Kevin's Watch

Avatar wrote:

Ali wrote:Show of hands -- who here was raised in the Christian faith and rejected it as an adult? (Happy to start a poll question, if need be.)

Me. I was raised a catholic. By 16 I was seriously questioning the idea, (so much so that I never bothered with confirmation), by 17 I was pretty much an aetheist. I spent the next few years studying as much of other religions as I could, and temporarily dabbling in some of them, but like Fist, it just turned out that I have no faith in anything.

--A

Another case in point.

Good luck finding people with the adult education and understanding who left due to reason. They often convert to other faiths via reason, but rarely abandon faith altogether.

I'll bet 500 rubles (roughly $16 at current rates) to a Christian charity (above and beyond anything I would normally give) that you can't find more than 2 people on this site that fit the bill. Anyone want to take me up on it?

rusmeister wrote:

Fist and Faith wrote:

rusmeister wrote:Thanks, Fist. That's unusually early, but it still makes my point, which comes down to it being awfully hard to find a person who seriously practiced and studied their faith (for a significant period of time) as an adult and then to be reasoned out of it,

True enough in my case.

rusmeister wrote:and that most people who object to faith - esp. Christianity - simply don't have that adult perspective on Christianity, including history and theology. They quit before really learning anything, but in our culture, they think they know what the faith is anyway because they were raised in it, and I'm saying that's not enough. (I'll call it "Christianity.2gv" for shorthand.)

This one is not true in my case. I don't object to faith, Christianity or otherwise. I just don't have any.

Sorry.
I should have said "reject faith", not "object to faith".
Once it's established that most (I say "most") people who reject faith do NOT have an educated adult understanding of that faith, it immediately follows that they (said most) do not know what it is they are rejecting - AND that many of the common arguments trotted out are mere straw men.

Well, "an educated adult understanding" is quite the loophole, eh? If we do find such people, you would likely say that, despite what they think, the education was not done properly, or that they were misunderstanding it despite a good education. (This, based on you continually telling me that I have not thought about what I say I've thought about to the degree that I say I've thought about it, and, therefore, not having the understanding of it that I say I have.)

But, all in all, you're right. The majority of adults do not change their faith. Based on all the cases I know personally, the biggest group of those who change are probably the ones who did not believe, or did not believe anything specific and/or strongly, and embraced one faith or another after quitting a drug addiction and/or going to prison. But no, I don't know anyone who was a strong believer as an adult, then stopped.

Fist and Faith wrote:

rusmeister wrote:

Fist and Faith wrote: True enough in my case.

This one is not true in my case. I don't object to faith, Christianity or otherwise. I just don't have any.

Sorry.
I should have said "reject faith", not "object to faith".
Once it's established that most (I say "most") people who reject faith do NOT have an educated adult understanding of that faith, it immediately follows that they (said most) do not know what it is they are rejecting - AND that many of the common arguments trotted out are mere straw men.

Well, "an educated adult understanding" is quite the loophole, eh? If we do find such people, you would likely say that, despite what they think, the education was not done properly, or that they were misunderstanding it despite a good education. (This, based on you continually telling me that I have not thought about what I say I've thought about to the degree that I say I've thought about it, and, therefore, not having the understanding of it that I say I have.)

But, all in all, you're right. The majority of adults do not change their faith. Based on all the cases I know personally, the biggest group of those who change are probably the ones who did not believe, or did not believe anything specific and/or strongly, and embraced one faith or another after quitting a drug addiction and/or going to prison. But no, I don't know anyone who was a strong believer as an adult, then stopped.

Of course, I'll still hold that they are wrong. But I'll grant that they seriously considered their faith from an adult perspective - and probably agree on some of the things they reject.

One point of clarity - I acknowledge that you have thought a lot about faith - I totally get it. What I insist on is that you have a short-circuit in your thinking that consistently misses an (otherwise) inevitable conclusion.
The elephant was the example I was going to take on and haven't had time to (and don't now). Obviously, if you think I've meant that you haven't even thought - when you know you have, then I see why you would speak of arrogance.

The thing is, it's not an inevitable conclusion. Not in an objective, this-is-the-one-and-only-way-reality-works, kind of way. I'm not even the only person on the Watch who thinks this. Certainly, there have been others out there in the world. And you're no more alone in your view than I am. It's the way our psyches are satisfied.

I can't imagine why you have such a problem with this word.

