Would you kill youself...

[jack sommerset]

See...that's the problem


For me, it's not about the pain but the indignity of it. I don't want their last memory of me being a glassy eyed stare as they wiped off my ass/nuts while changing my depends. I want to get everybody together, talk about the good times, try to have a few laughs, hugs all around, send everybody home, and then punch out privately while I still have control.

PLUS 1.....I'm with u on that. Have some dignity if you have the chance.

[whottt]

My Aunt did the ho e thing. It was totally her call. I went and looked up some treatments for her but she wanted no part of them. She pretty much lost the will to fight and just wanted to go to sleep.


IF I was truly terminal and I knew beyond all doubt there was no way out, I'd either go morphine or else I'd do something truly memorable and thrilling, like jump out of an Airplane or from a hot air baloon into a Volcano or a Tsunami or something like that....either totally peaceful or the thrill of a lifetime before instantaneous death. Will depend on my mood and what I can get away with basically.

I know anytime I've been up high in the air or like on side of a cruise ship in the middle of the Ocean...the thought of jumping always crosses my mind, and it's only the certain death aspect of it that prevents me from doing so. It's not a morbid urge or anything like that, just a near irresistible desire to have that thrill or unique experience.


BTW, of everyone in this thread, baseline bum has the worst imagination and the most primitive thought processes concerning the term "afterlife" and just what that means. Totally boring, and not substantiated by anything in history, nature or science...

Even Einstein said mattter cannot be destoyed...


Seriously, a caveman who wipes his ass with squirrels and can't add 2+2 is smarter and more openminded about this than you are...not to mention more imaginative. Imagination being a sign of intelligence.


Why cling to your conciousness so much? You don't use it for anything except seeing obstacles and being cynical.

A Souther Baptist Preacher would probably more enjoyable to have that debate with than you.

[marini martini]

Sorry about your Sis, Cowboy. Is this the same Sis that liked taking trips to South Africa???

I definitely am going to want the morphine if I was terminal. Also I'm big on the dignity issue not to mention my quality of life. I've watched our four parents die. My MIL suffered in a hospital with cancer for 3 months, while the Dr's and hospital kept her alive with artificial means, to cash in on her medicare. My mother laid brain dead for 3 days, after a massive heart attack, and my Father and I had to put our foot down to make the Doc's pull the plug. Thank god she had a DNR. My FIL, never went to Dr.'s, was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 89. We called Ho e, and he died a week later. My Dad, also was 89 the Docs said he had congenital heart disease, went to stay in the nursing home that was attached to his apartment, ho e took over, and he died peacefully a week later, while I held his hand. I have had a couple friends die after Ho e took over. So yeah, think I'll be going down the morphine highway, when life's just not a lot of fun any more and I'm in alot of physical pain. As much as I'd like to live long enough to be a burden to my kids, just ain't gonna do that to them.

[baseline bum]

My Aunt did the ho e thing. It was totally her call. I went and looked up some treatments for her but she wanted no part of them. She pretty much lost the will to fight and just wanted to go to sleep.


IF I was truly terminal and I knew beyond all doubt there was no way out, I'd either go morphine or else I'd do something truly memorable and thrilling, like jump out of an Airplane or from a hot air baloon into a Volcano or a Tsunami or something like that....either totally peaceful or the thrill of a lifetime before instantaneous death. Will depend on my mood and what I can get away with basically.

I know anytime I've been up high in the air or like on side of a cruise ship in the middle of the Ocean...the thought of jumping always crosses my mind, and it's only the certain death aspect of it that prevents me from doing so. It's not a morbid urge or anything like that, just a near irresistible desire to have that thrill or unique experience.


BTW, of everyone in this thread, baseline bum has the worst imagination and the most primitive thought processes concerning the term "afterlife" and just what that means. Totally boring, and not substantiated by anything in history, nature or science...

Even Einstein said mattter cannot be destoyed...


Seriously, a caveman who wipes his ass with squirrels and can't add 2+2 is smarter and more openminded about this than you are...not to mention more imaginative. Imagination being a sign of intelligence.


Why cling to your conciousness so much? You don't use it for anything except seeing obstacles and being cynical.

A Souther Baptist Preacher would probably more enjoyable to have that debate with than you.

Blow me whott. What the does the conservation of energy have to do with the physical processes in one's brain that support consciousness? Have fun imagining about spirits, but it'll turn out as well for you as when you imagined you were an astronaut or a millionaire as a child. You got real nerve calling someone unimaginative because he doesn't believe in your system of supers ion. If you don't like debating me, then shut the up and go somewhere else.

