Disappointment In There Being No After-Life

[Ellinas]

 

 

To me:

1. I do not know if there is a continuation of individual life after death.
2. I cannot confirm that there is no continuation of individual life after death.
3. I choose to believe that there is such a continuation.
4. I may be completely wrong in that belief.
5. If I am wrong I will never know.
6. If others choose to believe the opposite to me, that is their privilege
7. If they are right they will never know.
8. Either way, there's nothing any of us can do about it.

 

Well, there is something that we can do about it - determine whether the claim of life after death of particular carbon-based life organisms is correct or incorrect, if such a determination is eventually possible.

 

 

I await the definitive answer to that enquiry with interest.  However, to coin a phrase, I'm not holding my breath, as I suspect I'll be joining the ranks of the deceased long before anyone manages to make that determination with certainty.

[Jeff]

People get bored after 5 minutes in a drive thru. Eternity?

 

Brilliant!

[FarflungWanderer]

Quite frankly, the only afterlife I would ever subscribe to would be one where you spent eternity with the one person that meant most to you, whoever that is.

 

Otherwise, I don't really see a point. It'd be too damn lonely.

[Jeff]

 

 

...  since there is no proof of anything else I would suggest your pour yourself into this life like a never ending glass and over flow it any chance you get...

 

I was thinking something similar as I was driving in to work this AM.  I reached over and touched my wife's knee as she sat next to me.  I realized that there are a finite number of opportunities when I will experience this pleasure.  It made me smile because I was experiencing such a wonderful sensation as I drove along the highway with my hand resting on her.

 

It makes every day wonderful for me now that I know that I will someday die and cease to exist.  Everything is a wonder when I remember this.  Everything I enjoy is precious and valuable.  Every sip of whiskey and every wisp of wood smoke is a pleasure to be enjoyed to it's fullest.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

I just want to live until I die.  I'd prefer for that to be a good long while, because this is the only world I'm ever going to live in and I'd like to see as much of it as possible.  But, once the warm hand of the universe reaches down to take back the atoms and molecules it loaned me, I don't really care what happens afterwards.

[amateur]

Since I was raised by agnostics, but we attended church so I had the concept, I never thought much about heaven when I was a kid.  It was a vague thing to me.  By junior high/high school I took religion much more seriously but the concept of eternity really creeped me out.  Especially doing one thing (praising god) over and over and over forever.  No change, no growth, no hanging out with friends and having fun.  Just an endless loop of unchanging praise.  That really creeped me out.

 

Unless I can design my own personal heaven, I prefer thinking we just quit existing.  It seems so much more relaxing.

[VahnBlue]

Since I was raised by agnostics, but we attended church so I had the concept, I never thought much about heaven when I was a kid. It was a vague thing to me. By junior high/high school I took religion much more seriously but the concept of eternity really creeped me out. Especially doing one thing (praising god) over and over and over forever. No change, no growth, no hanging out with friends and having fun. Just an endless loop of unchanging praise. That really creeped me out.

 

Unless I can design my own personal heaven, I prefer thinking we just quit existing. It seems so much more relaxing.

You would eventually go crazy in your own person heaven, as well. There's only so much(or very little, to be more understanding) you can do for eternity lol

[Burny]

This reminds me of a joke I delighted in telling as a xtian.

 

A man is passionate about fly fishing. One day he dies, only to wake up next to a bubbling brook with a nice fly rod in his hand. He notices an angelic being sitting on the delightful river bank next to him. The angel tells him to go ahead and start fishing! The man catches fish after fish after fish. It's a beautiful day and birds are chirping all around him. The sun is warm on his back. Life is GREAT. Eventually he's getting hungry and tired of hauling in all these wonderful fish. He asks the angel where he can get some food and drink. The angel instructs the man to keep fishing. The man complies and keeps hauling in fish. Eventually he is near the point of collapse and can barely even lift the fishing rod. He begs the angel for a break. The angel refuses. The man, exasperated, says;

 

"This is pretty crappy service for Heaven!"

 

The angel wryly responds;

 

"What made you think this was Heaven?!"

 

I think that every person is more than capable of designing their own Hell and thinking it would be Heaven... Eternity is not for us. In the ancient stories, the God's are jealous of temporal humans. It's only possible to love temporarily. People say they could live "forever" with someone. This is patently false. You would be in hell after a few hundred years!

