Aethari

Yes, and if there's life after death, you're probably going to end up wishing you were dead. While it might seem fine and dandy to you to comfort yourself with thoughts of an afterlife now, talk to us again after you've been 'undead' for a million trillion years. Either die at some point, or end up a tormented, crazed, and utterly bored spirit.

The entire beauty of life is that you get to pick (to some degree) what experiences you get to have, and what experiences you miss out on. Eternal life turns living into merely existing (damned unhappily, at that), and I don't see why anyone would ever wish for such a thing.

Scared of death or not, I fail to see how belief in an afterlife makes it any better.

"Well, hey, I'm not going to simply stop existing: now I'm going to be forced to stay concious and experience the same events over and over again for all eternity, the constant torment making me wish for death every second, yet harshly denying me my peace."

Boy, that makes me all a-tingly with comfort.

~Aethari

Radorth

Based on what I know, our sense of time becomes almost nonexistent and I think some people could be happy for a pretty long time, just by getting out of this awful world.

Rad

Magus55

Aethari, you're assuming eternal life in Heaven would be unhappy, why? God will have plenty for us to do so we will never get bored. And on top of getting to do things we could never do on earth ( walk through walls, travel anywhere in the universe instantly, sit up close to a galaxy and marvel at its beauty etc, there will probably be games, parties, banquets), and never have to worry about getting tired, sick, aging, sad, depressed, stressed etc., we get to be in the presence of the Creator of the Universe for eternity, never to be separated again. Time becomes meaningless. A million years could go by and it would feel like a day.
Sounds pretty nice to me, alot better than rotting in the ground forever.

Godless Dave

He's assuming one thing about heaven, and you're assuming another.

The Naked Mage

I beg your pardon, but you know jack shit, Rad. You just have unfalsifiable conjectures.


"Some people" won't be nearly as happy to be gone as WE will be to be rid of them.

Radorth

Speaking of angry balloon juice.

Well, not to worry in your case if indeed you would "rather burn in hell than serve in heaven"?

Rad

The Naked Mage

Goodness, such grand expectations!

Yeah, walls would really mean a whole lot to the immaterial deceased.


Is this the afterlife or Star Trek? And why is Mr. Yahweh limiting us to the known universe?


We're in the middle of a galaxy as I type these words. How the hell much closer do you want?


Yeah, I need to die before I can attend a dinner party or play something made by Milton-Bradley.


I wouldn't think you'd worry about those things anyway. Isn't that why most people have religion in the first place?


But since time will be MEANINGLESS, we would have no conception of what a day would feel like, either.


But it's clearly nowhere near as good for the heavenly gene pool.


<PS: I would have liked to have added a whole lot more "rolleyes" - Lord knows Magus's post warrants it - but it seems insufficient for the mood I'm attempting to convey.>

daria

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around how people would be able to be nothing but happy for eternity. I would think it could get boring--the lack of different emotions--but if you're happy, I suppose you wouldn't notice.
Seriously though, can you really know happiness without knowing its counterpart? Or is it that you'll know happiness, but maybe not appreciate it the way you would if you had been unhappy for a time first?


And as for the OP; I'm inclined to echo what someone else said earlier about the fact that you know that you're only going back to "faith" to make yourself feel better about the whole ordeal. You're not only using faith because you don't like reality, but you're aware of your use of it. Can you really feel better knowing that?

Biff the unclean

So Magus55, if "you" are alive after your body is dead how do you do anything?
Since people here on Earth already have spirits why is it that they can go blind or deaf? Why is it that if they break their backs they can't move? It would appear that they need their physical bodies to perceive and to do things.
If the spirit can't do any of these things in a body that's just partially broken what makes you think it could do them with a body that has been "totaled?"

Taffer

Magus, that sounds nice and all, but I don't think it's what Aethari was getting at it. Even if you get to do all the nifty stuff you mentioned, you'll still be in Heaven for all of eternity. Sure, the first google of millenia will be awesome, but at one point, you'll have walked through every wall, popped up at every location, gotten sick of every single game and attended every conceivable party with pretty much every soul in existence (except for the ones in hell, that is, who have been quietly sizzling away all this time). I mean, even God will have trouble thinking up things for you to do. ("I know! Do the same exact thing I asked you to do two hours ago . . . Only now do it while hopping up and down on your left foot! And composing a symphony with your free hand. Fun, eh?")

It seems that all there is to do by then is bask in God's proximity, and that sounds pretty mindless to me.

The only solution I see to this is to get rid of your memories. You'd walk up to God (or just appear in front of him if you're lazy), ask for a memory wipe, he'd snap his celestial fingers and then you'd be standing there with a faintly puzzled grin on your face, ready to start everything over again.

And this would happen again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again . . .

Somehow, I'd prefer a cool, dark grave.