Why Is Immortality/Eternal Life Desirable?

[elman]

Why would you assume death to be preferable to life?

Loaded question, I never said death was preferable to life, since I believe they're two halves of the same whole. But if I have two options, existence after death and nonexistence after death, then I'd prefer the latter.

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).

Not how I assume Heaven to be.
Not how I assume Heaven to be.

Then by all means tell me what YOU assume Heaven to be.

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.

Why do you assume heaven--life to be unpleasant?

Because life is no longer enjoyable when you don't have the opposite to experience: suffering, death, disease, loss, unease, aversion, etc.

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

Your heaven would seem to be inhuman in that everyone would basically be in a utopian stasis and have no reason to think about anything but what they think is ideal by primitive wish fulfillment.

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

 

[elman]

Except that annihilationism (er- nihilism is the correct term, I believe) is not a Christian explanation.

I think it is a very Christian explanation for the destiny of the wicked. The wages of sin is death. Ezekiel 18 says the wicked shall die and not live.

 

[LBP]

This isn't so much a question of how to define heaven, but considering the basic problematic implications of eternal life, immortality, eternity and perfection. You seem to be pushing that issue to the side. You're still missing the point of the implications of eternity and immortality to a person that would otherwise be used to and actually find some enjoyment out of that. Why would a person suddenly find it better to have all their problems solved for them as opposed to what more people find at least motivating for their actions in some sense, reincarnation?

The only reason people might find heaven appealing is IF it's defined in such a way that it makes it sound like you can still enjoy yourself: hang out with pets, play football and stuff. But if you're that certain, then you seem to be going against any supposed idea that heaven is basically unknowable, as you're saying.

No, I believe you are missing the point. When you make statements such as "Why would a person suddenly find it better to have all their problems solved for them as opposed to what more people find at least motivating for their actions in some sense, reincarnation?" you are setting up a "straw heaven" as "a place where people have all of their problems solved for them." There may be people who imagine heaven this way, but I don't know any of them. Likewise, whether people find some notion of heaven "appealing" is beside the point. No one has any real idea as to what the heavenly realm is like, or whether "hanging out with pets" and "playing football" are even intelligible concepts in the context of the heavenly realm. Heaven is, of course, basically unknowable -- no human mind can really grasp the concept of a timeless eternity or share God's perspective. What we can know is that God has promised that an eternity with Him, whatever it is like, is a goal to be desired above all else. We don't need to "define" heaven; it is what it is, as we will find out when we get there. I don't believe it is a productive exercise to try to imagine an "appealing" heaven or to try to assess whether others' imagined heavens are "appealing." If someone is going to reject God's promises on the basis that he or she can't imagine an appealing eternity, that seems to me like kindergarten-level thinking.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

The huge distinction exists in your cosmology, not the biblical one.

Do you think people 2000-2500 years ago defined "the earth" as "the particular planet on which we stand as opposed to the many other similar spheres orbiting our or any other star"?

No. By the earth they had layers of possible meaning including "the whole world in which we live (as opposed to the world in which God lives)". Some times it's "... As opposed to the sky", sometimes ".... as opposed to the sea". Never could, let alone is, it "... as opposed to other planets".

To read any ancient text in terms of modern categories and thought patterns is anachronistic.

Then the problem remains that you regress yourself to a more primitive style of thought. These people thought bats were identical to birds, we don't take that seriously, though. But we're just supposed to think that it has to be read somehow literally when it doesn't have to mean less if we see it as figurative or metaphorical?

 

[ToHoldNothing]

"Why Is Immortality/Eternal Life Desirable?"

Isn't that kind of like asking, why is a life with good health/without illness desirable?

Terrible example. Good health and lack of illness are only general ideals. We shouldn't want to not ever get sick, because biologically we wouldn't develop immunity. This dichotomy of health=good, sickness=bad is also mistaken because of the idea that always having good things is somehow better than having a mixture of good and bad things. I can't appreciate my girlfriend if I haven't also experienced some kind of relationship faiure in the past, nor can I appreciate the cats we have without having experienced losing cats to disease or general death.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

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

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. 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 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 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.

