What if I don't WANT eternal life?

Great Debates
161

Correct.

Firstly, the joy I get from being a parent is already perfect. It could not be added to or multiplied.

As to your larger question. I guess my OP was a semi-facetious attempt to tease out a discussion about tangible concepts of Heaven and “eternal life.” I was sort of curious about how people pictured Heaven, or what they thought they would do for all that time. I guess I don’t feel that I need a reward after death in order to feel fulfilled in life.

The one thing that might intrigue me would be the pay-off that you suggested about having all my questions answered. I’d like to know the answers to all the great mysteries. Who was Jack the Ripper? What is the literal truth about Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed? How did they build those pyramids? Are there extra-terrestrials? What was on those tapes that Nixon erased?

I could spend a lot of time asking questions, but not an infinite amount of time. So maybe I could just hang around Heaven for a little while and then get obliterated. :wink:

162

Diogenes the Cynic -

for a cynic (and an very well educated one at that) - much of what you have written has made me rethink my own cynicism about religion (especially the bible). the bible has always struck me as a deliberatly misleading and contradictory work, designed either for the purposes of instilling the reader with a sense of profound mystery and a sense of insignificance that might draw the idea of god into focus, or as a smokescreen - a cosmic metaphor for power relationships, a socio-political tool that has sustained many hierarchies (and which continues to do so). the ‘either’ is still undecided for me (and this is only one of many questions, natch), but your views about the modern juxtaposition of the concept of hell on to one meaning death (or nothingness) are uplifting - and i can see the logic of it.

im sure you know of it but the idea of heaven you mention at the end of your post reminded me of the end of julian barnes’ novel ‘a history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters’… after a certain amount of perfect bliss, we long for disruption, the unpredictable and the interesting… and the perfect nothingness of oblivion seems like a happy ending.

peace

163

Thank you, ki42, and welcome to SDMB.
You’re right that the Bible is contradictory and misleading, but it is not deliberately so. It is, after all, not really a book, but a library of books compiled over centuries, by dozens of different authors with different agendas, different information and different abilities. Some of the books are better than others. Some of the Bible is crap. Some of it is harmless but boring. Some of it offers up the very best that humans are capable of expressing about their own existence. People were writing about the most important stuff that they could think of. Some of it is not important to anyone any more (geneologies, page after page on how to sacrifice a ram), some of it is timeless and still reverberates. Take what you like and leave the rest. Cherry-picking wisdom is a perfectly rational thing to do. Hell, don’t stop at the Bible, there’s equally good stuff in the Upanishads, the Koran, The Tao Te Ching, Shakespeare, etc.

I wasn’t familiar with Julian Barnes, but after some googling, I must say I find him intriguing. I think I’ll check out the book you mentioned.

164

I don’t want eternal life.
Eternal life sounds dreadfully boring.
Mortality gives life urgency, take that away, and there isn’t really a point anymore.
Sorry if I’m not a good debater here, but that eternal life business always turns me off to the evangelists of this world.

165

Ah, Diogenes Now I understand what you were asking. Not, do I have to sit on a cloud and play a harp for a trillion years, but is the nature of man compatible with atemporal existence?

Veering sharply away from the metaphysics, I shall attempt to deal with what I think about when I try to imagine Heaven. Harps, and such just ain’t in it. (Well, music might a part.) But I think that the Lord has made us for a reason. And I cannot imagine a reason for Him to do so.

Now, I don’t mean that as a slam on man. But after all, He is God. So, why make us? He can evidently make angels, and they seem able to do mostly anything that we can, and a lot that we cannot.

But whatever the plan is, he made us because angels won’t do. So, God made us in this world that is, so something outside of the nature of the world, will be. (And of course this “world that is” includes the vast reaches of space, and the wide seas of stars and galaxies adrift within it.) And it will be because where there was only God, and Angels, now there will be God, and Angels, and us. And further, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, we are important to it.

God has plans, and He needs us for those plans.

Now that’ll make you sing hosannas, won’t it?

I am figuring, looking at the world that He already made, this Heaven thing is gonna be Way Cool.

And, since I also believe that what He cherishes and desires most from us is that we love Him, and love each other, that this thing is going to be somehow related to love. A matter of spirit, rather than a matter of matter, and time. I don’t think bored is gonna be a factor.

