Nope.
I kind of wish there was some way to look back on my life and assess it objectively, and maybe see what the future will be like, before it all goes blank, but I have no interest in an actual afterlife, especially not an eternity of it. Nor do I have any wish for there to be some mystical being who set the whole existence thing up and has been meddling in it ever since.
Nonsense. I don’t care what good, say, Adolf Hitler or Stalin accomplished in their lives; their massively evil actions make them evil regardless of anything else they did. The massive amounts of evil in the world, only partially ameliorated by purely human efforts, easily overwhelms any possible good a god could do. It would be like someone flaying you and your family alive, giving you a cookie and then being surprised when you still think they are an evil person.
God is a wish fulfillment fantasy; Adolf Hitler, serial killers and childhood leukemia are not.
I am sincerely not having a go at you when I ask whether you really believe this. Are you comfortable with the idea that within the next 80 years you will cease to exist and will never exist again? That’s something I can’t wrap my head around, so I would genuinely be grateful to hear your views.
I certainly know I am okay with it. We all know it happens to us all, and we also all know we can’t escape it. So why worry about it? Not that I want it to happen any time too soon, but then again it may happen within the next few hours, days, or weeks. Though it’s more likely decades* away.
*I read somewhere that everyone has a 99% chance of surviving another year. I don’t how statistics like that are measured, but it’s probably sort of right.
While I might have discomfort with the idea of ceasing to exist, I also have discomfort about living so long that the world around me is unrecognizable. Would you want to be around long enough that the global ecosystem is completely different? Would you still want to be around when the sun expands and boils away the oceans and atmosphere? Would you still want to be around when the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies collide?
To answer the OP, sort of. I’d glad a literal Christian God doesn’t exist, because he seems a bit unstable. On the other hand, I can easily imagine a God-like entity whose existence would greatly improve our quality of life on Earth.
We are God. We are too far away from anything else for anything else to be God for us. Or space ship aliens either.
Imagine in the future that some Theist got access to a time machine… and all he/she wanted to do was meet Jesus. But, so many variables & the Theist didn’t want to change the past.
So.
He/She calculates out the probable location and course of Jesus where/when he was alone in a desert. Theist then sets up camp, builds a fire, cooks up food and vegetable rations, and waits. Along comes Jesus, starving. Theist wants to meet him, offers him food, drink.
Theist plays music from classical composers as well as modern music from an MP3 player and says everyone where he/she is from dances to them. Keeps asking Jesus or an autograph.
[Bad Galilean] “its a Bible. Just sign this book as proof, just sign this book as proof…” [/Bad Galilean]
A scared carpenter shakes his head and leaves. And when he gets to his town, he tells his friends, “I have met Satan in the desert. And he tried to tempt me…” :smack:
Sufficient Man is indistinguishable from God. Or Satan, for that matter.
It doesn’t have to be 80 years. I wouldn’t mind another century, maybe two.
But all things must end. Enough is enough. Over time, either I will end, or change to the point of being unrecognizable as myself. For “me” to live forever entails a kind of “fly in amber” stasis – a frozen, fossilized, unmoving, uncaring, unlearning mummified relict of myself. An icon, not a man. Philosophically indistinguishable from death!
I have a severe beef with the actual process! Kidney failure, memory loss, muscle atrophy, calcium loss, etc. Sheesh! That’s awful!
I wish God existed so I could punch him in the face after I die.
Let’s say 30 years at the outside, since I’m 62 and my father died at 87.
Yes, I’m comfortable with that. I’ve had a good and very lucky life already; I’m trying to do what it takes to make sure the last part is at least comfortable, physically and financially, but it’s all kind of a crap-shoot. So I just don’t stress about it.
I’ve gained a certain wisdom and perspective from living this long, but I am reaching the point where I have to shake free from some old stuff to let new stuff in, and I don’t know how much more of that I want to do. If I had eternal life, would my consciousness also expand to take in all that new information? Would that still be me? Honestly, it’s easier to imagine non-existence than to imagine existing in that state.
Roddy
Do you think often of the time you didn’t exist before you were born? Not think of that time period itself, but of the fact that you didn’t even exist at that time?
This. Since the OP doesn’t want us to define God, going with the most common representation seems standard. The propositions are so incoherent that they’re not even wrong (e.g. a mass murdering, omnibenevolent God, an immanent yet strangely inactive God)
Do I wish that there were an omnibenevolent omnipotent being who can and will give me eternal life? Yes. But if that were a reality, the world would look much different. We wouldn’t be wondering if there were evidence: firm evidence would be plentiful.
If the only thing that changed in this world is that there were firm evidence of a being so powerful that they fit the standard conceptions of a supreme being, that supreme being is one murderous psycho bastard.
How old are you? I’m 60, and I’m already okay with it. I need some good retirement time, but I don’t want to live to 200.
Maybe past reproduction people sacrificing themselves for the young is built into us.
I’d like to live forever myself, assuming that it was a pleasant existence; although as the line goes, I’d prefer to live forever by not dying. Most versions of the afterlife seem pretty repulsive at best. And the desirability of an afterlife is really a separate question from the desirability of gods.
I am comfortable with the notion that I will at some point cease to exist. After all before I was born I didn’t exist, so why would it be surprising that after death I go back to non existence? I find it somewhat comforting that when I go, I’m gone for good. No seeing loved ones grow old, get sick etc. No worshipping some vile, horrible monster like the god described in the Abrahamic faiths.
Czarcasm makes a good point about how being dead is just the same as the time before you’re born. I’ll add, we all experience a similar thing to every night, when we go to sleep and aren’t dreaming. There is nothing to fear about being dead of itself. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t anything. The process of ageing and dying I’m less sanguine about.
Certainly, I have some regrets about death. I’d dearly like to experience the highlights of scientific discovery and culture for the next thousand years, but this isn’t going to happen. I will miss out on a lot of things, but I do anyway right now. There is little point dwelling on it.
The concept of eternal life doesn’t really appeal. A lifetime as me is fine, but my potential for growth is limited, and eternity would be rather wasted on me.
Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to God of my childhood. The Mormon God is one screwed up creature. Plus, if you’re Mormon, and in the highest levels of heaven, you spend an eternity with your extended family. That couldn’t be much fun.
I don’t see any real universal gods out there, just a bunch of tribal ones which I’m not really impressed with.
As TokyoPlayer says, the current batch of gods we have are not very competent now and are getting more and more irrelevant with each passing generation.
No matter how much we reinvent them or rage against progression the theological Luddites will reach their evolutionary dead end.
We will probably have something else as an excuse to go to war with each other at that time but am convinced that gods or the belief in them will cease to be part of humanities greater future
Might one be so bold as to say they are … puny gods?
There is only one way to find out. :eek: