Why Is Immortality/Eternal Life Desirable?

[ToHoldNothing]

I don't believe you can demonstrate the probability of meaninglessness. If there is no ultimate meaning to lose we reach the same bottom line of meaninglessness.

You've failed to argue why ultimate meaning must be necessary. We can have meaning in a temporary sense without recourse to any ultimate meaning. You want meaning to persist forever because you seem to not want to face the harsh reality that meaning may not exist forever.

Not if there are no conscious beings.

No one said there wouldn't be in the instance of one person's death. Of course there would be other people around if you or I happened to die.

My experiences are evidence to me not withstanding mental disease is possible for all of us.

I wouldn't say that. There are some people that could be said to be hardwired in some sense to not have the experiences you have. Try as they might, it doesn't work.

I have already said that--it is not evidence of reality for you, but when you say there is no evidence, that is only saying there is no evidence for you, because I have some.

I'm saying your evidence is inconclusive because it only applies to you. Just because you experience anything doesn't make it true for others until we verify it in some sense with other people. Of course we all experience the sky, or breathing air, or eating food. But we can disagree about who created the sky or air, and we can disagree about which food tastes better.

No I have been talking all the time about after the extinction of humanity to point out that eventualy meaninglessness of no Creator.

Why would you need a creator to have meaning at all? People make meaning all the time and there's no conclusive evidence of a creator, so it stands to reason that people make meaning all the time without any creator to start it.

It stops for us, and it no longer matters to us that it does not stop for someone else.

It doesn't matter at that point, but we can think beforehand that we have left memories behind.

No your showing there is the possibility of natural or non supernatural causes would not contradict what I said.

If your experience posited explicitly supernatural causes as certain, then, yes, it would contradict what you said. Unless you said it was merely possible, in which case we're at an impasse.

Yes, I think so. I was not talking so much about intelligent design as I was the bio electricity not being a reasonable explanation to me for the existence of the brain and our intelligence if there is no Creator. As I type that, I think maybe that is getting close to the intelligent design argument after all.

There doesn't need to be a creator to explain natural processes unless you think there has to be an ultimate ontological cause for all causes.

But what if the intelligent being set up things to allow for existence occuring through random chemical processess?

Then it's being purposely deceptive as to the truth of creation. It'd be like God planting fossils that read to be millions and millions of years old, but the universe is only say, tens of thousands of years old. God would be intentionally deceiving its creation into thinking that everything came about naturally and basically leaves a situation that creates more atheists and non creationists than any kind of creationist, even those that merely believe creation in terms of big bang, for example, as opposed to creationists in terms of biological diversity.

I think God was intelligent if He created everything or if He created everything in such a way that life and intelligence evolved.

That's hardly intelligence worthy of worship, considering humans can generate similar algorithms that generate intelligence in some sense as it is. In time, we might be able to generate intelligence from basic organic material over time and we'd be little different from the God you describe.

Random or accidental, the point being, it was not caused by an intelligent being.

It doesn't have to be in order to have significance. My existence is random in some sense, since my parents might not have met had circumstances been different. In that sense, even if I'm not created, my life is valuable.

No comfort for the one gone and we still have the point when there are no living individuals.

Which is only thinking more about the future instead of the present, which is where we are disagreeing consistently.

You put too much value on everyone else. If I am gone, everyone else will not matter to me at that point, nor will I be aware of everyone else.

Perhaps you're putting excessive amounts of value on yourself. What happened to the notion of altruism Jesus teaches? Why are you the only one worthy of being considered special in terms of value? Don't we all share certain values anyway?

It is reasonable to assume a Creator and not reasonable to assume I exist as a random accident. When one has assumed a Creator, that logically brings a reason for the Creator to have created. If we assume a loving Creator which is also more reasonable than an evil Creator or a Creator that does not care, we then have the proability of extended existence. That would be no point to extended existence if it was not a improvment over this one

It is only reasonable to you when you dismiss evidence to the contrary. And you also seem to presume that meaning requires some intelligence behind those that create meaning. Meaning comes from intelligent and conscious beings, even if they weren't created. Just because there isn't an ultimate explanation for their existence does not mean the purpose they find in life is less significant.

Just because we were created does not mean we are created immortal. Even you don't believe that. You believe, if I understand right, that we are made immortal by God's grace, not that we were given an immortal soul from birth.

One can be unable to understand things and still logically speculate on their possibility. That is not ignorance or logical fallacy.

Speculation is one thing, but using your ignorance of something to justify positing something we're equally ignorant about (God) is not solving the problem. Not to mention if you don't understand it, you can't logically speculate anything significant about it. It'd be like me saying God is the best pancake in the world, since I don't really understand God by your explanation here of speculation about possibility. God could be the best pizza in the universe!

No. You cannot prove meaninglessness to be probable.

