Category: philosophy/religion topics
If life is meaningless witout an afterlife, then it stands to reason the afterlife would be meaningless without an after-afterlife when the god's god will come and save us all from the fallen nature of the afterlife.
Infinite regression theory in a nutshell, in the above link which is a Youtube video.
To Christians, yes, I know that technically there is inaccuracies about the Christian heaven represented there. But metaphorically, doing the same thing over and over for eternity, or once one has exhausted all possible experience, could indeed become as boring and hellish as moving rocks forever.
Thoughts?
If the christian heaven does indeed exist, I wouldn't want to go there anyway, if it's going to be populated with certain people from this community.
A bit of afterlife extension of Plato's "Young man, it's turtles all the way down!"
Well, the thing about the Christian afterlife is so little is actually known about it that no one can say one would be doing the same thing over and over again. Certainly the media portrays it a certain way, but how much of that is actually based on fact? Even my own faith - which believes strongly in an after-existence of eternal progression, and has a pretty extensive belief about the degrees of the afterlife still only has a rudimentary understanding of what will actually take place beyond the day of final judgement. I'll say this though, eternity is a very difficult concept to truly grasp. We humans measure much of our lives in liniar time. if eternity is endless, it certainly stands to reason there's a lot more that will be done than the same repetitious tasks forever.
Here's what is interesting.
According to Revelation, Christians won't be on clouds, but in a very industrialized city, paved with gold, and their main aim will in fact be praise and worship.
But even if you could have countless experiences, eventually you would have all the experiences possible. After you had had all those experiences, they would start repeating. At some point of repeating and repeating, it would become boring. Consciousness is limited. Just like the universe is limited.
The universe only appears eternal because we think it is, because it's more than we could imagine.
Think of those stories in genesis where the Abraham character was promised the number of descendants as the stars he could see in the sky. That's just a few thousand, by the way. The human eye can't see any more than just a few thousand. Even though the text makes it sound ad infinitum.
There is serious cosmological controversy as to the actual existence of eternity, as described by most religions and popular culture / myths.
But the way our consciousness works, we would in fact get bored after awhile, once we've had the same old experiences, even billions or trillions of experiences, over and over again ad infinitum.
Think about this: When you were a kid, the summers just seemed endlessly long, didn't they? Maybe some week-long camping and fishing trip just felt like an eternity, until it was over. As you had more and more experiences, time seems to fly more and more quickly.
Now imagine the greatest fun you ever had as a kid, or a vacation you took as an adult. Part of that fun is that there was a beginning and an end. Your vacation didn't have meaning only because there was an after-vacation vacation coming. It had meaning in and of itself.
One of the most commonly held misconceptions of atheism is that it must be bleak because there is no meaning in life, supposing that the only meaning in life is the expectation of an afterlife. If that were in fact the case, logically it would follow that the only meaning in an afterlife is the expectation of an after-afterlife, and that one would only have meaning if it had the expectation of an after-after-afterlife, and so on, regression ad infinitum
But theists of all stripes take vacations, knowing the vacation will start and it will end. And they don't consider the facation to be meaningless because that is, we could say, "all there is," for a vacation.
Anyway glad you wrote, was hoping to hear from theists on this one.
I've heard the Mormons have a different view of the afterlife than the typical Christian view of the Eternal City.
I understand what you're saying, and I think it makes sense. For myself however I never really gave being bored much thought. , only because based on my understanding of the afterlife (and for that matter my lack of knowledge of it based on there being much that is not known yet), I do not really worry about getting bored. Certainly an eternity of nothing but endless worship and adoration doesn't sound appealing, no matter how much we may owe the father and son both, we are beings which need to be DOING something. An eternity of just sitting around would likely get old very fast. Hense eternal progression. But as I (and my church) understand it, there is far more to look forward to (and to do) than that. I'm not discounting the city of gold, though I am not certain of its exact nature off the top of my head. We believe there to be three degrees of afterlife, and that there are a number of factors which determine on which (and in the scheme of which - we will end up. I also think that, just as we never stop learning, growing and encountering new experiences in mortality, so too will that be the case in eternity also. It's also important to understand that, though we will fully retain everything that makes us who we are, our personalities in other words, we will also be so much more than we were, because our bodies will be restored and perfected.
As you said, Leo, the LDS church does have a different perspective on the afterlife. It's more in-depth and expanded than diferent, as much of what we believe is biblicly supported. Still, I understand why some people - Christian and not - have a wide variety of mixed reactions to it. I don't want to start a whose light is brighter debate though. In summary, I'm not worried about being board, either in this life or the next. Sure I get board, but I just need to find something to do. I love my life now, and I'm sure I'll love my eternal life to come. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm not ready to be done with this life yet, either.:)
Interesting response. And I think Darkmatter525 had composed the video mainly as a cfounterargument to the typical evangelical argument that atheism is bleak because life without an afterlife is meaningless.
If that were true, you would get the regressive recursion that is implied in Plato's dialogs regarding the origin of the Earth, "Young man, it's turtles all the way down!"
The sort of ad infinitum recursion that the watch / watchmaker intelligent design hypothesis generates.
For those that don't know, there was a 19th-century naturalist, contemporary of Charles Darwin, who created a model to understand the universe, one still popular in young earth creationist circles: You find a watch on the beach, and after examining it, you draw the logical conclusion it is designed. It stops there, but that is a fallacy. If you conclude it is designed, and examine the attributes of the designer, you would using the same logic conclude a much smarter designer designed that designer. You could then examine the attributes of that designer and draw the same conclusion, just as Plato did with Origins.
Of course, none of that design hypothesis takes into account two key factors: correlation does not indicate causation, and we homo sapiens are pattern-seeking animals, and find patterns where they do not exist. Most Protestants do not, for instance, see the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast, or Christ on a cheeto, but Catholics with their cultural meme have recognized these patterns. Protestants can acknowledge this is a faux recognition of pattern.
All the various Christianities in their own ways, by being atheistic to all the other Christianities, are nearly themselves atheists as some of us are.
It's an interesting bit of philosophy. I think I agree with it. Nothing springs from nothing. Everything has a creation point, we humans, the world itself, even they who designed the world. We LDS do believe that both the Father and Son did indeed have an origin, and, furthermore that the world was created from unorganized mattter.
As for atheists finding the lack of an afterlife bleak, I get it. It definately sounds bleak to me. The idea of living my life, gaining all this knowledge and experience, only to have the whole thing suddenly stop after likely less than a century is a rather unhappy prospect, even if in a way I would live on in my children, and in the possible legacy of my deeds. But I am not an atheist, and thus have a high degree of certainty that death does not mark the end of existence. Sure, I could be wrong about what I believe. But the idea that all I am - that my consciousness - myself as an intelligence would suddenly wink out ... it doesn't make sense to me. But I understand - I think - that there are likely many atheists who are completely fine with it. In some ways it might even be comforting. An end to one's self would be an absense of everything, and a cessation of the trials and tribulations and stresses life brings. It would be peaceful maybe? Even though if you were gone, would you be aware of it? Honestly the whole thing is hard for me to comprehend and has me thinking in a circle. And that's okay. The nice thing about society today - as messed up as it sometimes can be - is that there is space for a multitude of different outlooks.
First off, thanks for being the only theist with the courage to take this on, BG. Many theists on here say they won't speak on these topics for fear of some sort of argumentative comeback, like they get from some of the antitheists on here. But this board explains it all, by their absence.
I admire your courage and appreciate your willingness to engage.
It would also be nice to hear from other theists on this.
I can only speak for myself: I am a naturalistic atheist. Meaning that what is natural and observable is what is important to me. In all probability, I don't see that a god or gods exist. But to be clear, most nontheists deal in probability, while theists deal in possibility. Those are two very very different things.
As to what happens when we die? They're experimenting now with the "consciousness switch" in the brain. If that is turned off, all cognitive functions cease.
When you are under anesthetic, that is what it will be like when you are dead. You won't know it, just as you didn't know when you were completely under. Only with an anaesthetic you wake up. But you wake up instantly, only to find out hours have gone by. That should tell you something. When you're gone, you're gone. From a naturalistic perspective.
Of course, atheism isn't a philosophy, and has no creed: it's only a definition applied to someone who believes that in all probability there is no god. Hence those of us, myself included, who consider agnostic atheism to be the only intellectually honest position: IN probability there is no supernatural entity, but it is impossible to either prove or disprove it.
