Why Is Immortality/Eternal Life Desirable?

[solarwave]

It is wrong, imho, to think that your personality and existence are the end of all things, and that anything else is merely a means to persisting in your own existence. Buddhism teachings that clinging and craving are wrong, not desire in and of itself in certain relations we have with people. I don't think my life is the be all end all of things. When I die, I will cease to exist, but I will persist in the face of what seems on its face to be a nihilistic worldview, which atheism and Buddhism both have been accused of being.

By the way I do see why it would be a good thing not to mind if you die, but I'm just saying the will to live makes sense. If you had a choice to die or live (in this life) you would generally choose to live.

Part of the overcoming of your clinging is in the realization that everything changes and is subject to alteration, even if it maintains some basic substance. My personality and identity are not going to stay the same, nor will they persist after my death. Realizing this is a start to realizing the lack of permanence in the self along with the world.

Good point

Reason and logic are self evident and axiomatic to reasonable and logical people, which all people basically have the capacity for through their brain.

When did morality come into this?

I brought morality in because it could be said that worship is justice towards God. Worship can come in many forms, not only singing.

There's a difference between hope and wishful thinking. Just like there's a difference between blind conviction and faith in the sense of trust through experience

I agree. A few years ago I would have been sure that faith is trust in the direction the evidence best points. I am less sure now, and now wonder whether faith in Goodness/God is worthwhile reguardless of evidence for or against it.

 

[elman]

So we'd still have a substantial body, but it wouldn't be material. Makes us sound like we're a bunch of wisps just floating around if we're spirits, unless you can qualify something about the nature of a spiritual body, which sounds similar to saying a square circle at first glance

You want me to make a spiritual body into a natural one. Not a reasonable request. What spiritual sounds like to you is just your negative reaction, nothing more.

 

[LBP]

It seems like kindergarten level thinking to just believe things without inquiring into them. iIf you can't even give some general description, however uncertain it might be, then you leave the whole issue up in the air as to what people can hope for. Some people hope for a spiritual/disembodied existence, others hope for a literal heaven on earth. There's a stark difference between them and you can't believe they're equally compelling without becoming something of a relativist, which I'd imagine you'd oppose.

Just because you think it's ideal doesn't mean everyone else thinks it is so.I don't desire heaven because it implies a persistence of one's consciousness beyond one's death, which I neither believe is desirable, nor do I think it's likely.

Of course, whether the survival of consciousness is "likely," and whether it is "desirable," are two vastly different considerations. I believe, on the basis of 40+ years of serious study and my own experiences, that the survival of consciousness is "highly likely," that the existence of a supreme creative intelligence is "highly likely," and that the truth of Christianity in at least broad terms is "likely." That being the case, whether the afterlife realm is "desirable" is rather beside the point; it is what it is. I can fairly easily conceive of an afterlife realm that I believe would be interesting/challenging/desirable for eternity -- but this is nothing but the workings of my human imagination, which by its very nature (i.e., human and finite) is incapable of conceiving a timeless eternity or the perspective of a supreme creative intelligence. Why is there any reason to suppose that the persistence of consciousness after death would be any less desirable than the persistence of consciousness for the next 20 years of your earthly life? Are you on the verge of killing yourself today, because the next 20 years may not fit your conception of the ideal state of existence? It seems to me that you have tipped your hand here -- you purport to be arguing that the survival of consciousness is not desirable, but what you are really arguing is that you don't think it is likely.

 

[elman]

I don't understand the comment that death and life are two halves of the same whole. That makes no sense to me. First you deny saying death was perferable to life and then you end your statment with a repeat that you prefer nonexistence(death) to existence(life).

You're buying into the binary notion that death is the absence of life, when in fact, we require death to make life in many cases. Dead animals fertilize the grass, apoptosis enables us to have fingers, etc. nonexistence is not the same thing as death if you believe the afterlife to exist.

The worms being alive that eat my dead body does not mean I am not dead. You need to keep your eye on the ball. Dead animals fertilizing grass does not make the animals not dead. Death is the absence of life. Existence is not non existence. I do believe the afterlife exists, but not a physical afterlife. This body is dead when I die and this body does not follow me into the afterlife. If I am alive spiritually after this body is dead, my body will still be dead.

