Secular Elation

It seems that a strong driving force for the masses to buy into religion seems to be the promise of eternal life.

I have a question. Why is this commonly valued (by those who are religious) as so important, so necessary and so glorious? I have heard the explanation that most people could simply not tolereate the idea of being wiped into nonexistence at death, and that the bit of eternal life is very attracting to those who are weak and cannot accept this.

My problem is this. If you REALLY think about it, an eternal life is a frightening fate. Eventually, it will become astonishingly boring. Could you imagine existing for an infinity of time? You may figure out how to occupy the time for several years, maybe even several hundred years, but an eternity? Would you not be exhausted from existing by the year 23,064,278,561,321,098?

Sure, real death isn't any more comforting, but I find it amazing that most religious people aren't horrified by this detail of eternal life. In the end, I would have to say I'd prefer natural death to this fictional afterlife. Eternal life sounds good at first, but when you really ponder it, it is not a good idea.

SimplyAtheistic

But eternal life will be perfect because god will make it that way....... haha, just jokin.
Jake

Kevbo

It's impossible to have a "perfect" eternal life when you know that the majority of people in the world, including many whom you love personally, end up forever separated and tortured for eternity.

sakrilege

There is a group of xians who will get pleasure from the eternal torture though, as expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica,

The blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishment of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful for them.

The Cromwell Institute

I find the prospect of eternal life detailed in Abrahamic theologies to be terrifying - that includes heavens as well as hells. Even in heaven everything would eventually get stale and boring, and existence itself would slowly become the ultimate torture, more painful than anything Christians could conceive of when describing their Hell.

southernhybrid

I think that when humans realized that death is a reality they made up the eternal life concept to deal with their fear of death. I don't think that many of them think that much about how awful it might be to live on eternally. If they thought a lot about it, they might actually realize how silly the idea is in the first place.


When we've been there 10,000 days bright shining as the sun, there's no less days to sing god's praise then when we first began.

Pretty creepy, isn't it!



I wanted to add that another reason eternal life was invented was as a way to control the masses. Don't worry about all the suffering, subjugation and exploitation in this life, you'll be rewarded in the next.

Howard

Best response I�ve heard to that�

There was a street preacher accosting people with the question, �Do you want to go to heaven?�
Some guy stopped and said, �Is it full of people like you?�
The street preacher said, �Yes.�
And the guy said, �Then I damn sure don�t want to go.�

The fact is most people fear death and do not want to believe it�s the end. That�s why the dominant religions in the world, Christianity, Islam, and, to a lesser extent, Hinduism, promise some kind of continued existence after death. How many Xtians and Muslims do you think there would be without that promise?

beth

Don't you know that heaven exist in a dimention where time does not exist? I assume that heaven would work if our intellect were to be stripped from us and we became as innocent children. Kinda like the civilization in H.G. Wells' Time Machine. I cannot remember the name of the civilization, but they were all happy, youthful, carefree, but the books and knowledge were all decaying. People were blissful in their ignorance...

Demosthenes

The Eloi

I remember a time when I was around 12, I was talking about the possibility of life after death and reincarnation. I said if we end up in the heaven after we die, then I'll sign up for reincarnation the moment I walk in through the pearly gates. I just couldn't imagine myself sitting on a cloud wearing wings and playing the harp for the next billion years. I'd rather die another death. Why not be born again on Earth with your previous memories conveniently missing.

At least that's what I'd do if heaven was real. The closest Hollywood ever came to what I envisioned afterlife to be was Robin William's movie What Dreams May Come

LeftCoast

SE,

The people who first thought up the idea of "eternal life" had no concept of infinity. Their idea of time-scales was probably something like (1 year, 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years, way-longer than I can possibly imagine....) Even if they could have concieved of a numer are large as 23, 064, 278, 561,321,098, to understand that any number of years that you can imagine no matter how large, becomes zero when divided by infinity was just beyond them.

I remembered that as "... 10,000 years", but even then it still illustrates the lack of imagination associated with the "eternal life" crowed. Unfortunately, a more accurate line"

When we've been there a google-plex years.... just doesn't have the same ring to it...

Note: google - 10 raised to the 100th power. google-plex - 10 raised to the 'google' power. 10**(10**100)