Eternal Life (thanks, but no thanks)

Trying to square the concept of Hell with Christian Theology is interesting and all, but perhaps it deserves a topic in its own right?

Since the topic came up in Existence After Death I thought I'd bump this old thread. The topic in the other thread is about how life after death may be obtained as well as the question of what matters in survival - but the related subject 'would I want it anyway?' is often not far behind...

The thread is about trying to persuade me that Eternal Life is to be anticipated as something to look forward to. I agree it is unknowable - but is there any scenario at all which would be something to look forward to? If you'd feel like addressing the points raised, rather than sarcastically attempting to dismiss them - I'll be here.

You said you read the whole thread. The OP raises this kind of afterlife and why I would not look forward to it and subsequent posts cover it. How about responding to those rather than asking me to repeat the points?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Yes, very good. I notice that you decided to ignore the actual criticism which was that the very first post in this thread addressed your response despite your confident attitude of dismissal which would imply you understood it. Very well, if that is the case your God joins the rest of the Gods in this thread which have failed to bring a persuasive case for eternal life. I will continue to not look forward to it. I never for one moment said I wouldn't enjoy it. Indeed in Message 5 I said

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I'd have no choice but to be happy and fulfilled... It is certainly no life I'd choose to lead

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So if you're going to try and persuade me that it is a life I should choose to lead, you can't just describe the life - I have already indicated I'm aware of the scenario and that it doesn't appeal to me: I find no meaning or purpose in an eternal state of bliss. The same applies to your assertion about how great it would all be. I am perfectly content to be wrong in this issue, and maybe when I'm 56 I will have a different view. My point is, that in my current state of mind, I don't find eternal life such a great prospect (either I don't care or don't want it). It is nowhere near as great a temptation to me as it is trumpeted by theists of various persuasions as if it was a self-evident truth.As a thirty year old, I feel largely the same, though I haven't mulled on it for a while.So we're both 2 year olds. You think kissing girls would be great, I ask why? Is that such a crazy question? Might I recommend pinching? The problem with skillets is if you have mistaken the waking world for the dreaming one you could end up impairing your brain function. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Sounds great. Sounds like an easy choice. I think I'm perfectly equipped right now to decide if I want all my curiosity fulfilled and all my social interactions resolved. There is, after all, a finite supply of that so:-What about eternal life when everything that happened on earth very rapidly becomes a minor chapter in humanity's life?It seems to me that you are saying that neither of us equipped to know what eternal life would be like or whether it would be enjoyable. If we agree on that, then we must both agree that there is no reason to look forward to it - right?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Aye.

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{mansions....cities of gold and gems...}

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I don't see any reason to care about baubles or why living amongst them for eternity is intrinsically appealing. I am absolutely sure, and do not have fear that I might be cast into Tartarus or eager anticipation of Elysian Fields. Sure - if you're going to say the choices are 'Ecstasy or torture' it's a simple choice. But that isn't what I'm asking about. I'm asking - regardless of how I'm to spend eternal life, given the objections raised - why should I look forward to it?

Finally! Not having an infinite brain - I cannot conceive eternity. I have seen people desire to end their own existence, and maybe one day too I will want to bring my story to its conclusion. For all I know - even 250 years may be more than enough. Surely all I care about, Lord, are what I mean to accomplish. If what I mean to accomplish happens to agree with you then that's great - but a task that can never be completed can never be accomplished. So will I get to finally accomplish my purpose or not? Re-creation or recreation? The capitals have thrown me. But why should I care about Modulous mk 2500? An entity so different than I that to call it 'me' would be stretching the meanings of the words to breaking point. I'm not inherently objecting to that - I just don't think it is much to sing and dance about. The part that I might want to 'survive' does not really survive forever.

It's not just about loathing it. I would obviously not loathe it if I was 'living' it. But existence is more than hollow and pointless gratification to me, and I don't want it if that's all it amounts to.

You are keen to define your way to victory: you might as well say, 'Eternal life is everything you want it to be, no more no less' as a means of persuasion. Here you are simply asserting the existence of a purpose for it all to persuade me it isn't pointless.OK, so somebody has a purpose in mind. It is my mind that is in question here, and I don't see the point of the existence you described. If you can tell me what the point is, I'll let you know if I want to sign up.

OK - but you can't make that look attractive? Understood.

I don't require evidence - I'm happy to grant whatever eternal life you want to conjure up as being true in order to sensibly discuss it. I'm just asking for you to make it sound attractive.

Have I done so on this thread? I must have missed that. I took your golden city with gems at face value and rejected it as something that I don't look forward to. I didn't request evidence such a place exists.