Death would be merely a transition. Nonexistence would not be an option unless you're a Christian annihilationist.

I am a Christian annihilationist, but it can be an option in any event. We live until we die. It is possible we had no life before we were born, and that we will have no life after we die. Death is not merely a transition, unless you make the assumption it is, and then it may only be your wrong assumption.

Death and life are an intertwined cycle is what I mean when I say they're two halves of the same whole. They're not cold and hot, or darkness and light

Not really true. As I said when I die, the existence of the worms eating me does not mean I am not dead.

I assume Heaven to be a state of spiritual existence in relationship with a loving Creator. I have no reason to assume such an existence would be boring or bad in anyway.

because you seem to refuse to think about it and conceive that it might actually be a bad thing.

I do not refuse to think about it. I have thought about it; and I have no reason to believe that existing with a loving Creator would be a bad thing. It is not logical to assume it would be bad. You on the other hand, only come to this assumption, because you are looking for a reason to reject Christianity, not because you have thought about it, and reached the reasonable conclusion it might be bad.

You're so fixated on it and believing unwaveringly that it's true that you can't even think for a moment you might be wrong.

I think this is more true of your fixation that heaven might be bad, than on mine that it might be good.

I do not agree that I must suffer death and disease and loss and unease and aversion etc. in order to enjoy life.

then your enjoyment of life is hollow, because you just have positives with no negatives to contrast.

This is you imagination at work. There is no life in this world without suffering and death etc. so we all have the contrast and none of us escape it. The joy and happiness in this life however are not the consequences of suffering and death and disease.

There and consider what could be and then therefore have a motivation to actually work towards making things good, even if it doesn't always work.

This is a Christian motivation.

I see no reason for such an assumption of "My heaven."

because you think heaven is somehow objectively agreed upon by all Christians when that's clearly not the case

I certainly do not think that and nothing I have said gives you any possible reason to believe I think that. I would guess all Christians agree that heaven is a good thing and will be a good existence to experience. That is our unity of agreement. As I have said above that is an entirly reasonable assumption if our Creator is a loving and good entity.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

By the way I do see why it would be a good thing not to mind if you die, but I'm just saying the will to live makes sense. If you had a choice to die or live (in this life) you would generally choose to live.

There's a difference between wanting to live because you think there's still some purpose to be achieved and wanting to live because you're afraid you'll cease to exist. The former doesn't have to be attached in any way to their personality and will accept that they will cease to exist when they die; the latter will only be willing to die if they can both accept it and are convicted that they will survive their death; e.g. a martyr.

Good point

It's one thing to recognize things are impermanent and not satisfactory to our initial perspectives, it's another to say that things lack any permanent substance in and of themselves, more unique to Buddhism.

I brought morality in because it could be said that worship is justice towards God. Worship can come in many forms, not only singing.

When did I ever say worship consisted only in singing? the point was that worship seems to lend itself to groupthink and general surrendering of independence to a great extent, instead becoming one of the group and not an individual in a community of shared values.

I agree. A few years ago I would have been sure that faith is trust in the direction the evidence best points. I am less sure now, and now wonder whether faith in Goodness/God is worthwhile reguardless of evidence for or against it.

So you're beginning to think faith in Jesus amounts to a leap of faith in the existential sense of uncertainty and anxiety and calming those things by making a leap into what is also called the absurd at times? Not to say the unintelligible, but the unrational in that you don't deliberate it, it's simply an impulse.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

You want me to make a spiritual body into a natural one. Not a reasonable request. What spiritual sounds like to you is just your negative reaction, nothing more.

