Are you afraid to die???

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I'd agree with that as well.
I don't fear death, but I greatly fear pain as it is something you never get used to (pain can only be covered by shock or drugs.. It is unpleasant.)

I've have (and no doubt others also) had theories about death.
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Hell & Heaven (maybe even limbo?): I think Hell just generally sucks because of pain, however Heaven seems kinda boring to me and finding that I can't kill myself in heaven cause I'm already dead would be another hell to me.

Reincarnation?: I've imagined many alternate realities. What if death just meant the birth in another reality? - As far as science goes, its just a set of scales with weight moving from one side to the other.. perfectly balanced.

The endless dream: I've been knocked out/passed out a couple of times in the past because of accidents or incidents. When I was out it seemed as if no time had passed; I was thinking about what I was previously.. time no longer mattered.
This idea of death I think is likely but I think its really grim to think about so I choose to believe in the theory of Reincarnation in another reality.
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I believe life is worth living.
Death seems like admitting defeat to reality in this forever game of chess.

I want to prove to the world that I am capable of doing what I want to do (I proved people wrong by getting good results at school, also today when my Engineering Maths results came in. I got higher than normal grade).
I also want to create something interesting (innovation) and have it inspire others. (My new goal)

Idea # 1 I don't like either. Idea # 2 sounds like it'd be good if that's what's gonna happen. Idea # 3 might be unpleasant for some (and it sounds like you are one such person), but that would be the best way to die for me!!

And at the final moment do you believe the spectral black figure of death will appear and give you a bouquet of choices. How old do you have to be to stop believing in fairytales?

84

I am not afraid to die. I don't even like my life very much.

I am afraid of pain and fear. I would want to be killed instantly in a car accident rather than have some doctor say "You have cancer and will die a slow death over the next year or two"

Uhhhhhhhhhhh....no. There would be no "figures" to guide me, and of course there wouldn't be more than one choice in the end. I'm just speculating as to what those choices could be. There would be no "final moment". Even the theory that death is nothing but a colorless void actually does come close to the Buddhist theory of nirvana. 'Bout the only difference that I can tell, really, is that one has a more philosophical bent and the other is more scientifically based. In both of them, the person who is dying (or has died?) is formless, emotionless, and thoughtless. OK guess there is one other difference. Nirvana is thought of to be endless relaxation and in the more scientific explanation, it just "is". But if you think about it there's not really that much of a difference between endless relaxation (esp. if the "relaxation" is more personal than it is universal) and just "being". It's the same thing that happened before we came out of the womb. We just "were". Happiness stems from satisfaction and satisfaction is, in my opinion, the first state of being we come into contact with.

P.S. if you meant to direct your comments towards the other user, and not me, then my apologies If this happens to be the case, then please ignore everything I said in the previous paragraph.

^I wouldn't take it personally.

Sand has this habit of coming off "harsh" or wry to people who bring up said subjects regardless of whether or not you believe in them.

It's his "thing" or gimmick.

Humor is is frequently evoked by exposing foolishness and there is lots here to laugh at.

I really like this one, Sand. Very good read.

I had a great-grandfather that died when I was about 8, so from then I been trying to understand what death meant. And in the 16 years since, I still don't.

However, it has kept me up at night on plenty of occasion - the fear of the infinite unknown when death comes. Even hit me last night, I had a dream where I died in a car crash and then the thoughts of infinite nothing. You won't know until you get there, in which case you won't know what happened before.

I don't believe in the Christian view of a heaven or hell though.

I don't so much fear death so much as that I do worry about dying on terms that aren't my own. Going out peacefully at the end of a full life, even going out from a terminal and even extremely painful illness like cancer, even if it were in my mid 30's - not so much a problem, ie. I'd want to see it coming and have myself reconciled. What I'd find unnerving, while alive, is falling to foul play (something in me is repulsed and sickened by the thought of being dominated in such a way by another mere mortal) or say being on my way to work and having a semi flip out of control or a careening Toyota smash into me on the highway going say 100 mph when I'm boxed in and can't get away from it, it wouldn't be so bad if I were single (well, except that my parents are both retired, I'd hope to have one of their names on my bank account by that time), otherwise though if I had a wife and kids and they needed my income or they were going through tough times - that would provide quite a burst of horror in my last moments.

However, death itself, outside the context of how or when, and what comes thereafter - no. In the theistic possibility a God intelligent enough to build the universe as we've experienced it and having omiscience would mean having full responsibility for what happens here - I think we'd all be going to the same place ultimately, I really doubt that I or most (if any) people have Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire to worry about or telling Satan to turn up the air conditioning. As far as the atheistic out come - ie. eternal oblivion, on one hand again, if its where we're all going, I call going there the 'completion' of my life, the completion of an act set in motion, a complete thought, and I'd be going to join a portion of the population (rhetorically, not in conversation in white robes) much larger than that which are alive today and, of course, all utterly freed of their worries, all utterly set in neutral - no agony because there are no nagging drives unfulfilled - in a sense complete and utter nothingness in a way that many people would have trouble underanding unless (say via. college chemical experiences or hippy festivals) they've experienced what its like to have one or two needs stop nagging at the conscious mind and just how much peace that ultimately is.

The other thing of course about the atheistic end, I've said it before but I think its worth reiterating - a Buddhist would call that sublime optimism as they believe that one has to live many lives of escalating carma to 'earn' that same oblivion, ie. in Buddhism its a privelege rather than a freebee. Black seathing nothingness, that's not oblivion, that's something closer to being a part of the rotten nashing mold wrapped around a small stone crumb, under a heat lamp, in the biggest and coldest empty vacant space imagineable - that's life on earth, pleasant scenery aside that's what biological life without spirit essentially is.

My sense of things, it could be oblivion, I have certain doubts about that but overall I'd have no fear of that either. Yes, I occasionally have some fear of what completely accepting the later premise might do to the quality of my internal/psychological life prior to death but that's about it - from there, we're all likely going to the same place or utterly evaporating to nothing in complete unanimity. People say misery loves company - wordly misery in that regard has 100%, which is better than misery having company, in a sense that practically makes it a moot point when you really think about it.

The closer I am to the day of my death, the less afraid I am of its coming. It does no good to be in a panic about the inevitable.

ruveyn

Having watched my wife succumb to a brain tumor a couple of weeks ago wherein she gradually became totally disoriented either from the disease or from the pain medicines it seems to me a rather unhappy process. I cannot see death as anything but oblivion and the Buddhist concept of bouncing about from life to life appears to me as sillier than the Christian or Muslim idiocies of an afterlife and that's saying a good deal. Anybody who does not view final extermination with a good deal of apprehension strikes me as a bit insensitive to say the least.

Well I went through a stressful time this month. It was both my nephew and my granny's birthday and they're both dead.

My nephew would've been 5 this month and I still can't get over it. Both these deaths are the first time I've experienced such pain as they only happened a year ago. I really don't know how people cope with losses. I thought they eventually went away but I'm still stuck in that irrational mode asking why??? why???? why??????

Just a question that keeps popping up now and again. I still have dreams about them as if this was all just a bad dream and they were alive all along...>_<

Now I have great things to look forward to in the near future. I get to eventually lose both my folks, siblings, friends and everyone I know until it grabs me the throat.

I'm really afraid to die; Am I the only one there like this?