Has anyopne over the age of 40 actually thought about the implications of eternity?
Never mind the rather compelling evidence against the possibility, just think about a really, really, loooonnnnnggg time.
It still has an end, doesn’t it?
Since the human mind can’t grasp a number larger that 10,000 while still being able to distinguish each item*, the concept of “eternity” is meaningless. Try this: After the first 5000 years, you’ve met and gotten to know every person (including Neanderthals) who ever lived, and know every damned thing that happened in their lives.
You now desperately hope for really big wars or massive deadly disease epidemics, just to get some fresh body to meet.
Your god turns out to be some snot-nosed brat that the rest of the gods can’t tolerate.
No harps (or even lutes, which are what Christian angels are usually depicted with), no golden streets. If there are golden streets, you look at them as paving materials after the first few hundred years, anyway.
And you are stuck. No way out. Forever.
I sincerely wish for an end. Maybe stick around as a ghost or something for a hundred years or so, just to see how your predictions turned out. But yes, an end.
Imagine a square tray of marbles - all neatly lined up, with 100 marbles per side. See number 57 over and 63 up? Now expand that to ten million per side - they start getting blurry, don’t they?
Oh, pish posh. Put me in a room alone with Valerie van der Graaf and I’ll gladly spend two eternities standing on my head just licking her spiked heels.
Well, from my POV, eternal bliss is incomprehensible. So it’s like someone saying “Would you like fries with that or oaiaob aoeoroaan;f;;asdfjjkjkjkjkjk? Oh, and if you pick the latter, it’s forever.”
But you’re not supposed to figure out how to make it work. You just have to relax and enjoy it. Some supreme being somewhere else is in charge of figuring out what will make you happy and delivering it. You’ll get a basket of french fries put down in front of you exactly when you want to eat them. You’ll get a plate full of oaiaob aoeoroaan;f;;asdfjjkjkjkjkjk if that’s what you want at the moment - even if you have no idea what it is. You get everything you ever wanted even the things you didn’t know you wanted because you never knew they existed. And you won’t stuck with anything for eternity - there will always be new things to do. You get to go to all the best places, experience all the most fun things, hang out with all the coolest people. And the next day you can do it all over again - or do something that’s totally different but equally great.
I fundamentally don’t believe in the concept of eternal bliss. I just don’t. I have a finite understanding. I think I would have a finite interest, finite enthusiasm, finite desire, finite everything. I think I am finite.
While I see no reason to believe in an omnipotent deity or in an afterlife, it seems clear to be that, if Athena DID exist, she could make you or me or anybody blissful for eternity, on account of being God.
You’re welcome to believe whatever makes sense to you. For me, eternity is not something I’d be comfortable signing myself up for. Dying and staying dead? That’s something I can wrap my head around.