What you think spiritual sounds to me is only a speculation. Spiritual at best seems to me purely a nonphysical, immaterial existence, like a disembodied personality with no vehicle, so to speak. Are you saying these spiritual bodies are composed of some immaterial substance, like ectoplasm? In which case, you're at least making the distinction between immaterial and material substances, which is a step beyond simply saying we have no form whatsoever and are just the essence floating around here and there, hanging out with god like floating piles of consciousness

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Of course, whether the survival of consciousness is "likely," and whether it is "desirable," are two vastly different considerations. I believe, on the basis of 40+ years of serious study and my own experiences, that the survival of consciousness is "highly likely," that the existence of a supreme creative intelligence is "highly likely," and that the truth of Christianity in at least broad terms is "likely." That being the case, whether the afterlife realm is "desirable" is rather beside the point; it is what it is. I can fairly easily conceive of an afterlife realm that I believe would be interesting/challenging/desirable for eternity -- but this is nothing but the workings of my human imagination, which by its very nature (i.e., human and finite) is incapable of conceiving a timeless eternity or the perspective of a supreme creative intelligence. Why is there any reason to suppose that the persistence of consciousness after death would be any less desirable than the persistence of consciousness for the next 20 years of your earthly life? Are you on the verge of killing yourself today, because the next 20 years may not fit your conception of the ideal state of existence? It seems to me that you have tipped your hand here -- you purport to be arguing that the survival of consciousness is not desirable, but what you are really arguing is that you don't think it is likely.

It's both. Survival of consciousness seems too unlikely based on a number of factors, such as the connection of mind states to a great extent on the brain, not to mention the interdependent nature of our thoughts to perceptions and appropriations of meanings thereof. Basically, anatta in Buddhism is far more compelling and convincing a metaphysics of mind and body than other systems.

But more than that, the values of the survival of consciousness don't seem to outweigh the problems and defects that it would bring to any basic human experience. Having no sickness, no death, no unease, no imperfection, would all seem to devalue our lives in that we'd have no real motivation to exist and we'd have nothing interesting to look forward to.

Worshipping any deity aside, just the fact that you'd be basically living forever with no real challenges or motivations to think about anything interesting, seems to make any afterlife like what heaven is at least commonly described as appear very unpleasant and, more importantly, boring in a basic sense of having no more goals at all.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

The worms being alive that eat my dead body does not mean I am not dead. You need to keep your eye on the ball. Dead animals fertilizing grass does not make the animals not dead. Death is the absence of life. Existence is not non existence. I do believe the afterlife exists, but not a physical afterlife. This body is dead when I die and this body does not follow me into the afterlife. If I am alive spiritually after this body is dead, my body will still be dead.

It means that the constituents of your material body are still alive in some sense. Matter and energy are related, as I recall. Death is not the absence of life, nonlife is the absence of life, such as a rock or synthetic materials. I never said I believed in a physical afterlife, so that's moot. Qualification is IF you are alive spiritually after your body dies. I contend that you are not alive spiritually, if we understand spirit to be your personality and consciousness.

I am a Christian annihilationist, but it can be an option in any event. We live until we die. It is possible we had no life before we were born, and that we will have no life after we die. Death is not merely a transition, unless you make the assumption it is, and then it may only be your wrong assumption.

So now you're saying it might be valid to see death as merely a transition of life into another life of sorts?

Not really true. As I said when I die, the existence of the worms eating me does not mean I am not dead.

I wasn't saying you lived on through the worms, the worms are separate, but the interrelation of your material constituents with the worm that eats them suggests that you persist in a nominal sense, not in a complete sense of your personality surviving your death, moreso what was your body, even though it wasn't really yours at all when you think about it.

I do not refuse to think about it. I have thought about it; and I have no reason to believe that existing with a loving Creator would be a bad thing. It is not logical to assume it would be bad. You on the other hand, only come to this assumption, because you are looking for a reason to reject Christianity, not because you have thought about it, and reached the reasonable conclusion it might be bad.

I don't refuse to think about it, I see no reason to think about the afterlife. It is logical to assume that the afterlife is not something we have to think about unless you already presume we survive our death. And no, my rejection of the afterlife is not unique to rejecting the Christian afterlife.

You're trying to make yourself a victim here when that's not the case. I qualified this topic by saying that all immortality and eternal life are undesirable. To say heaven is undesirable would be to make a stab at Christians, which is not my intent. There are plenty of non Christian and non abrahamic religions that beleive we survive our death in some immortal eternal way and I equally disbelieve those.

I think this is more true of your fixation that heaven might be bad, than on mine that it might be good.