Psy·che   /ˈsaɪki/ Show Spelled[sahy-kee] Show IPA
–noun
1.Classical Mythology. a personification of the soul, which in the form of a beautiful girl was loved by Eros.
2.(lowercase) the human soul, spirit, or mind.
3.(lowercase) Psychology, Psychoanalysis. the mental or psychological structure of a person, esp. as a motive force.
4.Neoplatonism. the second emanation of the One, regarded as a universal consciousness and as the animating principle of the world.
5.a female given name.

Basically, all the things that make you you, and make me me. The sum of our fears, hopes, etc., that determine the ways each of us can, and can't, and must perceive things.

-You must be eternal. Your psyche cannot tolerate the thought of an end to you.
-There must be one-and-only-one answer to everything. Your psyche cannot accept that more than one might be equally valid. It flounders in such a setting.

And so, you found a belief system that satisfies these requirements of your psyche. (I'm sure Orthodoxy satisfies other needs of your psyche. I suppose other belief systems could have, but it's possible that it is the only one that meets all of your needs. It certainly seems to be the best.)

OTOH
-I don't require immortality of any sort. I likely wouldn't refuse it if given the choice. (Depending on the conditions, both in how I acquired it, and its nature once I got it.) But oblivion is no problem.
-The idea that there is one-and-only-one legitimate path to much of anything is so bizarre, unnecessary, and possibly reprehensible, that I'm sometimes stunned that anyone can embrace it.

And so, my beliefs reflect all that.

Your beliefs cannot have a reality with no ultimate meaning that has any meaning. Mine can. And you are not allowed to define "inevitable conclusion" in such a way that only conclusions that agree with your beliefs are inevitable.


As for the elephant analogy, please, don't bother. Analogies are only good for just so much. There's no such thing as a perfect analogy. Even without your help, I can think of many things that differentiate a charging elephant and the implications of death without an afterlife.

It's not as involved a topic for me as it is for you. For you, death and the afterlife are the point of all this. The reason. You do things now based on what you believe will happen then. And you believe that even then there are things that happen, and need to be done. Obviously, you will put more thought into certain ideas than I will.

For me, it is only the fact that this will all end for me. Yes, that means no ultimate meaning. My life, and many things within it, mean a lot to me. But to the universe and eternity, nothing means anything. I would be devestated if my children died. The universe and eternity would not even know about it. I will be gone some day, and forgotten not particularly long after that. The universe and eternity don't even know I'm here now.

But that doesn't mean I don't, or shouldn't, or can't find meaning for everything while I'm here. Your insistence that I couldn't if I thought about it, or that the fact that I do is proof of a short-circuit in my thinking is... Well, yeah, arrogant and insulting. It is only incompatible with your beliefs. Your psyche.

rusmeister wrote: Another case in point.

I like to think I devoted a fair amount of study and consideration to the question. You may of course disagree, since it didn't lead to the conclusion you believe is the only "rational" one.

--A

Avatar wrote:

rusmeister wrote: Another case in point.

I like to think I devoted a fair amount of study and consideration to the question. You may of course disagree, since it didn't lead to the conclusion you believe is the only "rational" one.

--A

It's not that, Av. It's that I, not being Catholic, nevertheless have a fair idea how extraordinarily deep Catholic history and theology are, and know for a fact that there is no way a 16 or 17-year-old could learn, understand and penetrate it. It's like suggesting a similar grasp of the entire history of science, up to and including quantum theory (and I see theology as a deeper thing than physics). Sure, a well-educated teen can get the basic ideas and beginnings of those things. But know enough to be certain that they are all wrong? Not a chance.

I wasn't certain that they were wrong, I just couldn't bring myself to have a blind faith in their claims.

--A

Fist and Faith wrote:The thing is, it's not an inevitable conclusion. Not in an objective, this-is-the-one-and-only-way-reality-works, kind of way. I'm not even the only person on the Watch who thinks this. Certainly, there have been others out there in the world. And you're no more alone in your view than I am. It's the way our psyches are satisfied.

I can't imagine why you have such a problem with this word.

Psy·che   /ˈsaɪki/ Show Spelled[sahy-kee] Show IPA
–noun
1.Classical Mythology. a personification of the soul, which in the form of a beautiful girl was loved by Eros.
2.(lowercase) the human soul, spirit, or mind.
3.(lowercase) Psychology, Psychoanalysis. the mental or psychological structure of a person, esp. as a motive force.
4.Neoplatonism. the second emanation of the One, regarded as a universal consciousness and as the animating principle of the world.
5.a female given name.

