Not sure why the above link doesn’t work – I suspect a matter of discrepancy between GuruNet and Google. At any rate, this one does: real
All else remains the same.
Personally I don’t trust my imagination as to what I would find aesthetically pleasing if I had no form and when I have no perception as to what my new limitations would be after death. I don’t see how “dream fulfillment” is a satisfying answer when I have no idea what those dreams might be. Clearly, ymmv.
In the other thread Liberal you specifically said “I just think that they are all gateways into the same garden”. I guess you meant religions are all gateways to separate but equal gardens vis a vis their satisfaction value?
I’ll take a stab.
I imagine there’s a jar of peanut butter in your kitchen cupboard. I don’t know that it’s there. I don’t even know where your kitchen cupboard is. But if it is there then I’m right.
However, if I don’t even entertain the idea of the peanut butter, your cupboard or you for that matter… does than make that jar less real?
It “has to do” with a response to Furt. Look out your window. See those bipedal creatures? Those are called “other people”. Some of them are in here along with you and me. 
And that has WTF to do with afterlife gardens? 
It really isn’t a matter of an afterlife. We are already in our gardens. A man is always in pursuit of that which he treasures. He is doing exactly that which he wants to do. If he wanted to do something else, then that other thing is what he would be doing. As Jesus put it, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
Regarding your new question, I don’t think that imagination has anything to do with reality. Imagination takes place in the brain, and brains are not real.
Well, keep in mind that an aesthetic (in the philosophical sense) need not be pleasing, but merely valuable. If you value corporeal illusion, there is no reason you cannot, say, make a universe.
That’s pretty much right. No one garden is any more valid or valuable than another. It is an aesthetic, after all, and so is subject to personal evaluation.
Liberal said:
I can appreciate that, I’m just saying I don’t personally feel my current value system is all that useful in predicting any after life value system. So even if I accepted that dream fulfillment was the end result of spiritual seeking, I would have to be prepared for the possibility that my new “energy self” or physical form could prefer something I currently find abhorrent.
I can appreciate that as well. I’m just saying that they are one and the same — the current and the after. When you’re planting corn, it’s corn that you’ll harvest. If you want to know what it is that you value, just look at what it is that you’re doing.
I counter your corn metaphor with a butterfly.
I resist predicting what a butterfly will look like from it’s caterpillar. Especially when I’ve never positively seen a butterfly.
Like I said, what we predicate tells us what we value. If what you say is sincere (and I see no reason why it wouldn’t be), then you value resistance.
So my heaven may be a constant state of questioning. I guess I could live with that, or not live with that.
Suppose there were a garden. Suppose as well that the gate stood open. And suppose you have an invitation to enter the garden, if you wish.
Why would you peek over the wall?
And if you chose not to enter, Why would you examine the wall around the garden?
And if your are just dead, then what harm is there to you, if Liberal remembers you with a statue, in his garden?
It is just a garden. It doesn’t threaten you.
And if Liberal has imagined the fountain, would you offer him a drink, or laugh at his thirst?
I wander about in the woods, outside the garden, as is my won’t, sipping from the cup that Lib imagines he has dipped out of the fountain, just for me.
Thanks, my friend, and I salute you in the water of love.
Tris
Do you think with your elbow?
Might as well. Thoughts aren’t real either.
…And Tris, you are my garden. Thanks.
Hope you come see us soon. We’ve moved, though, to an old farm house complete with tobacco barn. I think you’d have a better time than we had in the apartment.
But I have this problem: what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do … I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.
You didn’t want to post that, did you.
I did, but I hated myself for doing it.
Seriously, it’s a fairly accurate assessment of my own condition. Is my eternal state going to more like the things I really wish I was doing, or more like the things I actually do?
There is no difference. Let me explain.
Suppose your goal is to be the wealthiest person alive. Clearly, you cannot squint and grunt and suddenly be worth billions of dollars, despite how much you would want it. Rather, what happens is that everything you do is in pursuit of that goal. You disassociate yourself from people who might be obstacles to that goal, and seek out people who might be facilitators. Your plans all center around attaining that goal. Even your decisions about what to eat and when are based on how they might contribute or not to your being the wealthiest person alive. You take the risks necessary to achieve the goal. Failure is not a deterence, but merely a stepping-stone. You study wealth. You covet wealth. You salivate over every dime that you earn. You know that it might take years, even decades, to achieve your goal, but that doesn’t matter because all that matters is the goal.
Now contrast that with someone who sits around watching wealthy people on TV, and wishes he had the right lottery ticket or a bottle he could rub and produce a genie. He saves no money, spends weekends with his friends partying, and posts on intellectual message boards. He doesn’t want wealth because he doesn’t pursue wealth. He wants to want wealth. He wants a genie. He wants to wish, because that’s what he does.
Romans 7:18-19 (NIV)
18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing.
“Love, and do what you like.” — Saint Augustine
Raindog, was there a point there? I think most people knew what I was quoting …
I find this psychologically simplistic. Let us posit a woman who desires physical and psychological intimacy with a man, but who has a personal history of sexual abuse such that she also fears that intimacy. And as a result, she avoids eligible men and turns downs dates, only to cry alone at night, hating herself for her fears.
Now, of course there are things she can do to overcome those fears and obtain what she truly desires; but that will inevitably be a process. It may be awhile before she summons the courage to go to a therapist. There may be points in that process where she gives up and stops going to therapy, or feels discouraged and resigns herself to being alone.
I am well aware of the ways in which infirmity itself can be a crutch and some people can enjoy pity or play the martyr; I note the fact that Jesus often asked people if they wanted to be well before healing them. But when they said yes, heal them he did.
It seems rather harsh to insist that the woman’s level of desire to be healed is in direct proportion to her willingness to act on that desire. Indeed, her ability to act on this desire for healing and subsequent intimacy may be constrained by her situation: what if she lives in a time and place where raped women are “ruined?”
Or perhaps more basically, what of a woman who doesn’t even know what she wants? She is seeking intimacy with men because she feels she ought (“it’s normal”), but it is only over time that she comes to conclude that she is a lesbian, and that that was the source of her ambivalence.
Consider how children often do not know what they really want (at least consciously). In fact, they will often, in tantrums, insist on getting that which they truly, deeply do not want, or in not getting what they do want. It seems an unfit Parent that would answer a child’s scream of “I hate you and I want you to go away forever” with compliance.
The child, in that moment, truly and earnestly does want the parent to go away forever. It may be an effective tactic to give the child what they say they wanted temporarily, so the child can see that it wasn’t truly their deepest desire; but that simply means that the child has learned, and that, again, finding what they really wanted was a process.
I think I’m with you on the basic idea; but you seem to set a very high standard for performance.