a Facebook CONVERSATION.....

MT wrote:
What happens to us when we die? Nothing happens. We're simply gone, we've expired, we no longer exist. Religious believers are in deep denial of this existential reality, while agnostics are halfway in and halfway out of denial.

RH wrote:
I haven't read the other 89 comments yet, but when we die it thrills me to think that our cells become dispersed and we become a part of the whole great everything. We become part of the worms, the soil, the trees etc. :)

JM wrote:
The loss of my individual identity doesn't thrill me, and it's quite surprising to hear someone say that who is not suicidal in their eagerness to be recycled by the universe.

RH wrote:
...at JM... I already fully accept that there is no finite division between myself and everything else. That humans are identifiable but not definable. Therefore I have no eagerness TO BE recycled. However, a post death version of interconnectedness is also fascinating to contemplate. :)

JM wrote:
Sorry, but being worm food is not fascinating. I'm not sure what you mean by no finite division. Since humans are physically limited in extent, by the Beckenstein Bounds derived from quantum mechanics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beckenstein_limit ), there are only a finite number of possible humans. Frank Tipler(a theoretical physics heavyweight... See More) has done some interesting calculations matching up that number against the rapid growth in our computing power to try to get an estimate of the point at which every human who has ever lived(plus every possible human who could ever have lived!) could be "resurrected" via computer simulations. Great book, "Physics and Immortality".

RH wrote:
....it thrills me that we are STAR LIGHT; Thanks to photosynthesis and the veg we eat, and the other animals we eat too that have themselves consumed the solar powered green stuff .

JM wrote:
Yes, that is thrilling. Death, not so much.

RH wrote:
... and it is thrilling to think that as much as 90% of every human being's entire 100 trillion cells ..... is actually BACTERIA. We are walking communities, much of it unmapped, un-named as of yet :)

BIOCHAUVINISM

BIOCHAUVINISM: The prejudice that biological systems have an intrinsic superiority that will always give them a monopoly on self-reproduction and intelligence.
[...K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation, 1986]