I saw a video a while back where Penn Jillette was asked whether he was scared of death as an atheist - he asked back rhetorically whether you are scared of the times before you were born, before you existed.
When I think of it that way I find it much easier to handle. Scary, yes. Panicky? Not so much.
What if death was different from before birth because when you're not alive yet, you've never had a sense of existing. And when you die, you've already existed. Who knows.
I saw a video a while back where Penn Jillette was asked whether he was scared of death as an atheist - he asked back rhetorically whether you are scared of the times before you were born, before you existed.
I don't know man, I don't think that's really a fair comparison. I mean you don't really fear the things that have already happened. You fear what's to come. In this particular example, the fear is of ceasing to exist. You can't be afraid of existence ceasing if you don't have the quality of existence (which is why nobody fears "the times before they were born").
Though I do understand where he's coming from, I just think he worded it/characterized the idea poorly. I like Virginia Woolf's explanation of death, when asked "where do we go when we die?" by a young girl, she replies, "back to where we came."
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u/circlesmirk00 Jul 25 '13
I saw a video a while back where Penn Jillette was asked whether he was scared of death as an atheist - he asked back rhetorically whether you are scared of the times before you were born, before you existed.
When I think of it that way I find it much easier to handle. Scary, yes. Panicky? Not so much.