What eight year old prays that he won't go to heaven? It's the weekend, which I think means that I get to post ridiculous stuff on steemit and litterally no one will notice. You may ask, why post it at all then? Well, you won't be asking that because you won't be goddam reading this, but lord knows I am asking myself that very question. There are two basic answers - no three - but the first doesn't count. That is because the first answer is that I am a little drunk. The first of the next two answers is that four cents profit is four cents no matter how you cut it. The final and most important answer is that I get to take words that have been flying through my head for some time and nail them the hell down. Like butterflies in a glass case. Somehow the Internet feels more permanent in that way. I know...blockchain something something. Whatever. I have a math degree and know how to prove the theorem behind RSA public key cryptography and even I don't give a shit.
Back to the original question. What eight year old does that? A highly religious one. Some kids learn about heaven in Sunday school. Some actually believe it. I was one of those who believed it so hard it made me sick. I mean - forever? Like forever ever? (To quote Outkast). It's pants shitting terrifying if you ask me. As for ghosts, that is even more sickening. I am not saying I am afraid of ghosts so much as I am afraid of being one. Can't think of a worse fate than wandering about as a fragment of my former self, reliving some whisps of thought over and over again.
Some people say they believe in an afterlife because they don't want this life to be all there is. I don't want to seem like a jerk, but I think they are confused about what the word "life" means. Yes, I suppose there is at a minimum the continuity of sensory experience, but our lives are made of all our interactions with other people in the order in which they occur. Each moment comes laden with potential and risk, driven by knowing that the moment will never come again and that number of remaining moments is in constant decline. It is a region in a web that ultimately connects all people to all other people. In that sense life is less a descreet object and more a shape held in place by all the other shapes around it. Attempting to extract that shape would cause it to lose cohesion. Sure perhaps something with some parts of you might live on after death, but would it really be you?
Whether there is an afterlife depends on a whole environment of stuff. What you are seem to be saying is are glassy cherries nice - No, therefore baking does not exist. It ignores so much that it really is like looking at the universe with a microscope. Step back, forget introspection. How long is "now" that never ends. If you could pick one second of life where you were ecstatically happy, and that never ended and never palled because there is no time within which to pall, would you reject that? Stop thinking in a vacuum and start observing.
Huh? I never said it didn't exist. Read again.
OK. You said you did not want it. Infinity of time how boring, that is a view but why include time in the afterlife. If you are with God then as he is outside time, time being a construct that he made, then you would not be in time. The alternative is no different, not being with God for an infinity of now. That's sensory deprivation by your own choice.
Keep in mind that I wrote this when I was feeling punchy and it paints with rather broad strokes. That being said, you took the time to reply so I'll repay the courtesy and try to better articulate at least some of my thoughts.
One of the problems with discussing the afterlife is that there is no universal concept of it, much like god. I admit I am confounding several different ideas people may have. One of these is not the Christian heaven, but the world of spirits and hauntings. Some people may have a positive view of such a world, rooted in a belief that beloved ancestors are watching over them. Why is that comforting? There are obvious answers. Perhaps we don't want to say goodbye or like the idea of someone who loves us influencing our lives or dispensing wisdom from beyond. That's understandable, but my mind tends to extrapolate what that experience must be like for the ancestor. How is it to be bound to a place and to a particular emotional range, robbed of all the experiences of everyday human life? Such beneficient hauntings may be a comfort for the living, but sound like pure hell for the dead. At least to me. Others may differ, but we are here discussing feelings rather than facts. Take it or leave it I guess.
Beyond that, there is the far more complex question of what is life to begin with. This coupe apply to many concepts of the afterlife and perhaps it is a more fruitful discussion than taking a survey of those concepts and discussing them in turn. What I mean is: what does it mean to be human and how seperable is this from our physical exitence? We can talk about the continuity of consciousness outside the body - whether you call this a soul or whatever else - but is mere continuity all there is? The second point of my post, which I admit was not well said, is that I regard our lives as more than the memory contained in a single brain. We are connected and our identities are formed by the totality of our experiences, including all the ways we are connected to other s within the bounds of time. Yeah that's a mouthful and simply saying it does not make it true or even intelligible. It is something I would love to expand upon someday.
I am confused by your concept of time. What does it mean to exist outside of time? Just curious that's all.
Excellent thought provocation there. The more I read about philosophy, psychology and the diversity of human beliefs I'm finding it more and more likely that once you're gone...you're gone. Anything else is just a wonderfully or sadistically designed story. Keep up the great writing.
I come from a zen buddhist perspective, where tradtional notions of the sould are, in some schools of thought, rejected. Reincarnation, where it is mentioned at all, can be seen less as a litteral return of your former identity and more of a dispersal back into the cosmos from where we came. There was no me before and it is not unreasonable to think there is no me after. Lives are like bubbles emerging in a foam. They are brief, but also inseperable from the foam and the other bubbles. They owe their existence to this continuum and have no meaning apart from it. I have found this concept more freeing than others. That doesn't make it true, but that's how I see it. Thanks for the comment!