Curing cancer is an excellent example as given. I am diagnosed with a strange mutation cervical cancer. Embarrassment caused me to ignore symptoms. Now the disease is at a too advanced stage to allow for invasive procedure or radiotherapies to function. My consultant is, for me, the public face of science. He is published in The Lancet. Regarding oncology, he knows inherently what is fact and what is wishful fantasy. His statements are backed by endless research, I trust him even in his assurances that I will die. It takes me a while to assimilate what he says. Two weeks later, and so certain is he of his evidence that he must abide by his financial duty of care to our National Health Service and withdraws funding for my horrendously expensive medications. I am on my own. Yet I do not abide by his metric of science on which I have incontrovertable evidence of my imminent death. I abide by one of blind faith and belief that tells me that he is (in this case) wrong because he has measured my rate of deterioration on a scale of science that is itself based upon assumption, which unfortunately is backed by *apparently* repeated proof. I choose to disavow his scale and trust my own. It is blind trust based on nothing except something that I believe. That I am not supposed to die yet. Tell me I am wrong.
1[SUP]st[/SUP] off, Jenna, let me belatedly add how glad I am that there’s no pressing ailment. I’ve thought about it a bit since you posted, though, and I think I’ll run with your metaphor t-at least my reply won’t seem nearly as heartless as it might have had the circumstances you outlined been true, ‘cause Jenna:
You’re going to die.
“Someday,” of course, and that’s really the point. Most of us live under the illusion that there’ll always be plenty of time, that “tomorrow is another day,” that we’re going to live….well,
forever. And we’re not. And we know it, but somehow we maintain this illusion in our day to day life. The best we can really say is “not yet,” or
”not today,” but we really have no choice in the matter: the day will come, one way or another, that “not today” is proven for the lie that it is, and that “not yet” is, in fact,
right now.
We’ll get hit by buses, wreck cars and motorcycles, slip in the bathroom, fall from great heights, drown surfing, get struck by lightning, mugged in dark alleys, shot from great distances, laid low by cancer, tuberculosis, leukemia, the flu, the common cold, suffer anaphylactic shock from allergic reactions to peanut butter, or shellfish, or strawberries, or bee stings, get stung by scorpions, bitten by poisonous snakes, eaten by grizzly bears, eaten by mountain lions, eaten by wolves, eaten by staph, mauled by dogs, contract rabies, contract measles, contract chicken pox, contract mumps, contract dengue fever, contract ebola, contract HIV, our ships will sink, our trains will wreck, our space shuttle will go out in a blaze of glory. Hurricanes, tsunami, earthquakes, tornados, mudslides and avalanches will sweep us off our feet. We’ll fall through the ice when skating or fishing, or,perhaps, simply go to sleep and not wake up. Some of us will live to be aged, and others will not even live long enough to be aware of it.
For those in between, it’s almost always “not yet,” for the most part. Even for those of us struck by toilets from space: [yt]ugWpj88EWt4[/yt]
Liked that show.
Loved that! :lfao:
And, without the sci-fi speculation about the nature of the afterlife, that’s pretty accurate-really. Unless you’re terminally ill, one moment you’re picking daisies…..and the next you’re pushing them up.
For those of us who are aware on a daily basis of the imminence and certainty of death (
always at my shoulder, ready at a moment’s notice) that knowledge comes at a cost-whether through daily exposure to death in combat, or facing it down through disease, or dire circumstance, or through ritual and meditation-a cost has to be paid. And it’s
not knowledge that is available on an intellectual level, except in the most abstract way-sure, you can say,”
Someday I’m going to die,” but unless you’ve been in a foxhole or been buried alive or been sick or been in a monastery for years, you’re not going to convince me, never mind yourself:
you are lying. And that’s okay. I think it’s a lie that a lot of us-men especially-need to get through day to day life. It’s a lie, though, nonetheless, ‘cause
I’m going to die, someday……………...And so are you.
What to do with this knowledge, that we’ll pass from, well, a life as
good as this one? What do you do about it? How do you live with it?
Well, like I said, you could live under the illusion that you’re not going to. Most people do, and power to them…..
You could go to war. See friends blown up and shot around you, face death every day until it becomes a reality that you’re inured to. That way, for many, leads to PTSD, anti-social behavior, and, at the very least, ennui if not genuine nihilism. For some, it’s right where they’re supposed to be, and they’re okay, but they’re also few and far between. Or be a cop, or a firefighter. Both jobs offer the same sort of enlightenment, and the same sorts of pitfalls, just over a longer term.