I don't presume that I couldn't be wrong, I simply think it makes more sense not to focus on the afterlife and thinking about what might be as opposed to focusing on what is. if I'm wrong, so be it. But you can bet I will try to eliminate myself by annihilation, which is preferable to any amount of immortal and persistent existence after my death.

This is you imagination at work. There is no life in this world without suffering and death etc. so we all have the contrast and none of us escape it. The joy and happiness in this life however are not the consequences of suffering and death and disease.

The thesis I'm advocating is that joy, happiness and such make no sense without suffering, death and sorrow. We need them as a basic contrast, like a 3 dimensional object needs faces to be 3 dimensional and not just a flat shape.

This is a Christian motivation.

Only incidentally. You share that to the point where you diverge with buddhists in that you think that your life will continue after your death and you will be eternally happy, which I think is almost worse than simply living forever, regardless of if you're happy or not. seems to me there's a state of affairs where we could live forever after our deaths, but not in any sense where we'd be happy or sad, that would be dependent on our perspectives.

I certainly do not think that and nothing I have said gives you any possible reason to believe I think that. I would guess all Christians agree that heaven is a good thing and will be a good existence to experience. That is our unity of agreement. As I have said above that is an entirly reasonable assumption if our Creator is a loving and good entity

Then your agreement seems pointless, since you agree on an abstract with no concrete description or qualifications about it. that's like agreeing magic exists without specifying the difference between magic and, say, natural occurrences like lightning and earthquakes.
It's not necessarily a reasonable assumption if you think that the Creator is not understanding love and goodness from any general human perspective, but from its own deified perspective. Basically, love and goodness could be inhumane from a human perspective observing a god's ideas of what love and goodness are.

 

[Emmy]

Dear ToHoldNothing. To be with other Christians in God`s Kingdom can only be imagined by Christians who have experienced true " Christian fellowship meetings." For a short while, this world and all its ills and hectic rushings about, can be forgotten. To be able to enjoy Eternity with our Heavenly Father and Christian brothers and sisters, could never be imagined by Strangers. I say this humbly and with blessed Assurance. Greetings from Emmy, sister in Christ.

 

[solarwave]

There's a difference between wanting to live because you think there's still some purpose to be achieved and wanting to live because you're afraid you'll cease to exist. The former doesn't have to be attached in any way to their personality and will accept that they will cease to exist when they die; the latter will only be willing to die if they can both accept it and are convicted that they will survive their death; e.g. a martyr.

In the former case it must be acceptable not to want to die young then, but there are still things you want to do. Even if you are 80 there may still be things you want to do, so do you think it is acceptable to have a life longer than natural but not out of fear?

When did I ever say worship consisted only in singing? the point was that worship seems to lend itself to groupthink and general surrendering of independence to a great extent, instead becoming one of the group and not an individual in a community of shared values.

You didn't. I was just making a point. People also worship privately don't they though. By 'surrendering of independence' do you mean surrendering to the group or the higher power?

So you're beginning to think faith in Jesus amounts to a leap of faith in the existential sense of uncertainty and anxiety and calming those things by making a leap into what is also called the absurd at times? Not to say the unintelligible, but the unrational in that you don't deliberate it, it's simply an impulse.

Not necessarily. I'm just giving my personal opinions rather than what I think is definitely true. The evidence for the resurrection still appears quite strong to me. I havn't heard a convincing (and detailed enough) explaination of what happened 2000 years ago to start Christianity otherwise.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Dear ToHoldNothing. To be with other Christians in God`s Kingdom can only be imagined by Christians who have experienced true " Christian fellowship meetings." For a short while, this world and all its ills and hectic rushings about, can be forgotten. To be able to enjoy Eternity with our Heavenly Father and Christian brothers and sisters, could never be imagined by Strangers. I say this humbly and with blessed Assurance. Greetings from Emmy, sister in Christ.

From what you've described, it just sounds like heaven is whatever a Christian imagines it to be, and thus heaven is little more than something based on human imaginations related to beliefs about things they may also imagine to be true, but don't reflect reality.

