Death is an issue in religion, philosophy and detective fiction.
Thoas to Ankhsenamen:
"'...you Egyptians think too much about the next life. You should cling to this one and enjoy it as best you can and forget about the rest.'" (pp. 133-134)
Enjoy, yes. Forget? Explore everything beyond our lives including any alleged evidence for survival. Genuine objective research into the paranormal is almost impossible in the present climate! The Society for Psychical Research did a good job on the deceased CS Lewis' appearance to JB Phillips. (Mrs Phillips confirmed that her husband spoke as if conversing with someone but also that she herself neither saw nor heard Lewis.)
One of the worst features of religion is Christians gloating at the supposed fates of unbelievers and even of heretics in the hereafter. Milton did it in Paradise Lost. An American Evangelical told me online that she would love to see my face on the Day of Judgement... Right. Let's all keep trying to find the truth for ourselves. If the ultimate reality is after all a person, then He or She will sort everything out.
8 comments:
Life is a material object; death is oblivion.
I think that life is a process rather than an object.
Death is matter reverting from an organic to an inorganic state. A heart stops pumping, blood stops circulating, neurons stop firing and interacting. Everything stays where it is but changes form. Nothing goes anywhere, not even into oblivion.
Your -consciousness- dies -- oblivion. It's dependent on the living organism of the human body.
"Oblivion" is correct for the cessation or absence of consciousness but it really has to mean that. Death is sometimes described as "darkness," "blank emptiness" etc. Darkness and emptiness are states that we can experience, i.e., of which we can be conscious. Absence of consciousness, of course, is a state of which we cannot be conscious. Obvious but I am just trying to make sure that language reflects that.
Kaor, to Both!
And I don't believe there is an eternal unawareness or black nothingness at death. Also, events have been recorded by unimpeachable witnesses at shrines like Lourdes and other miracles investigated by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints which makes sense only if they were of supernatural origin.
Paul: I agree that evangelical Protestant was extremely cruel. The correct and Catholic attitude was expressed by that bishop preaching to the Danes of King Harald Blue-tooth's time in MOTHER OF KINGS. The Church would not judge the eternal fate of the Danes' pagan ancestors. Rather, they would be left to the mercy of God.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Well, we have been through Lourdes before! How many Catholic apologists and philosophers use Lourdes as a main plank in their argumentation?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
None that I know of, and that was not my point. The point being that I think one reason for what God does at Lourdes is for that to be a challenge to think nothing matters or exist except except the motions of blind chance and matter. A challenge to those who regard with horror (or hostility) the supernatural claims of Judaism/Christianity and worse of all the Catholic Church.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Philosophical materialists do not think that nothing exists or matters except the motions of blind chance and matter. We believe that being (whatever it is that most fundamentally exists) is dynamic. It is describable as "energy." Mass is energy. Matter does not consist only of mechanically interacting particles with only the quantifiable properties of mass and volume. If that was all that existed, then there would be no qualitative differences anywhere and being would not have become conscious of itself through increasingly complex and sensitive psychophysical organisms. The emergence of consciousness was an irreducible qualitative transformation, involving others. Thus, electromagnetic wavelengths differ quantitatively but we are immediately conscious of them as colours differing qualitatively.
Chance seems to play a major role in events but that involves statistics, therefore a combination of continual novelty and some predictability. "Blind chance" means that events are not purposive/teleological. How could they be before consciousness? But, now that intelligent beings exist, we can certainly bring about intended events.
So you denigrate your philosophical opponents as:
thinking that nothing exists or matters except random material motions;
regarding supernatural claims with horror or hostility;
particularly hostile to Catholicism?
Find me some of these people and I will disagree with them.
Prime facie, "the universe" and "nature" are two phrases for the total reality of which we are the conscious part. In this sense, everything around us is "natural" and you have to demonstrate that the term, "supernatural," has some referent. I am not denying this, just saying that you have to establish it.
Since reality is infinite whereas our knowledge of it is finite, there will always be phenomena that we have not understood or explained yet. This includes "miraculous" and paranormal events in all religious traditions. Check out yogis that don't eat. (I don't know whether this is true but it is claimed and requires investigation.)
You come across as embattled, embittered and hostile. We need to discuss these important issues without all that emotional baggage.
Paul.
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