“We have two lives; the second begins when we realize we only have one” is a quote attributed to Confucius according to the internet. If it is that old, we may never be sure.
This was the opposite of depressing. This was the most reassuring and GROUNDING perspective I've heard on this eternal (hah) question. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
Thank you for this, Stephen. For what it is worth, I entirely agree with you. I'm in my fifties and I used to be agnostic, despite coming from a family that was Brethren on my Father's side of the family and Jewish on my Mother's. Then I had a brain tumour six years ago - benign, but it was in the centre of my brain. Took my surgeon a lot of effort to get out, and it left me very confused for nearly two years. Been getting memories back constantly since then, and now I am almost back to normal. But I am now atheist - didn't have any "experience", etc during or after surgery and it simply removed any vestiges of doubt for me. I too find myself striving to be kind, patient and understanding much more now. It has been a very strange journey.
Not everyone who has these operations has a near-death experience - you never actually 'died'. It seems that you have made a judgement purely based on your own personal experience, but there are many who have had a completely different one and feel very strongly that there is something after death.
Always happy to hear people’s views on ultimate matters. I’ve no doubt you can see, and have considered, that holding your view consistently would mean you could not logically object to anybody else’s behavior, no matter what they do.
Thank you for sharing this. Here's to looking forward to a new year with the mindset that each day brings us another opportunity to be kind to others rather than compare or expect or fret over individuals who differ from us. We may all share the same matter but we do not think or act the same, so let's control ourselves only.
I believe, as you do, meaning is something we make, and how we make meaning involves our culture, our families, socioeconomic situation, the level of suffering or ease we experience, and how our own genetic stamp adds our own particular flavor to all of the above. My own meaning making: In the midst of mystery, each other is all we have. I love as best as I can, act as ethically as I can, enjoy each day, and bask in the wonder.
I do have to agree. This moment, is all we really have, and it may be best, to make the most of it, and at least enjoy it, with whatever you choose to fill it with....Janis
04:30 I grew up in a very rigid, evangelical Christian home, and I learned to fear the God of the Bible. I'm now an agnostic atheist, and have been for a few year. And when you say some people are offended at the scientific view point on the origins of life, perhaps consider that many people are simply afraid to consider the alternative to their religious indoctrination.
There is a rhythm of existence, particularly with mammals, of rest and activity. Some hibernate for weeks or months at a time. We humans require a balance of downtime on a daily basis. Every day we must release our body and mind from activity, not knowing whether we will wake again. If we resist this natural pattern we would go insane and cease to be able to function. Then one day we will not wake up and this is the end. When we are infants we need to learn to walk. Walking is a controlled fall that we get better at with time and practice. Unless we embrace the falling we can never walk. When we embrace sleep as a form of death, inactivity, then we can live. Going through life without awareness or engagement is a kind of death or non-being. Your value as a person has to be something beyond a cog in the machine. That is a task that can bring meaning to the daily patterns of life. So we can find value or meaning in our lives and extend that to others and help them discover or uncover this. Or as someone may have said, " The un-examined life is not worth living." But beware, the obsessive pursuit of meaning can lead to madness. Some things just are.
It's not that the atoms of which we're composed will return to the universe. They're in the universe _now._ They're no more nor less part of the universe and under the direction of the universe now than they ever were or ever will be, because _we're_ part of the universe. They're not even ours until we die and have to relinquish them; they're entering and leaving us all the time. I wrote more on this topic, but it got poetic, crossed over into bathos, and died.
Hope you are feeling better. “Trying is enough” not sure Yoda would agree with you. Hey. We have different beliefs but a similar fear of eternity. When I think of a self existing, eternal God, its like staring at the bright beautiful sun (it’s blinding but I can’t look away).
I’m trying to imagine an agnostic fountain pen capturing this wonderfully rational humanist spirit … made from a celluloid primordial soup with something like E=mc2 on the clip. Maybe a nice quote by Spinoza on the barrel. Have a good 2025.
I've found that when I've been confronted by the most aggressive people trying to "save my soul", I can often put them off by telling them that whatever happens to me in death, I couldn't imagine a greater hell than to be surrounded by self-righteous people for all eternity.
