Thread 24605612

I've noticed the reaction generally falls into two broad categories

>The transcendental/utopianist response
Where you cope through the hope that mankind will somehow be able to transcend its condition and tame the universe and create the idealised world we picture in our minds. It's almost pseudo-religious belief in this sense and promotes collectivist attitudes. Marx obviously comes to mind here though you see the undertones of this in people like Nietzsche as well.

>The detached response
The one where you give up hope of the situation ever changing and simply take life at face value. The rest of the world becomes meaningless with this attitude and the goal of life is simply to enjoy it. Camus exemplifies this the best.

>>24605612 (OP)
sweet fucking jesus
this really is the stupidest board

>>24605625
Improve the quality of this board by refuting OP's retarded take.

>>24605612 (OP)
Walking on the beach
Walking on the sand
We are always shooting Arabs
For the thrill of it thrill of it
Homosexual North Africans
shooting Arabs
for the thrill of it

>>24605612 (OP)
Try reading Denial of Death

>>24605612 (OP)
Always remember that criticizing atheism does not address why atheists should follow your non-atheism in particular. If you want atheists to join your religion, you must convince them to accept your religion, rather than merely reject atheism.

>>24605612 (OP)
There are like 10 types of atheists. You are a dumb faggot.

>>24605827
Explain.

>>24605612 (OP)
Dead atheist asked to respond to death could not be reached for comment. That’s why we’ve partnered with Ground News,

>>24605832
Read Seven Types of Atheism by John Gray. Then I'll tell you about the other three.

>>24605612 (OP)
There is also a third, rarer but still present response. They think that, because this life must be all there is, that it's quite liberating and lights a fire under them to do everything they want before it "turns black"

I never understood the whole "omg someday I won't exist therefore life is somehow meaningless" idea, somebody explain

>>24605612 (OP)
There is no god, everything else is just projection

>>24606072
But what are you to do once you accept there is no God? Where do you go from there?

>>24606082
The same things most people do most of the time, less a Sunday service or some such

Why don't more atheists get cryonics when they die? It's not like they have anything to lose.

>>24606082
Even if you were given an unaging body and mind, and your life were a ceaseless march toward inevitable apotheosis, would it be any more meaningful than being born, living, and then dying, and all your works and revelations decaying with time? Even the promises of most religions are, "you'll be there forever, but trust me, it's pure bliss." There's nothing particularly fulfilling about it other than that it is godly and therefore it is good.

What's important is that I'm alive. Once that is no longer true, it's not my problem, anymore.

>>24606089
It's expensive and doesn't really work, shit completely destroys your brain.

>>24606089
Expensive, implausible, and not wanting to be a pussy about death

>>24606092
>Even if you were given an unaging body and mind, and your life were a ceaseless march toward inevitable apotheosis, would it be any more meaningful than being born, living, and then dying
Yes? That would be amazing.

>>24605612 (OP)
>22 year old noticed that the reaction to an experience he saw once fits into two broad categories. He has read eleven books and three were philosophy.

If you're just scared of death then you're a fucking fool who is only playing at serious religiosity.
Pursue the truth, death is a non-issue.

>>24606098
But I'd argue that what makes life worth living is the struggle against imperfection. Once you accomplish, learn, master every thing, the world remains only as an archive of the past.

Of course, our memories are terribly limited, so we can never actually reach this point, so you'd have to include "perfect memory" in the unaging deal, otherwise you could just repeat life, forever, without even realizing it. The point is, unsolved, novel problems are a necessity for life. Unless maybe you want to invent infinite amounts of mathematics and scratch out proofs for the rest of eternity. That might work. What do I know—I haven't been alive for endless aeons, nor can I fully shed the bias of the biological aversion to death.

(PS. You can type em-dashes on Linux via Ctrl+Shift+U -> 2014 -> Enter)

Atheists are the only people that really understands death and how bad its. Religious people can't handle the fact that dead people are gone so they make up stories like the afterlife or reincarnation.

