 close people in my life,young people,people who should not have died so young. Somedays I have the feeling I may not be able to see my girls become woman,Its really wierd,and i'm a not a pessimest,I'm a preety positive thinker,but thats how i am. Somedays I feel like death is stalking me. Like something is watching me. I guess it's like the PJ lyrics " I know that I was born and I know that I'll die, the Inbetween Is Mine" Vedder nailed it when he penned that.Please don't read this and think I'm looking for sympathy,becasue I'm not.Just needed to outlet some feelings that have been bottled up for a while. What is everyones idea of an afterlife? is it the angels with nimbus on head. Do you even believe in an afterlife? I guess I do believe in an afterlife but what it consists of I percieve is MUCH more different than what is commonly accepted as fact. I think we may be all an experiment by extra-terrestrials to see if we can make it work,well its much more than that but you know what I mean. This seems more pluasible than a man on a throne desending from the sky,more freaky to witness i mean but still more plausible. I think humanity is finally at that threshold of thought in that we can now freely choose to believe in the unbelievable. It's like Gord said "this song is for the boyz in the crew who are Nilists,can't remember the exact rant but from the Roxy gig, and its true,the way we've ben taught to live over the last 200 years or more has lead to a social upheaval of sorts. I think I've become a nilist over the last 3-5 years.Not hardcore like i'm plotting to blow up federal buildings but still I know there's a rogue element, a faceless nameless brooding fear festering, that creates fear in us all.To fear the establishment, this is a powerful weapon the gov't wields. :|

[grooveless touque]

The worst part of being young is feeling like you haven't accomplished anything, and the way the world rears us today, the worst part of aging is feeling as though you'll never accomplish anything. I'm only twenty, but in my mind I know I won't be around all that long either. I am not the kind of person who lives to be 70 or 80 or 90. I find it hard to imagine living out of my 50s. Even though that is what most people consider "young" to move on, another three-decades-plus sounds like a long time. But as you so readily pointed out, "not long enough to do what you need to do". In fact, I don't even know if by 55 I'll even have found out what I "need to do". That's something that's scared me lately. We lost a good friend of the family at 51 recently, a misunderstood man with a heart of gold not enough people got to see. And it's really been troubling me...he had decades of work to do and decades of people to touch. Whereas my horrible old British grandfather lived to be 93, punishing all the world for his hard life every step of the way. But that's beside the point...I'm talking about Gord, our family friend. He was claimed by cancer he didn't even know he had. And that's sort of the way I'd like to go...he was shopping for groceries on Wednesday and dead on Friday. But 51? My god...just goes to show that, no matter how good a person you are and no matter what positive effect you have on those that know you, you're never guaranteed long enough to fully appreciate it. If fifty years enough time to even figure out what difference you can make in the world, let alone enough to go out there and try and make it happen? At 50, can you even comprehend what impact on the world and those around you that you might already have had? I think the answer to both questions is no. And ever since he died, I've been thinking of how many countless lives out there are ended well before they had reached fulfilment of any sort, before they had had a chance to complete something that would define them. The smallness of Being in our world is terrifying, isn't it? Some people cling to religion to believe that they have already been fulfilled, but I don't subscribe to that and thus, I'm left with the prospect of a functionally empty life trying to find some way to accomplish something that means something to me, on a deep level. Right now there's a line from an Allman Brothers song that has been haunting me for months..."I gotta change my way of living cos the blues is all I see." Change my way of living...how? To what end?? We're constantly changing as we try and define ourselves, and make a place for ourselves somewhere in the abstract range of Being. What does it mean to change, and what does change mean? And when will you make a change that really means something to you? Will you even realize it at the time? Like I said, all these thoughts of just how small a man on the infinite range of Being seems. I don't know what I'm saying...or why I'm bothering to post such scattered and unfocused thoughts...but your post sounds a lot like what I've been thinking lately.

[jen]

I can absolutely agree also. I think about how life is so short all of the time. I try to live each day to the fullest as if it were the last. I do not believe in any kind of afterlife, either. Once it is over, it is over. We may live on in the soil and nourish in that way, but in my opinion, no other way. I think that many people may believe in an afterlife and may not live life to the fullest here on earth because they believe they are going someplace better after death. I don't know, it is all a mystery.
But I agree that life definitely isn't fair in the aspect of who gets to live the longest. I too have someone that is dying in the family right now..someone who LOVEs life and is full of laughter. Sucks. But that is the way it is.
The selfish part of me hates the thought of death because I don't want to miss anything in the world that will keep turning. New music, technology, etc. I hate to think that everyone/everything will keep moving forward. All I know is, when I do die, I want to leave the earth a better place because of how I lived. Even in a super small extreme.
I also find comfort in death by knowing that everyone that is in my circle of life..friends, family, favorite bands, entertainers, etc. will also die within the same mass of time. Everyone has an end, and we will all go through it together. Strange way of comfort, I know but it works for me. -Jen

[Summiteer]

thanx for your opinions guys, food for thought :thumb: hey highway;is your parents Aethist? and I'm not passing jugdement towards you at all, everyone is entitled to their believes, the reason I ask is my friend is also like that and he's not sure why, I guess i still think its the mixed up thoughts the church and school have bombared us with that makes us feel there is no end to a means when it comes to our very existence. but like you said thats the great mystery that lies beyond the door.We all stand at that threshold. Please don't think I'm saying your mixed up. I couln't think of a better way to put it. :| My buddy went through the whole residentail school experience and this was totally and unterally devasting to him. But they haven't killed us off :rambo:

