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I have trouble with the concept of death and nonexistence. I can't wrap my brain around it and it happens to us all.
What happens to us when we die may be beyond our ability to understand. FWIW, other life (if it exists) in the universe supposedly claim our physical selves are a "container" which have our soul in this life. When we die the soul moves on.
Death is scary. That is why it is a biggest fear among most people. Religion helps many. Spiritualism helps many. You can be spiritual and believe in "something" without it being specific. Many find comfort in nature. The revolving cycles of life. I find comfort there. Death is the great mystery. So many have done it that knowing it is natural, helps. But each person finds his own way to peace over it.
I have not always felt as calm about it and sometimes have bad feelings too. There is a great line in Moonstruck where the old woman says something about men cheating on their wives because of fear of death.
Many will try and "save" christian wise because of your question. That may be the answer for you-I cannot say.
My feeling is that the question about why the universe exists is different than why we have the ability to reflect on our own personal existence. We can perhaps determine one without determining the other.
Once we make this reduction, I believe we can attack the problem of self since it does not require physics or metaphysics to understand. I gave my view on self (or the soul) so no need to repeat that.
To posit a "purpose" as an explanation for things we do not understand is natural but not at all logical. If we don't understand something we need to try harder to figure it out rather than making up scenarios that invoke god, purpose, or whatever as a catch-all explanation. Lack of knowledge is a wonderful opportunity for us to use our intellect to see how we can come up with an answer.
Agreed, except we should clarify what you wrote in your last paragraph, in response to my previous comment (pasted below):
Quote:
Originally Posted by foos2
However, there must be some explanation for why the universe exists, how it got here, whether something existed before it, and why the laws of physics are the way they are. There must be an explanation for why we experience consciousness the way we do instead of simply being "ghosts in the machine." You and I will never learn the answers to these questions, but that doesn't mean we don't fit into some larger thing that could have some sort of purpose.
I was saying that there must be some *explanation*. If we assume that the universe is governed by deterministic laws, then everything should be explainable. It's possible that the universe in nondeterministic, so perhaps we could debate the determinism assumption. But even in that case, there should be an explanation for why things are the way they are. Most importantly, though, "explanation" is different than "purpose," which implies some kind of intent by an individual with agency. That we can never know, although it's always a possibility. Even if the existence of "purpose" is super low probability, it is not a logical fallacy to speculate that purpose could exist.
I agree that it is a human instinct to believe in a purpose when something is unexplained. I don't advocate for this kind of belief. And based on what science has shown us, I reject on the grounds of extremely low probability that there are ghosts, personal gods, souls living beyond physical death, flying spaghetti monsters, etc. But I do allow myself to be agnostic to the possibility that there could be some purpose for the existence of the universe. Think of something (perhaps an agent) choosing a few parameters (laws of physics) and essentially pressing "start." This agent need not have any awareness of what happens next or what Earth is. But this story that I chew on from time to time, even if it is driven by my human curiosity and need for explanation, is plausible, not fallacious. My reasoning would become fallacious (and like a religion) if I ever choose to believe in the story.
How do you psychologically prepare for death and nonexistence?
When the time comes you will find a way. You're young now but your perspectives will change as you age. It seems that most of your questions are anxiety driven by a stuck mind. I've watched a lot of people die, most of them of advanced age fortunately. I've had patients ask me to help them die. They came to terms with their life being over and were ready to go. It's sad that you're so obsessed with dieing when you should be focused on your life and living it. You are way too young to be so concerned about your mortality. On the other hand it is a cruel joke that we are so self aware. Lets all go back and slap our parents upside the head for making us, or if there is a God, for making us self aware. I hope you find a way to curb your anxiety, it must be torture living like that. Just try to understand that death is as natural as being born and natures way to curb the population. Imagine how horrible the planet would be if everyone stayed forever. Our death is just making room for some one elses turn. If it's any comfort most people aren't even aware that they've passed. Try to keep things in perspective about your mortality and find a way to make yourself happy. For whatever reason our parents decided to make us and now we have to deal with the aftermath. For some it's a great gift, for others, a cruel joke. I like to think of it as a great adventure.
And clearly that's why people turn to religions -- because they can't accept the existential reality of life: that this is all there is. There's nothng beyond this. There is no purpose or meaning to life. We're born, we live, and we can die unexpectedly at any point of our lives. We're no different than other animals or plants in that respect.
People generally can't accept that, and therefore that's why they latch onto the belief that there's a "higher power" watching over them, and that there's an afterlife, etc.
If you think about it, believing in an afterlife is just plain stupid. You live to be 80 years old and then you die only to end up "living" again eternally in an afterlife? That's just ridiculous and stupid. It goes to show that people can't accept that it ends when it ends.
You obviously have all the answers worked out; therefore, this discussion should end now.
Thank you for giving a definitive answer to an age-old question. And thank you for being mature about. Some of the more immature posters have a tendency to name call and make disparaging remarks towards people with different beliefs!
I was saying that there must be some *explanation*. If we assume that the universe is governed by deterministic laws, then everything should be explainable. It's possible that the universe in nondeterministic, so perhaps we could debate the determinism assumption. But even in that case, there should be an explanation for why things are the way they are. Most importantly, though, "explanation" is different than "purpose," which implies some kind of intent by an individual with agency. That we can never know, although it's always a possibility. Even if the existence of "purpose" is super low probability, it is not a logical fallacy to speculate that purpose could exist.