[whottt]

blow me whott. What the does the conservation of energy have to do with the physical processes in one's brain that support consciousness? Have fun imagining about spirits, but it'll turn out as well for you as when you imagined you were an astronaut or a millionaire as a child. You got real nerve calling someone unimaginative because he doesn't believe in your system of supers ion. If you don't like debating me, then shut the up and go somewhere else.

lol!

[baseline bum]

lol!

lol

[whottt]

To understand higher levels of consciousness, you'd first have to have achieved them at some point...I'm talking about the level higher than being pissed your dog never came back.

Once you attain caveman level, perhaps then our debates will be more fruitful.

[baseline bum]

To understand higher levels of consciousness, you'd first have to have achieved them at some point...I'm talking about the level higher than being pissed your dog never came back.

Once you attain caveman level, perhaps then our debates will be more fruitful.

So higher levels of consciousness for you is thinking one survives his own death, and believing his person still exists because the matter that makes up his body survives?

[E20]

Clash of of the mega ans II

[whottt]

So higher levels of consciousness for you is thinking one survives his own death, and believing his person still exists because the matter that makes up his body survives?

I just think it's ironic that you claim to be a scientist yet write off the existence of higher planes of existence without a shred of a scientific basis for doing so. You aren't doing it based on any evidence, it is entirely an emotional reaction on your part, and totally unscientific.

It's a scientific fact that other dimensions exist.

Every thing in this world created by man, was borne in the so called nothingness of which you speak. So did they exist before man brought them into this dimension or not? Well obviously, they did, if only within the laws of nature that allow them to exist. I mean, if we forget how make everything, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, for it does. The failure to show it is all ours.

Every single thing the mind concieves of potentially exists. No matter how fantastic. It's just the knowhow of proving it that we lack.

Those cutting edge man made cellphones use frequencies billions of years old, the creation of which man had nothing to do with, and if we forget how to make the actual cellphone and it returns to the nothingness from which it came, the frequencies they utilized will still exist, as will the cellphones themselves once some one reinvents them or rediscovers...



So I ask you, how did the frequencies get there?

Just as I ask you how did the spark of life get there?


Don't say they simply were, because religion can use that exact same stance, and it will have just as much basis in fact as the scientific statement does.


Who is to say that we're not the exact same thing as the cellphones? This essence that already exists, perhaps nothing more than a scientific experiement by a higher life form, wanting to see just how far we could progress with a set of rules to live by and an imagination to adapt to the environment around us. But what igf these s s we inhabit, are merely to access that life essence in this dimension. Much like those cellphones are used to access those frequencies.


You really are pretty dense, and the lacking imagination shot is a legitimate one, every scientific theory, every device invented by man, was the product of imagination, and perhaps a bit more than that, for the rules that allow them to exist were already in place, and science has done jack to explain why that is.

For you to know you're right, we'd have to know everything and be virtual gods of this plane, and we most certainly are not. We do not know everything, in fact we don't really know , as your overly literal and childlike view of anything regarding an afterlife proves.


In any case, it doesn't really matter one way or the other, we will both die regardless of our beliefs, but which one of us is going to enjoy life more?

You ever try to enjoy something when you're afraid of losing it? Pretty much impossible.

[whottt]

PS: The human brain and thought processes are a biochemical electrical dynamo. Conserve that energy.


You really are a bit of a stump sometimes base.

[monosylab1k]

[baseline bum]

I just think it's ironic that you claim to be a scientist yet write off the existence of higher planes of existence without a shred of a scientific basis for doing so. You aren't doing it based on any evidence, it is entirely an emotional reaction on your part, and totally unscientific.

Bertrand Russell trashed this argument of your's 100 years ago with his hypothesized teapot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russells_teapot

It's a scientific fact that other dimensions exist.

Really. Show me where the supernatural has been proved. Or if you have it, publish so you can win the Templeton Prize. That'll net you a cool million after taxes.

Every thing in this world created by man, was borne in the so called nothingness of which you speak. So did they exist before man brought them into this dimension or not? Well obviously, they did, if only within the laws of nature that allow them to exist. I mean, if we forget how make everything, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, for it does. The failure to show it is all ours.

The nothingness of which I speak? The only nothingness I have referred to here is the nothingness one feels without consciousness.

Every single thing the mind concieves of potentially exists. No matter how fantastic. It's just the knowhow of proving it that we lack.

I can conceive of a Whottt who isn't petty and doesn't try to trash other people's threads by dragging them into the dirt, but that doesn't seem to exist.