I'm not espousing it as true, I'm granting it as true. I don't need to believe it is true in order to make decisions about its appeal. Right - see OP for why I don't find this attractive. Yes - but the truth of the claims in this thread is not relevant so raising that objection in this thread is irrelevant. You claim 'my mind is set' - but if my mind was set I would not have started a thread to discuss it. I wanted to hear why other people found eternal life attractive, but it turns out that for the most part they have seriously divergent tastes than I do.Of course, you could assume the worst of me, that I am discussing in bad faith. But it makes no odds to my metahphysical position one way or another whether an attractive eternal life could be conceived. I admit, I was fairly certain that the dilemma is complete - that there is no escape route. However, I am more persuaded this is the case having subjected it to rigorous testing from the members here at EvC.You have a notion of eternal life that you find attractive. I'm sure that's very comforting. I don't find it attractive, and I can't be blamed for that! Sorry Buz, you tried - but your incentive scheme isn't as compelling to me (and others) as you might have assumed.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Hi, herebedragons,
Thank you for carefully considering my OP and addressing it directly with a clear and thought out response. It is significantly appreciated. Only the eternal ones Respect.That's what I'm doing here too. I hope we can help each other achieve our goals! Whatever conclusion you reach, I'm gratified that I took something someone took for granted and made them consider it more closely.There are two prongs in the dilemma. I'll deal with the easy one first.Static personality Excellent, so we're committing to the more palatable, dynamic personality prong. And don't need to worry about this direction at all.Dynamic personality I agree in the case of being 18 to present age it seems kind of not to pan out. I'm glad the example sparked off an interesting thought process though so let's try something else. Let's try it backwards.Let's imagine that I died when I was 7. But when I was 6, someone told me that I would survive my death and after twenty or so years in the afterlife I'd work in a boring job in post-life insurance, having rejected Christianity and so on. I can't see my 6 year old self caring a great deal about that and if offered an alternative, would conceivably take that. That is, my 6 yr old self has no loyalty about my present day self.Of course, this seems to assume a boring afterlife, but the lack of caring of the future self is the key component. This was kind of what I was driving at, and again the example is just to get across the concept - not as proof of it.When we're talking about 500 years of change - I would expect my future personality to be much more radically different than possible with the mere 25 or so years of change that I can realistically cite at my present age.Another example, perhaps more illuminating that the last. Imagine if, when you die, a crazy genius reconstructs your personality in an android. Then he implants billions of false memories, which alter the perception of the real memories - possibly pushing some of them from future consideration altogether. The false memories also result in a changing of all your goals, opinions and desires. Would you really care if the genius told you he would do this for you in advance?The question turns to: What do I want to survive when I'm talking about surviving my death?Earlier in the thread I quoted Bernard Williams, and I think you'd find it an interesting quote so I'll repost it

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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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(From, Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality)OK, so let's seriously consider some things here. I've raised tedium with my last quote, and it's an important point I've mostly glossed over in this thread so let's look at it.TediumForever isn't just a long time. It's forever. Never? Don't get me wrong - an afterlife where I get to access the source code to the universe and explore it at my leisure sounds great. But never getting tired of it? After your ten billionth quasar would you not be thinking 'When you've seen a million quasars you've seen them all!'? To borrow from the Holy Bible:

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What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

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Ecclesiastes 1:9.Surely - there is only a finite number of things that exist that can hold your interest? Surely, at some point, learning and experiencing things take on a certain repeated character?I cannot say for sure, but that seems to me to be the most likely outcome of this philosopher's immortality - what mix of activities could help pass the time FOREVER? At what point do you realize that all you are doing is passing time, with no reason or purpose for so doing? When does the soul crushing depression at the interminable prospect of having just scratched the surface of time killing? After ten billion years of finding ways to keep busy - do you look forward to another fifty billion years? Knowing that you would still be relatively 'young' (and when you realize that compared with forever any time period is not even a drop in the ocean).So I argue that fun, exciting or emotionally stimulating activities can make an afterlife attractive - they cannot possibly make for an attractive eternity.Unless:AmnesiaMemory isn't perfect in our brains. This is actually rather helpful - since it gives us extra impetus towards enjoying doing things again.
What if this were true of the afterlife. If it were possible to forget how much fun it was to play in a pulsar or explore 11 dimensional space, then we might be able to enjoy eternity. But this means we'd fall foul of the 'what did we want to survive for' problem. Eventually there would be a being that might not remember what it was like to be who I am now. And even if it did, it is unlikely to 'cycle round' to have the same opinions, goals, desires etc as I once did and even if it did then I'd surely just repeat what I did the first time and that seems kind of meaningless too.We could have all the same perks with a temporary afterlife. So I think, if we follow this prong we end up in horrifying tedium or in a state where having eternity confers no more benefits than a more temporal afterlife.Time is perceived differently I disagree with your notion of time - but even were I to accept it, it just compresses an infinite amount of time to an infinite amount of time. Sure, we may get so absorbed in something that billions of years of subjective times passes though it only feels like a few minutes, but that's just a billion years. We have a billion more of them and a heck of a lot more to come. It doesn't get us out of the essential problem I'm afraid. It inspired me to read some Williams and Kagan again - that's good enough for me