Now, that is not a philosophy. So, the theist might rightly ask, by what philosophy do you live? I'm a humanist. Most evangelicals have heard a lot of bad things about humanists: a lot of lies actually. Such things as humanists are hedonistic or communist. One is led to wonder at the authenticity of a faith who must constantly tell lies about those different from itself, but we have not had any evangelicals show themselves on this thread.
Humanism, well defined by the philosopher David Hume, is a work towards achieving the greatest happiness for the highest number of people possible. For faiths based on suffering, I understand that 'happiness' is a trigger word for you. But happiness, in this context, is not the hedonistic happiness of the satisfied pig. It includes such things as dignity, fidelity, preservation of honor.
So a man doesn't achieve happiness, for instance, by having an affair, even if he achieved pleasure, because afterwards he lost his family, destroyed relationships that were important to him. So don't let that word 'happiness' trigger your Sunday School responses.
Anyway back to the topic: to the humanist, this is the only life I have. This is my opportunity to make the greatest impact. Not just to fill a bucket list. I want to be remembered for certain things, and there is only one way to do that. Not so one-dimensional as "He was remembered for how much he loved Jesus." Instead, for love to family, leading an honorable life, fidelity to family and community and country. Every person is different, but I stress that the humanist is not a hedonist, as the pastors often tell the Faithful.
It is possible for me to die a very unhappy man. If I jeopardize relationships with mmy wife and daughter, if I spend a ton of money I don't have and leave others to pick up the pieces after I'm gone, surely before I die I will be quite miserable. This I already know without the looming threat of constantly being burned alive, "where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched." Such fear-based morality, in the mind of the humanist, is stunted and childish. Better it is to do what is right because it is right and helpful for fellow humans, than to do so on the basis of some arbitrary despotic fear, real or imagined.
The concept of life forever was created for us by faith systems. Not all early religious systems even had a forever concept: Even in the Old Testament of the Protestant Bible, people were said to "Sleep with his fathers," (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), or "be gathered to his People," (the kings).
In the Psalms, David protests "Do the dead praise you?" asking for his god to deliver him from enemies that threatened to kill him. This would not have been written had he an idea of praising God forever in some kind of heaven.
Even the Adam and Eve story: God never told them that they would burn forever and ever. In fact, he told Adam "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return." No eternity in that myth.
Heaven and Hell came along later. Zoroastrianism and Greek philosophy are largely responsible for their introduction into Judaism and Christianity. I know modern Christian apologists will superimpose contemporary thinking on ancient texts, but that simply is not intellectually honest.
Outside of Christianity, many tribal societies saw death as a sleep. Certainly there are the reincarnation myths. But even contemporary pagans are not fully settled on the issue: some are naturalistic and see death as sleep, some believe in reincarnation, and some the Summerlands of pre-Christian European mythology.
The research I've done to date on myth creation, the earliest forms they believe refer to death as a sleep. Even the Iliad and the Odyssey poems from the 900s BCE constantly refer to closing their eyes in the sleep of death.
The eternity construct didn't appear in full form until sufficient caste systems were in place so as to need an answer for the peasant population. Even the slaves in Egypt would not all live eternally, only the Pharaohs. But in later societies, Christian and Islam-based especially, you now have a system where whatever happens in this life doesn't matter, because you have your eternal reward. Create the concept of eternity and an eternal reward, and certain castes can use other castes, upholding a divine order.
Remember, eternity doesn't appear in cosmology, physics, astronomy, biology, or any of the natural sciences. Eternity is technically man-made. Or perhaps god(s)-made, from the viewpoint of theists.
But anyway, BG, again I can't stress enough that I thank you for responding. Most theists shy away from these types of engagements. They're not as sparkly and antagonistic as, say, an engagement between Cody or Chelsea and a theist.
I appreciate it, because I don't particularly want to post into an echo chamber where we all agree. And I'm genuinely interested in how people see things, and, more importantly, why.
I Leo and BG:
There are so many things that y'all have brought up and especially you Leo that I can't keep up with it all. I'll try to bring them all up and make them short and to the point.
The point of the city made with gold that you spoke of Leo is the New Jerusalem but as of Christians being there I'm not sure if they will be there or not because there is going to be a new Heaven and a new Earth that is read about in Revelation 22.