>>24605973
it's pretty simple; if the result is the same no matter what you do, then there's no point doing whatever

>>24606137
Modern atheists:
>Waaaa I can't enjoy life if everything will end one day :'(

Ancient atheists:
>Death is nothing to us. Look back at the eternity that passed before we were born, and see how it is nothing to us.
>When we exist, death is not present, and when death is present, we do not exist.
>So great is the folly of some men that they choose to die rather than face life.
>So great is the madness of some men that they are driven to death by the fear of death. There is nothing more absurd than to seek death when you have made your own life troubled by fearing it.
>I write this to you while experiencing a blessedly happy day, and at the same time the last day of my life. Urinary blockages and dysenteric discomforts afflict me which could not be surpassed for their intensity. But against all these things are ranged the joy in my soul produced by the recollection of our times together. Please take care of the children of Metrodorus in a manner worthy of the good disposition you have shown since adolescence towards me.

>>24605973
If your life is not enjoyable and wherever you die now or later is inconsequential then there is no reason not to killl yourself.

I'm an atheist and I believe in the afterlife. Suck it christcucks

>>24605612 (OP)
You have to actually read the authors you mention in the op faggot

>>24605612 (OP)
this shit belongs in /his/ btw

>>24606736
But how can I belong to /her/?

>>24606207
psychological pain is much harder to deal with than physical pain. most people who commit suicide do not do it because they suffer from urinary blockages

>>24606963
>psychological pain is much harder to deal with than physical pain
The Epicureans too believed this. Their whole philosophy is tailored towards attempting to neuter it.

>>24605612 (OP)
I'm atheist and i have no response to death
religious people are the ones who are detached and coping as you basically deny it with a fantasy of an afterlife

>>24606963
>psychological pain is much harder to deal with than physical pain
I don't at all believe this, though maybe the comparison gets difficult if you're allowing the sort of "psychological" pain that can be induced by bad reactions to psychotropic drugs, neurological illness, and brain damage.

>>24607842 (cont.)
I guess maybe in some sense guilt could be worse than a great deal of physical pain in the sense that people do occasionally get themselves injured or killed trying to protect others, so in a way they are choosing the physical pain of whatever injury over the psychological pain of guilt over failing to protect when they could have, but I think there's also a positive psychological benefit to doing whatever you feel is the right thing, so it's physical pain being weighed against both psychological pain and missing out on a psychological positive. But I'm not sure that quite captures all of it either.

>>24605612 (OP)
Met a few that are insanely terrified of the thought of not existing.

>>24606093
>>24606097
Retards

>expensive
It costs 30k. And so what if it costs money? It's not like you can take your money with you when you die.

>implausible
So? It's still more likely to work than getting buried or cremated.

>completely destroys your brain
t. has probably never heard of vitrification and thinks they just get a straight freeze. And getting cremated/buried completely destroys your brain anyway, so that's a non-argument.

>not wanting to be a pussy about death
Then why wait? Just kys now so you can prove how much of a badass you are.

>>24609067
Anon, dying is not that big of a deal. Everyone dies.
>>24606082
For most nothing changes. You could even pretend to be religious christian. You do what you want. You still need to have a job and feed yourself if you want to keep yourself alive. You still need social interactions to keep your brain stimulated.
>>24606092
>There's nothing particularly fulfilling about it other than that it is godly and therefore it is good.
It is good in those. God in abrahamic religions is cheating. After death(for the individual) everything else becomes irrelevant. Unless you're religious and delude yourself into thinking that you will have material wealth there.

you obviously go to heaven where there's plenty of fruits and many women to your heart's desire.

>>24609067
>Just kys now so you can prove how much of a badass you are.
I am already dead because I am amongst the living, and there’s no-thing to rush towards here, so why gild the lily?
If get to ride the contradiction of a mortal life for even a moment, I’m profoundly lucky. Living with the conscious awareness of death is why I don’t freak out and immediately turn to thoughts of suicide like you freaks.

>>24605612 (OP)
Why are people not as upset about where they were 200 years ago as where they will be in 200 years? That’s really the clue to unraveling this entire anxiety.

>>24609927
This argument does not really work because for me the universe began when I was born. It never having existed in the first place is different from it having existed before being taken away.

>>24609702
>Anon, dying is not that big of a deal. Everyone dies.
Yet you can't refute a single point I made. Normie retards like you seem to think everything has to be some sort of childish emotional knee-jerk reaction to something, and can't even conceive ot making decisions based on actual long-term calculation.

>>24609914
>I am already dead because I am amongst the living, and there’s no-thing to rush towards here, so why gild the lily?
>If get to ride the contradiction of a mortal life for even a moment, I’m profoundly lucky. Living with the conscious awareness of death is why I don’t freak out and immediately turn to thoughts of suicide like you freaks.
This is nothing but a bunch of platitudes. What the fuck is "ride the contradiction of a mortal life" even supposed to mean? Either you think life is valuable or you don't. If life is valuable, there's no reason not to get cryopreserved. If it isn't, there's no reason not to kys. Valuing your current life but not your potential future life as a reanimated being is an obvious double standard.

>>24605612 (OP)
With Nietzsche it wasn't an undertone imo, he really tried to create something like a religion with the Overman.

>>24606144
This is why most theists are actually desperately frightened closet-nihilists. They project this conclusion onto atheists because it's the exact reason why they refuse to accept reality: they couldn't handle it. Well, the vast majority of atheists can indeed handle it: normally, functionally, and without coming to these nihilistic conclusions. The atheist in their mind is the extreme minority, the real majority are normal people in european countries who were simply not raised with that superstition.
It's no surprise that christian larpers obsess over and revere the torture and execution of an innocent man - but cover their ears when people say that's morbidly deranged and unhealthy. Deeply spiritually broken people.

>>24609950
Yes, that's experientially true. But humans function by temporal abstraction; they see the future and past as functionally real as a necessity. Decoupling your cognition to overcome this anxiety is the only way to get over it and start the spiritual healing.

>>24608305
Most people are like this. It's the small minority that is comfortable with annihilation at death.

>>24609995
I’m glad to not be stuck in a cognitive framework that only allows me to experience life through logical propositions, and especially glad that I don’t feel the need to reduce these propositions down to spuriously reasoned binary choices

>>24609995
>>24611052
I’ll clarify the “obvious double standard,” I guess, but then I’ll drop it. I am profoundly lucky to have lived, and more life will not make me any luckier in this respect.

>>24611010
Most don’t believe in annihilation at death though

whatever happens after death, it's already radically different from waking phenomenal conscious experience with sense perception, since the death of the body is the death of the senses (Christians also believe this). whether it's annihilation or entrance to another mode of being, sense perception and phenomenal existence ends at bodily death. if you're frightened of this, then you're too attached to your senses. "whoever loves their life will lose it" and so on. the whole point of cultivating virtue is to give up all attachments, and I'm pretty sure that holds for most religions.

>>24611052
>I’m glad to not be stuck in a cognitive framework that only allows me to experience life through logical propositions
If you're opposed to seeing life through logic, this sounds like an admission that your opposition to cryonics is inherently irrational.
>and especially glad that I don’t feel the need to reduce these propositions down to spuriously reasoned binary choices
Then how the fuck do you even make decisions at all? All decisions for literally anything boil down to having some number of spuriously reasoned choices.

>>24611064
>I am profoundly lucky to have lived
>more life will not make me any luckier in this respect
You need to actually justify both of these assertions.

>>24605612 (OP)
Best response for an atheist is the Buddhist kind of self-denial.

>>24611460
The self obviously exists. I can directly observe being THIS human.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertiginous_question

>>24611467
It can't truoy exist in the materialist nominalist framework.

>>24606072
Also, I'm trans.

Being an atheist is a form of anti-intellectualism.

>>24605612 (OP)
we can easily imagine materialist accounts of a cyclical cosmos, or even panpsychic atheist pandeism

>>24607842
try developing debilitating early-onset tinnitus

>>24611010
please have more life experiences. much much worse fates than annihilation. becoming disabled or dealing with chronic and degenerative illness can be fates worth than death

I'm an atheist myself and greatly look forward to dying, eventually. One life is more than enough for any person. I genuinely look forward to the day that there isn't any "I" anymore

>>24611539
>please have more life experiences.
more life experiences = desiring to be annihilated? nice cuck logic.

>>24611556
t. hungry ghost

>>24611560
>buddhist sissy
ah, that explains a lot. vedanta is and always has been superior btw.

>>24611481
Which is why materialism is bullshit.

https://philarchive.org/rec/LISTFA

>>24611565
I'm not a Buddhist. I'm an atheist materialist, as I stated before

>>24611539
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_of_astronomical_suffering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqnJcZiDMDo

>>24611539
>much much worse fates than annihilation
I don't disagree with you. But people are still horrified by annihilation.

