There have been responses to the OP, though they seem to be getting smothered by the “define this afterlife/heaven” spin-off question. It’s an important question, but I’ll ignore it all and assume this perfect afterlife does exist and just go from there. To continue my earlier points:
I still think death will be pretty well just as bad as it currently is, for many many generations to come. We may evolve away from fearing death, but that would be thousands of years down the line.
Keep in mind we, like all life forms, have evolved with an inherent sense of self-protection and survival, and to fear things that can cause death. You can’t just turn off millions of years of hardwired instinct, no matter how convincing the pitch is. Sure a given percentage of people do actually do so (suicide bombers etc), but the vast majority of us do not and can not.
Amusement parks with roller coasters and other adrenalin-inducing activities prove that. These activities are similar to an afterlife pitch: you know you’ll continue to exist after jumping off the bridge and be just fine, but you still get butterflies and a rush none the less; your brain can’t help it. Does anyone think they’d be fine watching their children get eaten alive by wild dogs in the mortal life, knowing they’ll be in the afterlife in a few minutes?
This part hasn’t been specified, but the OP starts saying:
… which to me implies this afterlife is discovered somewhere close to modern times when we have the means to communicate it to each other and know what “proof” means; not back on the Savanas when we were running around in small groups with pointed sticks. Also meaning for most of our existence and evolution we did not have this proof.
That’s what my previous post talked about. If we have tens of thousands of years to evolve with a certain influence/knowledge, then we’d likely change to reflect it. But if you introduce the influence or knowledge into a population already hard-wired to fear death, it won’t become part of our psyche for a long long time.
FWIW they’ve done movies about this concept. The movie ‘the discovery’ is one example. In the film they had to do mass anti-suicide campaigns.
My prediction: If they invent devices that allow 2 way communication with the afterlife, and/or if they develop devices that allow spirits to interact with the physical world (like devices so they can write) then I think the suicide rate would skyrocket. Especially after endless messages came out of people who already committed suicide and said there was no punishment, only bliss on the other side no matter what.
Far more than it would if it were just proven as a scientific concept, but people had no way to communicate with the dead on a personalized level.
You can’t really divorce the OP’s question from “how does this afterlife actually work” because it very much affects the answer. Eternal bliss sounds great until you really start to think about the “eternal” part of it. If there’s no way out, then this supposed heaven turns into a torturous hell that some people would try to delay and others would try to impose on people. Then all the questions about conflicting desires among the souls involved, logical impossibilities, free will, and self delusion. That’s why it’s not possible to “just stick to the hypothetical” because the details matter.
Given the hypothetical characteristics of the afterlife as described in the OP, I imagine that almost the entire population of the world would commit suicide immediately, leaving just a few individuals and groups who have religious taboos against such suicide. Maybe some people would disbelieve in this particular form of afterlife, and would hope to attain a better or more righteous existence in a different heaven.
Somehow I don’t think this small number of holdouts would be enough to maintain a civilisation on Earth - especially if the offer remains open, so that the next generation of humans would also have the opportunity to enter the OP’s heaven. A few generations later humans would have disappeared from the Earth.
Perhaps this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox - someone discovers or manufactures a perfect afterlife, and there’s no need to maintain a presence in this universe any more.
Or, you could invoke the QM Many Worlds interpretation, whereby you get to hang with people you want to hang with and they are versions of themselves who want to hang with you. Versions of you would be in other people’s timelines who want to hang with you, and your version in their timeline wants to hang with them.
I definitely agree with this answer. It’s the only action that makes any sense at all – whatever business you think you have to finish up is literally infinitely insignificant compared to the eternal afterlife. It’s infinitely smaller than what you missed when you decided to hit snooze button one morning in 1983.
But, here’s where I fight the hypothetical – any entity that could be reasonable considered to be “me” has finite brain capacity, finite interests, finite patience. An entity that could deal with some kind of infinite afterlife is not “me” in any real sense.
And, that’s leaving aside the paradoxes and contradictions that most of these “let’s make religion real” discussions have – those mentioned above (I want to see my friends, they don’t want to see me), what happens with children (they grow up? To what equivalent age? What does that mean if they don’t have the normal interactions that humans have growing up?), and so on and so forth.
I dunno; as others have pointed out, we have a pretty strong survival instinct.
And knowing that we’re guaranteed a good afterlife might make this life easier to bear.
One thing I wonder is if it would increase the amount of selfishness, exploitation, mistreatment, etc. Some people are going to think, “If I’m guaranteed Heaven no matter what I do, why not do whatever I want?” While others may be less inclined to worry about the effects of their actions on others if those others have Heaven waiting for them to make up for anything they have to suffer in this life.
I wouldn’t normally jump out of a plane, but knowing that I have a parachute on my back makes it a lot easier. Assuming that the proof of an afterlife was as incontrovertible as the proof that a parachute works, I think the analogy holds.
And I wouldn’t jump out of a plane even with a parachute on my back, unless I had no choice. I’d be terrified, and knowing for sure that the parachute would work and I’d land safely wouldn’t make me un-terrified.
Can we interact with the beforelife? If not, then regardless of the bliss available, I’d be torn away from my wife, my children, my friends. As nice as it would be to see my grandparents again or hang-glide with cocaine hookers, all the people who are most important to me are still alive, so being deprived of them for decades would still be traumatic.
In this scenario, what are the strong arguments against murder and/or suicide, mass or otherwise? In the case of murder you could claim that the victim didn’t want to die, but since the “victim” comes out ahead in the deal how harsh a penalty can you really justify?
I agree with what several others have already noted: if an afterlife is a certainty, and it’s also a certainty that it is a paradise, then I think it’s a given that you would see mass suicides, as well as murders and involuntary euthanasia committed on the grounds that “I’m sending that person to a better place.” Many people will reason that “why should I continue living in this flawed world, and experience pain and sadness, when I know that there is a happier option?”
So, they would learn to ride bikes, go to school, interact with other kids, skin their knees, get made fun of, make fun of others, have birthday parties, get sick, have a first kiss, first love, etc.? All the things that make kids into adults?
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