Classical physics says that the universe is indeed deterministic. Quantum physics pretty much threw determinism out the window. Still, I think that physics tries, and largely succeeds, to explain the universe. My feeling though is that we are not discovering the hidden laws of the universe, we are simply modeling the universe and casting it into our own logical structure.
I think we can understand the relationships of things within the limits of human intelligence, but I am not sure we can ever fully explain it to the point of a purpose. I agree with your distinction between explanation and purpose. At some point explaining has to deal with the existence problem which is where the issue of purpose should be addressed. I am agnostic about the existence problem - epistemologically I think it is unknowable.
If you are not familiar with the weak and strong anthropic principles, you should look at that. It is an interesting body of work that goes into why the universe has the set of physical parameters that seem ideal for our existence. It largely comes out of the physics community but is more philosophy than physics.
When the time comes you will find a way. You're young now but your perspectives will change as you age. It seems that most of your questions are anxiety driven by a stuck mind. I've watched a lot of people die, most of them of advanced age fortunately. I've had patients ask me to help them die. They came to terms with their life being over and were ready to go. It's sad that you're so obsessed with dieing when you should be focused on your life and living it. You are way too young to be so concerned about your mortality. On the other hand it is a cruel joke that we are so self aware. Lets all go back and slap our parents upside the head for making us, or if there is a God, for making us self aware. I hope you find a way to curb your anxiety, it must be torture living like that. Just try to understand that death is as natural as being born and natures way to curb the population. Imagine how horrible the planet would be if everyone stayed forever. Our death is just making room for some one elses turn. If it's any comfort most people aren't even aware that they've passed. Try to keep things in perspective about your mortality and find a way to make yourself happy. For whatever reason our parents decided to make us and now we have to deal with the aftermath. For some it's a great gift, for others, a cruel joke. I like to think of it as a great adventure.
Being self-aware, to me, is more a negative than a positive. Being aware of my mortality, and also being aware that death can come at any time, at any age, and in many forms makes it hard for me to take life seriously. I mean, how do we make plans for anything? Having any long-range goals or aspirations seems almost comical when judged against the uncertainty of life.
Yet in order to survive and get by, we have to work, we have to plan, we have to save -- even though planning for the next 10 minutes is absurd much less the next 40 years.
But we all plan vacations, invest our money, work towards promotions, obtain degrees, etc., all the while knowing that the curtain could fall at any time thus rendering our toil and work towards our long-range goals null and void.
We humans operate on a lot of faith!
There are things we don't know, but try looking at what we DO know:
1. The human body is genetically programmed to wear out (we call this "aging") and to stop functioning (we call this "dying").
2. There is a noticeable difference between a body that is living, and one that is dead. What is it? Can we all agree that it is "something"?
3. For some strange reason, most people become more comfortable with the idea of life ending as they grow older. It is the young (generally speaking) who are most anxious about this.
I once saw a newborn who was dead (my own grandchild; thankfully, I have 6 more live ones). This baby bore no relation at all to the newborn daughters that I once held in my arms. Something was missing. The body was all there...and yet, there was no life. What is life?
Perhaps we can also agree that the difference between a live baby and a dead one is the live little body has someone living inside it. It's a miracle. A person is inside. Having been a father and a grandfather, I can tell you that the person inside is an individual from birth. All 6 grandchildren were different from birth, and wasted no time letting us know that.
Granted, it's difficult to "prove" that God exists. Perhaps He/She does, perhaps not. But does there have to be a God for us to be individuals traveling on a journey, of which being incarnated during this life is but one portion? I don't know if there is a God or not. But I know that I exist, my family are all alive (so far) and that is a miracle. Perhaps we are all collectively "God".
As for my little grandchild who did not live long...what was the "purpose" of his life? Do you suppose that he wasted one minute worrying about what death was going to be like?
Granted, it's difficult to "prove" that God exists. Perhaps He/She does, perhaps not. But does there have to be a God for us to be individuals traveling on a journey, of which being incarnated during this life is but one portion?
If someone is incarnated, where is that someone coming from? There does not have to be a god, but to have this idea of incarnation needs some details. Such as:
Is there a repository of souls (or whatever you want to call the thing that is incarnated) somewhere?
Is there a fixed number of souls in this repository? That would imply that there is a limit to how many people will ever live in all time.
If there is not a fixed number of souls, who or what is manufacturing them?
Why are they made differently?
Where does this soul go when the body dies? Back to the repository to be re-used?
A soul that leaves the body - does it take its memory with it? What about the soul of a baby with no memory - what does it have?
Can a soul without a body think and speak?
Does a soul after death have emotions - love, hate, joy, happiness, sorrow, anger?
Anyway, invoking the existence of a soul (or life force, or spirit) that lives independent of a body requires further explanation about it. Otherwise you would just be making up stories without any basis.
I think, if there is life after death, then we have something wonderful to look forward to, and to live life now according to our anticipation of that. If we have something we fear after death, then you are alive now and can change that. Live accordingly.
But, if as some insist, we simply go out like a candle light, with nothing remaining but the physical corpse, then do your best to leave positive memories for those that remain. Live your life to make someone else's better. No matter how good or bad your life on earth physically is, try to enhance someone else's. When you are gone, and they are still here, they benefit from your actions. That's a win, to me.
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