Actually I can, except that you refuse to even take my theory of meaning seriously and just say I don't believe in meaning at all, which would make me a nihilist in the absolute sense, which I am not. I believe in meaning, just not eternal meaning.

You believe in ultimate meaninglessness. In what sense are you not a nihilist?

In the sense that I still believe in meaning. That makes me nothing like a nihilist in the particular sense you are structuring that word to mean. I'm an absurdist in that I believe there's no ultimate meaning for all humans that applies equally, but that there are individual subjective existential meanings we all discover in life.

Realism regarding life includes joy and peace and love, not just harshness and accepting life as harsh.

Without a doubt, yes, I can appreciate things. I don't have to cling to them. My friends are enjoyable, but I shouldn't want them to be around all the time. We all need individual time. And we also need to accept the harsh reality that they could die at any moment and we should be grateful that they exist as long as they do.

Until I find a theist with a better idea, I will stay with Christianity.

Multiple explanations of Christianity. You're actually a very particular kind yourself, even if you don't realize it. Many would call your annihilationist theology heretical or blasphemous. Heck, Muslims consider your general Christian theology about Jesus to be the height of blasphemy towards God. What makes you right and them wrong, as opposed to the other way around, in both cases?

Actually it seems to me you live based on principles that assume the non existence of deities

Not really. My ethics aren't so different that someone who believes in deities couldn't generate them as well. You seem to think that my ethics explicitly says that gods don't exist, which they don't. They don't care either way, the principles work even if there was a god that claimed ethical principles that were opposed to it. My ethics are believed in because they have practical value, not because they're divine in origin.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Came across this, that seems to fit in some part of this thread:

"Christ, in his incarnation, united God to man. By his resurrection, he overcame death. That is the good news. I hardly see why anybody would want to spend eternity with a God who hated them up until he sent his son to perish in their place... no, I don't understand that at all. However, the good news that Christ allows us to be united to our creator by his birth, death and resurrection, because of the love of his Father, should be a breath of fresh air to all humanity."

I don't think I'd want to live in eternity with a God that explicitly said, apparently, that it hated me up until it decided to be merciful. That seems to suggest a kind of capricious whim that could easily turn on its head and turn the loving compassionate god into the angry God Jonathan Edwards spoke of. That monster who only holds people in the palm of its hand because it's being magnanimous instead of actually being merciful in any sense of genuinely loving the creatures it holds over hellfire, which it could drop you in at any moment. You're basically saying that you love what is the equivalent of an abusive husband who, through some change of heart, decides to love the wife it was mercilessly beating within an inch of her life. Who's to say those tendencies wouldn't come back, especially with such a flawed entity as a human being, that the bible speaks of with alternating praise and contempt? And apply that logic to God and you have an entity that not only could change its tone in an instant, but nothing in the entire universe could stop it except this god's other dissociative identities (I.e. Jesus and the Holy Spirit, if we're talking about separate but identical persons, which really leaves us with the single option of God being holy and mentally ill at the same time, inscrutable as that might be)

 

[Chanya]

Eternity sounds waaay too long to me. Don't you get tired in heaven?

 

[razeontherock]

THN, your last post was not responsive to what you attempted to respond to. To a VERY disturbing degree!

Eternity sounds waaay too long to me. Don't you get tired in heaven?

Chanya, here is what your posts reveal the need for:

"the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." Taken from Isaiah 61, here is a slightly larger context:

"The Spirit of the Lord GOD [is] upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to [them that are] bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified."

 

[ToHoldNothing]

THN, your last post was not responsive to what you attempted to respond to. To a VERY disturbing degree!

Sure it was. The problem exists that one has no real reason to trust a being that capriciously decided to love everyone when they had previously hated them,which is what you just told me, basically.

 

[elman]

I don't believe you can demonstrate the probability of meaninglessness. If there is no ultimate meaning to lose we reach the same bottom line of meaninglessness.

You've failed to argue why ultimate meaning must be necessary.

And you have failed to argue why ultimate meaninglessness must be necessary.

We can have meaning in a temporary sense without recourse to any ultimate meaning.

I have a greed to this many times. Why restate it?

You want meaning to persist forever because you seem to not want to face the harsh reality that meaning may not exist forever.

Meaninglessness may not be harsh reality.

Not if there are no conscious beings

.
No one said there wouldn't be in the instance of one person's death. Of course there would be other people around if you or I happened to die.

Eventually all will die or forget.

My experiences are evidence to me not withstanding mental disease is possible for all of us.

I wouldn't say that. There are some people that could be said to be hardwired in some sense to not have the experiences you have. Try as they might, it doesn't work.

I don't think so. I think they simply chose to not be open to the possibility of meaning.

I have already said that--it is not evidence of reality for you, but when you say there is no evidence, that is only saying there is no evidence for you, because I have some.

I'm saying your evidence is inconclusive because it only applies to you.