>>24606144
>If you're going to die someday, why not shit your pants? After all, it won't make any difference in the long run.
idk, this doesn't seem persuasive to me.

>>24605612 (OP)
I agree with your general distinction, but Nietzsche is clearly not collectivist. I think that you might say he is transcendental, but I don't think that it is because he envisions any 'ideal world' or 'utopia.' Nietzsche's overman is a man that can affirm life himself

>>24611703
cute video

>>24605612 (OP)
there's nothing wrong with death. its the dying that's usually painful.

>>24611526
Yes but those are blind guesses. Unlikely ones at that.

>>24611832
It's the opposite for me. I find nothing scary about enduring the pain of dying. It is the idea of existence ceasing forever that terrifies me.

>>24611720
You really don't understand, it's about uuuhhhh leaving a trace, being remembered, having a legacy, transcending your life and joining billions of indian souls in post-death (i. e. True life).
[10 more deeply convincing and well-thought paragraphs about Le final purpuse]
So you see, as long you pray to (a) Lord or follow an arbitrary set of Buddhist/Dao/whatever rules, it really doesn't matter if your britches are soiled. And if that's still unconvincing then you're simply immature

>>24611720
Most theists are incapable of imagining what reason they'd have for not shitting their pants if God hadn't explicitly told them not to.

>>24611720
well, yes. if you feel like it knock yourself out you panties pooper

Read Nietzsche and Philosophy (Gilles Deleuze) pages 147 to 189 (5-The Overman: Against the Dialectic).
What you're describing fits into the categories Deleuze uses to describe contemporary nihilism. Transcendentalists/utopians would be examples of reactive nihilism, while detached atheists can be described as passive nihilists trying to cope with their sorry state.
As an atheist, I deal with death by hating the whole thing. Of course, Lady Death won't ask for my consent, but I don't see myself accepting its inevitability. It seems absurd to me that beings like us have to die like an amoeba or an amphipod. If there's a chance for immortality within our technophilic grasp, we should seize it.

>>24605612 (OP)
What's wrong with death? It sounds rather pleasant to me.

>>24606144
>if the result is the same no matter what you do, then there's no point doing whatever
That sounds like an obvious non sequitor to me.

>>24612535
Closing your heart to transcendental logic is the most common atheist trick.

>>24612551
I think with my brain, not my heart. Making the mistake of doing the opposite probably explains a lot about you.

>>24612560
This just sounds like nihilistic cope. Just like op said, world becomes meaningless with this attitude of rejection.

>>24612533
>What's wrong with death? It sounds rather pleasant to me.

>>24612573
The world is meaningless. Get over it or make up some schizo bullshit to convince yourself otherwise.

>>24612576
Not an argument. Antinatalism is a robust position.

>>24612578
>Not an argument. Antinatalism is a robust position.

>>24612577
Hehe but what about the spiritual world, the immaterial?
Besides, Erasmus says that thinking too much leads to unhappiness, and I fully agree.

>>24612551
it's not specifically an atheistic position. It's the realization that you're facing something so immense that no matter what you do, you wont leave a dent. Worship is a sensible response. If that thing isn't worth worshiping then I don't know what is

>>24609995
based troonshuman.
Ignore those fucks, anon. They're insufficiently faustian

>>24612576
>>24612580
I like to imagine myself more like this

>>24605784
>b-bbut you should convince us!!
fool's errand. imagine taking retards seriously desu. when the kid of someone else does something stupid do you sit down with him and explain why he's wrong? neckbeards aren't even cute. also I make fun of my kid when he makes a stupid mistake and he understands 100% of the time. people really believe strangers on the internet will take their time and convert them lollll

>>24612576
>And I declared that the dead,
>who had already died,
>are happier than the living,
>who are still alive.
>But better than both
>is the one who has never been born
Fucking fedoras in Ecclesiastes.

>>24612576
kekked

Reminder that the obsession with the afterlife is specifically a Christian and Muslim phenomenon. Judaism barely gives any shits and is chiefly concerned with this world. Ancient religions were full of shitty/mediocre/unpleasant afterlife scenarios. The use of an afterlife promise as a goad is an odd exception.