diana

This rant brought to you by Folgers and an offhand comment by Thor Q. Mada in the thread <a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000783&p=2" target="_blank">Does Anyone Really Believe in God?</a>. (And also by an awesome song by Queen, from the movie Highlander, but that isn't important right now.):

I admit the idea of living forever sounds good on the surface (as evidenced by its enduring popularity), but on closer inspection, it would be a nightmare. Its effectiveness as a persuasive tool depends upon people accepting it at face value but not actually thinking about what it would entail.

Think of the activity you most enjoy doing--something you've done your whole life, have perhaps acquired some skill at, and enjoy doing, reading about, talking about, perfecting, buying equipment for, etc.

Now imagine doing that activity every waking hour, without break, for the next ten years. How enjoyable do you think it'll be then? Twenty years?

A day to God is like a thousand years. Twenty years is not even a recognizable speck on an eternal time continuum. Now replace your favorite activity with worshipping God.

Fun? Fulfilling? Or SHEER HELL?

Now...imagine being God. He is from everlasting to everlasting, and he can do no wrong. He's perfect in every way. If you think you get bored on a rainy Saturday afternoon, try to imagine the agony of being a being who has always been, will always be, is perfect in every way, can do anything and knows everything. And cannot die.

Even if you could choose how you spend eternity--if you believe you aren't locked into the traditional heavenly activity--how long are you going to go before you run out of things to interest you?

Heinlein's Time Enough for Love springs to mind here, where Lazarus Long, the protagonist, has lived for over two millenia, is bored to tears, and no one will let him die.

An eternal soul necessarily implies the impossibility of ultimate death.

I can't imagine even wanting to believe in such a thing, let alone what a curse it would be to be such a being.

d

Mageth

I wouldn't mind being able to live until I was bored shitless, then being able to voluntarily die.

I agree about the eternal thing. Many people just have no conception of what "eternity" means. Just think, you could experience everything possible (counting all the atoms in every possible universe, having every possible conversation with every possible being, reading every possible book (actually, you could conceivably experience every possible event in every possible book)), then you'd have to start over and re-experience everything, and so on, and so on, countless trillions of times, and you'd still have eternity to look forward to (or dread) continuing your neverending repetition.

Janaya

I think it would be fabulous to live as long as I wanted to. But I would then want to end my existence someday. Immortality? Never! Control over my own life span? Bitchin'!

This reminds me of a short story by Isaac Asimov called "The Last Answer". This story appears in one of his anthologies called, "The Winds of Change...and Other Stories." Has anyone here read it?

My poor attempt at a summary:
Apparently there is an immortal being that exists in the universe. He chooses only a few people (intelligent species) throughout the universe. When these people die he pulls their minds into his presence. He only selects those that are unique in their thinking patterns. These people can do nothing other than think. At first they think that they have reached their version of 'heaven' but he soon tells them that they have but one task. Their task is simply to think. To think for all eternity. It quickly dawns on them that this is really horrible way to exist, so they tell him that they will think of a way to end their own existence. He tells them that they cannot because he controls their existence. So they then decide to think of a way to end his existence. And what does this powerful immortal being say? He says "Okay." Then he goes about his business and leaves them to do their thinking.

Anyway, one of the very last lines of the story says, "For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want -- but an end?"

This story pretty much sums up my thoughts on immortality.

[ December 24, 2002: Message edited by: Janaya ]</p>

Kenny

Perhaps it is not true that love must die?

Amos

Only to be transformed into Love. The journey of life is from eros throught philia to agape.

Answerer

Sometimes I really pity God.

thebeave

I've always kind of wondered: If you were in heaven and let's say you began to realize after only 43.5 billion years have passed, that you've really had enough of the fundy bible thumping, harps, praising Jesus, watching athiest friends and relatives wailing and gnashing their teeth in hell, etc what could you do? Is it possible to commit suicide in heaven to end the boredom and agony? If you could commit suicide, would you then go into another heaven after that and start all over again? How do you commit suicide in heaven, anyway? I mean, how the hell could you get away from it all? Theists help out here!

Amos

Eternal life has nothing to do with living forever but makes reference to living while guided by our eternal mind as opposed to our temporal mind.

Temporal life is when we live as rational beings while in oblivion to our eternal soul while eternal life is when we live as rational beings while fully conscious of our eternal soul.

In our ego consciousness we are temporal and we must die to this temporal life to be born into eternal life. This would be our first death and the beginning of eternal life. After this our second death will end eternal life and the body returns to dust while nobody owes us anything.

[ December 24, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

excreationist

What about in the Vanilla Sky, where Tom Cruise was fairly immortal - he just didn't know it? That could be a way of stopping boredom... by erasing memories and being raised to believe you are a normal mortal human being.
I think it would be good to be immortal and create and rule over my own reality like a creator God. I'd probably recreate different periods in history, such as my school years, and participate in them... I would even be able to control other characters at will and stop and reverse time and alter the memories of other people, etc. I could set up different scenarios - e.g. ones from sci-fi movies or different religions, or fantasy etc. I could recreate different video games and be a character in it - like in an episode of Futurama where lots of video game characters like the space invader things, pac-man and donkey kong are involved in a plot. Or I could be in a cartoon, like the Simpsons and my sight would look like the cartoon show.
There would be a mechanism which can generate those virtual? realities - I'd be in charge but often I'd make it hard for me to use my power unless I say the password (or something). I'd sometimes want to just live out long painful lives - perhaps of poor third world people - just as a change of scenery and to make things more "meaningful". I'd probably repress or perhaps even erase some memories if things seem a bit boring... and the computer controlling the virtual reality experience would be able to think up scenarios that are sufficiently interesting - though I guess there should be a bit of boredom in there sometimes. And I would be able to reconfigure my emotions - e.g. make myself less prone to boredom - or increase or decrease my sensitivity to physical pain sensations, etc.
So I think I'd like to be immortal.

liquid

These dilemmas are always unfairly phrased. What about the situation where I could live as long as I wanted UNTIL I got bored? If I ever did. That would be good. An eternity is an awful long time but 70 years isn't enough.