As far as being bored in doing the same thing over and over again I think there is one thing that we will be doing and that is worshipping God for creating us and for sending his son to die for us. I'm not sure if that is in scripture on not and if it's not that may be my assumption.
I think when we die we will be raised up in Heavenly bodies. 1 Corinthians 15-4 NKJV. I think our bodies were made in corruption and Ibelieve when Godcalls all of us for the end of time our body will be made incorruptible. 1 Corinthians 15-42B NKJV.
Leo, I'm going to respond to your last post. It's true that even in the new testament of the bible in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 it speaks of those who die that they sleep. But in the gospels in Matthew, Mark, and in Luke the bible speaks about hell. Jesus preachesabout about hell more than he does about Heaven. I don't remember how many times. There were punishments and all back in the old testament. I'm not sure why there was no talk of hell but that is something I will do some research and study in my bible. I believe in my Christian faith, but I do want to know these things.
Jo, thanks for your responses.
I'm familiar with 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul makes the apologetic, and somewhat poetic, case for the resurrection of believers.
Historically speaking, Mark's Gospel, which is the earliest, mentions Hell least frequently, and some accounts say that it is in reference to the valley outside of Jerusalem. But the concept of hell as burning fire began during the Persian Empire - circa 500 BCE or so, and at this time the Jewish population was quite widespread. The original Yahweh religion(s) didn't have a hell. The term in the Old Testament is Sheol, which technically meant the Grave. No Christian has given me clear Scriptural evidence for the popular Evangelical teaching that Sheol was a place with two compartments, one paradise and another torture.
But assuming that Zoroastrianism, and Greek philosophy, which combined to be the Christian Scriptures in the latter part of the 1st century CE / the early part of the second CE, what is moral about giving most of humanity an immortal body just to torture it? If we presume the existence of a Middle-Eastern Bronze / Iron Age deity, a Yahweh split three ways between father, son and spirit, would it not be more moral to simply destroy the dissidents? What purpose could it possibly serve to have them, as Revelation states it, "Tortured in the Presence of the Lamb?" That makes the Lamb out to be quite despotic. Especially where contemporary apologists from C. S. Lewis onward constantly argue for God as a moral first cause.
The argument that perfection cannot be in the presence of imperfection - (sin), has it serious logical problems. First, perfection does not technically exist in any form.
You might look at a point of a ballpoint pen and see a smooth surface. But under a microscope, you will see hills and valleys, craters and lumps.
The Church taught that the moon was a smooth disk. But Gallileo's telescope showed it to contain craters and other geological formations. So we have the illusion of perfect. But perfect does not technically exist in the natural world anywhere.
But, presuming there is a perfect, how could that perfect logically be capable of creating an imperfect?
And, if it can create an imperfect, then it can conceive of, and look at, imperfection. It is perfectly capable of being in the presence of imperfection, or it could not have designed a system that was imperfect. Logically, it's impossible to have a perfect Eden that turned out to be imperfect once Eden's occupants committed a single action.
Of course, logical thinking and philosophy of this skill level were not that developed in the late bronze age / early iron age when most of the Biblical, Sumerian and Babylonian myths were being created. Socrates, had he had access to these, could have completely taken them apart by the 4th century BCE.
The problem with concepts like eternity and perfection, is we see no evidence of them anywhere in the natural world.
The problem with the Substitutionary atonement hypothesis is that it came along circa 1000 CE to replace the ransom hypothesis. The ransom hypothesis states that the earth was the devil's and the Christ bought it back with His blood. Substitution came along as an attempt to fill the logical gaps in the ransom hypothesis by claiming that Christ sacrificed and we are potentially pardoned because he received the sentence in our stead. Except that, we don't see any substitution of sentencing anywhere at all in the natural world, no societies anywhere.
If a designer had designed this, it would have been the predominant view throughout the world in various other mythical constructs. And it would have been the predominant view for the first 1000 years of Christianity.
The reason that Creationist apologists like the cosmologist William Lane Craig have to advocate for an eternity is that without an eternity you don't have a hell for torments. Without torment, you have no reason for Christ. So the cross is only as strong or powerful as the torment it purports to obvuscate. A torment which, if you believe most contemporary evangelicals, over 80% of the world's population will suffer.
