@elonah: Agreed, Elonah, agreed. Losing someone close would be a pain harder than death.

@meroko: i dunno, a painful withdrawn death is painful. unless you mean when you finally kick the bucket. :3

(watched "i shouldn't be alive" marathon and egads, the painnnnn, and endurance, but mostly the pain! )

This may be weird, but I have absolutely no fear of death. None at all. If anything, I'm curious of exactly what death is. I fear pain, but not death. Sure, I'll miss my family and all but death itself doesn't scare me. It's enevitable so why worry about it?

@playpink: naw, it's not weird. if you looked around the thread, you'll see members who don't fear death, only the possible pain that might come along with it.

Let's face it: when you die, that's the end of it. But pain is pain and most people don't enjoy it.

My opinion on death has changed so much since my last post that I feel compelled to write again. Nowadays, I have developed a fascination with death. I don't know, for some reason, I can't wait to die and find out what will happen. Or maybe it's only because of depression. Regardless, I can't wait to die and in fact, want to die as quickly as possible

Lot of people saying here that they're not scared of death.
I am scared of death. I'm christian and I want to go to heaven, but I don't want to die.
Death is a scary thing, and I understand if some people never get over it.

@theone: seriously? You want to die as fast as possible? Life is a precious thing, I don't think you should think about dieing that easily.

why are you scared about death? It's just a part of life.

As for heaven: here's how I think of it - if one believe that god has a divine plan (like many catholics I know), then god planned if you're going to heaven, hell, or purgatory. Regardless of so called free will, everything you do has already been planned and accounted for by god. In other words, you have no control over which one you're going to so there's no point in worrying about it.

(Strangely enough, I haven't met many christians with the above viewpoint. Is it just the people I hang around or are people really suggesting they can change god's divine plan, the one he had since the beginning of time, by a little fear/worrying?)

@theone: I'd see a therapist about that depression of yours. Depressions do bad things to our perception.

I'm not at all afraid of death, Everyone has to die one day, Whether you may be 6 years old or 60 years old, Death is gonna happen when it's supposed to. I'm just scared of Dying a painful death, Like bomb blasts, drowning, murder & those stuff happening now-a-days.

But yeah, If it's a talk about my family members dying... Then yes, I hate it, I'd rather sacrifice myself for my family members than grieving for that member... O_O (weird me)

When I think about death, I think I'm scared about it. It's not like I don't accept the death concept, but I guess it's more to scared because not knowing what death exactly is and what would happen afterwards.

I am curious about it, but cannot help fearing it.

@KTC: agreed. God had set his plans for us, and even have it adjusted to our personalities. We, somehow can't get out of it, since He'd predicted of everything we gonna do.

But, what do you mean with changing those plans by fear? I don't get it.. O.o

Because religious people tend to get their knickers in a twist about heaven and whether they get in or not. I don't know how many times that they use "You're going to hell if you don't do XXX" as a justification for their harassment. they think if they do yy or aa they will have a higher chance of getting into heaven. They don't so they should stop trying to convert people (ie me) or force others to bend to your own beliefs.

Their fear about their fate is what motivates them.

Obviously, if god planned for you to enter heaven, you will. if you don't, you won't.

(On a slight off topic note: for the above reasons, I think prayers are useless too. God isn't going to change his plan no matter how fervently you pray or how faithful you are.)

as for fear of the unknown: ahh, a common fear.

@KTC- Therapy is impossible on my limited pocket money.

@KTC:
I see.. But a note for "everything had been planned" point, from my knowledge, those planned things isn't always going to happen(but I think mostly yes). Because we have this "free will", we can hereby to deviate from the road that has been set for us, and so we wouldn't be able to proceed with what way we're supposed to go through, unless we go back to the point where we were deviated from, and follow the road.

In other words, God is not scripting our life story inside out, but making points instead. And so, we're likely to find those checkpoints, one by one to meet the final. I could say it almost the same with playing a route in Visual Novel, though.

Lol. Okay, now I know I sound perfectly like people who've talked with you, but I feel to talk about it, anyway.

@shed: Either way, in your scenario or mine, your path has already been predetermined. Even in a visual novel, you have a limited number of choices and cannot deviate from them. In visual novels, you do not have free will as the script has already been written and you're stuck in whatever situation you are in. Yes you are given choices on which path to take, but they are superficial if one considers that the endgame has already been written for you.

In other words, your free will is still a comforting illusion if you factor in the idea that god has a plan and your choices are irrelevant ultimately.

@KTC: well, I was trying to focus on A route in visual novel. For example, a 'true end'. True end was set, and then writer add more characters, events, and possible routes into it, to make it a vn, not kinetic novel.

Yes, it's true that in vn everything had written from the start. But remember, when we play a vn, it's become our very will to explore it. The writer might have slight of idea to predict the player, but it's entirely depends on ourselves.

Summary:
No, people don't have to gone with the true end if they don't want to, either way, unless they have something special to achieve by finishing that end(e.g. bonus, afterstory). But there's something certain, which is what player will achieve in the end of game. It could be either one of good ends, or.. the bad end.

Okay, I hope it makes sense.

Note:
I am saying that God's plan for us were as the true end in vn, and an illustration on how we could rebel on the plan.

@shed: but what I'm getting at is you're still following god's script no matter what. Free will suggests that you have complete control over your fate, that you follow no one's plan including god. But if this god exist and his plan, you are merely dancing to god's tunes no matter what you choose.

He made the paths you follow and there is no deviation from those paths. You cannot step out of a plan just like a character in a visual novel cannot decide to follow path A or B but instead make plan C.

God, being presumably omniscient/omnipotent, would have already accounted for such decisions and as such would have compensated for it.

In other words, what you think is free will is in fact you just being a little obedient character in a visual novel game. You are merely god's pawn to play with and eventually discard/banish to storage.

What is death if not the continuation of life? Is it the end of the way or the beginning of a new one

@KTC: okay, very well. Seems so. By then, if they acted that way or anyway, that was just a part of the plan. Which you can't complain about.

EDIT:
Wait, NO!! It's not it! I was tricked!

I was saying that we don't have to play the true end. Imagine that true end were God's plan for me. If I deviated from the path that leads me to the true end because of anything, I went to different path. I didn't follow the plan. I deviated from it.

No matter if you say it's been written all over. When I don't follow that path, entering the other path doesn't make it a true end anyway.

Well, as if we could figure what our true end is. And so, people do have right to work out their will, unknowingly either they are following the right path or not.

I think everyone has been curious about death at one point. Imagine being on the 8th floor and looking trough the window at the sidewalk more than 30 meters away from you. Trough the gazillions of thoughts that pass your mind every second, there must have been one that sounded like "What if I throw myself now?". Well, it has happened to me numerous times, but I always had arguments like the pain of the hit or how much pain will it cause my family and friends. The second thought is actually what scared me most. But the idea of death itself, no.

This happens in general to me...as in "what if I didn't do that"...but nah, face it, fate doesn't exist. Fate is what your future looks like when you're dying and look back at your life, then send all this data to a 15-years-old you and tell yourself what's going to happen.

Not afraid of dying, not afraid of that God who's gonna throw me in hell because I'm such a LGBT activist, because there is no God, just hopefully not a lot of pain.

I'd pretty afraid that this death leads into a new life, into a new life, etc. each longer and longer so that it becomes effectively seemingly immortal.

I am not afraid of death, but I will be insanely angry if I die early.
I am extremely ambitious and have a lot of plans and goals in life.
If I die without fulfilling them, I will become a manifestation of fury due to unfulfilled ambitions.