Dying in the philosophy of Epicurus

[advancedatheist]

Last night I caught the tail end of a dramatization of the life of King Henry the 8th on Phoenix's PBS affiliate. As he struggled for breath on his deathbed, surrounded by his courtiers, one of Henry's advisors grasped his hand and asked anxiously, "Do you die in the faith of Christ?" The advisor interpreted Henry's squeeze as a "Yes," to everyone's apparent relief.

What would have happened if Henry had roused himself enough to say, "Why, no. I die in the philosophy of Epicurus. I never believed this bosh about Jesus, but merely used it for political expediency"?

[LibraryLady]

Last night I caught the tail end of a dramatization of the life of King Henry the 8th on Phoenix's PBS affiliate. As he struggled for breath on his deathbed, surrounded by his courtiers, one of Henry's advisors grasped his hand and asked anxiously, "Do you die in the faith of Christ?" The advisor interpreted Henry's squeeze as a "Yes," to everyone's apparent relief.

What would have happened if Henry had roused himself enough to say, "Why, no. I die in the philosophy of Epicurus. I never believed this bosh about Jesus, but merely used it for political expediency"?

History, written by his courtiers, would have recorded that he replied, "Yes."

[Garrette]

LibraryLady is likely correct in that the event would have been intentionally misreported.

An equally scary thought is that even had they reported the reaction you hypothesize, the report would have been filled with proclamations about Satan having used the king's weakness to enter him.

The faith wins either way.

As in so many woo things.

[Dr Adequate]

What would have happened if Henry had roused himself enough to say, "Why, no. I die in the philosophy of Epicurus. I never believed this bosh about Jesus, but merely used it for political expediency"? Then he would have gone to THE HELLFIRE

By the way, your post suggests that you may be associating Epicurus with atheism. Epicurus was a deist. There is no evidence that he wrote the so-called "riddle of Epicurus", but if he did, then it's clear that his own answer to it would have been "God is able but not willing to prevent evil, for a perfect being is never troubled by anything."

Epicureanism (http://www.skepticwiki.org/wiki/index.php/Epicureanism) on the SkepticWiki.

Alternatively you may be associating Epicureanism with self-indulgence, which is also wrong (see article). The Epicureans got a terrible press... there can't be many people in history less alike than Henry VIII and Epicurus.

[Beerina]

The only thing I took out of the Epicurus thing was the observation that, once you die, you'll never know or think anymore, so time's gonna pass very quickly, just like it did before you were born. Of course, in a sense, you were just as dead then as you will be in the future.

You think, therefore you exist.

And I give about a 10% chance of a techno-rapture at some time in the future, where advanced science figures out a way not just to resurrect people's bodies, but to somehow re-gain the information of your brain needed to reconstruct you. Yes, quantum randomness and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle are minor stumblling blocks.

And I give a 10% chance that we're already in such a situation, since the only way for a mind to exist indefinitely without getting bored (all meaningfully different configurations of stuff, and hence things to do, are very large but finite) would be to do periodic brain wipes and repeat things. It's just that one would, presumably, select awesome things to repeat over and over. Even if I assume a solipsist position, where all the people raped and beaten and murdered are non-existent automata, just the knowledge, if false, that that might happen to me is a horrific thing. To say nothing about the lameness of my broken arm as a child and various other and sundry problems I've had that I could have done without.

Why not just do the Christopher Walken thing (http://imdb.com/title/tt0085271/) and hook your brain up to a continuous orgasm thing? Or at least the Tommy Lee life, dumb, wealthy, rock star, big weiner, and lots of babes?

[Beerina]

Although, ironically, hooking your mind up to a pleasure generator mignt be a bad Christopher Walken idea (http://imdb.com/title/tt0068677/). That's all you'd ever do.

But then again, what is there better to do?