Eternal Life (thanks, but no thanks)

Hi Mod, If Leonardo De Caprio could do it why not us...?Apparently God has less of a budget to facilitate your request than the movie Titanic.I would say, on a serious note, why not...? IF, as admited by jano, we have no clue as to what God is preparing for us in the afterlife, THEN limiting His abilities to not being able to take requests - like yours - is just an assertion. In either case neither of you has any evidence to the contrary. God could very well give all of us the option to control our afterlives. Maybe what is refered to as "eternal bliss" IS "permanent death "...? Would you agree though that these concepts of heaven are meerly interpretations of scripture and could very well be completely wrong?They have been interpreted wrong before, this could very well be the case for heaven and eternity also. So why would you have a dilemma with Gods options when your dilemma seems to be with peoples interpretations of scriptures? And if this was the case, that you could do this, or that eternal bliss actually means permanent death - as interpreted by a large group of people(for arguments sake lets say a group equal in size to those who believe as ICANT and jano do) - would the dilemma cease?Would you be comforatble placing trust on other peoples interpretations and thus ending your original dilemma that there are no options?As I see it the reason you feel there are no options is that peoples interpretation of scriptures says so, yet if people interpreted it in another way that would favor your desires would you just accept that and end the dilemma?

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

How can one have eternal "life" when one is dead...? I believe it's eternal "salvation", yes? "Life" is just the way it is said in a conversational sense, but does not make any logical sense. By definition alone if you are dead, end of life.Thus my appeal to your better judgment in not assuming that scriptural interpretation of what eternity is said to mean is actually correct. Eternal bliss, eternal salvation, eternity, could very well be the end...for eternity. "Life" is just a semantical element added, assumingly, for lack of a better word. Again, the added bonus of the word "life" doesn't equate it to "life" as establish in a temporal sense. If you are dead life is over.Eternity in heaven does not mean "life" in heaven. Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

* Highlighting used to sum up postion.The changes you speak of and the areas which can be controled are only functionable if one has a sensory system that can receive information and make changes accordingly. Without such a system no such change, whether "too much" or "not much", can take place. If it is only the consciousness that survives it will not have a temporal body, or presumable another host, to derive information so, IMO, the consciousness will remain unchangable for eternity. You will only have what you left with.At that point I feel that it will just be a regurgitation of what one has all ready collected throughout their temporal existence, and I fear this will lead to one boring eternity.Thus I side with Mod that no other alternative, other than sheer mystery and wishful thinking, is better than oblivion.My fear is that there IS a conscious afterlife that is neither what religions have explained nor what athiest thought it would be like. Perhaps there will still be a debate about whether the afterlife we all find ourselves in IS the one that god described or if it is totally different from what was said in scriptures. I would be curious to see the arguments from the religious apologetics then. I believe, having been on this forum for a year now, that many here would be more than happy to debate this topic for an eternity.

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

Well now you stumped me. I truly see no way around having something more than just consciousness. Death in the temporal sense is physically observable and the results of such death or visible. The body, or temporal host, will rot in the ground, if anything survives it could only be consciousness. Well maybe it only makes sense to me, but, with the removal of the temporal body/host also goes the sensory system that the conscious mind used to gather info. Keeping that in mind, unless we are given another "similar" body/host, functionally the conscious mind will not work in any way similar to our temporal existance.Of course we can adjust our concepts to include a body/host but then I will refer back to my previous point which... But, speculation aside, if the afterlife does not take place in a physical material world how could you find it "possible for the afterlife to behave in such a way as to be very similar to how we experience things in our temporal bodies."...? If you are looking for evidence other than deductive logic, I have none.
You are right, I will not be able to show that this is necessary the case. But then again, I have no way of showing you that an afterlife is necessarily the case either. I think that the burden of "theoretical proof"(for lack of a better term) would fall on you to provide reason for this alternative to be similary in anyway to an experience like the one we have in our temporal lives.- Oni

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

Well I would not say I know anything for sure, I highly doubt there is any afterlife at all, but anything is possible. However, if we start with the premise that there IS an afterlife, and IF as you claim there could be another "host" that functions like the old one we had, then there is no "after" life, since this would simply be the same "life" in another "host". Kinda suggestive of reincarnation.Not that this senario isn't possible either, but then we are not keeping with what was proposed to me by Mod in message 67, This then takes us to the point that "life" itself is eternal and we are just experiencing it in the temporal sense now and it never truly ends. If this is the case then we will experience all we experience now, before we were born into the temporal life, and forever. Since I personally do not have any memory of "before" I was born I can only assume I will not have any memory after I die. So there is a clear distinction between what we experience in our temporal life and before/after that temporal "life".But this side-tracked our discussion so I will end it there. If the "if" you are refering to is "if the afterlife does not take place in the physical material world...", you are right, I have no known knowledge but I was under the impression that that was the original understanding of it. Are you suggesting that it can be a physical material world-type afterlife? Ok. Well at this point I think I have lost sight of what is being described as an "afterlife". If it is just going to be another universe, part of a multi-verse, with it's own laws of physics, as material as the one we are in now, with the same functioning "host", then we are not describing anything different from temporal existance. It would simply be "life" just in another place. This was not my concept of what we were speculating on, even though we don't know anything about it, if we are simply going to describe "life" the way we understand it here on Earth, just somewhere else, then I'm totally for that and see no reason not to be since I have enjoyed my experience here. Well yes now that you've been more specific I can see how your description would be enjoyable. But just note that you really draw no distinction between "temporal" life and the "after" life in your senario. Well, I would say that your senario has a lot more support than mine since I am currently experiencing what you're describing in this particular universe. You are describing life in a new host in another universe, my idea was just a surviving consciousness. You're idea we currently experience in this universe, my idea has never been witnessed.

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky