Tuesday, 18 July 2023

Death

Dahut, XVI, 1.

Before fighting Budic, Gratillonius thinks that to die will be to sleep forever. Then he remembers Mithras! People are inconsistent on this subject. A Catholic curate in the West of Ireland said that his parishioners accepted Church teaching and believed that death was an ending and retained the pagan idea that the dead descend into an underworld from where they resent and can harm the living. I will be astonished if I find myself still in conscious existence after physical death. In some ideas about survival, memory is not retained, which makes sense: the water of Lethe. Anyone born after I have died will think of himself as "I," will not remember having been me and can be affected for good or ill by my present actions. That exhausts the moral significance of karma in relation to future lives. Death is a change of scene but memory is part of the scenery.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And I don't believe you to be right, that death ends everything for us.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

If that is true, then I'll find out.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Kind of a pointless discussion at this stage of our knowledge. If you and I meet in a hereafter, then I will have been proved wrong whereas, if there is no hereafter, then you will never be proved wrong.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Logically, that is so. But Christians don't believe that to be the case, meaning we still have an obligation to persuade others to belief.

Ad astra! Sean