[jen]

Hey Merle,
No my parents aren't atheists..actually far from it. My mom is a Baptist and my dad doesn't believe one way or another. I have formed my own beliefs as time has gone on. :wink:

[Summiteer]

Love your pic by the way....... :wink:

[jen]

:oops:

[LastStop]

I'm an atheist, and I'm extremely happy to be. There is a marvelous essay about "the meaning of life" from an atheist point of view at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/nihilism.html">http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/nihilism.html</a><!-- m -->


excerpt:

"Where do our purpose and meaning come from? They come from nowhere but ourselves. It is the right of every person to decide what makes their life meaningful and what their purpose will be. An atheist could devote their life to fighting the abuses of organized religion or trying to win people over to the cause of freethought, but not all atheists choose to be activists. Some might prefer to write, paint, sculpt, program, or otherwise create. Some could devote their lives to charity work, or to family, friends and community, or to any cause they identify with. Some might want to advance the frontier of human knowledge through science. Others might focus on self-improvement and making themselves the best, most well-rounded individuals they can be. Some might simply prefer to enjoy the beauty of the natural world, the wonder of the universe, and the pleasures of the senses, and make the most of their lives while they have them. Atheism leaves all these options open, but forces us into none of them; its essence is freedom, autonomy and self-direction.

The unanswered question is why theists feel we need a god or gods to tell us what to do, or worse, that our very purpose is to worship such beings. Too many of them seem to simply take these things as given, but as an atheist, I question these assumptions. Why do we need a higher power, or anyone else at all, to tell us what to do? Isn't it our choice and our right to set our own path? What's so difficult about choosing for yourself?

Even more puzzling to me is the notion that God gives us all a purpose, and that purpose is to worship God. How could anyone embrace such a depressing and limiting idea? It makes us out to be slaves, or puppets, or canned applause, created by a vain God just so we could constantly sing his praises and tell him how great he is. Equally bad, in my view, is the concept that the purpose God has decreed for us is to follow his rules, have faith in him and be saved. If this is what God wanted for us, why didn't he create us all in Heaven in the first place? Why did he create us apart from him and then set these arbitrary hurdles for us to jump over to get back? This view reduces humanity to a rat running a maze.

In sharp contrast to all these things is the freedom afforded to us by atheism. One who has never known anything but the chains of religion can only dream of the exhilaration of true self-direction. Humanity is diminished, not uplifted, by senselessly following the preordained path decided for us by a cosmic tyrant long before we were born. It is the choice to do with our lives as we wish that gives our existence true meaning and purpose.

Another reason theists commonly see atheism as equivalent to nihilism comes from the mistaken perception that, without God, human goals are ultimately futile and we have nothing to strive for. If we die and that's it, the argument goes, why does anything we accomplish matter?

But again, this argument is not only a non sequitur, it can be reversed and turned back on the theist. If we all can look forward to an eternal afterlife of bliss, why does anything we achieve now matter in the long run? Any work of art or invention you wanted to create, any book you wanted to read or course of study you wanted to undertake - you'll have all the time you could ever need to do those things when you reach Heaven. No point in packing them all into this fleeting mortal life. Likewise, why bother to improve this world for our descendants or ease the burden of human suffering? All mortal pain is inconsequential in the face of an infinity of happiness.

The atheist, by contrast, has sound reasons for desiring to set and achieve goals. If this life is all we have, then whatever we want to do to improve ourselves, we have to do now or miss the opportunity forever. Likewise, if there is no afterlife where all earthly wrongs will be righted, we have a real reason to work now to decrease suffering and ensure justice.

So, in the end, what makes life worth living for this atheist? The answer lies in a threefold combination: the love and friendship of human relations, the wonder and beauty of nature, and the illuminating truths and tantalizing mysteries of science. Whether it be spending time with friends, kissing someone special to me, enjoying a good meal, watching a sunrise at dawn, walking through a forest in autumn and marveling at the vibrancy of color and the play of sunlight on leaves, walking through the same forest in summer, observing photosynthesis and the interlocking and vibrant web of life produced by millions of years of evolution, returning to that forest in winter to see the fractal patterns of branches and frost on a winter morning and feel my breath steaming in the air; whether it be watching clouds at day and considering how atmospheric scatter of sunlight makes the sky appear blue, or watching stars at night and letting my imagination drift through the incomparable vastness and grandeur of the cosmos, wondering whether there is any other intelligent life out there that might at that moment be wondering the same thing; or contemplating deep truths of our own existence, picturing my own thoughts as electrochemical flashes in a network of synapses, my own body as proteins built up by self-replicating entwined double helixes, mutating and propagating themselves throughout the eons, my own structure as composed of glittering bits of subatomic matter, the whirl of electrons around the atomic nuclei, the quantum froth of quarks, tiny immutable particles as old as the universe itself, or as ephemeral as nothingness, all self-assembling over multiple levels of complexity into a thinking, conscious mind that can look back and conceive of and study its own existence - all these things make my life worth living. There is a lot to enjoy in this world, and none of it is made any less valid or desirable by not believing in God. On the contrary, it only increases my wonder that we've managed to come this far by ourselves. We are here now, and we exist. There is much for us to love, much for us to admire, and very much still for us to learn. This is not nihilism, and there is no reason for it to be. On the contrary, atheism is nothing less than a celebration of life."