Does everyone want eternal life?

[Aloysium]

. . . Emptiness implies nihilism and lack of purpose. As Lear said, nothing shall come from nothing. A total void is sterile and incompatible with belief in Karma and spiritual development. “Wisdom” has destroyed itself and the meaning of everything else. Illusions themselves become illusory and everything descends into absurdity. The only result it achieves is to demonstrate that nothing worthwhile is ever achieved and it makes no difference whether we have existed or not : an ideal solution for those who consider life is worthless and meaningless - and that it would have been better if no one had ever been born. The death wish and desire for extinction are fulfilled perfectly in the Buddhist scheme of things: the philosophy of detachment destroys the value of truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love and results in the exaltation of cynicism and the apotheosis of negativity.

Everyone, everywhere seeks the Good. The problem is the lure of lesser goods, which are transient, and to which attachment is purposeless and leads to death.

Emptiness in Eastern philosophy should be thought of as being “no-thingness”. We are not things. Things are ultimately “illusory”: changing and temporal; what is truly real is eternal Being Itself.

The pursuit of Nirvana, as it actually practiced is not an avoidance of suffering, but rather a total acceptance of what life brings in each moment, in the eternal Moment. Detachment from the enticements of the world, sacrifice, and the surrendering of all to God, as has been known to all monastic societies, brings one to truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love.

We are fortunate to have the magisterium, to clarify the message of Christ.

CCC 27-28 The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for: The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator. In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behaviour: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being: From one ancestor (God) made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him - though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “in him we live and move and have our being.”

 

[Charlemagne_III]

All the people I’ve known who rejected God, and many people I’ve heard of, have never gone out of their way to rage against God on their deathbed. That’s because nobody really wants eternal death, even when they’re not sure there’s such a thing as eternal life.

 

[rossum]

Thought implies the existence of a thinker who doesn’t disappear from one instant to the next!

Thought implies the existence of a thinker for the duration of the thought. If the thought changes then the thinker has also changed, because they are thinking something different to what they thought before. The thought has changed, so there must be difference. Difference inevitably implies change.

A world without change is trapped in eternal stasis. The world we live in is not trapped in eternal stasis, hence change is ubiquitous.

I suspect that we are not going to agree on this.

rossum

 

[ajecphotos]

I only want eternal life if it can be spent with God / for God.

 

[Aloysium]

Thought implies the existence of a thinker for the duration of the thought. If the thought changes then the thinker has also changed, because they are thinking something different to what they thought before. The thought has changed, so there must be difference. Difference inevitably implies change.

A world without change is trapped in eternal stasis. The world we live in is not trapped in eternal stasis, hence change is ubiquitous. . .

A bird flies in the clear blue of the sky, leaving no tracks.

 

[tonyrey]

Thought implies the existence of a thinker for the duration of the thought. If the thought changes then the thinker has also changed, because they are thinking something different to what they thought before.

If nothing is ever the same from one moment to the next nothing can be defined or understood.

The thought has changed, so there must be difference. Difference inevitably implies change.

The difference is within the mind but the mind itself is not a mere collection of thoughts. The mind considers the thoughts and accepts or rejects them. The process of reasoning implies one person who unifies and organises the data.

A world without change is trapped in eternal stasis. The world we live in is not trapped in eternal stasis, hence change is ubiquitous.

A false dilemma. The laws of nature do not change nor do the values of physical constants.

I suspect that we are not going to agree on this.

It is evident that we shall continue to disagree but you haven’t refuted the following statements:

Awareness of change implies an unchanging concept (“change”) in an unchanging mind. If there were no continuity in the identity of the thinker or the objects of thought there would be no enduring basis for understanding anything.

Thought implies the existence of a thinker who doesn’t disappear from one instant to the next!

Persons are not bodies and minds are not brains.

Your “logic” is based on the false materialistic assumption that souls and minds are essentially the same as physical bodies.

Physical causes by themselves don’t explain moral responsibility. Murder presupposes an intention.

The power of the mind to control the body is evidence of its transcendence.

Karma is a finite process whereas God is eternal.

If nothing is ever the same there is no principle of identity - or laws of thought. Concepts, definitions and descriptions would always fleeting, out of date and misleading.

The body is an inadequate model of reality and materialism is clearly false.

Emptiness implies nihilism and lack of purpose. As Lear said, nothing shall come from nothing. A total void is sterile and incompatible with belief in Karma and spiritual development. “Wisdom” has destroyed itself and the meaning of everything else. Illusions themselves become illusory and everything descends into absurdity. The only result it achieves is to demonstrate that nothing worthwhile is ever achieved and it makes no difference whether we have existed or not : an ideal solution for those who consider life is worthless and meaningless - and that it would have been better if no one had ever been born. The death wish and desire for extinction are fulfilled perfectly in the Buddhist scheme of things: the philosophy of detachment destroys the value of truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love and results in the exaltation of cynicism and the apotheosis of negativity.