Why Is Immortality/Eternal Life Desirable?

[razeontherock]

You can't really prove that life can be extended without end, first off.

Have you been listening to the Mr Obvious show lately?

you still seem to hold that heaven is an idyllic existence where we don't ever die, like a veritable utopia.

You keep saying a LOT of things and attributing them to me. I might as well ask you why you insist on wearing purple underwear. Or if you've stopped beating your wife.

If Christianity believes death exists, it seems to be very mitigated

While the "if" doesn't belong in your statement, the mitigated part tells me this thread hasn't been entirely fruitless.

I wouldn't call that religion, so much as mysticism.

If our quote function allowed the preservation of context, you would see that here you are calling people just making stuff up to fill in the blanks mysticism. My, what a dark version of the word!

the first commandment is myopic in its focus, is what I'm saying

Be sure to tell Him that when you meet Him.

so you miss the point entirely. One can believe ideas that you believe are Christian without being Christian themselves.

I keep pointing out your ideas that C supports wherever I find them, so for you to say I somehow miss this point is simply ...

I'll let you fill in that blank.

Don't care.

I was not attacking you, you're confusing me attacking your unfounded beliefs

The rules of CF generally do not allow for that. Discussing ideas is fine, but belittling others, blasphemy, and the rest of the context you were responding to here is not. And it's called basic human decency, not narcissism.

0 tolerance for this brand of your nastiness from here on out, dude.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Sorry, your jello relativism doesn't carry any weight:

The Word of the Lord is sure.

The Word of the Lord endures forever.

God doesn't change.


THEREFORE, there's simply no room for your statement here.

Who said I was ever advocating relativism? That's neither here nor there.

And your claims are just opinions with no support apart from the text itself that you're referring to, which is circular.

If God doesn't change, basically, you're saying any opinion or belief you have could still be wrong?

 

[razeontherock]

You're confusing faith and trust, which are related, but distinct from each other.

I have no idea what this has to do with the thread, but in C the two are NOT distinct. Glad we sorted that out.

In short, you believe these things with no clarification, as if people will just magically go along with you because it just makes sense.

I just got done reading you say you don't pretend to know what I believe, unless I tell you. Go back to that or retract this statement, but have some integrity one way or the other, eh?

Thomas was told that those who believe and don't see are better than him, so his skepticism seems to be disregarded as having as much value overall. Am I wrong?

Yes.

1) G-d is no respecter of persons. There is no "better."
2) Neither of us have anything to compare to Thomas' skepticism, if we are to take the story at face value. What he did was not intellectual inquiry, nor any kind of soul searching, nor wrestling with repentance. Instead, he tried putting conditions on the Almighty.

 

[razeontherock]

So you have understanding of Buddhism and Hinduism to compare it to Christianity?

That's not what I said. I simply point out ideas you present, if there's any common ground. You keep proving over and over you aren't familiar enough w/ even the basic tenets of C to compare them to B or H.

Forces me to wonder what sort of 'C' background you had, but I don't blame you for getting away from it.

You see where I use the word 'seem' consistently?

Yes, and I do appreciate that.

If you don't believe that, tell me to the contrary and then clarify what you DO believe.

Unpossible. You throw out a zillion ideas into any exchange. Focus!

 

[razeontherock]

Originally Posted by razeontherock
So if I can mix metaphors - life is hell?

That assumes that hell is understood in buddhism as some place of torment in any sense of the word, which is only half right.

No it doesn't. That's why I qualified it as mixing metaphors.

Life is hellish

You picked a long way to go about agreeing.

Now, why would EL be desirable?

 

[razeontherock]

So why is eternal life good when death is supposedly something good as well?

In C, death is an ENEMY. Unnatural, and not part of the original plan.

 

[razeontherock]

Who said I was ever advocating relativism? That's neither here nor there.

And your claims are just opinions with no support apart from the text itself that you're referring to, which is circular.

If God doesn't change, basically, you're saying any opinion or belief you have could still be wrong?

Sorry, you'll have to go back to the context this was written in. You basically claimed C has no such permanent fixture. And anyone "exploring Christianity" would be content with support solely from THE most credible source of C thought, the Holy Bible. If you want other support, that would be life experience, which I obviously can't give you over the internet.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

I have no idea what this has to do with the thread, but in C the two are NOT distinct. Glad we sorted that out.

Neither here nor there. You believe what you want about that; see how far it gets you

I just got done reading you say you don't pretend to know what I believe, unless I tell you. Go back to that or retract this statement, but have some integrity one way or the other, eh?

You seem to think everything you say can't even be relatively analyzed without you correcting someone. If I say something wrong, I can retract it, but I can't always qualify what I say as tentative when I see a pattern in your speech.

Yes.

1) G-d is no respecter of persons. There is no "better."
2) Neither of us have anything to compare to Thomas' skepticism, if we are to take the story at face value. What he did was not intellectual inquiry, nor any kind of soul searching, nor wrestling with repentance. Instead, he tried putting conditions on the Almighty.

Not quite. He asked for proof, that is skepticism and empiricism on its face. For you to say otherwise is to be intellectually dishonest about what Thomas was doing in that event with Jesus and his stigmata. You can't separate this so called putting conditions on something with intellectual inquiry, since that's part of intellectual inquiry is putting conditions on what makes something proven or reasonable.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

Sorry, you'll have to go back to the context this was written in. You basically claimed C has no such permanent fixture. And anyone "exploring Christianity" would be content with support solely from THE most credible source of C thought, the Holy Bible. If you want other support, that would be life experience, which I obviously can't give you over the internet.

Any dogma is historically situational and contextual to a particular denomination or group of Christianity. There weren't formulated creeds or such in Jesus' own cult, so your advocating some hard and fast approach to Christian doctrine seems disingenuous when compared with a much more general idea of Jesus' teachings apart from the creeds of 200+ years later.

Even if you gave me some answer from your bible, it doesn't mean every Christian will get that answer, and for you to say otherwise is being unfairly dismissive of any other Christian merely because they don't fit in with what you believe is orthodox.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

In C, death is an ENEMY. Unnatural, and not part of the original plan.

Thenyour whole worldview seems unnecessarily and unrealistically skewed towards a fixation on life and this whole topic seems to be reduced to "Xianity thinks death is wholly bad, therefore there is no reaason why Eternal life and immortality should not be desirable,"

If you're the representative of Xianity in any sense, you've basically just cut this topic short with that utterance

 

[ToHoldNothing]

You keep saying a LOT of things and attributing them to me. I might as well ask you why you insist on wearing purple underwear. Or if you've stopped beating your wife.

Except those are irrelevant to the topic, so they'd be worthless tangents to a discussion that has a particular subject in mind. If I'm wrong, correct me without being condescending or insulted.

While the "if" doesn't belong in your statement, the mitigated part tells me this thread hasn't been entirely fruitless.

Only in continuing to understand why I have little to gain from christianity's ideas of 'salvation'

If our quote function allowed the preservation of context, you would see that here you are calling people just making stuff up to fill in the blanks mysticism. My, what a dark version of the word!

A better word might suffice, such as wishful thinking.

Be sure to tell Him that when you meet Him.

I don't resort to threats of the afterlife, why do you, as if it will be any motivator?

I keep pointing out your ideas that C supports wherever I find them, so for you to say I somehow miss this point is simply ...

I'll let you fill in that blank.

Incidental beliefs that synch up with your beliefs are no more pertinent or meaningful than the fact that Jesus practically steals or borrows Confucius' initial phrasing of the Golden rule hundreds of years before his virgin birth

The rules of CF generally do not allow for that. Discussing ideas is fine, but belittling others, blasphemy, and the rest of the context you were responding to here is not. And it's called basic human decency, not narcissism.

0 tolerance for this brand of your nastiness from here on out, dude.

You have no place to enforce these rules, but only to spout them out to me as if I'm wholly bound by them any more than you are in belittling my beliefs as I might perceive you to be.

And your being insulted by what you think are slights on your character is not decency, it's an unrealistic sense of entitlement because of your position in this Christian majority forum.

You won't have to worry about tolerating, you've basically cut off your usefulness for discussing this topic if you are basically unwilling to consider the possibility that death might be more significant and meaningful than you believe it to be.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

No it doesn't. That's why I qualified it as mixing metaphors.

Buddhism doesn't always consider hell a metaphor in the literature. Hell is commonly considered a real place, however transient it may also be. This is what distinguishes it from Xian hell

You picked a long way to go about agreeing.

I didn't agree. Life being hellish is not the same as life being hell, even in a figurative sense. Life being hellish is also contrasted or set alongside the allegation that life is heavenly, for example. Life is not one way or the other, it's perspective.

Now, why would EL be desirable?

It would only be so if you had already concluded death was in no way desirable, which seems silly if Christianity advocates some kind of figurative death but opposes literal death somehow.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

That's not what I said. I simply point out ideas you present, if there's any common ground. You keep proving over and over you aren't familiar enough w/ even the basic tenets of C to compare them to B or H.

I don't think I ever claimed I did; you, on the other hand, seem to think you know things that you have demonstrated patent ignorance about time and time again for the most part.

Forces me to wonder what sort of 'C' background you had, but I don't blame you for getting away from it.

Honestly, I can be said to get better ideas of Christianity from general academic investigation of writers from that tradition that simply being told what to believe, but you'd probably say that isn't going far enough in learning about Xianity, but that's where we'd disagree

Unpossible. You throw out a zillion ideas into any exchange. Focus

Then clarify what you do believe about a particular subject. Would that be better?

 

[razeontherock]

Thenyour whole worldview seems unnecessarily and unrealistically skewed towards a fixation on life and this whole topic seems to be reduced to "Xianity thinks death is wholly bad, therefore there is no reaason why Eternal life and immortality should not be desirable,"

you've basically just cut this topic short with that utterance

I wouldn't call 20 pages cutting anything short, but this is not how I expected this to resolve! See that this pre-dates C by quite a bit. From Moses:

Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, [that] I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:"


I'm surprised this is news to you, seeing as you claim a C background. Also Chris pointed this out from another passage many pages back, about a living dog being better than a dead lion. He's right, that's in Ecclesiastes not Proverbs as I thought, but they both have the same author, and the context is as i laid it out.

