Lord Asriel

Life now doesn't horrify me because I know it is going to end. I know it is finite, and that gives me a sense of purpose because the clock is ticking. Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to live for 200 or 2000 years, but eternity? Even Minesweeper would get boring after 100 billion years...

Reasoning that because a small amount of something is good, more of it must be better is falacious (sp?). Consider salt. No salt on your meal is bad, some is good, but too much is also bad.

On a side note, the only thing that really scares me about death is whether I'll be able to think of something suitably profound/witty for my Last Words. I'd hate for the last thing I say in this world to be "I keep thinking its Tuesday"

HelenM

A better analogy would be that rain today is good for the earth today and so, rain in the future will also be good for it.

The problem here is that your model is too simplistic. More detail on temperatures and weather and wind patterns and climates would easily resolve this apparent dilemma.

A better analogy would be, if two aspirin cure me today I have hope that two aspirin will cure my next headache also.

Yes but in two of your analogies sneakily the quality of the 'more' so it was not the same as the original good thing.

Yes, but I modified your analogies to make them closer to how I was thinking and then the induction did work...

take care
Helen

HelenM

This is a very simplistic way of thinking about eternal life.

Personally I am always running out of time and the idea of having enough time to do all I wanted to do would appeal to me very much

I take your point but Christians trust that if God says eternal life will be awesome then it will.

What I am saying is I see nothing rational in being horrified by eternal existence. If your simplistic portrayal of it is right then you'd live it one day at a time and why would it not be the case that whatever stops you getting bored in this life, wouldn't stop you getting bored as you lived out eternal life one day at a time?

It's all about assumptions, anyway. Christians assume eternal life will be awesome; you assume eternal life will get boring. Whatever. It's just an assumption isn't it?

And to be clear, I'm all in favor of appreciating each day of this life as much as possible. I don't like it when Christians seem so focused on - heaven, or whatever - that they seem to be missing out on life now, today. And I'm all in favor of accepting that we're going to die one day - or that this life as we know it will end for us, anyway.

take care
Helen

LeftCoast

Helen,

I don't think you appreciate just how long eternity really is (This is not intended as an insult, the concept of infinity is a very abstract one).

Just think about it like this:

With an eternity to play with, you could quite literally do everything that there is to do in the entire universe as many times as you could possibly stand to do it (no matter how much fun you think something is now, if you do it enough, it will eventually become mundane and boring)- and no matter how long it took you to reach this point, you would still have an infinite amount of time stretching before you with nothing at all interesting left to do.

In microcosm, think back to the last time you were at some event that you really didn't want to be at and were bored out of your skull - we've all been somewhere like that - well imagine that that is all that you have to look forward to for the rest of eternity. This is basically what the others have been getting at.

HelenM

Yes, but being bored isn't what I think I have to look forward to.

You may as well say, imagine how fast time goes when you are really enjoying yourself...it cuts both ways, to think about how time goes.

What I assume is that I won't get bored.

I don't see why this is a less valid assumption than I will.

And as I said, if it's like time now, it's experienced one moment at a time, not all at once. A year seems like a lot, before we've lived it. Then at the end of it we wonder where it went.

So, I don't see much point in trying to think about how vast eternity is, as it it would all happen 'at once' to us...

Nevertheless, I do understand about infinity...I'm a math major after all .

take care
Helen

Blankman

Helen,

For the sake of argument I am going to assume two things:

1) Heaven exists
2) Hell exists

Let's assume I am a good christian and I go to heaven when I die. However, many of the people I have known and loved in my life here on earth were not christians. They go to hell. I can not imagine spending eternity in a conceptual "heaven" while knowing that some of the people I had known and loved, including my children, were being tortured or whatever in hell. No, this would not be heaven to me, THIS WOULD BE HELL!

If hell does not exist? Then why be a christian? Any heaven for me would have to include my wife, children, family and friends. Anything else would be hell. Of course I am also assuming that "awesome" as you say would mean that I would be happy? Maybe those of us in heaven would only get weekend visitation rights from those in hell or lower levels of heaven?

As an added thought- I don't believe animals fear death, but most do everything possible to avoid it. The only reason we fear death is because we know it is coming. Religion, I believe, is just humanities attempt to settle the fears of death and dying. Accepting death (with no eternal life) is my way of settling my fears.

Jamie_L

I have to chime in and say I am an atheist/naturalist and I am not particularly horrified by the notion of eternal life. Or, perhaps more acurately, I am less horrified by that notion than I am by the notion that I will some day cease to exist. THAT notion scares the willies out of me.

The satisfaction I take from my life has nothing to do with my sense that it will all come to an end - at least, not on any conscious level I can detect.

I completely understand all the arguements as to why eternity as a conscious being would suck. However, none of them scare me more than the prospect of not existing.

Jamie