Eternal Life (thanks, but no thanks)

Allow me to ask the important question as far as the topic is concerned, will there be a procession of events, a sequence of things that happen? Will my thoughts travel from one idea to the next? Or does everything freeze like in a painting?If the former, can you see a way out of the dilemma I outlined?

I know that feeling. I have written probably three times the number of posts that my post count shows. Most are thankfully lost to the ether. Freud said something similar (I hope that doesn't worry you )

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After all, one's own death is beyond imagining, and whenever we try to imagine it we can see that we really survive as spectators. Thus, the dictum could be dared in the psychoanalytic school: at bottom, nobody believes in his own death. Or, and this is the same: in his unconscious, every one of us is convinced of his immortality.

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I know that isn't exactly your point, but I thought you might find it interesting anyway. Moving on - it seems we need to get clear on how you define your 'self'. This is a very difficult task, that has kept philosophers busy for centuries.Maybe you think it is the soul, or the brain or the personality or something else. You mention that the common metaphysical thread is the 'self', but what is that thread made of? Well perhaps that isn't actually too important: personally more important than 'self', I think, is getting to grips with 'What matters in survival?'. If have a massive brain damaging accident and I still have experiential continuity but I have lost Mod's personality (same memories/goals/beliefs/desires etc) - I don't have what matters to me in survival. Don't get me wrong - I basically agree with you. However, I find myself wondering about what personality I would have in a million years and I'm thinking - if I change over time it will be more different than I was ten years ago...by a lot. In fact - if you showed me who I was in a million years and said see Mod survives his bodily death... I might be tempted to say 'So what?', since it doesn't give me what matters (all traces of this Mod have long gone).It is like the analogy of the car I put forward earlier, that over time gets all of its parts replaced. There is a continuum of car-entity, but after thirty years it is made up of entirely different parts so can it be the same car? Can we really say that the car we now have is thirty years old?I appreciate you spending the time to think about it, and having the courage to express yourself. It is a difficult, unintuitive subject, and I was kind of hoping to get a few people to really think about what matters to them and what immortality or eternal life or what have you might actually be like and whether or not it is any good.I would like to close on another couple of thoughts.1. You can imagine a meeting that happens without you being present, even though you have to 'spectate in the minds eye' to do so. As such you can imagine a universe without Bluejay.2. You can certainly have a feel for what it is like to not exist - just imagine the universe ten years before you were born. Or even during any period of run-of-the-mill unconsciousness.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

So as punishment for the accident of birth we will have to suffer eternal existence whether we want it or not. Against our will. Some free-will that is. Your obsession with gold paving is bizzarre. Substances are valuable because they are rare. Take away the rarity and you take away the value. How noble it must make you feel to know that you are merely fulfilling God's wishes, with no thought for your own greatness, as you progress down the path that leads you to "be like Him". I shake my fist at no-one. I merely ask not to be punished with eternal existence for the accident of birth.I merely ask not to be punished for that which I am not responsible for.I merely ask for justice. Is your God not just ICANT? Apparently not.

I actually have some recent personal experience of just such a case as this.The person in question is a friend of a friend but someone whom I have known a long time. The person in question has a brain condition and is most definitely not the same person that they once were. Personality, social awareness, attitudes, emotional responses etc. etc. all seem very different. Not obviously damaged as such...just....well....different. Quite disturbingly they even intersperse recollected events told in the 'I' (e.g. I once went to Blackpool) with the past tense third person (e.g. she used to enjoy that).It is frankly tragic to witness even though we were never personally close.But the person is question seems quite unperturbed. They see no great loss in the person they once were no longer being present as, despite recognising this absence, as far as they are concerned 'I' exists quite happily.Bizzarre.I am not sure exactly what this adds to your discussion but it does seem relevant somehow.

Hi Straggler, Who said you had free will concerning eternal existence?Not me, and not God. I didn't realize I had an obsession for gold, or material things.My wife would disagree with you as I have given away a lot more than we have used for ourselves in this life.I think the gold is just there because it is something valued here. To try to get us to understand that it is not important at all. Actually just the opposite.I am a very proud man with many talents, and have accomplished much in my lifetime.But to be so helpless as to not be able to do anything to procure my eternal destiny other that throw myself on the mercy of the court of God is hard to accept. Providing your assumption that eternity with God would be punishment. You will get justice.I don't want justice.I want and have God's grace and mercy, even though I deserve justice.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Precisely. I do not have free-will regarding existence. Full stop.Any free-will granted to me God within that context is pretty darned limited to the point of being all but useless. Well let's hope for the sake of your creations that you maintain this humility while you are lording it up in your eternal realm being "as Him". Well neither you nor anyone else has been able to demonstrate that Mod's dilemma (eternal change = horror AND eternal stagnation = horror) is actually not a dilemma. How?
The horror of eternal existence as punishment for the accident of birth?
How is that justice? Please explain. So you seek more than you deserve? Well I guess that is true for all of us to an extent.But "Seek that which you do not deserve" hardly seems fitting as an overall expression of the Christian faith does it?