This still doesn't get to any qualitative comparison, which is really the whole point of the question in the title, but rather than being interested in that you seem to prefer argument for it's own sake.

Peace

 

[ToHoldNothing]

I wouldn't call 20 pages cutting anything short, but this is not how I expected this to resolve! See that this pre-dates C by quite a bit. From Moses:

Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, [that] I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:"

Not short in either duration or length, but simply cutting it to an end. It's an idiom, I would think you'd realize that, even in jest.

You make it sound like I choose death, which is absurd. I can value both life and death without prioritizing to the dismissal of one or the other.

I'm surprised this is news to you, seeing as you claim a C background. Also Chris pointed this out from another passage many pages back, about a living dog being better than a dead lion. He's right, that's in Ecclesiastes not Proverbs as I thought, but they both have the same author, and the context is as i laid it out.

I didn't claim a seminarian or theological background, which would've been more relevant and reasonable to expect in terms of knowledge.

This still doesn't get to any qualitative comparison, which is really the whole point of the question in the title, but rather than being interested in that you seem to prefer argument for it's own sake.

You didn't qualify any quality about eternal life, you presume it is good without any support for that argument. Either explain why death should always be seen as bad or don't even bother trying to argue your position as even reasonable, let alone rational.

 

[elman]

Then logically, love is God, so why would you need to separate the two except in that god is a personality, whereas love is between different personalities, suggesting god has dissociative identity disorder.

.

This was in response to God is love and it is not logical or reasonable. God being loving does not logically result in all loving actions being God.

 

[elman]

Pretty much, though escaping it seems a bit too close to aversion, whereas Buddhism is more recognzing things as they are, which can involve seeing that your own perspective is limited and that reality as it truly is is not what you think it is. This is where the idea of samsara/reincarnation and nirvana/liberation being intertwined comes from.

Reincarnation is a curse in that it is something you bring upon yourself, not that it's a curse from outside yourself. You keep yourself bound to samsara, samsara doesn't bind you.

I understand what you are saying but the reality is life is not all suffering. Life is also joy and happiness and pleasure. Life is good and death is not good except in the limited sense that it ends a life that is dominated by suffering. Not all life is dominated by suffering.

 

[elman]

Heaven is not what nirvana is. Nirvana is liberation, not annihilation. Siddhartha Gautama himself said that nirvana is not either eternal existence nor annihilation, but a middle path between them.

Some might call it pantheism in some sense, in that you finally become one with everything in a sense, but not in a conscious sense. That's certainly closer than either understanding that seems to be popularized in understandings of Buddhism in the west.

Nirvana is neither oblivion nor eternity, but simply realizing things as they are; it's a state of mind more than a state of existence, one might say; so that what happens after death of an enlightened person is basically unknown.

I know, but this is more double speak as far as I can tell. We die to self and become part of the whole, like we are a drop of water and we merge with the ocean of everything. The result, no matter how you slice it, is oblivion of self--annihilation so far as self is concerned. It is similar to me becoming part of the worm that eats me when I die--no comfot there at all for me. If you are pleased with it, so be it.
You say what happens after death of an enlightened person is basically unknown. This is true of what happens to a person when they go to heaven--unknown, except we trust a loving Creator that it will be good and it will be life and not death. This is why it is foolish to talk about being bored and unhappy in heaven.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

This was in response to God is love and it is not logical or reasonable. God being loving does not logically result in all loving actions being God.

You didn't say God is loving, you said God is love. There's a difference between being the manifestation of a quality and simply putting that quality into practice consistently. If God is loving, then we have a logical reversal that still seems to hold as valid, if not true; Loving is God.

Or maybe, Loving is Godly, if you wanted to qualify it somehow, in which case it's no longer logically valid, but simply a converse of sorts of the original statement 'God is loving'

 

[ToHoldNothing]

I understand what you are saying but the reality is life is not all suffering. Life is also joy and happiness and pleasure. Life is good and death is not good except in the limited sense that it ends a life that is dominated by suffering. Not all life is dominated by suffering.

Buddhism doesn't say all life is suffering. That translation of dukkha is inflexible and forgets that Buddhism does affirm that life has good things in it to enjoy. But the dukkha, or unsatisfactoriness for a better translation, is internal and comes from our psychology and perspective on the world. Life and death are both good depending on perspective.

This is not to say they are absolutely determined by perspective, but any wise person will not use black and white thinking to judge things as good or bad in any ultimate sense. That's beyond words. Life is not dominated by suffering, suffering dominates a person's life individually.

That's not to say that life is depressing, but it is harsh in its reality. People die, things will degrade, things will change. That is anicca, impermanence. Anicca is part of why we see life as unsatisfactory. Satisfaction comes from within, one might say. That's where a misunderstanding comes from. The satisfaction is not to become dead to the world, but dead to black and white judgments.