The inevitable death

The opposite of life questions never asked:

What purpose does naturally inevitable death serve?

What's the reason for death? Or rather why do you think you as a human were designed to die eventually?

Is your inevitable death to be looked at as a good thing or a bad thing? And why?

If you think life is so valuable and/or important do you think death is equally valuable and/or important? And why?

 

Nothing can last forever, especially not complex and fragile things like cells and DNA, not in a violent, harsh environment like earth. In such a complex thing like life, just one mistake can screw the whole system. Thus death. There is no purpose, in my opinion, it just happens.

Biologically it makes more sense to just reproduce than to try and maintain one organism indefinitely, because the damage accumulates and energy expenses continually increase.

We aren't designed to die, that's a silly way of looking at it.

Death isn't a bad thing (though I'd like to put it off for a while!), because it is a natural thing that is unavoidable. I don't see any reason to get all worked up over it, it's wasted energy to stress about the unchangable things in life. Maybe there's some spiritual side to dying (haven't decided yet, lol), so that's a possible thing to look forward to. If not, you won't even know you're dead anyways, because your consciousness will be lost. Like in anesthesia, when you go under, you know nothing; it just feels like you close your eyes, then a second later open them, although a few hours and a whole operation has occurred in the meantime. I figure that's what death is like, so there's nothing to fear there.

 

So if we're not 'designed' to die, it must come as a result of purely ramdom forces - as must life if we're not 'designed' to live. I see nothing silly at all in the idea that we are meant to die - or that this is part of a conscious design.

In my view, life and death are two sides of one coin. They are both perhaps phases of our existence as conscious beings.

 

You're right, it's silly in my opinion because I don't think humans (or life in general) was consciously created by some being. Since "design" implies conscious creation with a purpose, I think it is silly to say we are designed to die Even if evolution "designed" us to die, that's unconscious accidental design...thus it doesn't even qualify, really, as design, it is more realistic to say "it just happened."

 

----One day it all just became SOOOOOOO FUKIN clear to me! ---LIFE IS LIKE A ROLL OF LIFESAVERS!!!---

 

Well I have to tell you that on this I differ from your view. I do believe in a conscious, intelligent design behind things. I'm not at all interested though to seek to try to prove this to anyone - and I certainly don't intend to do so here.

All I will say is that for one who believes only in a mechanichal and accidental universe, I suppose death must seem as ultimately meaningless as life.

 

I do and no death isn't but heaven is....more so in fact....its a pretty fine aspiration

 

Theist often have this perception of atheists. Their response: there is no meaning to life so whats the point of doing anything. In the end there is no point so why don't I just kill myself now? I say go right ahead, one less person bringing me down. However, I enjoy happiness, whereas you may not, who am I to tell you anything about your feelings? So I am going to live my life experiencing life and everything it has to offer because I can. This lifts a tremendous weight, I do not have to live a life predetermined by any God.

I don't understand why death would hold any importance other than that after death you do not continue to live...

As far as that designed to die thing goes, trippin is right. Cells die eventually and do not reproduce so your bodily systems can no longer function efficiently or at all. So oxygen can no longer get to the brain therefore consciousness ceases.

I would be happy to know that consciousness continued after death. However, such a proposition is rediculous. Stop belittling life on earth in the REAL. Life here is not just a waiting room for bliss in the afterlife. Start living life for the sake of living.

"Existence preceedes essence." Your life is yours to create.

 

Yeah, you enjoy a life predetermined by random uncaring nature. Nice trade . I enjoy God and everything God has to offer because I can.

 

Determinism does not exist

 

Leaving God out of the frame here - determinism exists at every level. Your actions and my actions are determined by a multitude of factors - biological, social, linguistic, economic and many others.
You think there is no determinism - yet you are compelled by nature to act in many ways - to eat, sleep. procreate. You can get illnesses, you have no choice. You can't sustain your own existence without fulfilling these needs. That is one level of biological determinism. There is also the question of hereditary factors - a person's life is often determined by these.
You think in a particular language you have learned in the process of socialization as a child into a particular culture - you cannot choose to think in another language which you have not learned, and the structures of language and discourse itself may be seen to have a deterministic effect on may levels. Niether can you choose to simply stop thinking and live in mental silence.
Reactions are determined by cultural conditioning. A person brought up in Africa will interpret things very differently from an American or a Japanese.
Most people's lives are determined by economic factors. Marx, for example, believed everything to be thus determined.
Science too increasingly is showing just how determined many aspects of behaviour are.
For some, the notion of the Divine, and of a higher conscious state possible for human beings is seen as the way out of what is a thoroughly deterministic mode of life - even if many believe themselves already free. This so called freedom is an illusion. Virtually everything people do is predetermined by innumerable factors. Even the notion of freedom is thus determined.

