The possibly most intelligent human to ever walk the earth - a complete agnostic throughout his life - was so terrified and incapable of accepting his certain demise that he converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. Despite that he remained afraid until the very end.
How do you overcome the fear of death if religion doesn't work?
Von Neumann was a genius, sure, but it was only a certain type of intelligence. His peers in the hard sciences acknowledged it themselves. I remeber reading an exerpt from some Nobel prize winner who worked alongside Von Neumann and Einstein at the Institute for advnaced study at princeton. The guy said that Von Neumann had the fastest mind he had ever know but Einstein was a 'deeper' thinker.
Im sorry OP, but the only answer is the teleological suspension of the ethical
Von Neumann was a Jew who had lived a sinful life of intellectual pursuits instead of worldly and spiritual ones, such a life will not be resurrected when the messiah arrives. He only converted to Christianity as a last ditch effort.
>Lately I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock but it would not hold. Gravel gave way. I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose, and in cold terror I fell into the abyss... what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed ... It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.
And Heinz Pagels went on to do exactly that. But he was right. You're only briefly a person and no you won't be reborn again, but you're a part of something bigger and this could be infinite in scope.
embrace death.
dia de los meurtos about living in the after because someone alive remembers you.
you conquer your fear of death by looking forward to it.
Since ancient times people have struggled to cope with death, OP. People who lived 5000 years ago in ancient civilizations felt exactly what you're feeling now, fear of the inevitable, unavoidable and unpredictable end of their existence, and you can be sure that 5000 years into the future when even our ashes will have long, long disappeared forever there will be people afraid of death.
There is nothing that we can do about it, our existence will end no matter what, so the rational thing would be to never worry about it, since you have no control over it, but we're just human, we can't help but to feel afraid of not being able to experience the beauty of being alive anymore.
Put effort into living the best life you possibly can OP, do things the right way, be just, be honest, be good, strive for excellence in everything you do and leave your mark behind, a mark of inspiration to the people you come in contact with, so you won't be forgotten after your death, even if it is for just a few years or decades.
How much time did he spend trying to understand life and death through studying history, religion, and philosophy?
In other words he was nothing special and you shouldn't fellate him.
I never understood why people fear death. Death is wonderful when you compare it to life. Above all, you didn't exist before your birth, and you essentially cease to exist when you sleep. Yet somehow, inexplicably, tards still fear death and desperately cling to their repetitive, meaningless lives. It doesn't matter if you are Stalin, Cezar or Napoleon - nothing you do makes any sense or has any value except in a tiny fraction of time.
I will never understand, I truly won't. Why do you value yourself so highly that you think you should exist forever when men whose shit you aren't worthy to smell have gone under in numbers you cannot fathom?
Now pain is something else. I fear pain as well. But death as such? Eternity? I love it. I'm deeply in love with this girl.
>Above all, you didn't exist before your birth, and you essentially cease to exist when you sleep
[citation needed]
...
He was Jewish, brainlet
>In other words he was nothing special and you shouldn't fellate him.
>I never understood why people fear death. Death is wonderful when you compare it to life. Above all, you didn't exist before your birth, and you essentially cease to exist when you sleep. Yet somehow, inexplicably, tards still fear death and desperately cling to their repetitive, meaningless lives. It doesn't matter if you are Stalin, Cezar or Napoleon - nothing you do makes any sense or has any value except in a tiny fraction of time.
>I will never understand, I truly won't. Why do you value yourself so highly that you think you should exist forever when men whose shit you aren't worthy to smell have gone under in numbers you cannot fathom?
>Now pain is something else. I fear pain as well. But death as such? Eternity? I love it. I'm deeply in love with this girl.
That explains everything. Jews are absolutely terrified of death. The general theory is that they know that they're fucked after death.
Enjoy fearing the inevitable. Forever. Every second of your life.
>Enjoy fearing the inevitable. Forever. Every second of your life.
>Making assumptions about anonymous people
>Enjoy fearing the inevitable. Forever. Every second of your life.
I am enjoying my life, i don't fear death, but i don't claim to know what happens after.
>How do you overcome the fear of death if religion doesn't work?
You don't.
Fear of death has been hardcoded into living beings for billions of years via natural selection. Creatures who don't mind their own demise have a habit of getting outcompeted by creatures who try to cling to life no matter what. Hence it's your heritage, handed down from your most distant ancestors, and you will never shake it off completely.
You can try to distract yourself from it. And usually fear of death won't be crippling anyways (which would be an evolutionary disadvantage in its own right) but it will always be lurking beyond the surface.
Of course the most rational thing to do would be to just accept your mortality and shrug it off, as Epicurus would advise you to. But this is an irrational universe. You have no control over your fate. Your whole existence is just a freak coincidence in the first place. The arbitrary laws governing reality allowed for dead matter to form into structures which would self replicate, so that's what happened. The most efficient self replicators of every generation would pass on their code to the next generation of replicators and so here we are, a billion years later.
If you have any shot at all at living a happy life depends entirely on the code you inherited. And what you inherited is merely whatever happened to be the most efficient mechanism to allow your ancestors to keep self replicating. If a strong fear of death was among those mechanisms, though luck, you're fucked. It will make you feel miserable and there is no deeper meaning behind it.
Your birth was pointless, your life is pointless, your death will be pointless, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about any of it.
I'm an agnostic but I cringed anyways.
Years go by and the one thing that is in a constant growing state inside me is the fear of death.
>Fear of death has been hardcoded into living beings for billions of years via natural selection
Animals don't fear death
If we're talking about scientific, Von Neumann is one of the top contender, along with Euler and Gauss.
A more psychological genuis was probably Buddha with his depth/knowledge on human mind. Have anyone here read the Abhidhamma? Or a buddhist model of the mind?
>how to overcome death
Find out what dies first. In other words, find out who you are first. Follow the trail on what constitutes as "you" and how it is formed and how it dies.
You would have to start from scratch with the generic "muh souls" to the "muh automation". And finally towards Parfit's(or Buddha's) works on what constitutes a self. As that's where modern science is pointing towards.
Fucking deathlets
bait
>fearing the natural order
W E W
>Eternity? I love it. I'm deeply in love with this girl.
Tell that to the gazelles who run for their lifes when a lion appears in their field of vision
They shame you with fedoras user, but only because you said the truth, and the deathlets will never be able to accept oblivion.
Some nigger once said "give me liberty, or give me death!" I say, "give me death!" Soon, please. Seriously, right now.
I want to go back to the void.
I WANT OFF THIS WILD RIDE.
That was the gayest shit I ever read.
>Eternity? I love it. I'm deeply in love with this girl.
Cringed hard
Inspiring words to those who can't open their mouths without sounding mentally retarded in meatspace.
Then kill yourself you dumb excusist.
I don't find the concept of my own mortality that terrifying, what bothers me is how short life is and that I have no hope of experiencing everything I want to. Given the option I would choose at least 500 years of healthy living before going happily.
pic related
>strive for excellence in everything you do and leave your mark behind
For what purpose? To mark your territory like a dog? So you won't be forgotten? For what? You are dead and long gone what do you care if someone remembers you or not.