Thanks for proving my point about fearing the unknown. Ceasing to exist is entering the unknown. Being completely powerless is entering the unknown.
This is funny because you're pretty close to getting it, but won't let go of this "entering unknown" bullshit. "not knowing things" is a lack of power, so you have it backwards. The state of being powerless is not the same as nor is it a subset of state where one is "entering the unknown," it's the other way around -- "not knowing things" is a subset of "things that make you more powerless." Ceasing to exist, too, is better described as being in the subset of "things that make you more powerless." So it's not the unknown that ties everything together as our fear, but a lack power. In other words, we seek power, and knowing things is just ONE ASPECT of that.
We value certainty, so we seek to be as far away as possible from death. In certainty, we have control, and power. But we have those attributes because certainty requires limits, boundaries and assumptions to work.
But we have no control or power over what's limitless, boundless, and unassumed. That's uncertainty. Fear is about uncertainty, because there's always a chance something bad will happen that's completely outta your control. What happens in death after life is uncertain.
Now that you've read that, reexamine your reasoning here. You're trying to go backwards again in the is-a relationships. Control and knowledge are aspects of power. Lack of power and lack of control is not necessarily lack of knowledge (entering unknown, in your words), as you say... that's just like saying power and control are necessarily knowledge. Knowledge is power, not power is knowledge. Let me know if you can't see the difference.
The reason why I talk about feelings is because we're primarily emotional creatures, not primarily rational, logical ones. Emotions govern our perceptions of life and therefore colour it at all times (so I'm not saying reality doesn't exist, as MONEYMUFFINS suggested). So I ask you this - what's wrong with ceasing to exist, being completely powerless? And how does it feel?
Whether or not it's true that we're "primarily emotional," let's at least try to set that aside for the sake of logical discussion, so we can get somewhere.
We cease to exist in this life, yes. Then what? For all we know, we definitively cease existence altogether. Or there's another life ahead of this one. Or we come back to this life as trees. How do we know there's no existence after this life when we have no way of measuring that? The best that science can say to maintain objectivity is that there's no evidence of life after death. It can't conclude therefore that there's no life after death. That's subjective, and science seeks to be objective.
Except we do have a pretty good idea what happens, like I said. You lose part of your brain, your whole personality can be lost, you may lose the ability speak... look up split-brain patients if you really wanna blow your mind. Knowing this, how can you have the same existence without the brain that essentially IS you? When that rots or is otherwise destroyed, its parts scattered to the wind and soil, how could you possibly have the same kind of life? Sure, you will continue exist as those scattered particles, but they're no longer assembled in the system that formed your self!
Learn things about your brain and your body and you won't even consider stuff like spirits or souls or some other way your self is transferred in some "afterlife." How will you feel things without nerve endings? How will you think without a brain? How will you hear voices without ears? How do the spirits of legend speak without vocal chords? That mystical way of looking at things like that is childish, or at least it should be considered that way.
Here's a fun thought experiment: If we're preserved when our supposed spirits leave us, then why does damage to our brain affect the self? Does brain damage mean soul damage, too? If so, what if we die by getting our brains smashed, or we hit our heads and linger as retards for a while and then die? Is the soul that leaves that body retarded too?? Or is our past self auto-saved into the brain from time to time? How about the peripheral nervous system? Will I still have Yoshimitsu's iMCF dialed into my muscle memory down in the afterlife?
Are you assuming I'm against science or something?
There are no answers without questions. Because science is about objectivity, it wouldn't exist if it wasn't questioning everything. We wouldn't have what we currently have without science. We wouldn't have progressed so much without science. And even when science finds answers, doesn't mean they're always right. Consider the evolution of the theory of atoms, whether Earth was flat or round, or even the Higgs boson - scientists though that particle could answer everything about how the universe, only to find that it opened up more questions about the universe.
Part of science's ongoing evolution is to be proven wrong. There's anything wrong with that, IMO.
Of course people question scientific fact. Science can't grow without that.
And uncertainty =/= we don't know anything. Uncertainty = we don't know.
You were looking good until the last sentence. For scientific facts, it's not "we either are certain and know, or we are uncertain and don't know." We have varying degrees of (un)certainty for claims that have been tested using the scientific method.
Maybe I haven't explained myself well. There's nothing wrong with science. Rather, it's our perception of it that matters. When we perceive science as the sole validator of truth, then we get our knickers in a twist when it's wrong on something. Science is best at finding rules that apply to everything that's physical. It doesn't work as well on the mental, emotional, inner topics such as God, consciousness, etc. It can at best speculate on such topics.
No, we don't have to "get our knickers in a twist" when scientific facts are proven wrong. The scientific method is the sole validator of claims that aren't true by definition. It tells us how certain we can be of something. Science is best at finding rules that apply to everything that's physical? Well guess what, everything is physical. Even if that wasn't true, what method would you suggest to find rules that apply to magical things such as "the mental, emotional, inner topics such as God, consciousness, etc."? Even if we somehow confirmed that something was immaterial, wouldn't we still need to use some form of the scientific method to determine anything about it?
Morality is subjective, since morality is a mental interpretation on how to live one's life, and the mind can rationalise and justify anything when perceived as the causal point of our life experience.
Morality uses subjective assumptions like "we like power" and "we don't like pain" then the rules logically (objectively) follow from those assumptions. People may be able to ignore inconsistencies in their moral principles, but if their principles are self-contradictory, then you can't follow all of your principles. "Subjective/objective" is a false dichotomy anyway. Everything is objective by some measure, and everything is subjective when you haven't decided the measure yet. To say "morality is subjective" is to say there is no good or best morality. But that raises the question: good or best for what, exactly? I think you need to identify the objectives that morality attempts to achieve, and maybe then you won't be calling it subjective.