[25YearsLater]

I must admit, I'm somewhat surprised by what I'm reading.  It's as if now that everyone is resigned to the idea of an eternity with the Good Lord being a load of hogwash, that somehow makes a virtue out of only living a short time.

 

Well I don't get it.  Ok, so perhaps staying alive till the universe reaches its maximum entropy state could get a bit dull, but the lack of imagination I'm seeing is quite disappointing, if I'm honest.

 

If I could stay youthful in body and mind, yet accumulate wisdom and knowledge, I'm pretty sure I could get used to living for a long, long time - certainly several hundred years at least.  Considering how much I've forgotten since my school days, and how interested I was in so many things, I could easily fill several lifetimes just with studying all the things I'm interested in but have no time for, since I'm too damn busy making a living.

 

And that's even without seeing and being part of the amazing directions science and technology will take the human race over the next few centuries.  I would love to experience a lot more of life on Earth, find out whether we really do destroy the planet and ourselves, or maybe figure out how to rescue the situation.  Then go to the Moon, Mars, maybe some of Jupiter's moons - then once we've got wormholes figured out, in a few centuries time, maybe another solar system, actually meet the aliens.  Miss the opportunity to do Star Trek for real? You've got to be kidding.

 

You lot feel free to die off after your three score years and ten if that's all you have the enthusiasm for - I'll keep the anti-agathic drugs for myself and a few chosen like-minded friends 

[Jeff]

I agree that an extremely long life could be very enjoyable with many things to explore.  I would even be willing to lose my body and move into the realm of having a mechanical or virtual body as long as I didn't have malware and was free to terminate my own programming instead of being reloaded without permission.  I can even see moving past my current familial ties to become really a completely different person as I grew and experienced new things.  One of my favorite authors is Charles Stross.  His visions of future possibilities has tempted me into thinking my body may not be so important if I could live a long time.

 

However, I do not believe that I will get to experience this long life, so I do take my pleasure now as intensely as I can get it.

[25YearsLater]

 

However, I do not believe that I will get to experience this long life, so I do take my pleasure now as intensely as I can get it.

 

Agreed, but I'll send you a drop of my anti-aging formula when I've perfected it, Jeff

[VahnBlue]

I must admit, I'm somewhat surprised by what I'm reading. It's as if now that everyone is resigned to the idea of an eternity with the Good Lord being a load of hogwash, that somehow makes a virtue out of only living a short time.

 

Well I don't get it. Ok, so perhaps staying alive till the universe reaches its maximum entropy state could get a bit dull, but the lack of imagination I'm seeing is quite disappointing, if I'm honest.

 

If I could stay youthful in body and mind, yet accumulate wisdom and knowledge, I'm pretty sure I could get used to living for a long, long time - certainly several hundred years at least. Considering how much I've forgotten since my school days, and how interested I was in so many things, I could easily fill several lifetimes just with studying all the things I'm interested in but have no time for, since I'm too damn busy making a living.

 

And that's even without seeing and being part of the amazing directions science and technology will take the human race over the next few centuries. I would love to experience a lot more of life on Earth, find out whether we really do destroy the planet and ourselves, or maybe figure out how to rescue the situation. Then go to the Moon, Mars, maybe some of Jupiter's moons - then once we've got wormholes figured out, in a few centuries time, maybe another solar system, actually meet the aliens. Miss the opportunity to do Star Trek for real? You've got to be kidding.

 

You lot feel free to die off after your three score years and ten if that's all you have the enthusiasm for - I'll keep the anti-agathic drugs for myself and a few chosen like-minded friends

Yeah ok. See how long that will last you.

[Burny]

I must admit, I'm somewhat surprised by what I'm reading.  It's as if now that everyone is resigned to the idea of an eternity with the Good Lord being a load of hogwash, that somehow makes a virtue out of only living a short time.

 

Well I don't get it.  Ok, so perhaps staying alive till the universe reaches its maximum entropy state could get a bit dull, but the lack of imagination I'm seeing is quite disappointing, if I'm honest.

 

If I could stay youthful in body and mind, yet accumulate wisdom and knowledge, I'm pretty sure I could get used to living for a long, long time - certainly several hundred years at least.  Considering how much I've forgotten since my school days, and how interested I was in so many things, I could easily fill several lifetimes just with studying all the things I'm interested in but have no time for, since I'm too damn busy making a living.

