Eternity and The Afterlife
If eternity is defined as the absence or negation of time, rather than simply as an unending future, then what implications would this have for my life after death?
Eternal life would not simply mean an unending future life but, rather, a life unfettered by time, freed from the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future.
Upon my death, I would not merely encounter in heaven only those persons who died before me, but I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who I thought I was leaving behind, and I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who would be my future descendants.
Any comments about this?
Eternal life would not simply mean an unending future life but, rather, a life unfettered by time, freed from the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future.
Upon my death, I would not merely encounter in heaven only those persons who died before me, but I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who I thought I was leaving behind, and I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who would be my future descendants.
Any comments about this?
Comments (30)
Why do you believe in an after life?
What I proposed does not necessarily mean that I believe in an afterlife. I simply wanted to investigate the implications a certain interpretation of the meaning of eternity would have on an afterlife if one assumed it existed.
Why think about something you don't believe in?
It's intellectual fun!
eternal life is to be understood as existing in another reality, not in this universe.
time in that another reality is to be understood as not correlated with time in this reality, it is impossible to imagine the speed of time in another reality because it's eternal, any limitation to time would question eternity.
Quoting charles ferraro
Yes, because afterlife in another reality means transition of soul from this reality to another reality and the process as well as death is unavoidable.
[quote=Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus]Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.[/quote]
For each of us, death is the MOST SIGNIFICANT and DEFINITIVE EVENT we will ever experience in our life, because it puts a definite end to our life, it cancels it.
We each live awaiting this ultimate, inevitable cancellation of personal life.
Eternal life, if it does exist, DOES NOT belong to those who live in the present, because eternity, unlike time, is dimensionless; it lacks past, present, and future.
Eternal life, if it does exist, transcends ALL temporal dimensions.
:death: :flower:
[quote=Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata]A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.
If eternal life transcends all temporal dimensions then it cannot be "after" anything, least of all death.
:clap: :smirk:
There's a Buddhist sutta (verse) called The Eastern Gatehouse. It comprises as dialogue between the Buddha and Sariputta. (It ought to be said that the figure of Sariputta, one of the Buddha's closest disciples, is customarily the figure in the Buddhist scriptures with whom the Buddha converses about matters of great depth or profundity.) The Buddha opens the dialogue with a rhetorical question:
In such verses, 'the Deathless' is a synonym for Nibbana, which is elsewhere depicted as freedom from the eternal round of birth and death. It might also be pointed out however that neither is Nibbana heaven - there are indeed heavens and hells in the Buddhist world but they are still aspects of sa?s?ra, the round of birth and death.
I think that description is congruent with your second paragraph, but not with the idea of retaining one's sense of self and sense of others. Of course, for this reason, nibbana (Nirv??a) is often taken as a nihilistic idea, being the complete cessation of awareness or of being. But another sutra rejects this as a wrong notion (notice again that it is addressed to Sariputta but here represented in the Sanskrit as distinct from the Pali language, because from a Mah?y?na scripture):
Which, of course, raises the question of the manner of a Buddha's existence in the 'deathless realm' - a question which cannot be answered from within the frame of reference of sentient beings.
Quoting 180 Proof
Taking into account one's entanglement with actions that are to have future consequences. In other words, living fully in the present would imply the ending of all such ties - holding no hopes, no regrets, fully reconciled in the moment.
Perhaps. But since you and I are still alive, we cannot yet know, with complete certainty, if it belongs in your ontological spitoon, can we?
I have no belief in an afterlife and I find the idea incoherent. Death holds no fascination for me and the idea of eternity is meaningless. I consider that before I was born I was effectively 'dead' for 'eternity'.
Nietzsche
Technically, you're correct.
Neither is there that warrants there is none.
I read it indeed after I posted. Why should the burden be on the afterliver? And what about the proof of theoretical induction, pointing merciless to infinite replay mechanisms?
Because the burden of proof falls both on the positive claim and on the extraordinary claim which is contrary to ordinary experience and facticity. One is born, one lives, one dies. On what grounds do you claim more than that? How do you know this? Or why believe it if you don't know? What's your evidence? :chin:
That's the spirit!
So the burden of proof lays on the believer because it lays on the believer? Why should they proof it in the first place? If they could, it wouldn't be a belief anymore. Of course it could be a fantasy then, but isn't the big bang a fantasy too then? How you wanna proof the big bang?
"Try" what?
The laughter of despair?