Letter to an Innocent Man

[Acriku]

Nerve cells cease to function. Organs break down. Cells degenerate with time. Proteins go back into the earth, minerals replenish the surrounding earth. What is hard to imagine? There are people with disorders where certain nerve cells cannot function, just think of it as a disorder with total shutdown of the nerve cells and everything else.

[VigilVirus]

Those people can still think. They just cannot express their thoughts.

No person can imagine that somehow he will cease thinking.

[Acriku]

When nerve cells cease to fire in a certain area, defects occur, the most obvious is in the area where firing is decreased. Sure we cannot imagine the cease of thinking, because we haven't experienced it, and is hard to comprehend. But it does happen, and I am assuming what you are getting to is the existence of a soul? Where thinking would be infinite, never ceasing?

[Nyarlathotep]

To put my 2cnts in..

First of all, the poem is good, except for the generalisation of things. It could have done with less. Again, apart from that it's good.

Abou death, I have accepted that I am going to die one day and can't lose one night sleep over it. The same goes towards poeple close to me. Sure I'll morn when the die, sure I'll be very sad, but I know I'll get over it.

[hilamobster13]

look at yourselves!!! the guy writes a poem about something, and has the balls to share it with you all, and this turns into a 'me me me!' thread about how you all personally deal with death. the poem touched me, despite things i dont find compleetely true. it made me remember exactly what brought this chaos into place, it made me think about where i'll be in life 10 years from now, when i remember this whole fiasco......... this is a brave thing to put up here, simply for the fact that it trolls more than an old guys lawn...

props to you, sir.

oh, and i certainly expect you all to tell me exactly why my opinion is pointless, and why youre all so much more right, or simply that im wrong, your right, yadda yadda yadda, same old thing...... just show the guy some respect..

[ordos45]

[quote author=

[Acriku]

Gila I'm getting tired at your "peacekeeping" when there is no war. You create the war in your mind, and try to bring it here with your peacekeeping. Please stop it, ok? You expect everyone to just say, oh empr you were so brave, and the LETTER (not poem) touched me down inside? No. We are all not like that. Some are fed up with people prolonging the tragedy and bringing back feelings that were better gone through and moved on. Also, yes I feel sorry for the man that died, for the many men and women and children that died. But he died. Let's move on. Lot more people are dying today, and tomorrow, perhaps we should write letters to them hoping they reach eternal life in the heavens above?

[nemafakei]

On one day, a few years ago, 10,000 people who have all had pretty good lives died. Every day, 30,000 people who have had pretty bad ones die because of their water supply being infected or insufficient.

[emprworm]

regarding Acriku:

the guy at www.ex-atheist.com was right. Your views are exceedingly similar to his.

"I recalled staring at a swarming mass of termites one sunny day, thinking that, from a comparative distance, there was little difference between them and us. I smashed a few dozen with my shoe and ground them into the dirt. What did it matter if these died? What did it matter if they all died? People died every day. The end result would always be death for both the individuals and, eventually, the species.

Humanity had become nothing more to me than an organized network of molecules and enzymes. I viewed people as mere organisms going through their daily routines of metabolizing nutrients and expelling wastes, ovulating their eggs and ejaculating their semen." - www.ex-athiest.com

Pretty much Acriku in a nutshell.

Regarding Nema: needless death becomes a statistic, so who cares about one of them?

Some of you in here are pretty sad to me.

Here is my view on life. Some of you may wonder what my view is. Read closely, and you will learn something about me:

A young boy one morning went down to the beach. The tide that night had washed up thousands of starfish on the drying sand. He noticed that many of them were still alive and began to pick them up, one by one, and throw them into the water.

An older man, walking along, who saw this smiled and laughed.

"Young boy, look at them! There are thousands of them. In an hour the sun will completely dry them up and they will die. What difference can you possibly make? You are wasting your time. You cannot save them. What does it matter even if you spent an entire week here?"

The young boy, holding a starfish in his hand, looked up at the rising sun. He looked accross the beach, speckled with the creatures as far as he could see. He held up the starfish and turned towards the man.

"It matters to this one," he said, and he threw it back into the sea.

[Anathema]

A good poem, Emprworm. But like Nyar said, except for the generatisation.

That guy you spoke off had a disrespect for life as few others, and from his site I think we can safely say he just can't live without religion.

And Acrikus description is correct. We all know that the body decomposes after death. We know that thoughts are created inside our brain, and that without a brain you cease thinking. You can't determin someones views from such a statement.

[Acriku]

the guy at www.ex-atheist.com was right. Your views are exceedingly similar to his.

"I recalled staring at a swarming mass of termites one sunny day, thinking that, from a comparative distance, there was little difference between them and us. I smashed a few dozen with my shoe and ground them into the dirt. What did it matter if these died? What did it matter if they all died? People died every day. The end result would always be death for both the individuals and, eventually, the species.

Humanity had become nothing more to me than an organized network of molecules and enzymes. I viewed people as mere organisms going through their daily routines of metabolizing nutrients and expelling wastes, ovulating their eggs and ejaculating their semen." - www.ex-athiest.com

Pretty much Acriku in a nutshell.

Reality's a bitch isn't it?