 

And that's even without seeing and being part of the amazing directions science and technology will take the human race over the next few centuries.  I would love to experience a lot more of life on Earth, find out whether we really do destroy the planet and ourselves, or maybe figure out how to rescue the situation.  Then go to the Moon, Mars, maybe some of Jupiter's moons - then once we've got wormholes figured out, in a few centuries time, maybe another solar system, actually meet the aliens.  Miss the opportunity to do Star Trek for real? You've got to be kidding.

 

You lot feel free to die off after your three score years and ten if that's all you have the enthusiasm for - I'll keep the anti-agathic drugs for myself and a few chosen like-minded friends 

 

You mis-understand what most of us are saying. People throw around the word "forever" like it's no big deal. I would LOVE to live a couple hundred, or maybe even thousand years. It's the 'forever' part that's a load of nonsense. We couldn't handle 'forever'...

[rach]

I was taught in the after-life ever since I was three years old!  Constantly it was drilled into me as a fact that I will live forever, and that the "forever" I will live, will be complete and absolute paradise.  I always thought about all the things I would do in "forever."  I thought I'd go on a big boat and sail around as much as I wanted.  So when I came to the end of Christian belief it was devastating to let go of all that certainty.  It was like my whole reality had shattered, as well as my concept of self importance, because I now know that I am disposable just like the billions of people that came before me.

However, as I started thinking in depth about it, first of all I do think the possibility of living endlessly with no possibility of death is horrifying.  If there is a possibility of death then there is an escape if things go wrong or if you've just had enough of living.  With no possibility of death (which is what I was taught), you would be claustrophobically trapped.  The other thing is that my beloved pets have died.  Christianity offers no "eternal life" for animals, and so I had to accept the impossible-to-accept, my pets are gone forever. Would I want to live without them?  Would I be happy in heaven without them?  Would I want to experience all those joys of heaven knowing my babies, my dead pets, will never share those joys?  No, I decided.  I'd rather be dead with my pets.  For they are more worthy of heaven than I could ever be, and they won't be there.  If they're not going, neither do I want to go. 

[25YearsLater]

You mis-understand what most of us are saying. People throw around the word "forever" like it's no big deal. I would LOVE to live a couple hundred, or maybe even thousand years. It's the 'forever' part that's a load of nonsense. We couldn't handle 'forever'...

 

 

Point taken.

 

Let me redefine my use of the word 'immortal', which seemed to cause all the debate earlier in the thread....

 

"To live forever, with the option of self-termination when things get too boring".

 

All a bit academic, though, as someone else pointed out...

[gall]

 

Unless everyone else is living that long as well you would probably get truly depressed when all your friends keep dying and you outlive all your lovers.

 

So you are not immortal. You never were. You are not out anything you ever had.

 

I love my life to but instead of pining for more later I use what I have now to make it worth my time.

 

Fill your life with life and you won't worry so much about death or having more life after.

 

It seems hollow to say I know but really since there is no proof of anything else I would suggest your pour yourself into this life like a never ending glass and over flow it any chance you get.

 

I use to want to live for ever but the prospect now just seems ugly to me.

 

 

Yes, I know all that stuff.

 

I'm 52, so well over half way, in all probability.

 

I think I'm qualified to know whether I've had more than half the fun and learning I want out of this life - and I haven't, not by a big margin.

 

You may be right, and immortality would get boring.

 

I'd settle for 'as long as I want'.

 

But 70-80 years with a significant likelihood of disease and disability towards the end is crap, and nowhere enough - for me anyway.  Maybe it is for you, I'm not stopping you from deciding when you've had enough.

 

 

And I am not stopping you and have no desire to or anyone for that matter.

 

Live as long as you like. I would still live as many days of your life as if it will end tomorrow. Disease may not be what gets you. In the end you may just get struck by a bus at 60... I hope you don't and that you get as long as you like but the only guarntee is that you are going to die.

 

I would not mind more than 80-100 years myself. I don't want 5000 but 500 would be just enough to finally have time to finish all those books I never get to

[Sophrosyne]

I was very disappointed at the thought during the first stage of my de-conversion. I've been more accepting towards the idea as of recently... but it still isn't wonderful thinking about the fact that life comes to a permanent end at death.

It makes me a bit annoyed at times, especially when I see someone young die (it's like they weren't granted much time, it seems unfair...but then again, life isn't always fair).

I don't have any hope of an afterlife, but I can see how christians might find comfort in one.

 

I don't think I would want to live forever; I do however wish this life was a bit longer than the average 70-80 years.