If heaven is unspecifiable, then by all means defend immortality and eternal life in general as preferable, desirable or otherwise beneficial in any way to humanity. Though, of course, you'd have to qualify about the extent of immortality and eternal life. Otherwise we'd have the obvious population problem combined with reproduction, among other problems I could bring up

 

[ToHoldNothing]

In the former case it must be acceptable not to want to die young then, but there are still things you want to do. Even if you are 80 there may still be things you want to do, so do you think it is acceptable to have a life longer than natural but not out of fear?

The problem remains in that there's also a difference between having a sufficiently long life, say 900 years, and having life eternal with no way to die. I'd prefer to have a long life with the possibilty of death, like tolkien's elves, than be immortal and also live forever by association.

You didn't. I was just making a point. People also worship privately don't they though. By 'surrendering of independence' do you mean surrendering to the group or the higher power?

Basically, yes. If your whole end purpose is worship, why would God require the group to do it. Couldn't it just be everyone privately communing with God? Certainly seems to be more consistent with god wanting everyone to come to it individually and then fellowship as a community.

Not necessarily. I'm just giving my personal opinions rather than what I think is definitely true. The evidence for the resurrection still appears quite strong to me. I havn't heard a convincing (and detailed enough) explaination of what happened 2000 years ago to start Christianity otherwise

Resurrection is still distinct from a belief in immortality of the soul. There are Christians that believe in conditional immortality; that is, we get immortality from God and can potentially lose it, I'd imagine. Unless of course, it's like learning a new skill, you can't unlearn it easily, if at all completely.

One can be resurrected or even reincarnated multiple times and this is a very conditional immortality in that you might eventually get out of the cycle of reincarnation or you might simply lose the favor of whatever force decided to resurrect you multiple times.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

As Nietszche put it, "In heaven all the interesting people are missing,"

 

[elman]

What you think spiritual sounds to me is only a speculation. Spiritual at best seems to me purely a nonphysical, immaterial existence, like a disembodied personality with no vehicle, so to speak. Are you saying these spiritual bodies are composed of some immaterial substance, like ectoplasm? In which case, you're at least making the distinction between immaterial and material substances, which is a step beyond simply saying we have no form whatsoever and are just the essence floating around here and there, hanging out with god like floating piles of consciousness

Spiritual is not physical. We cannot understand the spiritual and we cannot know what a spiritual body is. We assume it is not this physical or natural body. God is a Spirit. The existence of the spliritual is speculation or assumption as is the denial of the existence of the spiritual. I don't understand your problem with a lack of vehicle.

 

[elman]

The worms being alive that eat my dead body does not mean I am not dead. You need to keep your eye on the ball. Dead animals fertilizing grass does not make the animals not dead. Death is the absence of life. Existence is not non existence. I do believe the afterlife exists, but not a physical afterlife. This body is dead when I die and this body does not follow me into the afterlife. If I am alive spiritually after this body is dead, my body will still be dead.

It means that the constituents of your material body are still alive in some sense. Matter and energy are related, as I recall. Death is not the absence of life, nonlife is the absence of life, such as a rock or synthetic materials. I never said I believed in a physical afterlife, so that's moot. Qualification is IF you are alive spiritually after your body dies. I contend that you are not alive spiritually, if we understand spirit to be your personality and consciousness.

I would assume spirit to be that part of me that continues to exist after death if there is an afterlife. My personality and conseciusness and memories are me, not my physical body. So you seem to be talking about death not being death but then you do talk about death being death. The constituents of my material body, whatever that means, being still alive in some sense does not mean I am still alive in some sense.

I am a Christian annihilationist, but it can be an option in any event. We live until we die. It is possible we had no life before we were born, and that we will have no life after we die. Death is not merely a transition, unless you make the assumption it is, and then it may only be your wrong assumption.

So now you're saying it might be valid to see death as merely a transition of life into another life of sorts?

I am saying the same thing I have always said to you, that for some of us, the righteous, physical death may only be a transition to complete spiritual existencs; but for some of us, the wicked and unloving , death may be oblivion.

Not really true. As I said when I die, the existence of the worms eating me does not mean I am not dead.

I wasn't saying you lived on through the worms, the worms are separate, but the interrelation of your material constituents with the worm that eats them suggests that you persist in a nominal sense, not in a complete sense of your personality surviving your death, moreso what was your body, even though it wasn't really yours at all when you think about it.

