Zappa.com

well, I don't know if Zappa ever used the word 'atheist' to describe his (non)-beliefs. But, I am sure as hell he didn't believe in God...

_________________
"bit of nostalgia for the old folks."

you're a dumbass

_________________

i'm totally spiritual

yep, and im a believer in stupidity. you can always rely on someone being and idiot.

Not sure I get ya Batchain.

The idea that Frank, moments from death suddenly accepts religion is right out of the movies.
When people have cancer like Frank's it slowly eats away at you. Without getting too much into the details, people generally fall into a deep sleep before they actually die. This maybe days or weeks. The body shuts down. The lungs become water-logged which is where the saying 'death rattle' comes from. Eventually they stop breathing and pass.

Frank's illness was a long terminal one and I strongly doubt from my experience of long terminal cancer that he was wide awake until the very end.
Maybe I've misunderstood this thread but that was the impression I was getting.

It's quite possible Frank was an agnostic. He didn't believe in a Cloud-Guy with a big book, persay, but that doesn't nessecarily mean he didn't believe in a higher power. He might have just despised man-made, fallible religion. Anyone shed some light on this?

_________________
"Too weird to live, too rare to die"-Hunter S. Thompson

That guy that channels Frank would know the answer.

_________________

Girl, not guy.

_________________
"Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, and don't kid yourself" - FZ

That was a guy, not a girl. He just had a girly name.

_________________

Just my opinion - anything is possible. But it's highly doubtful.

It was Lesley Jane. LOL

_________________

I can't imagine Frank suddenly bounding up and getting religion. That's a lot of shit.

But medically you're off, Ringo. What many hear in different instances and call a "death rattle" is the remaining air in the bronchioles expelled through mucus as they collapse. Sometimes there are several audible "rattles", sometimes there are none and, sometimes the person isn't dead yet.
But unless there is strong sedation or the person is in a coma there is no "deep sleep".

_________________
<------PhotoArtWerk by debutante_daisy http://www.facebook.com/BatchainTheMovie

Well maybe things are done differently over there but I talk from my experience in a hospice for terminal cancer.
I guess also it depends on the type of cancer. In my experience, the end is near when the patent is always sleeping. Dropping off all the time. Eventually they drop off into what I called a deep sleep. They just don't wake up. It's often here that at that stage morphine is used. One could argue that it's the morphine keeping them in that stage but it seems to be that the morphine isn't really used until the end, perhaps to make the passing easier, some may suggest to make the passing quicker.
Either way, there is certainly a lot of sleeping involved with the later stage of terminal cancer in my experience. How would you describe the final stages?

_________________

_________________
<------PhotoArtWerk by debutante_daisy http://www.facebook.com/BatchainTheMovie

Zappa's perspective was pretty clear. He didn't claim to know everything, felt that some spiritual power or significance might be... sort of agnostic in that approach, but he completely rejected deities and crap like the trinity and jesus and most religion. He might have liked Bhuddism...

Anyway, you can waste all day discussing the LABELS for his thoughts, but his thoughts are clear, as you can see in the following quote:

Here is an excerpt from another interview in which he is quite bluntly asked about his views on "life after death" :

------------------------
Rob Samler:
What do you think happens to us when we die?

Frank Zappa:
Dust.

Rob Samler:
That's pretty much what I think. We become worm food.

Frank Zappa:
Yeah, unless of course you're cremated... BUT.. I will say, and this doesn't put you in the realm of metaphysics, that something animates you while you are alive. There's an electrochemical process that animates this bag of shit that everybody has to drag around, OK? So it is not impossible that at the point where the electro-chemical process that's motivating the bag of shit ceases to be strong enough to make that bag of shit move around, that energy may be exchanged, and may dissipate and have an existence of its own without the bag of shit. I wouldn't want to extrapolate that into the world of ghosts and goblins...

Rob Samler:
Right. I mean, it's hard to say, since...

Frank Zappa:
Well, I believe that those energies and processes exist. I just don't think that they've been adequately described or adequately named yet, because people are too willing to make it all into something that supports a religious theory of one flavor or another. If you start defining these things in nuts-and-bolts scientific terms, people reject it because it's not fun, y'know. It takes some of the romance out of being dead...

Rob Samler:
(laughs) Right.

Frank Zappa:
...because of people's desires to have eternal life and to extend their influence from beyond the grave...all that Houdini type stuff... but basically, I think when you're dead...you're dead. It comes with the territory.

All:
(laughter)
----------------

Shades of Rene Descartes' Dualist approach. Interesting... Where the "mind" and "body" as separate entities are now "something that animates you" and the "bag of shit". Classic Frank!

_________________
Let's hear it again for the London Philharmonic Orchestra!

WHAT WOULD FRANK SAY .
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT
WHO CARES WHAT HIS REAL BELIEFS WERE . THE FACT REMAINS HIS MUSIC IS THE BEST






WRAP'EM UP ROLL'EM OUT GET THEM OUT OF MY WAY

Any person trying to determine what any other person should think or believe is exactly the kind of person that Frank Zappa and others have warned us about. Frank's example encourages me to think for myself and leave others to think for themselves. Maybe he found some answers in his last moments. I only hope he found peace or whatever he may have sought.

nicely put.

_________________
One two, buckle my shoe!

I've always admired the term "Escaped Catholic." Every Catholic I've shared that with laughed their ass off.

_________________
.

george carlin once related his background as "Catholic, until I reached the age of Reason."

_________________
Let's hear it again for the London Philharmonic Orchestra!

You know, you can believe in God and not believe those things. In fact, that's Buddhism and Hinduism right there.

Believing in God doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with religion. In fact, IMO religion can be like the static on your telephone line...it confuses the issue.

.

"When people put all their faith in the insulation of religion, that that is going to guarantee them a ticket to heaven, peace on earth, of whatever it is, so long as they follow these prescriptions these religions preach, it sets up blockades to progress, it sets up blockades to all kinds of creative things happening which is what I think being alive is all about."

-Frank Zappa

Franks music is great, if it be he was a Christian or not!
But i would personlay love it if he was a christian (as i am) for I can have many discussions with him, when i "Rise up to heaven". I belive Frank belived in god, BUT i also belive he didnt want others to know about how or if he was religous or not because, he wants people to care about the MUSIC not the religon.

_________________
There Once lived a man named Frank, he originally was a drummer bu picked up a guitar. The world has never been the same...