Life has no meaning and no purpose. We are part of evolution. And as individuals, we are the totality of our personal past at every present moment.Groetjes uit België. 🙏
_ Re: Meaning of Life - The simple and non-assuming answer is as you have said "None". There is no meaning to life. And of course the fact appears to be that people, individuals, or philosophers, or religions have given 'THEIR' meaning based on personal conditioning, upbringing, or belief system. _ Well done on that point SBREBROWN! _ However, re: neuro-scientific approach the brain is strictly body related. The 'real' you if we can for the moment categorize it that way, the 'real' you is neither the brain nor the body. There is, however, a "you" identity that arises based on stored memory and associations to various experiences. It is the "I" or "me" identity that 'identifies' itself based on particular conditioning, upbringing, beliefs, etc. This is the personal identity that most people take as being their actual 'self'. In a peculiar way this could be called the Artificial "I" (AI) akin to the artificial intelligence of computer programming. _ What the 'real' you or 'I' or 'me' is, cannot be comprehended by the limited finite mind. The reality of "you" is not an identity but is more in the realm of pure awareness or consciousness in an omnipresent, non-local aspect. In this area we are pointing to that which is ineffable and thus beyond any intellectual analysis.
So you believe that complex beings such as ourselves, just randomly evolved? I'm open to all suggestions. What about the idea that the human species was planted here, by an alien culture? ( I don't believe in UFO's.) The one thing that would make me believe in a higher power, is how the Earth's magnetic field is perfectly formed in a way that makes life on Earth possible. This is a deep subject for Christmas Day. I hope you find some happiness during this holiday season.
@@tancreddehauteville764 Natural selection. I'm no expert, and that answer is based on your question being a real one. But since that answer is one googling away I'm guessing your trying to start some clever discussion. However I have no wish in debating it.
The Earth's magnetic field varies over time, so it can't be called "perfectly formed". You've been reading too much creationist... I have no choice but to call it _literature._
Penticostals from France, I believe, began teaching a hell punishment forever theology. Thomas Jefferson wrote about the oddness of the belief system they were preaching in one of his letters. The catholics took Dante to heart. And monks have added so much to the bible. The greatest and strangest thing of all the early enemies of christianity may have added, likely the Mithras/Freemason cult, was that a God who taught us not to sacrifice people and killed us for sacrificing children, should suddenly reverse that sacrifice by killing one of his own children. You may rightly ask, then how do you still believe in Jesus, whether he died on a cross or not? Because, when you ask him to teach you how to love and give and be more than you ever thought possible, he says yes, and does it. All he asks of us is to try to love people and be a good example, which some people, like you, do anyways. However, my autism and sociopathy did not help me to do that naturally, I needed outside help, and he gave it. You know, Jesus didn't come to save people from hell, he came to call people to be administrators and rulers in his Kingdom to come. That's why he says many are called but few are chosen. I've met a lot of crazy christians and non christians, would you choose some of them to rule over other people???
I can swear there ain't no Heaven But I pray there ain't no Hell Swear there ain't no Heaven And I'll pray there ain't no Hell But I'll never know by livin' Only my dyin' will tell Yes, only my dyin' will tell, oh yeah Only my dyin' will tell
The purpose of life, which perhaps is a different question than the meaning of life, is unsatisfactorily simply to procreate. My proof? If life has a purpose it must be present in all life. What do we have in common with an amoeba? All life procreates, thus it is the purpose of life.
Thank you, Stephen! I feel very similarly and it was lovely hearing someone else articulate it. Even as a young person, who was still emersed in the faith in which she was raised, the thought of an interminable eternity (heaven, hell or something else) was more unsettling than the thought of death being the end. I'm going to butcher this quote, and I wish I remembered who said it - Sagan? Hitchens? Randi? - but it stuck with me and rang true. The gist is, "There is peace in knowing that when the last synapse fires, there is nothing." I'm quite content to simply return to the stardust from whence I came. And it was, ironically, a pastor who helped me move away from religion (in a positive way). He gave a powerful sermon saying, in essence, quit worrying about getting into heaven or if there is a hell... this is the only life we know we have... to be a peace with yourself, do your best every day to help make this one life as good for as many people as possible.
