What are your views on death, and why? — outlier

"I follow the Church Without Christ where the lame don't walk, the blind don't see, and the dead stay dead." (From Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor)

It should be abolished

You have no proof of what you fear, therefore your fear is unfounded.

As Roger Scruton himself points out, death has happened to everyone and everything for millions of years. Therefore one should simply accept it.

There are two strong reasons to believe that death is the end:
1) science has found no evidence of consciousness occurring without brain activity, and at death brain activity ceases
2) science has not found evidence of anyone surviving death.
Unless and until science finds evidence that overturns either or both of these, the rational thing to believe is that death is the end of us.

I wish this board had a "like" button. We wouldn't need a "dislike" button.

Hmm, I think I do know what I fear - not being able to experience feelings and do activities anymore. I've seen dead things, and they... well, just lay there and decompose. It doesn't look very fun. But seriously, maybe the fear of death lessens as you age, and come to understand and accept the way things are. I'm not sure.

Death is really bad, but sometimes life is even worse.

By the way, thank you to everyone who has contributed so far - I've found reading your comments very interesting.

dogmatic Science-Worship...pseudoscience — Michael Ossipoff

Examples of, please.

Instead of thinking about your self in terms of your self, think about that into which you were born and are a part of. And try to distinguish between death and dying.

there is no philosophic difference between this

You die. Your consciousness ceases. Your body decays. That's it. No good reason to believe anything else, as much as we might like to fantasize about other stuff, as much as we might like something else to be the case. — Terrapin Station

and this

if you lived your life according to ( fill in your blank ) you will find everlasting life

Guessing, hoping, imagining what is after death is a waste of time. Spend some time in refection, read some, find a world view, a reason, a meaning, a basis on how to live your life, that you, in your most honest with yourself spot, believes is true. In that process, the what happens when I die questions is answered, at least for you.

What are your views on death, and why? — outlier

I expect annihilation, for the usual reasons which I therefore won't go into (unless they come up.)

What is death good for? It scares us away from that in us which dies. It scares us into that in us which does not die, which is to say that in us which is also in those who survive and the children not yet born.

What is this part of us that lives in others too? It's what we bring alive when we read books. It's what our own ears and brains bring alive when we here a piano sonata. Somehow 'consciousness' can 'capture' its highest, brightest, and sweetness states of being in material reality, which is to say in the shape of public objects.

What is it in us that dies? Millions of specific memories involving specific faces and specific proper names. Obviously the skin and the face we wear. And surely to some degree we really are 'snowflakes' in our perception of this mysteriously shared reality. So maybe even that which is highest in us is never perfectly captured. I can't hear Mozart just as Mozart heard Mozart. I can't feel exactly what Hegel felt as he finally grasped the skeleton of his entire philosophy with what I expect was a profound joy.

In less glamorous terms (beyond artistic genius and world-historical personality), this sense that true virtue is distributed opens us up to others. We don't have time to be petty. Or rather we find ourselves not wanting to spend our limited time among others in small-hearted ways, cowardly ways. Death opens up the space around economic life. Money is good, very good. But our fear of poverty and the loss of respectability can also enslave and stifle us. Death pokes a hole in the certainty and dominance of all this so that it can breath.

Precisely right -- as you age you become less concerned with death since it is inevitable for all things and all persons. As you age you realize that death is inevitable and that it will happen to you sooner if not later. And ultimately the afflictions of extreme old age make death a gift especially as you consider the ancient Greek myth about Tithonos who shrank to the size of a grasshopper with immortal old age.

Philosophy considers the metaphysics of death and the ultimate fate of the mind after death.

Philosophy gives us the understanding and wisdom to face death with courage. Death is something we accept.

Even more puzzling is the metaphysical question of what were be before we were born? And the most logical response is that our minds existed before birth as well. This creates the least contradictions and dilemmas. We are already immortal. We simply dispose of our bodies when they grow too old to function anymore. We most likely have no beginning, even as the God of Aquinas (the First Cause, etc.) and the God of Aristotle (the Prime Mover) has no beginning.

there is no philosophic difference between this

You die. Your consciousness ceases. Your body decays. That's it. No good reason to believe anything else, as much as we might like to fantasize about other stuff, as much as we might like something else to be the case.
— Terrapin Station

and this

if you lived your life according to ( fill in your blank ) you will find everlasting life — Rank Amateur

You'd have to explain that a bit more. For one, there seems to be an ontological difference between those two, no?

I would propose that it is neither position can be stated as a fact. I would further propose that reasoned arguments can be made both for and against both positions. So there is no overriding philosophic reason to prefer one or the other. One is free to chose either and not be in conflict with fact or reason.

Ah. Obviously I don't agree with that. What I stated is what the facts are, There are plenty of reasons to believe it, no good reasons to doubt it, and no good reasons at all to believe otherwise.

you know as a matter of fact that there is no afterlife??? Can you somehow support that please - because that may just be the biggest scientific discovery in the history of man.

you know as a matter of fact that there is no afterlife??? — Rank Amateur

Yes I know that for a matter of fact, without the slightest doubt at all. It's not at all a "scientific discovery." No science has ever suggested otherwise. The other beliefs are simply absurd.

I don't mean this in any bad way, and with all due respect - it really makes no sense to engage on this topic with someone who believes it is a matter of fact that there is no afterlife. We will have to just agree to disagree sir.

Sure, it's understandable you'd feel that way.