If there is no afterlife for my personality etc. there is no persisting by me in even a nominal sense.

I do not refuse to think about it. I have thought about it; and I have no reason to believe that existing with a loving Creator would be a bad thing. It is not logical to assume it would be bad. You on the other hand, only come to this assumption, because you are looking for a reason to reject Christianity, not because you have thought about it, and reached the reasonable conclusion it might be bad.

I don't refuse to think about it, I see no reason to think about the afterlife. It is logical to assume that the afterlife is not something we have to think about unless you already presume we survive our death. And no, my rejection of the afterlife is not unique to rejecting the Christian afterlife.

You think about the afterlife and assume there is none. So where do you come up with your ideas that the afterlife is bad?

You're trying to make yourself a victim here when that's not the case. I qualified this topic by saying that all immortality and eternal life are undesirable.

That effects a Christian belief in eternal life.

To say heaven is undesirable would be to make a stab at Christians, which is not my intent.

That is what you did.

There are plenty of non Christian and non abrahamic religions that beleive we survive our death in some immortal eternal way and I equally disbelieve those.

Yes you reject the possibility of eternal life and then proceed to point out how bad it will be.

I think this is more true of your fixation that heaven might be bad, than on mine that it might be good.

I don't presume that I couldn't be wrong, I simply think it makes more sense not to focus on the afterlife and thinking about what might be as opposed to focusing on what is.

But you are fodusing on the afterlilfe when you propose it is bad.

if I'm wrong, so be it. But you can bet I will try to eliminate myself by annihilation, which is preferable to any amount of immortal and persistent existence after my death.

It is what it is and you have no power over it in any event. Again it is not logical to assume annihilation is preferable to existence. You have no concept of what the existence might be like.

This is you imagination at work. There is no life in this world without suffering and death etc. so we all have the contrast and none of us escape it. The joy and happiness in this life however are not the consequences of suffering and death and disease.

The thesis I'm advocating is that joy, happiness and such make no sense without suffering, death and sorrow. We need them as a basic contrast, like a 3 dimensional object needs faces to be 3 dimensional and not just a flat shape.

OK I agree there is the basic contrast and we can enjoy food because we get hungry.

This is a Christian motivation.

Only incidentally. You share that to the point where you diverge with buddhists in that you think that your life will continue after your death and you will be eternally happy, which I think is almost worse than simply living forever, regardless of if you're happy or not. seems to me there's a state of affairs where we could live forever after our deaths, but not in any sense where we'd be happy or sad, that would be dependent on our perspectives.

I am not sure how our perspective will effect our happiness or sadness after we physically die. I continue to not be able to follow why you think eternal happiness would be a bad thing.

I certainly do not think that and nothing I have said gives you any possible reason to believe I think that. I would guess all Christians agree that heaven is a good thing and will be a good existence to experience. That is our unity of agreement. As I have said above that is an entirly reasonable assumption if our Creator is a loving and good entity.

Then your agreement seems pointless, since you agree on an abstract with no concrete description or qualifications about it. that's like agreeing magic exists without specifying the difference between magic and, say, natural occurrences like lightning and earthquakes.

You are the one wanting to fill in the unknown with bad things.

It's not necessarily a reasonable assumption if you think that the Creator is not understanding love and goodness from any general human perspective, but from its own deified perspective. Basically, love and goodness could be inhumane from a human perspective observing a god's ideas of what love and goodness are.

_No love and goodness are the same if done by God as done by us. Love and goodness are never bad and never inhumane._________________

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Spiritual is not physical. We cannot understand the spiritual and we cannot know what a spiritual body is. We assume it is not this physical or natural body. God is a Spirit. The existence of the spliritual is speculation or assumption as is the denial of the existence of the spiritual. I don't understand your problem with a lack of vehicle.

Incorrect. Me denying and being skeptical of the spiritual is not speculating about it. In fact, it's because any ideas about the spiritual are speculation that I deny its existence and am skeptical of it being proven, since any generally useful thing must be proven useful or practical in some sense.

Lack of vehicle is the problem of the interrelation between the body and mind. Without the body, the mind is hollow, one might say.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

I would assume spirit to be that part of me that continues to exist after death if there is an afterlife. My personality and conseciusness and memories are me, not my physical body. So you seem to be talking about death not being death but then you do talk about death being death. The constituents of my material body, whatever that means, being still alive in some sense does not mean I am still alive in some sense.

Spirit according to general Christianity is not your soul, it's the animating principle of both your soul and body.

Death is death as we usually understand it, but that doesn't mean death is actually death as we usually understand it. Death as transition and merely a metamorphosis of life makes more sense.

This all assumes that your identity is not in some sense tied with your physical body, which is inaccurate even by a general Christian understanding, unless you want to lean towards gnosticism

I am saying the same thing I have always said to you, that for some of us, the righteous, physical death may only be a transition to complete spiritual existencs; but for some of us, the wicked and unloving , death may be oblivion.

conditional immortality only creates more problems because life and death are up to the caprice of a deity that has the power to bestow it whenever it pleases.

If there is no afterlife for my personality etc. there is no persisting by me in even a nominal sense.

I didn't say otherwise; that's the basic idea of the afterlife, the persistence of your consciousness and personality. The bodily aspect is a secondary concern of details.

You think about the afterlife and assume there is none. So where do you come up with your ideas that the afterlife is bad?

From people's general explanations of what they beleive it to be, including your own.

You're mistaken in thinking I assume there is no afterlife. At best I reserve judgment since I don't think it's important, but if there is any afterlife, hypothetically, I don't think it will be especially pleasant.

That effects a Christian belief in eternal life.

then it's just your psychology that makes you believe in an afterlife.

That is what you did.

No I didn't. Heaven is not unique to Christianity, therefore you are not my sole "target"

Yes you reject the possibility of eternal life and then proceed to point out how bad it will be.

I reject the desirability. I don't deny outright the possibility. At best I say it is highly unlikely. I point out how bad it is by hypothetical descriptions by people such as yourself, that isn't the same as outright rejecting it.

But you are fodusing on the afterlilfe when you propose it is bad.

By hypothetical tentative descriptions by believers. This isn't misotheism, where I believe in God and hate it, no more than I can be said to believe in the afterlife and persist in hating it. That isn't my position.

It is what it is and you have no power over it in any event. Again it is not logical to assume annihilation is preferable to existence. You have no concept of what the existence might be like.

Nor do you beyond your psychology imagining what it might be like.Speculation on something that is faith based is useless to me, so I don't speculate much myself, I let others do that for me.

OK I agree there is the basic contrast and we can enjoy food because we get hungry.

I am not sure how our perspective will effect our happiness or sadness after we physically die. I continue to not be able to follow why you think eternal happiness would be a bad thing.

Because there'd be no sorrow to contrast it and it would be hollow and empty, like being a vegetable or comatose.

You are the one wanting to fill in the unknown with bad things.

You're filling in the unknown with the things, I'm simply judging them as bad.

_

No love and goodness are the same if done by God as done by us. Love and goodness are never bad and never inhumane

Anything taken to excess is by its nature a bad thing. Even things we normally understand to be good can be unquestionably bad when taken to excess and made to be something more than they originally were. Happiness in perfection and eternity would be without real significance, since it would not be in flux as natural happiness is.

 

[elman]

As Nietszche put it, "In heaven all the interesting people are missing,"

How would Nietszche know?

 

[razeontherock]

Spirit according to general Christianity is not your soul, it's the animating principle of both your soul and body.

Do you truthfully think you can distinguish between soul and spirit, in the way Christianity uses such terms? If you think so, what compels you to think such a thing?

 

[elman]

Incorrect. Me denying and being skeptical of the spiritual is not speculating about it. In fact, it's because any ideas about the spiritual are speculation that I deny its existence and am skeptical of it being proven, since any generally useful thing must be proven useful or practical in some sense.

Lack of vehicle is the problem of the interrelation between the body and mind. Without the body, the mind is hollow, one might say.

One might say any number of things that are incorrect. So you deny anything that is speculation and not proven. Kind of a limited approach. You say you are skeptical of it being proven. How many times have I said it cannot be proven?