I hope you don't get stuck FOREVER in Heaven , Stephen. I also hope that one day, you will have enough room where you record to move that camera and your desk away from that wall of beautiful pictures, so that we can see them in all their glory . That would mean that your head will not be chopping them off and they will not be chopping your crown horizontally with their crosswise lines. Not sure how this can happen, but it sure would not hurt my eyes and design sense, if the camera frame had the FULL PICTURES with a nice bit of negative space above and below...with your frame, and lovely face......free of backround chops. Just an idea, for later. Thanks for your opinion. It was very scientific....Janis
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” Carl Sagan I like others here, am of a like mind. I believe exactly what you have described about life and death. I have actually thought about it quite a bit because I have lived my entire life in a religious region and am surrounded, constantly, by people who believe in things that my brain just cannot accept. The difference is that unlike many of those people - not all, but many - I am very happy and do not live in fear of death or judgment or eternal damnation, or whatever. I worry about disease or injury, but not death itself. Why? To me, it's like a light switch. You're just... gone, and that's it.
“We have two lives; the second begins when we realize we only have one” is a quote attributed to Confucius according to the internet. If it is that old, we may never be sure.
This was the opposite of depressing. This was the most reassuring and GROUNDING perspective I've heard on this eternal (hah) question. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
Thanks for being sane and not delusional.
You made my entire year with this video. Thanks for answering my question. ❤❤❤❤
I appreciate you, Dr. Brown.
Thank you for this, Stephen. For what it is worth, I entirely agree with you. I'm in my fifties and I used to be agnostic, despite coming from a family that was Brethren on my Father's side of the family and Jewish on my Mother's. Then I had a brain tumour six years ago - benign, but it was in the centre of my brain. Took my surgeon a lot of effort to get out, and it left me very confused for nearly two years. Been getting memories back constantly since then, and now I am almost back to normal. But I am now atheist - didn't have any "experience", etc during or after surgery and it simply removed any vestiges of doubt for me. I too find myself striving to be kind, patient and understanding much more now. It has been a very strange journey.
Not everyone who has these operations has a near-death experience - you never actually 'died'. It seems that you have made a judgement purely based on your own personal experience, but there are many who have had a completely different one and feel very strongly that there is something after death.
Always happy to hear people’s views on ultimate matters. I’ve no doubt you can see, and have considered, that holding your view consistently would mean you could not logically object to anybody else’s behavior, no matter what they do.
Thank you for sharing this. Here's to looking forward to a new year with the mindset that each day brings us another opportunity to be kind to others rather than compare or expect or fret over individuals who differ from us. We may all share the same matter but we do not think or act the same, so let's control ourselves only.
I believe, as you do, meaning is something we make, and how we make meaning involves our culture, our families, socioeconomic situation, the level of suffering or ease we experience, and how our own genetic stamp adds our own particular flavor to all of the above. My own meaning making: In the midst of mystery, each other is all we have. I love as best as I can, act as ethically as I can, enjoy each day, and bask in the wonder.
Except that when you appeal to ‘ethics’ as a standard, you contradict your belief that all meaning is mere social construction.
It’s a complex question and one each of us should ask ourselves.
Always thought provoking. Thank you for being you.
This is amazing insight, thank you.
100% agreed. All points.
The ever-insightful sbrebrown, ladies and gentlemen.
I do have to agree. This moment, is all we really have, and it may be best, to make the most of it, and at least enjoy it, with whatever you choose to fill it with....Janis
Well done, sir.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Loved it!! Keep being kind. Not that it matters.
Very interesting!
I think, you are right ... as always 😉
04:30 I grew up in a very rigid, evangelical Christian home, and I learned to fear the God of the Bible. I'm now an agnostic atheist, and have been for a few year. And when you say some people are offended at the scientific view point on the origins of life, perhaps consider that many people are simply afraid to consider the alternative to their religious indoctrination.
42?
There is a rhythm of existence, particularly with mammals, of rest and activity. Some hibernate for weeks or months at a time. We humans require a balance of downtime on a daily basis. Every day we must release our body and mind from activity, not knowing whether we will wake again. If we resist this natural pattern we would go insane and cease to be able to function. Then one day we will not wake up and this is the end.
When we are infants we need to learn to walk. Walking is a controlled fall that we get better at with time and practice. Unless we embrace the falling we can never walk. When we embrace sleep as a form of death, inactivity, then we can live.
Going through life without awareness or engagement is a kind of death or non-being. Your value as a person has to be something beyond a cog in the machine. That is a task that can bring meaning to the daily patterns of life. So we can find value or meaning in our lives and extend that to others and help them discover or uncover this.
Or as someone may have said, " The un-examined life is not worth living." But beware, the obsessive pursuit of meaning can lead to madness. Some things just are.
It's not that the atoms of which we're composed will return to the universe. They're in the universe _now._ They're no more nor less part of the universe and under the direction of the universe now than they ever were or ever will be, because _we're_ part of the universe.
They're not even ours until we die and have to relinquish them; they're entering and leaving us all the time.
I wrote more on this topic, but it got poetic, crossed over into bathos, and died.
Hope you are feeling better. “Trying is enough” not sure Yoda would agree with you. Hey. We have different beliefs but a similar fear of eternity. When I think of a self existing, eternal God, its like staring at the bright beautiful sun (it’s blinding but I can’t look away).
I enjoyed watching this video, even as a Muslim. Stay strong and stay hopeful for the future.
I’m trying to imagine an agnostic fountain pen capturing this wonderfully rational humanist spirit … made from a celluloid primordial soup with something like E=mc2 on the clip. Maybe a nice quote by Spinoza on the barrel. Have a good 2025.
I've found that when I've been confronted by the most aggressive people trying to "save my soul", I can often put them off by telling them that whatever happens to me in death, I couldn't imagine a greater hell than to be surrounded by self-righteous people for all eternity.
It's up to you to 'save your soul', not others.
It’s really up to God
well said !
@@tancreddehauteville764. 1000%
@@bold2013. 1000%
Just like Epikuros (Maybe someone else) said: If I exist, there is no death. If there is death,
I will not exist.
Life has no meaning and no purpose. We are part of evolution. And as individuals, we are the totality of our personal past at every present moment.Groetjes uit België. 🙏
_ Re: Meaning of Life - The simple and non-assuming answer is as you have said "None". There is no meaning to life. And of course the fact appears to be that people, individuals, or philosophers, or religions have given 'THEIR' meaning based on personal conditioning, upbringing, or belief system.
_ Well done on that point SBREBROWN!
_ However, re: neuro-scientific approach the brain is strictly body related. The 'real' you if we can for the moment categorize it that way, the 'real' you is neither the brain nor the body. There is, however, a "you" identity that arises based on stored memory and associations to various experiences. It is the "I" or "me" identity that 'identifies' itself based on particular conditioning, upbringing, beliefs, etc. This is the personal identity that most people take as being their actual 'self'. In a peculiar way this could be called the Artificial "I" (AI) akin to the artificial intelligence of computer programming.
_ What the 'real' you or 'I' or 'me' is, cannot be comprehended by the limited finite mind. The reality of "you" is not an identity but is more in the realm of pure awareness or consciousness in an omnipresent, non-local aspect. In this area we are pointing to that which is ineffable and thus beyond any intellectual analysis.
That - genuinely trying - i the only thing we actually Can do.
Yoda was wrong.
Spinoza?
So you believe that complex beings such as ourselves, just randomly evolved? I'm open to all suggestions. What about the idea that the human species was planted here, by an alien culture? ( I don't believe in UFO's.) The one thing that would make me believe in a higher power, is how the Earth's magnetic field is perfectly formed in a way that makes life on Earth possible. This is a deep subject for Christmas Day. I hope you find some happiness during this holiday season.
Evolution is not the same as "randomly evolved".
@@MattiasWirf So who directs evolution then?
@@tancreddehauteville764 Natural selection. I'm no expert, and that answer is based on your question being a real one. But since that answer is one googling away I'm guessing your trying to start some clever discussion. However I have no wish in debating it.
The Earth's magnetic field varies over time, so it can't be called "perfectly formed".
