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> I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. I feel that eternity in
by lapcat 6mo ago
> I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife.
I feel that eternity in Heaven would actually be Hell, because nothing would matter. No danger, no failure, no challenge, no goals, no purpose. What gives life meaning are mortality, limitations, beginnings and endings, progress.
I recently watched the film "Eternity" on Apple TV, starring Elizabeth Olsen, in which everyone after they die has to choose their own form of afterlife and then stick with it forever. All I could think about was how bored I would eventually get. (The film itself was pretty good, not boring. That's because it had an ending!)
Fiction is ideal for playing out these scenarios. Think also of the film "Highlander", in which the ultimate "prize" of the immortals turns out to be mortality. MacLeod's life had become repetitive, and he couldn't fully invest in it, because he kept losing everyone he loved. They grew old and died, while he lived on and had to keep changing identities. For a while it's a grand adventure... until it isn't anymore.
I can certainly understand wanting to live longer, but eternity is unimaginably long, way too long. I don't think that's something to be desired.
- card_zero 6mo agoProblems, yes. "Biology is going to kill me soon" shouldn't have to be one of those problems, and in fact I think it makes us all slightly crazy in different ways, from not caring about the future to unscrupulously believing in afterlives.
- lapcat 6mo agoI suspect you indended to reply to the sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47827905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47827905 which contains the word "problems" rather than my comment which does not?
- card_zero 6mo agoNo, I was disputing "mortality" while agreeing with "challenges", which I've written as problems in the nice sense of "please let me finish my problem". That's some historical figure's alleged last words, I think. (Edit: probably an embellishment of Archimedes, supposedly saying to the Roman soldier who killed him, "do not disturb my circles!" - not exactly a plaintive attitude about mortality, more just being a grumpy geometrist.)
- chubs 6mo ago"All I could think about was how bored I would eventually get" I used to wonder this. I read the religious answer to this relies on the concept of infinitude: what if an infinite god can invent an infinite number of exciting new... things to do?
- lapcat 6mo agoGod as Mr. Roarke?
- mock-possum 6mo ago“Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens” for better or worse.
- Mikhail_Edoshin 6mo agoThe reference to eternity in afterlife doesn't mean "very long time"; it means "no time", a world that has no time. You can briefly feel the difference by being present in the current moment.
- ButlerianJihad 6mo agoNo, this is a very bad misunderstanding of the term. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05551b.htm https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05551b.htm Eternity in its proper sense belongs to God alone; human beings sharing in "eternal life" will experience time differently. Even the angels experience "aeviternity" which is unique to their kind. https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1010.htm#article5 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1010.htm#article5
- Mikhail_Edoshin 6mo agoCould be; I'm not too literate on this, I'm only retelling what I understood directly and this could be very limited. I just wanted to point out that "eternal life" is not going to be the same life we have now, only endless. It is very different and, speaking of boredom, definitely not boring. Boredom is an invention of mind.
- lapcat 6mo ago> Boredom is an invention of mind. Yes? Are you saying in the afterlife we'll be mindless?