Tris

166

-Many years ago I read a novel called Replay by Ken Grimwood. In it, the two main characters, by forces unknown/unexplained, died in 1988, and “awoke” back in their teenage bodies, back in the early sixties.

The first time, the characters see it as a fluke. Don’t know why, but let’s make the best of it. With prior knowledge, they of course bet heavily (horse racing, Dodgers pennant wins, etc) and invest in stocks. By the “second” 1988, they are, of course, multi-millionaires, but die and reawake again.

Sort of a long and drawn-out “Groundhog Day”.

In any case, this continues to happen for what turns out to be dozens of “replays”, with the only quirk being each replay gets shorter on an accellerating curve.

Towards the end, each of them have visited practically everywhere on the Planet, done everything from hang-gliding to diving to mountain climbing. They owned huge companies, made movies, interviewed famous people, even tried to intervene in the Kennedy assasination. (Indirectly.)

They’d tried nearly every food, sampled every wine, slept with dozens of people, wrote books, went to college and studied foreign languages.

In the end, as it relates to this thread, there’s this:

No matter how “blissful” existence is in Heaven, unless there’s something new and interesting to do, or see or hear nearly every “day”, it will eventually get boring. And once it becomes so, you still have an eternity of boredom stretching out ahead of you.

This, to me, does not necessarily sound like “bliss”.

167

Great! When I mentioned my vision of heaven on page 1, I was considering throwing in a line about how I’d miss your part in the discussions. I don’t know what heaven will be like. The conventional Christian version of it sounds incredibly boring to me, too. Since you’re interested in different versions of heaven, I’ll throw out what I’ve heard some Mensans describe as the Eternal Gathering (EG)*, which sounds like the Mensan version of heaven.
[ul][li]Anything you’re interested in, any question you have is being covered in a fascinating program right where you are.[/li][li]Anyone you want to talk to or do anything else with is right there and willing to do what you want to do.[/li][li]Anything you want to eat or drink is right there in the quantity you want to eat or drink and it tastes better than it could possibly do so on earth. Of course it’s non-fattening![/li][/ul]
To me, that includes a jam session with the Bach family, a religious discussion with anyone you choose, including God, Himself, a quiet talk or cuddle with someone you love, and, from what I know of these people, one heck of a hot tub party! I suspect this would stave of boredom for a while. Yes, it is incredibly hedonistic, but if Christ wanted us to be aesthetes, I doubt he would have turned water into good wine as his first miracle. So, catch you at the EG?

CJ

*The Mensans who I’ve heard this idea from hang out at Regional Gatherings, “RG”'s (the joke is the initial “O” and terminal “Y” are omitted when spelling), the Annual Gathering, “AG”, and Unofficial Gatherings, “UG”'s, pronounced “uhg”.

168

Yes!
please provide.

169

doc nickel the plot of that book reminds me of one of the back to the future films, where biff thieves a sporting annual from the future and the world becomes a kind of apocalyptic gunfest as a result of his actions. but the idea of replaying lives is an interesting one, and it seems to negate the problem we might face with getting a bit bored of eternity.

to be honest i think (in my heretical way ;)) that the recieved idea of heaven (with harps, eternal bliss etc) is a myth which helps our species by removing the conscious strain of being intelligent enough to comprehend our own mortality. unlike mr diogenes i find the idea of being snuffed out scary… tho logically i know that it wont matter to me as i have ceased to exist, i want to believe in a god and in some continuation of existance - whether on earth or some other plane is not so important (i too disbelieve the idea of hell). maybe this is because you feel you have already attained your personal nirvana (hehe that sentance sounds like it came out of some bullshite self-help book)… personally i find life a struggle and i am still searching for real happiness.

if the buddhists are correct then heaven and a hell-like state exist only on earth… and i think there is ample evidence of people in both states… so if you have found your concept of heaven, how can you contemplate its end?

sorry i am so vague and rambling but my thoughts on this arent easy for me to pin down in a few clear sentances…:slight_smile:

170

^heh soz about the formatting on the above post:smack:

i also want to add that im not sure that the fact that the bible is such a haphazard collection of books, papyruses or whatever means it is not deliberatly misleading. sure, if you analyse say one of the gospels you could read it in terms of it being aimed at a certain culture or referencing points of an earlier belief system to make it a more effective ‘converter’ (not the best word but there you go). aside from this tho the whole thing has been reedited and manipulated according to various agendas, as you state, so surely in its various compiled states these bibles deliberately distort its original message?

you dont need to answer this as its something of a linguistic argument anyway, and i tend to think that the structure of english at least tends to polarise arguments and lead to dead ends. i am more interested to know if you see the bible as an interesting source of philosophy - one amongst many - or if you see it as being divinely inspired?