Basically, all the things that make you you, and make me me. The sum of our fears, hopes, etc., that determine the ways each of us can, and can't, and must perceive things.

-You must be eternal. Your psyche cannot tolerate the thought of an end to you.
-There must be one-and-only-one answer to everything. Your psyche cannot accept that more than one might be equally valid. It flounders in such a setting.

And so, you found a belief system that satisfies these requirements of your psyche. (I'm sure Orthodoxy satisfies other needs of your psyche. I suppose other belief systems could have, but it's possible that it is the only one that meets all of your needs. It certainly seems to be the best.)

OTOH
-I don't require immortality of any sort. I likely wouldn't refuse it if given the choice. (Depending on the conditions, both in how I acquired it, and its nature once I got it.) But oblivion is no problem.
-The idea that there is one-and-only-one legitimate path to much of anything is so bizarre, unnecessary, and possibly reprehensible, that I'm sometimes stunned that anyone can embrace it.

And so, my beliefs reflect all that.

Your beliefs cannot have a reality with no ultimate meaning that has any meaning. Mine can. And you are not allowed to define "inevitable conclusion" in such a way that only conclusions that agree with your beliefs are inevitable.


As for the elephant analogy, please, don't bother. Analogies are only good for just so much. There's no such thing as a perfect analogy. Even without your help, I can think of many things that differentiate a charging elephant and the implications of death without an afterlife.

It's not as involved a topic for me as it is for you. For you, death and the afterlife are the point of all this. The reason. You do things now based on what you believe will happen then. And you believe that even then there are things that happen, and need to be done. Obviously, you will put more thought into certain ideas than I will.

For me, it is only the fact that this will all end for me. Yes, that means no ultimate meaning. My life, and many things within it, mean a lot to me. But to the universe and eternity, nothing means anything. I would be devestated if my children died. The universe and eternity would not even know about it. I will be gone some day, and forgotten not particularly long after that. The universe and eternity don't even know I'm here now.

But that doesn't mean I don't, or shouldn't, or can't find meaning for everything while I'm here. Your insistence that I couldn't if I thought about it, or that the fact that I do is proof of a short-circuit in my thinking is... Well, yeah, arrogant and insulting. It is only incompatible with your beliefs. Your psyche.

I don't have a problem with the term "psyche". I have a problem with your assumptions revolving around the psyche, the first of which is that a person's psyche determines what they can, and can't believe. I happen to believe that both reason and experience can modify that, and that the psyche itself is not the prime determining factor of what one can or cannot believe. It is tantamount to saying "I believe what I am comfortable with", which is an antithesis to believing what is true - what happens to actually be the case.

If my objections to death as something truly abnormal and unnatural are based on logic and not "my psyche", then the idea of my objections being merely personal fall apart, and while my psyche happens to agree, the logic is independent. If my psyche disagreed, it would be because the logical conclusion was unpleasant - the personal attitude that would wish to ignore the logical conclusion - which I suspect to be the case with you, and which would explain how you ground your thinking in the present and treat (what is "now") the future as unimportant, allowing you to see meaning "now" (a time which is actually meaningless) and to not care about it "later". But to anyone who can think outside of the limitations of the moment, "later" would be just as significant as "now", and while "now" would remain significant - the moment of action and choice - eternity - that which is immutable and independent of the "now" would become the thing that gives "now" any meaning, and you can only speak of meaning in any meaningful sense if it is objective. Otherwise, we can share no common thought or experience whatsoever, and insanity is the result. The "now" without the eternity is meaningless - even "now". It becomes total gibberish to anyone else - most obviously to those whose lives spanned different "nows".

You have used the things you believe in as the foundation of a tower. Naturally, if that foundation is removed, the tower collapses.

But I have built another tower. It does not have the same foundation yours has, and is constructed using a different architecture. The fact that your foundation is not at its base is not relevant in the slightest. My house does not have the same materials in its foundation that the Empire State Building has, yet it seems to function just fine. Your insistence that the Empire State Building is the only possible building is crazy.

As is your belief that death is abnormal and unnatural. By what definition of the words "abnormal" and "unnatural" is death either???

Is birth? Is breathing? Eating? Puberty? Is any other part of our existence, other than its end?