But that doesn't mean I have no value for life.

[Dante]

But what will he do when a group of nasty, yet stronger and meaner, children come down and start stamping on the starfish? I'm afraid that from I see of the world chances are the little boy would be so afraid/awed/admiring of them that he'd join in pretty quickly.

On the other hand, what if the starfish were actually washed out from the rockpools and throwing them into the sea (sandy, not rocky) would kill them?

And in regards to the falling man, what if he wouldn't have appreciated the letter? Would you still say what you say if you had known him to be a sour, grim old loner? This isn't to say he was, I have no idea. It's hypothetical.

Prove me wrong to my satisfaction on these points and I'll concede victory of debate skills to you for as long as.... until I forget.

[emprworm]

lol, dust scout, you cannot prove someone's personal moral views "right or wrong", you can only believe them to be. I believe that certain things are right or wrong. You believe in certain things as right and wrong. You cannot ask someone else to prove your own views of "right and wrong" as right or wrong.

The story I wrote was a very simple allegory meant only to share with you my personal views of morality. In regards to real life, if I was in a field-hospital helping children and a group of stronger armed men came in and started killing the kids, you really think I would join them? If you do, then you really do not know me too well.

And lets say the falling man would have hated my letter. That would have no bearing on my compassion towards his needless death. A muslim woman today, as you read this, is being beaten by her husband somewhere in the middle east. She would have no appreciation for my religious views- she would probably have no appreciation for me being a white american who likes Bush. But does that mean I still want to see her beaten? No. I wish I could help her. What a suffering person thinks of me personally is irrelevant to me wanting to help them so they don't have to suffer. If a communist atheist was dying of thirst, I would give him a glass of water.

[TMA_1]

good point Empr. One of my best agnostic friends who is searching right now agree's. If we are just an organized collection of cells, trying to reproduce, then why sugar coat? Many people now days see it like this and inject drugs and pop pills. I remember him telling me that. He would snort and smoke crank every day. Also stuff like DPT and Libs. He told me during that time that the only logical point you can go to as an athiest is pleasing the self. Pleasing others in the end benefits nobody if there is no higher power. And those athiests and agnostics that do try to please others do it out of their own need to feel good. Athiests and agnostics with no spiritual purpose make material purposes. All to get a high. You may get a high from helping people, doing good. Logically though if there is no point, I would rather get high on synthetics. I will admit to you guys too, that a certain time in my life, I did do that. If there is no point then why make up reasons to life for? everything is subjective if there is no focus point preistablished. Athiests make preistablished points of focus and that is a subjective variable. I feel sorry for those who have to make up their own reason to live and have to focus their lives soully on emotions. Even athiest scientists dont use the mind but their hearts into a purpose that in the end serves humanity. Humanity though equals nothing though without a God and therefore no purpose goes to serving it. If you make up reasons than those reasons are only valuable to you. worthless. "Vanity, Vanity, all life is vanity!"

[Acriku]

Ok now it has become the religion thread Edric ;)

Well that may be what you think TMA, but many atheists and me included are spiritual. With themselves, their family, and humanity, but not with a god. Are atheists void of love? Are we void of sense of compassion? Of sympathy? Do we not bleed the same blood as you? When we see a cat in a tree, do we not try to help it out as well you do? I ask, today, why must difference equal hate with people? Why do we not accept the difference as a unique feature, and cherish eachother as humanity?

[VigilVirus]

Emprworm, your views and that story that you wrote is very idealistic and 'morally perfect'. I can tell you, the majority of the people in the world (over 99.9%) do not have the same view, because humans tend not to care for other humans that they do not even know. They pretend that they care, even seem sad and gloomy when something like that happens, but any intelligent person knows, that all that they think about is and all that they are worried about is the same thing happening to them.

You can these stories well, but who can we know that you actually mean it and not feigning it like those 99.9%??

[TMA_1]

Athiests have the same emotions but have a subjective focus in life. Your views are no more relavent than anton Levay. No more relavent to anybody elses. becausee everybody is about as equal to everybody else. all opinions without a higher order are subjective.

Also athiests seem to have ruined the perfectly wonderful word Spiritual. They think of spiritual things as things sacred to them. Spiritual has to do with the metaphysical though. A thing that is supernatural.

[Acriku]

Again that is your opinion. But keep the hate on the downlow, and the prejudice on the non-existence. If you want to think atheists are just bags of immorality that does everything to be happy and are selfish and have no value for life, I can't stop you.

[VigilVirus]

<<< Loads shotgun >>> I can

j/k ;D

[TMA_1]

I never said you guys were immoral. I said that your goodness and righteousness is worthless because there is no point to it if it is as viable as another persons idea of righteousness. dont pull the argument into insult thing on me. that is a debate tactic in order to get me riled up.

[Acriku]

TMA, it is called humanism. For the better of human kind. THAT is why.

[exatreide]

gila....stay on topic...stop going off topic........

[Dude_Doc]

But then you do believe in something, or am I wrong?

[DukeLeto]

AThiests simply do not believe in a SUPREME BEING. It doesn't mean we believe in nothing at all.

[exatreide]

uh....i belive it dose leto...

when it comes to gods ect.