171

Welcome, Ki42!

You said

The “heaven” of the harp variety seems to me to be too much of an earthbound concept. In my opinion, we are trying too hard to imagine heaven based on what makes us happy on earth. We expect everything from visuals to comic books.

Yet, I think that we have lived our lives not even comprehending some of the realities around us: the relativity of time, the curveature of the universe, black holes, dark matter, etc. If we haven’t been able, in general, to wrap our minds around those concepts, how can we expect to have any depth of understanding of what “heaven” may be like?

Maybe when the Buddha said that what was beyond nirvana could not be described in words, he was right! :slight_smile:

The idea of my own mortality used to terrify me even though I was brought up in the church. Twenty years ago I very briefy experienced something that defies words. (From a description that Libertarian gave in another thread, I gather that he has experienced something similar.) Since that time I have not had a fear of death – only the very human fear of the pain that may be part of the process.

Diogenes and Don, by definition, “bliss” cannot be boring. Right?

Could I be wrong about all of this? Sure.:cool:

172

Ki42,
I’m agnostic, or at least non-theistic, so I wouldn’t say that I believe the Bible is divinely inspired in the sense that fundamentalists would mean. I do think that much of the Bible represents the highest level of philosophical thought that humans are capable of. I think that the Bible is divinely inspired in the same sense that Mozart and Shakespeare and Jimi Hendrix were divinely inspired. I like to think that divine inspiration is the ability to be able to tap directly into our own subconscious and draw ideas, make connections, create, find sudden insights, make intuitive, non-linear leaps, etc. without having to filter it through our conscious, thinking minds.

I don’t even think it has to be intellectual. I think that the experience that athletes speak of, of being “in a zone” could apply here to. Michael Jordan has spoken of getting into a mental state where everything seems to slow down, he can see everything on the court, anticipate what his opponent will do, and the basket looks enormous.

When I was a professional musician, I sometimes (not often) could slip into a zone where my instrument seemed to be playing itself. There seemed to be no cognitive process going on as I improvised, yet every note was correct and followed a logical compositional path. I couldn’t make this happen or anticipate it, and sometimes it left as quickly as it came. On a few rare occasions I would be able to see a complete song, lyrics and all, spontaneously compose itself in my head. This doesn’t happen musch any more. It happened the most when I was in my early twenties, and i think part of it was just having more artistic fearlessness back then. I wasn’t afraid to try something that might suck. Now I tend to overthink everything.

I think some people seem to have the ability to find this “zone” almost at will, (Shakespeare, Mozart, Einstein) and that the greatest philosophical thinkers (Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed)virtually lived in this zone.

This is basically a Zen sort of outlook that I have. (“God” is inside us but is blocked by our egos. The sensation that we are identical to our egos is an illusion. If we can ever stop “thinking” we can find our “Buddha” selves, our “Christ” consciousness)

I hope I’m not being too long winded, but let me suggest this about “inspired” works of literature: (or art, or music, or an ankle-breaking cross-over) if it inspires others, then it is inspired, itself.

Now to go backwards a little bit to a couple of your other questions. You’re right that the Bible has sometimes been revised or reinterpreted to suit a particular agenda. The Gospels are filled with alleged fulfiments of “prophesies,” which, in their original context, clearly were not intended to be prophesies at all. You’re also right that this was done to facilitate the evangelization of new Christians. I don’t believe, however, that the Gospel writers believed that they were being dishonest. They wrote what they believed must have been true according to their new understanding of the Messiah. I think it’s better not to dwell on the contradictions, errors and heavy-handed dogma in the Bible and just get what you can from the pure ethical messages or passages which seem to ring true or offer comfort. Treat the Bible as you would any other work of literature. You’re allowed to like what you like, and ignore what you don’t like.

As to your question about “contemplating Heaven’s end,” all I can say is I don’t really have an answer to this yet. I’m not afraid of oblivion. It’s not something which can be experienced. It shouldn’t be any more scary than what it was like before we were born, i.e. it isn’t like anything so why be afraid of it?