Those cutting edge man made cellphones use frequencies billions of years old, the creation of which man had nothing to do with, and if we forget how to make the actual cellphone and it returns to the nothingness from which it came, the frequencies they utilized will still exist, as will the cellphones themselves once some one reinvents them or rediscovers...

So I ask you, how did the frequencies get there?

A frequency is billions of years old? What do you even mean by that? Are you referring to something like a member of a binary star system whose radiation pulses at 3 GHz?

Just as I ask you how did the spark of life get there?

Don't say they simply were, because religion can use that exact same stance, and it will have just as much basis in fact as the scientific statement does.

What does it matter whether I know how life got here? One's explanation being wrong doesn't make your explanation (some spirit creating everything) right, but it's pretty obvious you don't understand simple logic. You're wrong = I'm right is about the most childish system of argument there is, so step down from your high horse.

Who is to say that we're not the exact same thing as the cellphones? This essence that already exists, perhaps nothing more than a scientific experiement by a higher life form, wanting to see just how far we could progress with a set of rules to live by and an imagination to adapt to the environment around us. But what igf these s s we inhabit, are merely to access that life essence in this dimension. Much like those cellphones are used to access those frequencies.

What do you even mean by this? What is an essence? Is that your $10 word for spirit?

You really are pretty dense, and the lacking imagination shot is a legitimate one, every scientific theory, every device invented by man, was the product of imagination, and perhaps a bit more than that, for the rules that allow them to exist were already in place, and science has done jack to explain why that is.

Requiring even a shred of evidence to believe something doesn't make one unimaginative. I cannot seriously believe you'd go buy a used car and not kick the tires, take it out on the highway, get under it and look for rust, etc... i.e., look for physical evidence that supports the dealer's claim that you should buy this car. Yet, for something vastly more important, you want to believe something that came to you not through any tangible evidence, but through personal revelation? I have read your personal revelation, and your track record isn't all too good there (Cavs will beat the Spurs in 07, McCain wins in a landslide, etc.).

For you to know you're right, we'd have to know everything and be virtual gods of this plane, and we most certainly are not. We do not know everything, in fact we don't really know , as your overly literal and childlike view of anything regarding an afterlife proves.

I never professed to know 100% that I'm right. Believing there is no afterlife is the only thing that makes logical sense when there is not a shred of evidence to support any other notion. Once again, I cannot believe you call me childish when you keep making the argument that not having faith in some complicated idea that leaves no trace of its existence is somehow on par with believing in it; as if an unknown, no matter how complicated it is, is a 50/50 bet. You can't seriously believe that. Anyways, it's on you and other believers to prove something, not on me to disprove your ideas.

In any case, it doesn't really matter one way or the other, we will both die regardless of our beliefs, but which one of us is going to enjoy life more?

You ever try to enjoy something when you're afraid of losing it? Pretty much impossible.

I'm not afraid of dying, because I know nothing's going to stop it from happening. I like to hike trails where I see bears and mountain lions. I like to climb mountains where one slip could easily be fatal. I like to swim in water that has sharks, because I enjoy the waves. Living life scared of death must be a horrible burden, but that's not at all the question being addressed here: I value the out of life, and would never willfully end it. Also, go and make a happy post every once in a while before you lecture someone about enjoying life.

[whottt]

Bertrand Russell trashed this argument of your's 100 years ago with his hypothesized teapot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russells_teapot

He really doesn't. He really doesn't even begin to get it. And I don't know who he was arguing with but it certainly wasn't me.

Really. Show me where the supernatural has been proved. Or if you have it, publish so you can win the Templeton Prize. That'll net you a cool million after taxes.

Sure, anything we can't explain or don't understand, now, or in the past, or in the future. At any point.

I know they aren't going to give me a million for that, but it's an accurate description. Unless of course you change your definition of supernatural to an extremely rigid one on the fly.

The nothingness of which I speak? The only nothingness I have referred to here is the nothingness one feels without consciousness.

Have you ever been unconscious? I have. I wouldn't describe it as nothingness, and it certainly wasn't unpleasant.

I can conceive of a Whottt who isn't petty and doesn't try to trash other people's threads by dragging them into the dirt, but that doesn't seem to exist.

Sure it does, I promise you. You just need to look a little harder.

A frequency is billions of years old? What do you even mean by that? Are you referring to something like a member of a binary star system whose radiation pulses at 3 GHz?

Sure. Why not? That, and more.

What does it matter whether I know how life got here? One's explanation being wrong doesn't make your explanation (some spirit creating everything) right, but it's pretty obvious you don't understand simple logic. You're wrong = I'm right is about the most childish system of argument there is, so step down from your high horse.

