Why We Can't Imagine Death

Thought a few readers may appreciate this very interesting and thought provoking article.

Why We Can't Imagine Death

who would have thunk it ehh

beleif in life after death appears to be nothing more then an evolutionary oddity of conciousness then we dress it up and call it religeon

Ahh I just recently read a little bit of this article the other day when I was at the coffee shop reading.

I will have to finish it now

If I remember correctly the article was proposing that we could not imagine nothingness. The article didn't take into account the idea of Afterlife and our comprehension of that idea (if I recall correctly).

We can't imagine nothingness because we are consciousness. It's like imagining we have no imagination.

when dead , you simple cease to exist?
hmmmmmm you could always hook a recent dead guys head up to a blood machine , revive him and ask what happened? most likely say , " I dono, I just remember getting hit and opening my eyes here?"
This most likely has been done , but not released because it destroys ALL religions.

just the other day i was utterly confusing my gf with a similar line of thought.

she's quite set in her ways, as most of us, that there are certain things she could never accept as truth because she knew these things to be non-existent.

i asked her what it would take, being shown beyond a reasonable doubt, proof that things she thought impossible did in fact happen and were real. what would it take for her to assimilate this new information into her mind in an acceptable way. she eventually confessed that there are some things she cannot wrap her mind around, no matter how hard she tries. some things that no matter the effort involved lead her back to where she started and her mind simply rejects the information.

i stated that some things are rather hard to grasp, like infinity or nothingness and she said, "oh nothingness is easy. it's all just black and empty."
i said, "no it isn't. it's nothing. there is no blackness or light. there is no emptiness or fullness. there is nothing. if you have a group of things in the physical world and take them away, then you say there is nothing there, even though the physical world remains. if, however, you remove the physical world and reality itself you are left with true nothingness. nothingness has no color or degree of illumination, no weight or measure. there simply isn't anything at all."

needless to say, she just couldn't truly fathom it but i can't blame her.

we're products of our own minds and our minds create limitations on what is and isn't acceptable to it. i can't say one way or another if the mind is truly separate from the brain since i'm no expert but i can say that it is difficult to imagine what death would be like if death is in fact nothing so a lot of us tend to lean more toward nothingness being observable by the mind since the mind sort of basks in observation.

reply to post by LetsPlayFeedTheGater

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Actually many Christians believe we do experience body and mind death, and exist in a state of nothingness until God decides to have his great Resurrection

that would mean to the observer, the time lapse wouldn't be noticed by that way of thinking, correct?

wow, i love trying to conceptualize things like this, even though it's impossible to truly grasp, it's amazingly wholesome fun to make the attempt

reply to post by Barathrum

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Yes I believe that would be the implication yeah.

Like closing your eyes for a second and then opening them again.

Another belief is that consciousness never dies, even if it experiences nothingness, it is still exists in some way. Some hold the belief that the Universe will implode eventually to a point of Singularity. Which will cause all individual consciousnesses, even the "dead" ones in that state of nothingness, to become a part of that Singularity. So you could be dead, in a state of nothingness, for billions of years, and it would still just be a blink of an eye when the Singularity happens and it becomes conscious.

I dunno, all interesting ideas though.

reply to post by Barathrum

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hey credit where credit is due

a silent blackness is the closest we can get to describe nothing as we have to use our sense

silence is a lack of sound total darkness is a lack of light

but yeah its truley an impossible concept to get your head around in the same way as infinity

reply to post by noobfun

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The problem with that is silence and all white would be just as close of a representation of nothingness as if it were black, both fail equally

yes it certainly is

i find it ceaselessly amazing all the things our minds can dream up and accomplish but then concepts like that cripple us in a way and our mind gives us the BSOD if we puzzle too long.




it's a shame though if there truly is nothingness when you die just because of the fact that many people say, "well you won't know until you get there" the irony being that if your mind truly dies, we won't know so there's no chance at having a good self-ribbing for being mistaken, for those that are.

I find it incomprehensible to think that after my life as I know it is over - that's it - I will never live as anyone or anything again. The Universe has existed for billions of years and will continue to exist for infinite (or so I would imagine) but to me it doesn't matter. I would have had my seat at the table, time to get up and let someone else sit.

It's clear that the near impossibility of grasping the reality* that you are just here once, once only and never again is why religion is prevalent throughout history to give us humans a comfort blanket to hang onto.

*reality as I believe. What do I know!

I'm up a little earlier than usual today so still a little foggy-headed, are you saying you DO believe there will be an afterlife or not?

Anyone who's been unconscious knows what 'nothingness' is like

They come round and don't know if they've been out for a minute or
half an hour

it's a strange feeling

Come to think of it, many who've been in deep coma often have no
idea how long they've been out .. a day or ten years. Some experience
nothing at all throughout the 'gap' time


'Nothingness' is quite nice

reply to post by Dock6

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Those you speak of apparently weren't on their way out of this world. Consider the countless thousands who have actually died in a clinical sense and revive to tell of seeing either heaven or hell. Can life-saving drugs account for all of this? Misfirings of the brain?

Yeah, it sounds sad but i believe when you die thats it. Nothing!

Through life you are told you go to heaven or theres some magic place or even hell, so thats why people find it hard to believe that there's nothing after you die!

Just like before you where born there was nothing after you die there's nothing!

i think really the part of the concept that is truly the most difficult to grasp is the fact that we don't really know 100% for certain that there is nothingness or what it's like to experience nothingness in death.

true, people that awaken from a coma or from having been unconscious feel disoriented, they still can't truly know what it is to experience nothingness. true nothingness is unfathomable by the conscious mind, as it cannot be actively engaged in nothing.

as a human, i can't honestly say 100% one way or the other if there is something or nothing when the body dies. i can make assumptions or mold my own conscious thoughts around a certain concept and try to accept it as fact but in the end, if there is truly nothingness, we will never even know. it will forever remain a mystery to the conscious mind because it is not capable of being aware of absolute nada.

in mathematics, we have zero and infinity. in the physical world, we can have zero bananas but we cannot have infinite bananas. if we could we'd need a much larger pantry. in the world of the mind, however, we cannot truly perceive zero or infinite consciousness. it's impossible as far as i know and i think that's why many find it difficult to grasp oblivion in death.

reply to post by Bombeni

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No, I don't believe in an afterlife. It's just hard to imagine, like previous posts have mentioned - nothingness! Who's to say what we are experiencing now is life? Maybe this is the afterlife? Or even the beforelife!!!! Now that's not a word is it............ I need a beer.

sounds like a re-working of the intelegent design argument "it seems complex it couldnt possibley have happened by chance"

yes yes literally thousands but then compare them with the literally lots more thousands that didnt see anything

when only 20% 15% 10% or 5% or 1% saw anything the chance is its a brain fart of some variety

so just what is the percentage of 'i saw' to 'nothing happened' ?

Of course I already know it is a moot point for most of you; but if life after death does not exist then Jesus could not have been raised from the dead. Many of you don't believe that happened though. However he did resurrect and walked among the people for weeks before finally ascending to Heaven. IMO, whether you are a Christian or not, arguing whether Jesus DID come out of that tomb and live among the people for a time, after being crucified, is non-negotiable. Now many of you would reply that He wasn't actually dead if He came out of the tomb; save it, it's all been said before.