And these beliefs are not based on logic. You've said this often enough. Faith must be the result of special revelation. It cannot be proven, because then it would not be faith. Your psyche told you, even as other parts of you objected, that this and that were truth. Then you found things that justified them. Things that allowed the "logical" part of you (see below) to accept what you could not help but believe anyway. It was tearing you apart to be at war with yourself, so you found ways to reconcile with yourself.

Which is easy enough for either of us to do. Both of us can and have found things that justify what we feel to be true. Even the KKK members do this. Any words can be twisted, or taken out of context. Even ignored.

Are we made in God's image? In what way? He was walking around the Garden of Eden, right? They heard him and hid. He seems to have been a humanoid. It certainly wasn't that we were capable of reason. Difficult to reason without the knowledge of right and wrong, which Adam and Eve did not have when they were made in God's image. So who argues which side of that? Who argues something else? (I do not argue either, since I don't believe any of them ever existed.) Talk about faulty translations; or how we must believe what this or that authority tells us it means; or whatever else you want to say to justify whatever your beliefs on the matter are. Someone else - someone who has studied ancient Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic and whatever other languages just as thoroughly as you have - will have a different belief about it.


You see... The thing is, I think you are every bit as stark-raving mad as you think I am. I find your "logic" to be so far from logic that I can't believe you try passing it off as such. As you think of mine. It's okay, though. We have our fun, eh?

Avatar wrote:I wasn't certain that they were wrong, I just couldn't bring myself to have a blind faith in their claims.

--A

And no Orthodox or Catholic priest would tell you that you must have a blind faith. (They might say that a person who simply chooses to believe "blindly", if you will - the act of believing without proof - is more blessed, but not that you must accept everything without explanation or understanding.) In those Churches, at any rate, they actually require most people to undergo a period of instruction before accepting Baptism - so that people understand what they are accepting, and so ensuring that it is not "blind" acceptance at all. It's referred to as catechism, and the would-be convert as a catechumen. (See the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in the NT for an example of instruction before baptizing.) This process can last weeks - or months, until the person fully understands what they are doing and all their questions have been answered. So far from blind acceptance - in the Churches I mentioned the exact opposite is the truth, and "blind acceptance" is a widely accepted and successful propaganda tactic that is false.

Hahaha, fine, any faith.

--A

Fist and Faith wrote:You have used the things you believe in as the foundation of a tower. Naturally, if that foundation is removed, the tower collapses.

But I have built another tower. It does not have the same foundation yours has, and is constructed using a different architecture. The fact that your foundation is not at its base is not relevant in the slightest. My house does not have the same materials in its foundation that the Empire State Building has, yet it seems to function just fine. Your insistence that the Empire State Building is the only possible building is crazy.

As is your belief that death is abnormal and unnatural. By what definition of the words "abnormal" and "unnatural" is death either???

Is birth? Is breathing? Eating? Puberty? Is any other part of our existence, other than its end?

And these beliefs are not based on logic. You've said this often enough. Faith must be the result of special revelation. It cannot be proven, because then it would not be faith. Your psyche told you, even as other parts of you objected, that this and that were truth. Then you found things that justified them. Things that allowed the "logical" part of you (see below) to accept what you could not help but believe anyway. It was tearing you apart to be at war with yourself, so you found ways to reconcile with yourself.

Which is easy enough for either of us to do. Both of us can and have found things that justify what we feel to be true. Even the KKK members do this. Any words can be twisted, or taken out of context. Even ignored.

Are we made in God's image? In what way? He was walking around the Garden of Eden, right? They heard him and hid. He seems to have been a humanoid. It certainly wasn't that we were capable of reason. Difficult to reason without the knowledge of right and wrong, which Adam and Eve did not have when they were made in God's image. So who argues which side of that? Who argues something else? (I do not argue either, since I don't believe any of them ever existed.) Talk about faulty translations; or how we must believe what this or that authority tells us it means; or whatever else you want to say to justify whatever your beliefs on the matter are. Someone else - someone who has studied ancient Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic and whatever other languages just as thoroughly as you have - will have a different belief about it.


You see... The thing is, I think you are every bit as stark-raving mad as you think I am. I find your "logic" to be so far from logic that I can't believe you try passing it off as such. As you think of mine. It's okay, though. We have our fun, eh?

It seems that in most of our conversations, concepts are mixed and matched, and I'll concede that this may be a two-way street.
When I refer to logic, I do not mean that everything I believe is logically deducible. I mean that some basic things - like the fact of death and the question of meaning are logically deducible. beliefs, on the other hand are a reaction - which certainly may be based on logic but are not themselves logically provable. I have invoked logic here not to say that faith is a product of logic, but to say that regarding the question of death there are some logical thoughts - thoughts grounded in logic - that appear to completely escape you.

Of course you have built another tower. I am not saying that there can be only one tower in that sense - so do not claim that the ESB is the only building. I am saying that the tower can be founded on concrete or on sand. When the earthquake or tsunami of death strikes, both of our houses will be shaken to the foundations, and the question is, whose foundation can stand?

As to natural, yes, the most of other parts of our existence are natural. The things involving pain, breakdown and death are not. That some of these are may be attributed to belief - worldview. Others have definite empirical clues which, while supporting belief, do not spring from belief but from observation - both of self and of others. That childbirth is painful (and the pain being unnatural) is explained to my by my worldview and acceptance of authoritative explanation; but that death is unnatural is explained by observation of human reaction. Your own expressed attitude happens to be unquestionably an exception to how the rest of humanity reacts to death. I think the overwhelming majority of humanity to be right, and the modern intellectual exceptions such as yours to be wrong. Most people really do cry or shout "No, no!" (and not laughter, joy and dancing and cries of "Yes, yes!") on the death of a loved one. They really do see the end of both themselves and others as a horrible thing. They instinctively feel or consciously see that it is something that ought not to be. It happens consistently, and is "natural" in that sense, but that does not change the near-universal human reaction to it (with your notable exception) as a cause for deep grief, with both a feeling and desire that it is not right; that it ought not to be - and so is unnatural in a different sense.

On God's image - it is dangerous, I think to insist on Biblical literalism - which is a very western reading of translated scripture, and certainly does not normally access the cultural knowledge of how a Hebrew of ancient times would have read the text. However, we would certainly agree that there are important ways in which we are, in our modern, English-language-based understanding, made to be like God. These would be not (only) physical characteristics, but mental and spiritual ones as well - the gift of reason and free will no less than the gift of sight, which we may use or abuse.

Finally, on translators, certainly they might hold different worldviews than mine. But on what we must professionally agree upon - the things that are common to our profession, they could hardly disagree. No translator could say that knowledge of culture (or lack thereof) has no impact on the understanding of a text. It would take an ignorant person with no knowledge of foreign languages and cultures to say that (as many Baptists did in my youth). And if they had studied a particular culture, they would be forced to agree on certain facts about that culture and how a text would have to be understood within the context of that culture. They couldn't simply hold any view they liked, or that was comfortable with their psyches. They would have to contradict their expert knowledge to do so.

Huh, thought I posted this morning -- must've not hit "submit" in my rush out the door....

Rus, I think you're mischaracterizing people's reactions to grief. Yes, people who are losing a loved one to death will cry and shout, "No, no!" But I think what they're reacting to is their own personal grief in losing a loved one from their lives. It's not that capital-D Death is wrong -- it's that the loved one has gone to a place where the grief-stricken person cannot follow (right away).

My impression of Christian belief has always been that Jesus died for our sins not so that (physical) death would end, but so that we wouldn't all be in eternal torment *after* death. Are you saying my impression is erroneous?

Of course we feel it ought not to be...we're pretty self-centered. If we're honest, our grief is for ourselves. The object of our grief no longer has any problems.

Personally, I found the knowledge that all things must end to be something of a comfort to me in my fairly recent losses of family members.

--A

aliantha wrote:Huh, thought I posted this morning -- must've not hit "submit" in my rush out the door....

Rus, I think you're mischaracterizing people's reactions to grief. Yes, people who are losing a loved one to death will cry and shout, "No, no!" But I think what they're reacting to is their own personal grief in losing a loved one from their lives. It's not that capital-D Death is wrong -- it's that the loved one has gone to a place where the grief-stricken person cannot follow (right away).

My impression of Christian belief has always been that Jesus died for our sins not so that (physical) death would end, but so that we wouldn't all be in eternal torment *after* death. Are you saying my impression is erroneous?