 

If there werent Death then life wouldnt be as good and precious as it is now. People love living SO much that they believe in life after death, which is like the last match of the "Little Match Girl" (Anderson's tale).

I dont think there is any living after death but I'm trying hard to believe. It's the match thing...So that I can "keep the faith" be happy till the last second. And after that...who cares? I'll see

 

Nothing you mentioned is necessarily true.

The determinism, as in the context of the subject, is refering to is a lack of humanistic choice.

 

I find it hard to believe you can question that biological and cultuaral determinist are untrue. I would have thought they were self evident.

Ideas, or limited ideas about God are a function of such a cultural determinism. The Christians have one notion of God, other religions have quite different conceptions. Most people in the west have been exposed by their social conditioning and education only to the Christian idea, and perhaps not even to that, but to a very limited version of it.

 

determinism does exist. Evolution itself is being determined by nature (although, humans are now capable of determining their evolution). Genes, illnesses and etc. are all inhereted to us from our parents. That is the biological determinism.

Cultural determinism means an individual's interaction with the society he lives in.
If you,until the age of (say) 6 hold cows holy and live in India, then we may suggest that this behaviour is due to cultural determinism. If there werent a thing called cultural determinism, then there wouldnt be racism or experiencing new cultures.

 

We are talking about two completely different things.

Everything you mention here is not necessarily determinism, they are merely drives or motivation. They are of earthly origin, which I agree with. These drives and conditions influence, but do not NECESSARILY determine anything.

Implicit in determinism is that there is no choice in actions. Merely because I am hungry does not necessarily determine that I will eat. Nor anything else that you mentioned. There is no question that drives exist naturally, the instinctual drive to procreate does not necessarily mean I will procreate. Even with animals, while they do not have the ability to disect the matter, they attempt to procreate because of the drives caused by hormones, not because it is predetermined that they will procreate at that particular time in such particular setting with a certain mate.

 

Put it this way - if somebody gets an illness you may not be able to function properly - certainly it may prove impossible for them to do as they wish. They may want to go out to meet the girlfreind or whatever, but can't manage because they are too ill. Hence their action is determined on the social level by a bio factor.

But deeper than this is linguistic and mental conditioning. The structures of thought itself are put into people at an early age - they have no choice to learn english or chinese as a first language, yet the whole conceptual basis of thought is different depending on which of these languages one thinks in.

In this way, the whole pattern of an individual life is determined, set to run within bounds. If we don't even accept there are these bounds, we will never be free of them. Simply to deny these huge determining factors won't make them go away.

 

I don't know why you keep saying this, I agree with you for the most part. I do not agree if you think this 'determinism' cannot be overcome. So if you are saying that my cultural background necessarily determines my future I once again disagree. However, I believe we were speaking of some supernatural determinism, which is different because it is irrational.

 

I said it to counter your earlier ststement that there is no determinism.
I think that determinism can indeed be overcome -
Also, a 'supernal' detrminism needn't be irrational, not in the sense of sub-rational or emanating from a level below or inferior the reason - it could be super-rational, coming from a higher mode of knowledge.

 

Determinism in the classic sense is dead: with the advent of reletivity theory and quantum theory, the purely mechanistic view of the universe, working like billiard balls on a table, was thrown out. Quantum theory tells us that things don't exist in fixed places, but show a tendency to exist in this place and a tendency to exist at this time. It's all based on probability. That combined with Reletivity telling us there is no absolute time or absolute space, but everything is reletive, it becomes impossible to have a truly deterministic view of events. Cause and effect is no longer absolute and reaching into the past in a for-sure way, it's more of a probability of what happened. Likewise, it is not possible to predict the future, since there is a level of quantum randomness that can have unforseeable and large effects on the future of a system (see chaos theory). This is why we can't predict the weather only a few days in advance with much accuracy. One might say all futures exist simultaneously at different probability levels which are constantly changing.

On the other hand, there is some sort of determinism that exists, as has been stated. We get hungry- we eat. We trip- we fall- we bleed. We get raised in a racist home- we will probably be racist. And so on down the list. Cause and effect still seem to exist on our scale, but in reality, nothing is for sure thanks to the things mentioned above. Chaos theory works at all levels in complex systems, so we can never say that kid in a racist home will be racist: think about all the other factors shaping that kid.

Where choice falls into this framework, and if it even exists at all outside our imagined understanding of the world, I don't know.