It is not inconclusive to me which is all I ever claimed.

No I have been talking all the time about after the extinction of humanity to point out that eventualy meaninglessness of no Creator.

Why would you need a creator to have meaning at all? People make meaning all the time and there's no conclusive evidence of a creator, so it stands to reason that people make meaning all the time without any creator to start it.

This is repeating for the upteenth time. That meaning is temporary.

It stops for us, and it no longer matters to us that it does not stop for someone else.

It doesn't matter at that point, but we can think beforehand that we have left memories behind.

But at that point it does not matter what we thought before.

No your showing there is the possibility of natural or non supernatural causes would not contradict what I said.

If your experience posited explicitly supernatural causes as certain, then, yes, it would contradict what you said. Unless you said it was merely possible, in which case we're at an impasse.

There is no certainty.

I think God was intelligent if He created everything or if He created everything in such a way that life and intelligence evolved.

That's hardly intelligence worthy of worship, considering humans can generate similar algorithms that generate intelligence in some sense as it is. In time, we might be able to generate intelligence from basic organic material over time and we'd be little different from the God you describe.

We don't worship God or love God because of His power or intelligence. We love Him in respons to His love for us.

Random or accidental, the point being, it was not caused by an intelligent being.

It doesn't have to be in order to have significance. My existence is random in some sense, since my parents might not have met had circumstances been different. In that sense, even if I'm not created, my life is valuable.

Temporaritly and ultimately meaningless.

No comfort for the one gone and we still have the point when there are no living individuals.

Which is only thinking more about the future instead of the present, which is where we are disagreeing consistently.

I don't deny the present just because I consider the future.

You put too much value on everyone else. If I am gone, everyone else will not matter to me at that point, nor will I be aware of everyone else.

Perhaps you're putting excessive amounts of value on yourself. What happened to the notion of altruism Jesus teaches?

Jesus was all about our having life and having it abundenly. His was the path of victory over death.

It is reasonable to assume a Creator and not reasonable to assume I exist as a random accident. When one has assumed a Creator, that logically brings a reason for the Creator to have created. If we assume a loving Creator which is also more reasonable than an evil Creator or a Creator that does not care, we then have the proability of extended existence. That would be no point to extended existence if it was not a improvment over this one

It is only reasonable to you when you dismiss evidence to the contrary. And you also seem to presume that meaning requires some intelligence behind those that create meaning. Meaning comes from intelligent and conscious beings, even if they weren't created. Just because there isn't an ultimate explanation for their existence does not mean the purpose they find in life is less significant.

Yes, mortality is less significant than immortality. Meaninglessness is less significant than meaningful.

Just because we were created does not mean we are created immortal. Even you don't believe that. You believe, if I understand right, that we are made immortal by God's grace, not that we were given an immortal soul from birth.

I believe we are given an immortal soul from birth, but a soul that we can kill with our own sin.

One can be unable to understand things and still logically speculate on their possibility. That is not ignorance or logical fallacy.

Speculation is one thing, but using your ignorance of something to justify positing something we're equally ignorant about (God) is not solving the problem. Not to mention if you don't understand it, you can't logically speculate anything significant about it. It'd be like me saying God is the best pancake in the world, since I don't really understand God by your explanation here of speculation about possibility. God could be the best pizza in the universe!

And this proves what? That we should not think about the possibilities of our life being meaninful?

No. You cannot prove meaninglessness to be probable.

Actually I can, except that you refuse to even take my theory of meaning seriously and just say I don't believe in meaning at all, which would make me a nihilist in the absolute sense, which I am not. I believe in meaning, just not eternal meaning.

Nothing there proves meaninglessness is probable.

You believe in ultimate meaninglessness. In what sense are you not a nihilist?

In the sense that I still believe in meaning. That makes me nothing like a nihilist in the particular sense you are structuring that word to mean. I'm an absurdist in that I believe there's no ultimate meaning for all humans that applies equally, but that there are individual subjective existential meanings we all discover in life.

But you believe all is ultimatly meaningless.

[

QUOTE]Until I find a theist with a better idea, I will stay with Christianity.

Multiple explanations of Christianity. You're actually a very particular kind yourself, even if you don't realize it. Many would call your annihilationist theology heretical or blasphemous.[/QUOTE] Not relevant.

Heck, Muslims consider your general Christian theology about Jesus to be the height of blasphemy towards God.

It is not relevant what Muslims consider.

What makes you right and them wrong, as opposed to the other way around, in both cases?

Neither of us are right and you are also wrong, just in different areas and in different degrees.

 

[razeontherock]

This needs to be here:

"So in the sanctuary have I appeared before Thee to see Thy power and Thy glory, For Thy mercy is better than lives"

This is King David's answer to your question. Going back:

Sure it was. The problem exists that one has no real reason to trust a being that capriciously decided to love everyone when they had previously hated them,which is what you just told me, basically.