You could join a monastery or religious order-this is as much a retreat from life as it is facing death, I think, and I have to wonder about its efficacy. Having known more than a few monastics, I can say that many of them seem to have that equanimity about their knowledge of death, but some also seem….confused.
I did mention rituals. All religions have their roots in shamanism. When we all lived in the forest, so to speak, and religion was a newly created technology, each person got to face death by metaphorically experiencing it, and journeying to the underworld. This is the essence of the shamanic experience-one would be buried alive, or go into a cave, or be led through some other experience that simulated a metaphorical journey into death. After that, of course, living with the fact of death is supposed to be easy. This type of ritual still exists in tribal societies, college courses in comparative religions, and expensive New Age encounter groups. :lol: Certainly, from my experience, it’s an effective way of being free of the fear of death, and being free of that fear is the first step towards acceptance and acknowledgement, of not living under the illusion of “not yet”
Of course, as we “progressed” and became “civilized,” religion became hierarchical, and such experiences were reserved for priests or deities, or the elite. All too often, it was the deity that made the metaphorical journey to the underworld-the deity that died and was reborn. Thus it is that Mithras, Jesus, and Osiris suffer, die and are resurrected, in place of the individuals in the populace., which is, as others have pointed out, now under control.
You could get sick-as in gravely ill, as in having the doctors tell you and your parents how little time you have left, year after year. Having started life that way, and really lived a little less, now, than the first third of my life expecting to die of my ailments, I can say that as much as I wouldn’t change that part of my life, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, for a bunch of reasons. I was an odd kid, anyway-having been around profoundly ill children, there’s a terrible sadness and knowing to them, like an 11 year old girl who just knows she’s
never going to be kissed. I, on the other hand, have always been an optimist-I’m a bit of an oddball. The way it worked for me, precocious lad that I’m told that I was, I found out that our sun will die,
someday, as In 5 billion years or so from now. The sun will become a red giant as it runs out of fuel, and then simply sputter out, cool off and become a black dwarf-a cindered diamond, really. End of sun. Confronted every day with my death (I think at this time I was nearing 7, and had actually “died” twice) the eventual end of the sun was something of a comfort to me-
the sun’s going to die, and so am I is what I used to think. I can’t even describe-even today-what it felt like to find out at 9 (by which time they had always said I’d surely be dead) just what “not yet” would start to come to mean to me, never mind at 13, 15, and at 18 and 20. Mind you, my day starts and ends with a boggling array of pills, and-well, have you ever seen someone in the mall, say, with an oxygen tank or generator? Whenever I see someone like that, especially lately, I have to remind myself that before I die-provided I don’t get hit by a bus, murdered by a jealous husband, or smashed by a toilet seat from outer space-I’ll be toting one of those around myself. In spite of that,I remain the optimist I’ve always been, and wonder how it is I’m going to swim with the thing. :lfao: (See, John? That’s me mocking myself. You should feel flattered!)
I’m still thankful for my life, for every breath I’ve drawn, for each and every day, and begin each and every day with that: saying thank you.
So, to come full circle-
who, exactly, do I thank? I could thank my parents for having and raising me, and I do, but they had two other children, adopted a third, and, really, when I say “
thank you for my life” I’m really giving thanks for the
fact of
me-something unique that is more than just the product of the biological coupling of Jeffrey Cuffee and Carol , his wife. I could also thank
myself-and I do-for the will to live, and being optimistic and upbeat through it all (in spite of my rather snarky, curmudgeonly online persona-really!) , but that’s still less than the
fact of
me-in the end,
I’m left with God, or the Mystery, or foot-I call him “foot” sometimes, it’s a joke between us…..:lfao: It’s the Creator that I thank, until that day this body breathes its last, and I pass into the Mystery myself.
And, getting back to the OP: he's FOS. Really. And all you atheists can believe- or
"know"-whatever you like. Doesn't bother me-heck, it's one more of "ten thousand things" that make life more interesting! :asian:
). Alternatively perhaps this is just the way that you, me and others with a faith rationalise what is merely unfortunate chance or circumstance whose path intersects with their life - I do not know for sure. That your life now, hampered as it is by medical miscreancies (my neologism for the day 
