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The failure of the "afterlife" concept
Not long ago, this was a discussion between myself and a friend, who even though Christian, has all the markers of being an intellectual juggernaut.
We spent hours over several days debating the principle from his perspective and mine. He just emailed me about it again; from somewhere came a recognition of a major failure of his concept. It obviates, directly, what humans hold as one of the highest standards, individually and socially; quality.
Not being an expert on Christianity, a bit more familiar with Judaism, I've looked through a few online texts for clarity. Little, if any, is to be found. I'm familiar with Daoism, by proxy, Buddhism and Confucianism; checked what I could find in the Q'uran.
What became apparent to me was that none of the ideological systems even spare a passing glance at the issue of "quality afterlife"; I'm not certain if that makes it a foregone conclusion or simply a non-issue.
What humans are expressing most often when they say "quality of life" is the nature of experience, and consequent emotional states invoked/provoked by those experiences. Even those experiences that create sadness, anxiety, fear, rage, etc., have the inherent ability to create a specific quality that adds to the totality of life experience.
So, even if one accepts the premise of an afterlife; what is actually gained?
The answer is rather simple; duration/immortality. It might seem like a reward to some, I suppose. But where is the quality? When I asked my friend this question, he began to direct towards "spiritual life" ... ? I'm still working through that aspect. But, from my understanding, and what he has said; consciousness ends with the body, but the spirit remains. The spirit has no recognition of corporeal form or its consciousness, as in there would be no recognition of others that you knew in physical life, none of the emotional attachments to those once loved ...
Simply, from my perspective, some "aspect" continues, without experience, without quality ... the afterlife is just an abysmal duration of duration.
How far off am I?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Freedom of Anonymity on -
Just a couch in the shade, a few virgins, some water... it's all good... thanks Allah!
But that requires that the formless have experiential sensation. How does this occur without consciousness? Isn't spirit most necessarily described as an energy from/extension of a god? If hunger, pain, sleep can't/do not exist ... how can anything be felt? If the "spirit" lacks memory, what value is there to any "afterlife experience"?
From my limited experience with a virgin, exactly how the hell is that a reward? That's the worst sexual experience that can be found ... I think someone got their tales twisted and that's actually damnation and punishment.
It is a way to get past the idea that you just get good food and water in heaven...which sound really boring.
If it is an energy form, how can it lack? Meaning, we eat and drink because of the energy requirements of a physical form, and are always lacking to some degree, so constantly in a state of need/want.
So, if some energetic aspect continues past the physical form; this is either a convolution or an error.
Hinduism/Buddhism/Daoism are more at poetry/prose and have nothing to really say; typical of cosmological ideologies.
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Permalink Reply by Edward Teach on -
The closest thing to "heaven" for me is complete emersion into the physical, emotional or intellectual experience of the moment... When the line between me and my experience is least defined. It's the difference between me singing a song and the sense of being a conduit for the song (it singing me).
I don't know if I described it well... kind of melting into the experience... a focus on "process," rather than "product"
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Permalink Reply by Freedom of Anonymity on
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Actually, that is very well described; immersion is as close as we can come to "being the experience".
But, the exigency is all the inherent parameters of physicality that allow for us to become immersed. That is how our sensation/remembrance of quality becomes, for lack of a better term, concrete.
So, what is there after "life", of experience and quality?
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Permalink Reply by Edward Teach on
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Glad you knew what I meant... especially since I used an antonym to describe the phenomenon...lol!
But, the exigency is all the inherent parameters of physicality that allow for us to become immersed.
...welll... there's always lsd
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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on -
In Christian theology there's an interesting debate to be had with fundamentalists: variously you'll be told that your "resurrection body" will be a new body (no more arthritis etc.,) This is occasionally used to explain why no-body recognised Jesus when he started appearing to people. The disciples didn't collectively hold an IQ of a bag of spanners - no! - it's that Jesus looked different, and so will we all. New Heaven New Earth, New body: the whole shabang.
Now read The revelation of John (20:4), wherein are described the resurrected martyrs who have all been beheaded! Now this is a vision John has of the final days; the martyrs are back and he describes them as beheaded. That would seem to me to be a fairly strong argument - in so far as the bible has any legitimacy in this area - that you keep the body with which you departed.
On which basis we can conclude the heaven is full of aborted foetuses and octogenarians playing bingo.
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Permalink Reply by Freedom of Anonymity on
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In Christian theology there's an interesting debate to be had with fundamentalists: variously you'll be told that your "resurrection body" will be a new body (no more arthritis etc.,) This is occasionally used to explain why no-body recognised Jesus when he started appearing to people. The disciples didn't collectively hold an IQ of a bag of spanners - no! - it's that Jesus looked different, and so will we all. New Heaven New Earth, New body: the whole shabang.
?
I've never heard or read this before, interesting. So then what is the use of the "spirit" then? Just an animator of the flesh bag? Do you get "spirit 2.0" with the new flesh bag? Does "spirit 2.0" remember "spirit ver. 1"?
What an odd distortion of thought ... and I'll take it that these individuals who espouse this perspective don't see the irrationality of that premise? Is this supported anywhere in the Biblical canon, or are we just "freestyling" the ideology at this point?
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Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on -
Hey, once you've bought into the ORIGINAL bullshit, what's a little more?
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Permalink Reply by Freedom of Anonymity on
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Perhaps it just strikes me that even within the realm of belief, that an average individual would have to come across points that invariably caused them to stop and question.
Especially, when one is being told that the entire direction of their existence is to get to death for a grand reward .... and the reward is {0}.
Do I ask too much?
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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on
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I think once you abandon evidence-based reasoning and rely on emotive posturing, frankly anything is fair game. To the mind infected with the virus of religion, once you accept the Jesus body vanished and rose from the dead, it's small hop skip and a jump of crazy to believing just about anything you want about your own body.
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Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on
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That presumes that the "average individual" uses conscious, intellectual thought on a reasonably regular basis. As Richard has said, the second faith enters the equation, irrationality comes along for the ride and literally ANYTHING becomes possible. No matter how unlikely or impossible, dear-old-deity can make anything possible ... and while the average atheist looks at it and groans, the average believer just takes it all in stride 'cuz it's all part of the plan ... in theory.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on
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If I want to have a sanity check, I occasionally browse through the "God" channels (UK SKy viewers channels 580 +)
there's everything there from biblical exegesis to prophecy (the funniest is watching pre and mid tribulationists argue ever-so politely about something over which they fundamentally disagree.)
I think I picked up the apologetics about the new revitalised body there. I think certainly scratch the surface of what apologists websites say about conditions in the new earth post rapture and this is the sort of explanation you'll find.
The bit about the beheaded martyrs is admittedly my own reading, but I struggle to understand how in a vision John could have known they were beheaded martyrs if they were resurrected with heads.
What an odd distortion of thought
Well quite. As a sanity checker it's usually quite reliable.
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Permalink Reply by Sonny Mobley on -
FoA: You would hear this talk all of the time if you listened to some of my local southern baptist preacher's. Each different sect of christianity interprets so many things so differently you never know what they're going to say. One of my friends is from North Carolina and his father was a pentecostal minister and he looks at me like 'm crazy and I do the same to him when we discuss the beliefs of the local southern baptist's vs his pentecostal father (also from what he has made me understand... the local pentecostals are also nothing like the ones he grew up with).
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