General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Gene Wilder - Atheist [View all]Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Okay, what is? Gene Wilder the baby? Christopher Hitchens the adolescent? None of us are even the same person from moment to moment.
I know, Death is spooky black stark nothing, and this is supposed to be the great looming threat which drives us all into the warm embrace of the holy church.
Ignoring the fact that the scenery is made of balsawood and you can see the ropes holding up the angels.
But nothing is "nothing". Certainly not nothing. There's no such thing as nothing. So-called "empty space" is teeming with things popping in and out of existence all the time, borrowing time and matter and energy and probability from the randomness, uncertainty and chaos that is the REAL firmament underlying everything.
It's not that I'm not scared of anything, but I'm certainly not scared of nothing, Rug.
(It also may be completely meaningless to try and speak of what is "outside" existence, because by definition there is no outside, but that's a post for a different day)
Gene Wilder - and Christopher Hitchens to boot- the individual, the ego, the organizational system of molecules holding forth for however many decades against the relentless and always victorious forces of entropy? Gone. But where? Back to the nameless, the Tao, the great mother of the ten thousand things which has no name and can never be created or destroyed. That's not Misty-eyed, that IS the stark reality.
At least, that's what I choose to think this week. You think whatever the fuck you want, holmes. Your head, not mine.
How's that, for "preaching"?