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

 

[ToHoldNothing]

No, I believe you are missing the point. When you make statements such as "Why would a person suddenly find it better to have all their problems solved for them as opposed to what more people find at least motivating for their actions in some sense, reincarnation?" you are setting up a "straw heaven" as "a place where people have all of their problems solved for them." There may be people who imagine heaven this way, but I don't know any of them. Likewise, whether people find some notion of heaven "appealing" is beside the point. No one has any real idea as to what the heavenly realm is like, or whether "hanging out with pets" and "playing football" are even intelligible concepts in the context of the heavenly realm. Heaven is, of course, basically unknowable -- no human mind can really grasp the concept of a timeless eternity or share God's perspective. What we can know is that God has promised that an eternity with Him, whatever it is like, is a goal to be desired above all else. We don't need to "define" heaven; it is what it is, as we will find out when we get there. I don't believe it is a productive exercise to try to imagine an "appealing" heaven or to try to assess whether others' imagined heavens are "appealing." If someone is going to reject God's promises on the basis that he or she can't imagine an appealing eternity, that seems to me like kindergarten-level thinking.

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.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Many people fear death because it is as if they never existed.

Because they're too attached to their own limited perspective and thinking that life must be so that in the afterlife, they will still be alive and conscious, which is not only idealistic, but clingy

I can't say worship is based on reason any more than saying thank you to someone, or wanting justice when someone you know is killed is reasonable. But to want to respect, thank, and give to someone what they deserve isn't wrong just because we have to assume certain things we can't prove by reason, don't you think? Isn't reason itself something which we can't prove without circular reasoning? So if we accept that emotions and conscience are part of us just as much as reason it would make sense to act on them if they didn't have bad consequences.

Reason and logic are axiomatic, unless you think that just because we have to posit them as axioms that it requires that we posit something even more faith based to justify them, which doesn't follow

Generally yes. But I don't really know what happens after death

Then the whole issue boils down to: You believe this, I don't believe this, but why should you believe this apart from your personal experiences? Why should this apply to everyone, when not everyone believes as you do?

 

[ToHoldNothing]

TY for the lesson in earthly wisdom. I am far more familiar with the divine variety.

So i guess God didn't create logic, right? which means God can do whatever it wants

Really. The dragon refers to what - other people's opinions? okay..

The ant is you and I in our little tiny limited perspectives, the dragon is the objective and overall perspective that overshadows us as a dragon overshadows an ant. Being obscure rarely works, which is why I try to explain my metaphors when inquiries come forth

Right. See, truth is a very specific, narrow, strict thing, like it or not.

Specific, narrow and strict are all based on a human perspective, so it doesn't follow that the dragon perspective matches to your ant perspective

...and the trash would be...?

Everything. Trash heaps don't just burn certain materials, they seek to destroy everything. The whole annihilationism topic is another thread entirely, which I'm not qualified to talk on

They're gone because there is no way to communicate with them. Again - death = separation. And to the living the question of where they went was moot - because they were forever separated.

So death is merely a transition/transformation? Then death doesn't really exist at all, it seems. It's just life changing.

I would agree with that.

Doesn't mean you'd agree with the annihilationist about why the spirits are just demons masquerading as the departed. you'd just agree in the same way an old earth creationist agrees with a scientific cosmologist about the age of the universe or the earth

Well, we are presuming to talk about truth here, and ultimately there is only one truth about this or any subject - not one for me and one for other Christians and one for modern Jews and another for those in the time of Moses, etc. Anything that is not truth is merely opinion

Just because objective truth is flexible doesn't mean it ceases to be objective. Again, dragon and ant perspectives should be emphasized.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

1 cor 15. Paul says we are not going to have natural bodies but spiritual ones. God is a Spirit according to the Bible, which means not physical as we are.