You've been reading too much creationist... I have no choice but to call it _literature._
Penticostals from France, I believe, began teaching a hell punishment forever theology. Thomas Jefferson wrote about the oddness of the belief system they were preaching in one of his letters. The catholics took Dante to heart. And monks have added so much to the bible. The greatest and strangest thing of all the early enemies of christianity may have added, likely the Mithras/Freemason cult, was that a God who taught us not to sacrifice people and killed us for sacrificing children, should suddenly reverse that sacrifice by killing one of his own children. You may rightly ask, then how do you still believe in Jesus, whether he died on a cross or not? Because, when you ask him to teach you how to love and give and be more than you ever thought possible, he says yes, and does it. All he asks of us is to try to love people and be a good example, which some people, like you, do anyways. However, my autism and sociopathy did not help me to do that naturally, I needed outside help, and he gave it. You know, Jesus didn't come to save people from hell, he came to call people to be administrators and rulers in his Kingdom to come. That's why he says many are called but few are chosen. I've met a lot of crazy christians and non christians, would you choose some of them to rule over other people???
Thank you. I’ve been dealing with my eminent death and I found comfort in your thoughts.
You gave all you have and that's more than we can ask of you. Be kind in 2025. I'll try, too.
I can swear there ain't no Heaven
But I pray there ain't no Hell
Swear there ain't no Heaven
And I'll pray there ain't no Hell
But I'll never know by livin'
Only my dyin' will tell
Yes, only my dyin' will tell, oh yeah
Only my dyin' will tell
No, no. Eternity's WITHOUT duration. You're still thinking about it in clock-measured time. 🙃😉😇
The purpose of life, which perhaps is a different question than the meaning of life, is unsatisfactorily simply to procreate. My proof? If life has a purpose it must be present in all life. What do we have in common with an amoeba? All life procreates, thus it is the purpose of life.
… the second one starts when he realizes he has only one life… -George W Bush
Or Confucius.
Well said Steven, thank you!!!
I have very similar views to yours
GOD IS DEAD
The obituary said.
Well, for heaven's sake:
An eternal Irish wake!
Slainte!
Thank you, Stephen! I feel very similarly and it was lovely hearing someone else articulate it. Even as a young person, who was still emersed in the faith in which she was raised, the thought of an interminable eternity (heaven, hell or something else) was more unsettling than the thought of death being the end. I'm going to butcher this quote, and I wish I remembered who said it - Sagan? Hitchens? Randi? - but it stuck with me and rang true. The gist is, "There is peace in knowing that when the last synapse fires, there is nothing." I'm quite content to simply return to the stardust from whence I came.
And it was, ironically, a pastor who helped me move away from religion (in a positive way). He gave a powerful sermon saying, in essence, quit worrying about getting into heaven or if there is a hell... this is the only life we know we have... to be a peace with yourself, do your best every day to help make this one life as good for as many people as possible.
I hope you don't get stuck FOREVER in Heaven , Stephen. I also hope that one day, you will have enough room where you record to move that camera and your desk away from that wall of beautiful pictures, so that we can see them in all their glory . That would mean that your head will not be chopping them off and they will not be chopping your crown horizontally with their crosswise lines. Not sure how this can happen, but it sure would not hurt my eyes and design sense, if the camera frame had the FULL PICTURES with a nice bit of negative space above and below...with your frame, and lovely face......free of backround chops. Just an idea, for later. Thanks for your opinion. It was very scientific....Janis
Stephen, I totally agree with every word you said.
Respectfully, nihilism is not for me.
Quod ereat demonstrandum
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” Carl Sagan
I like others here, am of a like mind. I believe exactly what you have described about life and death. I have actually thought about it quite a bit because I have lived my entire life in a religious region and am surrounded, constantly, by people who believe in things that my brain just cannot accept. The difference is that unlike many of those people - not all, but many - I am very happy and do not live in fear of death or judgment or eternal damnation, or whatever. I worry about disease or injury, but not death itself. Why? To me, it's like a light switch. You're just... gone, and that's it.
In God there's nothing.
What does this have to do with pens? Your ideals are uselss compared to others.