Eternal life, though? I don’t know. It’s hard for me to envision what this could mean, other than something so abstract that it would be meaningless to call it “life.”

Eternal consciousness? I can’t envision what a non-temporal consciousness would be. I was hoping that I could get some other people’s ideas about what “eternal life” is. my OP was intended to make a point that eternal life, in any literal sense, doesn’t sound like that much of a bargain if you really think about it.

173

Zoe, i know where ur coming from. i dont think that ‘what would heaven be like’, or ‘what would existence be like without time’ is really a concept our brains can handle. we are so used to thinking of time as a linear metronome that the idea of living without it or beyond it is beyond us, even tho we know (or have a reasonable idea) that time can be warped, bent, and maybe even reversed by the effects of gravity… about your comments about not being afraid of death anymore - good for you, seriously… accepting the inevitable can only be a wise decision - im think and hope that at some stage i will reach that acceptance myself.

diogenes - i agree with a lot of what you have said. i make music myself and yeah its all about getting into the zone, like you say you cant predict it or recreate it, but you can sense when its happening and there is a kind of feeling that something is guiding you or inspiring you…

what you said about zen and ‘god being within us’ is close to my view, depending on your definition of god (another impossible question haha!). i think the true essence of ourselves is energy, and buddhism and science seem to agree that energy/spirit must be conserved. my way of understanding what you mean by becoming free from ego is that you are removing any blockages to your deeper expression of life, allowing your energy/actions to flow in the directions you truly would wish them to, unrestricted by what your idea of what is acceptable for you to do(hope that made sense)… i think this is a worthy aim in life, i guess it has parallels in judeo/christian/islamic tradition as well because a central teaching seems to be ‘love thy brother before thyself’ - so if you eliminate the self then you become capable of truly selfless love.

to take a stab at what ‘eternal life’ may mean (tho i am afraid it is very abstract and not comparable to ‘eternal consciousness’)… i think it may mean a state of existence not as ourselves (our egotistical selves i mean) but as a microscopic part of everything else - the energy which drives us becomes a part of the energy that drives everything else. its not far away from the straightforward ‘when we are dead, thats it.’ view, but having spent our lives consuming and reshaping matter (by breathing, eating, etc), the same then happens to what was us when it ends. maybe we place too much emphasis on our minds as regardless of whether we can still think after death, we still continue to support life and the energy that was formerly us is definitly not obliterated, even if the configuration of brain cells and nerves we experience as consciousness is.

that probably made no sense whatsoever [.img]laughing smilie[/img]

174

This may have some relevant thoughts - Heaven’s Code Name Is Hello. It’s exerpts from an Allan Gurganus short story, I believe.

By the way, H4e? I did ask you a serious question back there in my last post to that thread. I apologize if I sounded hostile or sarcastic to you; I honestly would like to understand your perspective on that issue.

175

Ki42,
What you’re describing is essentially the Zen view. Consciousness survives but memories do not. And don’t worry about having difficulty describing it. It’s not supposed to be describable. That’s one reason Buddha wouldn’t talk about it. Another reason was that he thought it was a waste of time. He said that we have to concern ourselves only with this life and forget about the next one. Worrying about what comes next is only an ego based distraction. To put it another way, if you want to go to Heaven, you’re not ready for it yet.

king of spain,
Gurganus’ description of Heaven sounds like the ultimate SDMB. :slight_smile:

176

Vanilla, I’d be pleased to comply, but suddenly busy for the next little while and I want to do justice to my reply, so please give me a few days :slight_smile:

177

Sorry, you’ll have to clarify which thread and what question? If I can remember to come back here and check for your clarification! Ha. So many threads and forums, I have a hard time keeping track, I’m afraid. I can’t guarantee I can answer your question.

178

okay!

179

My bad H4E, I meant this thread. It’s toward the bottom of page 2.

180

Libertarian, you explain so well. I just keep wanting to post, “What he said…”

Diogenes said

I believe that “the ultimate state of love and bliss” is not about “doing” anything. That’s why getting bored wouldn’t be an issue.

Why am I trying to convince you that bliss won’t be boring? You know that already, don’t you?

Is it a matter of your not “knowing” or “believing” that our spirits can live in a state of total bliss?

My ego feels like it’s having a conversation all by itself. Blasted ego!:wally