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

 

[solarwave]

Because they're too attached to their own limited perspective and thinking that life must be so that in the afterlife, they will still be alive and conscious, which is not only idealistic, but clingy

Is it wrong to be clingy to your own life when it has given you everything you every good thing you have ever experienced? It may overcome, but the average person doesn't seem to do this. I may be wrong.

Reason and logic are axiomatic, unless you think that just because we have to posit them as axioms that it requires that we posit something even more faith based to justify them, which doesn't follow

Arn't reason and logic self-evident to reason and logic though?

Some moral laws seem to be self-evident, eg: that rape is wrong.

Then the whole issue boils down to: You believe this, I don't believe this, but why should you believe this apart from your personal experiences? Why should this apply to everyone, when not everyone believes as you do?

Hope?

Someone else can try to convince you why the afterlife is real. I'm not saying anything necessarily applies to everyone.

 

[Sketcher]

I have no problems with being free of pain and loss myself. Furthermore, companionship with the Creator of all life and all pleasure is a good thing to me. It's going to be anything but boring up there.

 

[ebia]

Then the problem remains that you regress yourself to a more primitive style of thought. These people thought bats were identical to birds, we don't take that seriously, though. But we're just supposed to think that it has to be read somehow literally when it doesn't have to mean less if we see it as figurative or metaphorical?

One has to read any text with the categories and concepts of it's time, place and culture. To not do so is anachronistic, arrogant, and downright absurd and bound to lead to misunderstanding about what the text says. To assume that because we can translate a Hebrew or Koine Greek word as "the earth" that the author would have the same set of connotations in mind as a 21st century science journalist is just silly.

If you want to run with the game of "ancient people didn't use modern science therefore nothing they said was of any value at all" you might as well have started by making that level of cultural arrogance explicit and saved a whole lot of time. On that basis the conversation must be a waste of time.


I'm not sure how to parse your second sentence.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Is it wrong to be clingy to your own life when it has given you everything you every good thing you have ever experienced? It may overcome, but the average person doesn't seem to do this. I may be wrong.

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.

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.

Arn't reason and logic self-evident to reason and logic though?

Some moral laws seem to be self-evident, eg: that rape is wrong.

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?

Hope?

Someone else can try to convince you why the afterlife is real. I'm not saying anything necessarily applies to everyone

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

 

[ToHoldNothing]

I have no problems with being free of pain and loss myself. Furthermore, companionship with the Creator of all life and all pleasure is a good thing to me. It's going to be anything but boring up there.

Perspective problem again. The ant thinks it's all great to be part of a hive mind, but the dragon is not so myopic and narrow in its perspective, as it flies broadly, yet still admittedly in a limited perspective of its own.

You have presumptions that heaven will be anything of what you personally think it is, not to mention that you think pain and loss are somehow absolutely bad and evil in and of themselves, when they are as much a learning tool as me breaking my arm and learning not to jump on the couch like a monkey. It would seem to be anything but boring to you, but from my perspective, I'd prefer to simply be annihilated in terms of my personality and simply persist on in terms of karmic constituents

 

[ToHoldNothing]

One has to read any text with the categories and concepts of it's time, place and culture. To not do so is anachronistic, arrogant, and downright absurd and bound to lead to misunderstanding about what the text says. To assume that because we can translate a Hebrew or Koine Greek word as "the earth" that the author would have the same set of connotations in mind as a 21st century science journalist is just silly.

If you want to run with the game of "ancient people didn't use modern science therefore nothing they said was of any value at all" you might as well have started by making that level of cultural arrogance explicit and saved a whole lot of time. On that basis the conversation must be a waste of time.

Yet we can't necessarily always think that these people always have the right answers. We can read it as we do a literary text without taking it as something of a revelation unless you personally believe that yourself, which is separate from a general reading of the Bible.

I don't think that just because a people doesn't use science that they are automatically useless, but I think we should take things less seriously than to put every ancient civilization on a pedestal and think that everything, or a majority of what they say, is significant to us in our particular historical and cultural contexts

I'm not sure how to parse your second sentence.

Basically, you can still view something as spiritually significant even if you don't think it has to be read literally, e.g. Genesis and Revelation for two obvious examples

 

[ebia]

Yet we can't necessarily always think that these people always have the right answers.

I didn't say you could - the point we were discussing was how to read the text for what it says (specifically the scope of what it has in mind by renewal of the earth). Until we've understood what the biblical vision for the future is we're not ready to discuss the validity of that vision.

Basically, you can still view something as spiritually significant even if you don't think it has to be read literally, e.g. Genesis and Revelation for two obvious examples

Of course they aren't literal. But the first couple of chapters of Genesis and the last couple of Revelation are visionary, symbolic, outlines of God's intention for creation, an intention expressed elsewhere in other forms (eg the imaginative poetry of Isaiah), the paradigmatic action of Exodus,...

 

[ToHoldNothing]

So basically it's more exegesis, trying to link together what are systems primarily connected by prophecy more than identical visions of the afterlife. A lot of this seems to come down to cultural upbringing and influences. Take Ha Satan for instance. It wasn't an evil entity initially and Jews didn't think so until they had been exposed to more dualistic moral thinking from Zoroastrianism.

A lot of this boils down to your attempt to try to unify books that aren't necessarily written by authors with exact ideals in mind in relation to God, especially when you take into account how the Jewish narrative differs in the tribal distinctions made by God's commands of genocide versus a God that decides that everyone should get a chance once the Roman Empire rolls around

 

[ebia]

So basically it's more exegesis,[/qoute]
Of course - how could we possibly discuss the desirablility of the Christian hope without examining what that hope is to which scripture points?

trying to link together what are systems primarily connected by prophecy more than identical visions of the afterlife. A lot of this seems to come down to cultural upbringing and influences. Take Ha Satan for instance. It wasn't an evil entity initially and Jews didn't think so until they had been exposed to more dualistic moral thinking from Zoroastrianism.

A lot of this boils down to your attempt to try to unify books that aren't necessarily written by authors with exact ideals in mind in relation to God, especially when you take into account how the Jewish narrative differs in the tribal distinctions made by God's commands of genocide versus a God that decides that everyone should get a chance once the Roman Empire rolls around

Without getting bogged down in a side-track to a side-track by disputing your various details, of course the various authors bring different perspectives and an interest in different questions from different times and places in the story. Why should it be otherwise?

Your original question was about the desirability or otherwise of the Christian hope, but you seem much more interested in looking for reasons to dismiss the biblical picture than finding out what picture it is that you are dismissing.

Remembering that this is not a forum for apologetic debate but a forum for question and answer.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Of course - how could we possibly discuss the desirablility of the Christian hope without examining what that hope is to which scripture points?

Without getting bogged down in a side-track to a side-track by disputing your various details, of course the various authors bring different perspectives and an interest in different questions from different times and places in the story. Why should it be otherwise?

Because it only seems to create more difficulties for a monolithic system. Which is where your perspectives create problems. There are Christian annihilationists, those who beleive heaven and hell are places of bliss and torment respectively, those who believe heaven and hell are based on our relation to God and thus heaven and hell will both feel good in related, but very distinct ways, those who believe heaven is a material place and those who believe it's a spiritual place.

This already clogs up a discussion that seems to be missing the point of what I asked, in that why would such a place be desirable to an outsider in the general sense? Why would a person with no relationship with God or belief thereof, feel any compulsion to want to have a relationship or belief in God and an afterlife as such with permanent existence after death?

Your original question was about the desirability or otherwise of the Christian hope, but you seem much more interested in looking for reasons to dismiss the biblical picture than finding out what picture it is that you are dismissing.

I can't figure out which picture I could criticize (not dismiss outright) because I'm not getting a clear picture as I observed above