On the last, partially, "yes". The object of the Incarnation was nothing less than enabling the complete reversal of the fall. This means an eternal physical life. God LIKES matter - He made it! Thus, life itself is to be completely restored - not just some disembodied spirit form of existence, but one that is also material. Death is decidedly an enemy - the last enemy. You'll see under some Orthodox cross depictions a skull and crossbones. It's not a "Jolly Roger" - it's symbolic of Christ's trampling down death by death - the complete victory over death. So yes, death is a great wrong, but it is a consequence that was brought about by the turning away in seeking the source of life from God to self.

Turning to the first part of your post, it seems rather strange to think that most people would be satisfied with 'following the departed loved one'. What most people clearly want is the return of the loved one, and a continuation of existence, and this is revealed not only in common sense and knowledge, but in legends, myths, fairy tales, and all of the deepest desires of humanity. So yes, the attitude DOES see death as wrong, even if inevitable. People WANT to avoid it, and they want their loved ones to avoid it, too. They don't want it to happen in the first place., and when it does happen, they want its effects to be canceled. (This seems to me like "Captain Obvious", but evidently not.)

Avatar wrote:Of course we feel it ought not to be...we're pretty self-centered. If we're honest, our grief is for ourselves. The object of our grief no longer has any problems.

Personally, I found the knowledge that all things must end to be something of a comfort to me in my fairly recent losses of family members.

--A

I agree that part of our grief is for ourselves. But to suggest that that is all it is is to deny love for the other, as the other, altogether.

There seems to be logic lacking in saying that "They died. Oh well, we'll all die, so I guess it doesn't matter." It is inconsistent with what we desire now. We desire them to be alive and for us to be alive. What we really want is their (uncorrupted) restoration.

At any rate, I think I have reasonably established that death is something that nearly all humans throughout history have felt ought not to be. Once we agree that death is not, by the general mass of humanity, perceived to be "natural" in that sense of what ought to be, we can proceed further.

One thing that Christianity (if I may not be required to repeat the caveats that I mean Orthodox Christianity first of all, and other forms insofar as they agree) has right is that death is an enemy.

Avatar wrote:Hahaha, fine, any faith.

--A

You could if you chose. It is all a matter of choice. You can choose at any time, and are choosing, even now. And you can still change your choice if you choose. (Note how far this is from fundamentalist concepts of being 'saved' once and for all)

I spent some years (in my 30's) telling myself that I could not just "press a belief button" and believe; that I needed 'proof'. I eventually discovered that I was always free to choose, even in spite of 'lack of proof', and I ultimately did press the belief button and found that I always could have done so.

Rus wrote:It is inconsistent with what we desire now.

Sure, it's inconsistent with our desires. That's why I said we're selfish. It's not inconsistent with reality. Of course somebodies death matters. But it only matters to us. It upsets the smooth running of our universe.

Rus wrote:...is that death is an enemy.

It's not an enemy. We don't like it, sure. Afterall, who wants to die? It's the end of the world for each of us. But it's not an enemy. It's not out to get you. Any feeling that it is is mere anthropomorphism.

Rus wrote:I ultimately did press the belief button and found that I always could have done so.

So one day you just decided that you would believe in god? Why?

--A

rusmeister wrote:So yes, the attitude DOES see death as wrong, even if inevitable. People WANT to avoid it, and they want their loved ones to avoid it, too. They don't want it to happen in the first place., and when it does happen, they want its effects to be canceled. (This seems to me like "Captain Obvious", but evidently not.)

Evidently. Because it seems like "Captain Obvious" to me that most folks understand that death is natural as well as inevitable. But maybe that's because I've spent the last couple of decades observing nature -- instead of spending them reading a bunch of guys who use a lot of rhetoric and obfuscation to justify their own world view. (Kidding! )

Oh, and thanks but no -- I won't want this body back later. It'll be pretty gross by then....

rusmeister wrote:
At any rate, I think I have reasonably established that death is something that nearly all humans throughout history have felt ought not to be. Once we agree that death is not, by the general mass of humanity, perceived to be "natural" in that sense of what ought to be, we can proceed further.

Ah, but if we look at world literature as evidence, we will see that there are plenty of tales in which the conclusion, "Death is necessary, if scary" is drawn. The Grimm's Fairy Tale about Godfather Death leaps to mind as an example of an older version of this. There is also plenty of Greek philosophy relating to this, which even states that one ought not to fear Death (Socrates' defense in Plato's Apology leaps to mind, or Epicurus' statement: "So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since the former it is not, and the latter are no more.") Ultimately, I think Death as mostly been viewed as natural... just at times undesirable.