No designer I am aware of in real life would be willing to suffer an 80% loss. And I don't know a developer or designer with quite the jealous, glory-seeking attitude of the Abrahamic / Yahweh religions.
But how this relates to an afterlife? The real meaning for the Abrahamic traditions in an afterlife is in the escape from torment, by the Few and the Chosen. Notice the negative reactions by Christians to Rob Bell, a purpoted universalist. We could debate the implausibility of universalism, based on the tribal nature of homo sapiens, but that is nother topic. The Christian response to universalism, in a nutshell, is that it offends the Cross of Christ. Even though Bell makes an argument (however logically implausible) that Christ's suffering would ultimately save all. But as a death cult, using the dictionary definition of words here, not childish insults, evangelical Christianity only has meaning if its few are saved, and its majority opponents are eternally damned. "... The smoke of their torment shall go up forever and ever ..." from Revelation. Clearly, Thomas Aquinas had a point in saying that Christians would watch the damned suffer. And if it makes the Lamb happy that they suffer, so it technically would the Christian.
I cannot accept this logically. The character of most Christians is far nobler than that, and none I know have such psychosis as to be able to stomach such proceedings.
And remember, these aren't just the Hitlers. These are the woman who was raped and killed, but didn't accept Jesus. While her rapist and killer who "found the Lord" in prison is now in heaven watching the show, as it were.
Ted Bundy, according to Dobson and Crew, is in heaven. According to evangelical Christianity, if his victims had not accepted Christ, they are in Hell.
Jeffrey Dahmer was baptized in prison, the ministers speaking of his having accepted Christ. But if any of the young men he tortured and killed happened not to have accepted Christ, they are in Hell.
Adolph Hitler by his own words in Mein Kampfh was a committed Christian, a Catholic. He hated atheists and others who he considered subversive to Christian education in German schools. Although he might have indeed "suffered loss" at the Judgment seat of Christ, he could be in heaven right now. While the women he had experimented on while they were in labor, in the concentration camps, are in Hell for their Jewish faith.
What gives meaning to Evangelical Christianity about the afterlife is the few who get selected, and the punishment of the many. Take a look: read D. James Kennedy's Evangelism Explosion materials freely available on the web.
And also read any counterapologetic to Rob Bell's "Love Wins" book. None of the evangelicals make the logical case for the impossibility of universalism given the tribal nature of homo sapien. Instead, they make their case clear: the Cross is completely invalid if you don't have eternal punishment. And that means eternal punishment for most of humanity. Even annihilationism - the hypothesis that when God says destruction he means it, total destruction and no longer existing, is not sufficient for the evangelical. The part that gives meaning to the evangelical meme, as outlined in the Protestant Bible as interpreted by Jonathan Edwards and later evangelicals, is that most of humanity, most of what the designer designed, is damned to remain awake, conscious and aware of constant torture forever and ever, while the few that are chosen enter in. And those few see the smoke of the many forever and ever. And their torment is in the presence of the Lamb.
That's what gives meaning to their afterlife, as illustrated by their response to Rob Bell and others.
Although I've responded mainly to Abrahamic traditions, and I fear we haven't given the Mormons a completely fair play to completely tell us their idea of the afterlife, I am curious to also hear from the pagan community on this one.
I know it's more eclectic, but I'm curious how you all approach that subject, if at all. I realize, this being a U.S.-based site, it's largely populated by Abrahamic traditions but still. The rest of you are out there. Lol.
Ok Leo. I understand but I want you to know some things. First of all, only God will have a say of who will be in Heaven and who won't and no Christian will be happy about people burning in hell. That's why it's so important that we including myself try to witness to as many people as we can before the end of time comes. But that's for another time. As for watching them burn I don't know if we will be watching them burn. I know that the people who don't obey the gospel will burn in hell but only God will be the one to judge who will be in Heaven and who will be in Hell. I'll try to read the stuff that you mentioned. I'll do some thining about what you said and will probably post more about this topic more.
Yeah I would like to hear this too. One of my friends from Church has been working with two Mormon girls to try to get them to obey the gospel but they don't stay anywhere long. I need to ask her if they have come up on this topic. I would probably say not, but it would be interesting to here what y'all think.
Here is a rather poignant, if racy, vid on the morality of substitutionary atonement
Should be more food for thought, related to this topic from an Abrahamic perspective at least.