Um, no; that would be the exact opposite of what I've been telling you. And what you responded to was someone else's statement (not directed to you at all) saying the same thing, but in different words. And more concisely than I have. That you would also get that backwards may say what you are and are not willing to hear, I'm afraid.

Either way it's pretty simple:

many NC's have posted they think G-d should be able to save mankind w/o the Cross. He could not, as that would have been "capricious of Him," as you put it.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

And you have failed to argue why ultimate meaninglessness must be necessary.

I don't think I ever argued it is necessary, but is merely a harsh reality that people tend to not want to accept. Ultimate meaninglessness doesn't mean that we cannot find meaning as individuals. It merely means we don't have an ultimate purpose that pervades all of our lives equally.

I have a greed to this many times. Why restate it?

Because you seem to think that a temporary anything is less meaningful

Meaninglessness may not be harsh reality.

What would be the harsh reality instead?

Eventually all will die or forget.

Eventuality is in the future, meaning is in the present

I don't think so. I think they simply chose to not be open to the possibility of meaning.

I can find meaning in life without recourse to your god

It is not inconclusive to me which is all I ever claimed.

A single person having conclusive proof to themselves is hardly any different than a single person believing they are Jesus incarnate

This is repeating for the upteenth time. That meaning is temporary.

You've failed to argue why this makes the meaning less fulfilling

But at that point it does not matter what we thought before.

Again, in the future, not in the present

There is no certainty.

Just above you said you were certain about something in terms of God, am I wrong?

We don't worship God or love God because of His power or intelligence. We love Him in respons to His love for us.

But God's love is fundamentally different, so any experience of love in relation to God is qualitatively different than experiencing love from humans

Temporaritly and ultimately meaningless.

Eventually meaningless overall, but not ultimately meaningless to the individual as they experience it

I don't deny the present just because I consider the future.

You would if you focus primarily on the future and not on the present

Jesus was all about our having life and having it abundenly. His was the path of victory over death.

Depends a lot on what you mean by victory over death.

Yes, mortality is less significant than immortality. Meaninglessness is less significant than meaningful.

I would argue the contrary. Mortality is more meaningful because it gives us motivation to experience life all the more fully, meaninglessness is more significant in that we can find meaning amongst it.

I believe we are given an immortal soul from birth, but a soul that we can kill with our own sin.

Then it technically isn't immortal by your own description that it can be killed

And this proves what? That we should not think about the possibilities of our life being meaninful?

We can see our life as meaningful without obsessing over permanent meaning

Nothing there proves meaninglessness is probable.

Probability of meaninglessness has nothing to do with inferences and everything to do with evidence, since probability considers mathematics and observations of physical events and processes

But you believe all is ultimatly meaningless.

No, I believe any ultimate meaning is unfulfilling. You can concoct ultimate meaning, but it isn't satisfying to everyone, therefore it is less than meaningful.

Not relevant.

It's quite relevant. Some would say you don't really believe in immortality, since it's conditional

It is not relevant what Muslims consider.

Sure it is, they're of a similar religious family as your own religion

Neither of us are right and you are also wrong, just in different areas and in different degrees.

So now you're a relativist? No one's right and everyone's wrong, so that would imply that there is ultimately no certainty, which you've contradicted yourself on in saying you're confident and convicted that you have experienced God when you just said you can't be certain about anything.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Um, no; that would be the exact opposite of what I've been telling you. And what you responded to was someone else's statement (not directed to you at all) saying the same thing, but in different words. And more concisely than I have. That you would also get that backwards may say what you are and are not willing to hear, I'm afraid.

You seem to have an overly nuanced idea of grace that doesn't include any idea of caprice, which is part of the issue, since if God saves who it will and damns who it will, it is capricious in some way by the nature of this so called grace.

many NC's have posted they think G-d should be able to save mankind w/o the Cross. He could not, as that would have been "capricious of Him," as you put it.

If God is able to save people without utilizing exclusionary tactics that separate people based on their beliefs in divinity or lack thereof, I would think it'd be a more practical way to see if people are "Saved" or not. What if God judged people's salvation on their ethical habits and behavior instead of their belief in something that is unverifiable?

If God judged people in some sense more as to the nature of their hearts and the goodness they have through cultivation of virtues, it would make salvation still a matter of faith, since it would be internal and not external in nature, so there wouldn't be the certainty that you are concerned God shouldn't give to people in terms of faith issues, like salvation. Where is the problem in God judging people by their hearts instead of their beliefs about certain things? What if God judged people as to whether they were truly good in some objective sense instead of whether they believed or disbelieved in God or the afterlife?

There isn't caprice in pragmatism

 

[Devo49]

Talitha : Seriously - like it or not, the human spirit is immortal.
Really? You have proof of this?
I'd love to see it!