That does seem to be a summary of Paul's of Tarsus' theology, to be honest. In crude, more lengthier form:The Lord gave us the Law.
We cannot live up to the Law.
The punishment for breaking the Law is Death.
Jesus did live within the Law.
He does not deserve Death.
Yet Jesus is put to Death.
This Death is so that those that do deserve Death do not need to have it.
If only they accept the sacrifice that Jesus made for them.I capitalise 'law' and 'death' because different people seem to understand them in different ways and I don't really want to get to in depth into discussions of interpreting the texts Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Hi, Modulous. I think I would feel differently.But, your basic dilemma seems to be real: either you always remain the same, or you change into something else. I can certainly understand why you would consider this a problem.To me, changing into something else doesn't seem as disturbing as perhaps it seems to you (though I suppose it would have to depend on what I change into). But then, as a Mormon, I have always been taught that such a transformation is the entire point of my existence, so perhaps I have been conditioned for acceptance of that.-----I gather that you are mostly indifferent towards the perpetuation of the Modulous "experiential continuity"?

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Hi Straggler, But I don't seek it.It is a present possession.But you right most everybody thinks they ought to have to do something so they can deserve the GIFT of God.But no one can deserve a gift because if they deserve it then it is wages as they have earned it.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Boldening of want in the first statement by me.OK ICANT have it your way. Let's revise things to incorporate your exact phraseology."Want that which you do not deserve" hardly seems fitting as an overall expression of the Christian faith does it?But all of this is relatively off topic as compared to the main portion of my post which you ignored.

As is so often the case, I have found someone else who has more formally worded this dilemma. Bernard Williams in "Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality" raises it also, though he does it slightly differently than me.He argues that we can definitely die too early, but tries to build a case that it is also possible to die too late. His variant of the dilemma runs thusly. There are...

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...two important conditions which must be satisfied by anything which is to be adequate as a fulfilment of my anti-Lucretian hope, namely that it should be clearly me who lives for ever. The second important condition is that the state in which I survive should be one which, to me looking forward, will be adequately related, in the life it presents, to those aims that I now have in wanting to survive at all

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Good old philosophers eh? He raises the same kinds of points that have been raised in this thread - constant change is no good since it is no longer me that is living forever, stagnation is no good because my aims in life are to grow, I'd only end up getting bored of myself, there is probably a limit on how much stimulating pursuit there exists etc etc.If one could take a drug and know that taking the drug would guarantee happiness for the rest of your life (and that life would be the same length of you current life), but it meant you would be basically an idiot incapable of looking after yourself and you'd just sit around with a dopey grin and be happy...would you take that drug? I wouldn't. And I think this is the best argument against the enforced bliss of heaven. Bliss in and of itself is not enough for an enjoyable life. Immortality would seem to rob life of any meaning at all.For anyone interested in pursuing these things down other avenues, might I recommend Death with Professor Shelly Kagan at the open Yale courses website? It is 26 50 minute lectures on philosophy. It was while watching these lectures that I first started asking this question in earnest - though it had occurred to me in muddy format before.The first half is metaphysics and is interesting though not necessary to understand the second half. If you want to know all about Socrates' arguments for the immortality of the soul, then fill your boots, but if you want to get onto the Death part of the course skip to lecture 14.Some downsides to immortality are discussed in Lecture 18 if you want to watch someone else's thoughts related specifically to this thread.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

The device of a 2d creature encountering the seemingly insurmountable height of a sphere didn't require the current logic to be turned on it's head. ...if circumventing it as above then perhaps.

What is your thinking about the Biblical record? Do you believe Jesus rose from the dead? If so, how he was changed at his resurrection, according to the Biblical record may help you understand what will happen to Christians at the resurrection. It all depends on how you regard that record.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Hi, Modulous. I don't want to drag your thread into the interminable "can someone see the future?" debate (Straggler has done a nice job making sure that has been addressed in other threads), but I wanted to perhaps add a tiny snippet of my personal perspective on that issue with my personal perspective on this issue.Like Straggler, I think that showing me the future changes everything. In this case, it disrupts the whole concept of experiential continuity (which is my viewpoint on "self"), which requires that future Bluejay be a culmination of all past Bluejays. Thus, when right-now Bluejay is shown what will, in essence, replace him in the future, it does not preserve the continuity, and the resulting response would obviously be the same indifference you would feel toward some other person you’ve never met, as you have suggested.But I don't think seeing oneself in the future is the same as being oneself in the future. It still provides only a third-person view. If I was able to see right-now Bluejay from someone else's point of view, I might very well disapprove of what I saw (some people have proven this, in fact). But, because I see the universe as right-now Bluejay, I feel that right-now Bluejay is worth preserving.So, what I see as right-now Bluejay is only relevant right now.What if you were instead given the opportunity, not to see future Modulous, but the see the universe as future Modulous? While “being” future Modulous, would you be less concerned about personal safety than you are while “being” right-now Modulous? Or, right now, could you see yourself saying, "So what?" about right-now Modulous?If your dilemma is real, you’d have to expect that you’ll reach a point where right-now Modulous no longer cares about right-now Modulous. Otherwise, I don’t think there’s a dilemma.I’m not saying that that won’t happen (in fact, you’ve made a pretty good case for the likelihood of that happening), but, I think this is a better exposition of my perspective on immortality than what I have previously provided.I get the feeling that this will hardly be new to you, but I still think posting it will be of some benefit.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Are you a different person? Or are you the same person who has been shaped by the experiences you've had in the time you've had them? Would it not be better to think of the once 18 ringed tree as merely consisting of 10 more rings. That is: the same tree - just a lot more rings to kiss. If you don't care for eternal life involving ongoing growth then why care for the reminder of this life which involves the same thingWhy not blow your brains out now if wanting to press the self-destruct button then?