LMAO, if you are saying I'm on the highhorse and having a negative, almost judgemental reaction to it, then my work here is just about done.


Amazing how scientists are just as intolerant of things that don't agree with their beliefs as religious zealots are.

What do you even mean by this? What is an essence? Is that your $10 word for spirit?

Sure, why not.

Requiring even a shred of evidence to believe something doesn't make one unimaginative. I cannot seriously believe you'd go buy a used car and not kick the tires, take it out on the highway, get under it and look for rust, etc... i.e.

Depends on how badly I needed the car.

look for physical evidence that supports the dealer's claim that you should buy this car. Yet, for something vastly more important, you want to believe something that came to you not through any tangible evidence, but through personal revelation? I have read your personal revelation, and your track record isn't all too good there (Cavs will beat the Spurs in 07, McCain wins in a landslide, etc.).

My track record is excellent, but no one is right all the time.

Besides, I never claimed I was trying to be right or accurate with thost statements.

I never professed to know 100% that I'm right. Believing there is no afterlife is the only thing that makes logical sense when there is not a shred of evidence to support any other notion.

Sure there is plenty of evidence, the origins of virtually every major civilization in the history of man can be traced to some sort belief in higher planes of existence or an afterlife.

Most of the oldest evidence of human existence is spiritual in nature.

It's almost instinctive in us. And instinct is usually there for a reason.

That there are things beyond our normal perception is fact, even science says so. Thinking that we now know of everything unseen is plain old arrogance.


Much like science is every bit as arrogant as religion is...the difference between science and religion, both want to actually be god, but at least religion admits it.


You see, on the day we can explain god, every thing he did, how he did it, do it for ourselves, on that day we will be gods ourselves. That's when we'll be able to prove it, and not before then. At that point science will claim it for it's own and it will cease to be supernatural. However, it and itself will not have changed, only our comprehension of it.

Once again, I cannot believe you call me childish when you keep making the argument that not having faith in some complicated idea that leaves no trace of its existence is somehow on par with believing in it; as if an unknown, no matter how complicated it is, is a 50/50 bet. You can't seriously believe that. Anyways, it's on you and other believers to prove something, not on me to disprove your ideas.

I can prove that civilizations that believed in god(s) of one kind or another flourished, while those that didn't did not. Crack a history book sometime.

I can also prove that spirituality and metaphysics predated science by millenia.

I'm not afraid of dying, because I know nothing's going to stop it from happening. I like to hike trails where I see bears and mountain lions. I like to climb mountains where one slip could easily be fatal. I like to swim in water that has sharks, because I enjoy the waves. Living life scared of death must be a horrible burden, but that's not at all the question being addressed here: I value the out of life, and would never willfully end it. Also, go and make a happy post every once in a while before you lecture someone about enjoying life.

Making happy posts isn't what makes me happy, if it was, I would.




PS: Russell was kind of vague...

Natural teapot or man made? Fully functional or merely a resemblance?

I'm going with natural and resemblance, and I assure you, by that definiton there is a subtelescopic teapot between Mars and Earth, and it was made by god, not man.

[Slomo]

Sorry about your sister CC.

I can't even pretend that I know what I'd do in this situation until I was actually living it, but I'm fairly certain I would opt for ho e and pain meds over aggressive treatment that had little chance of working.

Based on having to be there for two close members of my family I think I would do the same.

...As much as I love and miss her, the funeral was nowhere near as painful as the weeks spent listening to her struggle for breath.

I've thought about this exact same thing many times - and couldn't agree more.

...
For me, it's not about the pain but the indignity of it. I don't want their last memory of me being a glassy eyed stare as they wiped off my ass/nuts while changing my depends. I want to get everybody together, talk about the good times, try to have a few laughs, hugs all around, send everybody home, and then punch out privately while I still have control.
...

Difficult to be 100% sure, but this makes the most sense to me.

[baseline bum]

He really doesn't. He really doesn't even begin to get it. And I don't know who he was arguing with but it certainly wasn't me.

His argument perfectly addresses your idea that a god's existence must be disproved before it's logical to doubt it. You can't possibly live by that kind of logic: that any hypothesis is reasonable to believe only because it hasn't been disproved.

Sure, anything we can't explain or don't understand, now, or in the past, or in the future. At any point.

I know they aren't going to give me a million for that, but it's an accurate description. Unless of course you change your definition of supernatural to an extremely rigid one on the fly.

That's the lamest explanation I have ever heard for the existence of the supernatural. I'm in awe that you think anything so far unexplained has to be non-physical.

LMAO, if you are saying I'm on the highhorse and having a negative, almost judgemental reaction to it, then my work here is just about done.

Is that the white flag? You refuse to acknowledge my simple point that "you're wrong means I'm right" is a horrible system of logic?

Sure there is plenty of evidence, the origins of virtually every major civilization in the history of man can be traced to some sort belief in higher planes of existence or an afterlife.

Most of the oldest evidence of human existence is spiritual in nature.

It's almost instinctive in us. And instinct is usually there for a reason.

It is true we likely do have an instinctual predisposition towards religion, because religious beliefs are indoctrinated into children. A child instinctively treats the word of authority figures as true for the most part. I can already see your reply that kids cry to go to McDonalds, tell their parents "no" when told to share their toys, don't want to go in the bath, and so on, but those are cases when the child has something to immediately gain from his defiance. Kids generally don't play legos in the street after being told not to.

This is one of my main beefs against religion: they go after children who are at ages where they can't realistically think for themselves. Not many people above age, say 17, are going to believe the bible stories if they were told them for the first time at that age. It would be like when we're shocked at hearing a tribe in South America thinks witches fly over their crops and destroy them at night, or how some in Africa believe they can cure their HIV by having sex with (raping) a virgin, or how Islamic martyrs get 72 virgins in heaven. Those crazy ideas are quickly dismissed by any intelligent adult, but lots of people believe equally crazy things like a woman who was a virgin could give birth or that one can survive his own death that were told to them over and over at a time when they had no ability to defend themselves from it.

Amazing how scientists are just as intolerant of things that don't agree with their beliefs as religious zealots are.

This meme would have a leg to stand on if science was indoctrinated into children, but it isn't. No one takes physics classes at age 5 or reads Darwin at 10. Most scientific learning comes from the late teens and on, when the student is capable of thinking for himself and rejecting things that he feels have insufficient explanations.

That there are things beyond our normal perception is fact, even science says so. Thinking that we now know of everything unseen is plain old arrogance.

You're speculating and getting into faulty logic again. Something not being understood fully is not grounds to invoke spiritualism. Spiritualism has to stand up on its own merits, instead of sprouting up like a weed in between the gaps left by what we currently know backed by physical evidence.

Much like science is every bit as arrogant as religion is...the difference between science and religion, both want to actually be god, but at least religion admits it.

Not really. Religion teaches one to not be curious; the answer is already known. Science aspiring to be god is a ridiculous idea, as the universe is way too complicated to probably ever be fully understood between now and the time our species goes extinct. Pretty much every answer found opens up 2 new questions. To loosely quote physicist Richard Feynman, the universe is like a chessboard we watch and try to infer rules from, and when we think we have them down all of a sudden we see castling.

You see, on the day we can explain god, every thing he did, how he did it, do it for ourselves, on that day we will be gods ourselves. That's when we'll be able to prove it, and not before then. At that point science will claim it for it's own and it will cease to be supernatural. However, it and itself will not have changed, only our comprehension of it.

That's a stretch. Even if we fully understood every law of physics it doesn't mean we'd have the engineering ap ude to create everything we could conceive of with that knowledge.

I can prove that civilizations that believed in god(s) of one kind or another flourished, while those that didn't did not. Crack a history book sometime.

Crack a logic book sometime. Even if religious principles could turn Iraq into the Roman Empire, it doesn't mean religion is correct. Even worse is your invocation of numbers of civilizations. That's the kind of argument that says Obama/Bush/Clinton/Reagan/Carter/etc. was obviously the best choice because the majority of us voted for them.

I can also prove that spirituality and metaphysics predated science by millenia.

So what?

PS: Russell was kind of vague...

Natural teapot or man made? Fully functional or merely a resemblance?

I'm going with natural and resemblance, and I assure you, by that definiton there is a subtelescopic teapot between Mars and Earth, and it was made by god, not man.

Fine. There is a green-alien-made functional teapot between Mars and Earth that quickly becomes smaller as time passes by, so as to keep ahead of our telescopic technology. You cannot prove it doesn't exist.

[LnGrrrR]

I'm staying alive as long as I can... but if I'm already braindead, pull the plug.

I'm hoping that they figure out how to transfer a pseronality onto a hard drive before I get old though.

[CosmicCowboy]

If you little es want to cat fight over religion start your own thread!

[CosmicCowboy]

Sorry about your Sis, Cowboy. Is this the same Sis that liked taking trips to South Africa???

Yeah, shes going again next month assuming health allows...Shes having some anemia problems from the chemo they need to get straightened out...she will just go off chemo while she is there...