S
Simpleton
Guest
Hmm, so what do they mean when they say we have immortal souls? I always took this to mean that our soul is not finite.
How do believers respond to the following criticism of the afterlife?
- Status
G
GEddie
Guest
Immortal means not dying, ie, with it’s body. It is preserved for the pneumatikon soma; but remains finite, only God being infinite.
ICXC NIKA
S
Simpleton
Guest
Ah got it, thanks!
G
GEddie
Guest
S
Sair
Guest
Exactly. Which is why the “Life has no meaning without God” argument for theistic belief is ineffective - because we have nothing but wish-thinking upon which to base any faith in eternal life, such questions are not an argument for a god or eternity, either…
S
Sair
Guest
Transcends it in time or in space? For all of our actions have an effect upon the world, regardless of how small that effect might seem to our perception. Our actions affect our lives as long as we have life, and may affect others as long as they have life. Is it not arrogance to expect more than this? To imagine that our temporal lives have some eternal, transcendent significance?
S
Sair
Guest
The question is whether you can convince yourself that nothing matters when you’re in the moment. It’s all very well to be philosophical when all your immediate needs are satisfied - when you have food, shelter, warmth and companionship, you may tell yourself that none of it matters. But this really amounts to a lack of gratitude for what you have, and a lack of understanding of what your life would be without those things that make it worth the living. Perhaps your life is meaningless in the context of the universe - but should that make it meaningless to you or to those who share your life? Perhaps meaning requires us to go beyond ourselves, but the desire for eternity is not the same as the desire to go beyond the self - it is, rather, the wish for the self to last forever.
B
Blacksword
Guest
“Convince” yourself? If it just is that way it requires no convincing. And hunger pangs telling you you’d like to eat don’t somehow give eating a real meaning if the life youmare sustaing by so doing has no real value. Also, the concept of “gratitude” is silly in this context. Who are you grateful to, the uncaring universe? And for what, the luck of having a possibly less terrible temporal experience than another, though the same meaninglessness hold over all and await all in the end? Absurd. You are flailing because the obvious truth is there to see: atheism IS nihilism, logic isnt warm and fuzzy, and it brokers no sentimentality. But I do see one thing in your post worth a mention of a fundamental nature: eating, drinking, companionship, these things, of themselves, cannot make life “worthwhile”. Alone, they are nothing. With objective meaning, purpose, and value in the universe, they all become infinitely important. If there is no eternal nature to our existence, nothing matters. If there is an eternal nature to our existence, EVERYTHING matters!
B
Blacksword
Guest
As an added thought I would say this: we are left with the unknowable question then of whether there is true purpose and meaning to existence. From what we do see of the universe, however, everything in it seems to positively scream out “Purpose!”. The order, the mathematics and physics behind there being ANY universe at all, let alone one capable of supporting life, is, so the physicists and cosmologists tell us, incredible beyond imagining. Yet here it is, and here we are. The physical evidence strongly implies purpose, so it is most plausible to conclude purpose, and therefore, a Purposer behind it. Might this be wrong? Sure…but going with what the evidence indicates never seems a bad idea.
Are we in a puddle, just here by happenstance, or are we in a swimming pool, carefully measured and designed? The physics says strongly “swimming pool”.
Are we in a puddle, just here by happenstance, or are we in a swimming pool, carefully measured and designed? The physics says strongly “swimming pool”.
J
Julia_Mae
Guest
This is not correct. Unless I am misunderstanding. There’s plenty of evidence for afterlife, one only needs to look.
F
fred_conty
Guest
I believe it was mentioned, “there would be nothing left of us to mourn their absence”
How could this not be against God and the afterlife? For God tells us that there is an
afterlife. “What does a man profit if he suffers the loss of his soul?” And again Jesus said to the man on the cross hanging beside him, “This day you will be with me in paradise.” That statement states that men will no longer exist after death, which is
not the christian view.
A person could take the statement further and say to me, “suppose your wrong and there is no afterlife, look what you missed.”
Ok, then what have I missed? If I no longer exist, then practically nothing, because I won’t know what I missed anyway.
But suppose your wrong and there is an afterlife, look at the difference of what I will experience and what you will experience…forever.
Whose side are the odds on if you are a gambling man?
How could this not be against God and the afterlife? For God tells us that there is an
afterlife. “What does a man profit if he suffers the loss of his soul?” And again Jesus said to the man on the cross hanging beside him, “This day you will be with me in paradise.” That statement states that men will no longer exist after death, which is
not the christian view.
A person could take the statement further and say to me, “suppose your wrong and there is no afterlife, look what you missed.”
Ok, then what have I missed? If I no longer exist, then practically nothing, because I won’t know what I missed anyway.
But suppose your wrong and there is an afterlife, look at the difference of what I will experience and what you will experience…forever.
Whose side are the odds on if you are a gambling man?
A
ASimon
Guest
Neither, on that basis. That, on an otherwise equal playing field, the consequences of being wrong one way are far worse than being wrong the other way, isn’t an evidence-based argument for the truth of either proposition.
There is no compelling evidence that human consciousness survives in any form beyond death, and no evidence that if they did, that this afterlife would conform to the Christian understanding of it.
S
Spirithound
Guest
The analogy has a small flaw, and it is in the scale of each option. Notice how the claim you’re responding to is that “Without God, life is fundamentally meaningless.” If something is “fundamentally” meaningless, then participating in that experience will eventually lose its meaning, like reading a book or watching a movie. As a Catholic, I affirm that while reading and watching movies are fundamentally meaningless, they have meaning, although it is a more transitory meaning. I also affirm that that fundamental meaning of my life is to know and love God in this life and be happy with Him forever in the next. I’m not precisely sure what “the claim” is responding to, so I can’t speak to that right now.
F
fred_conty
Guest
Ah yes, but you can’t prove that there isn’t life after death and reward/retribution.
So suppose we say that both (which I don’t happen to accept) are equal for the sake of
argument, that niether can be proven, then I would rather take my chances that there is life after death since I won’t care what I experienced in this life if that is true, as long as
I expierence happiness after life in this world. And it would make far greater sense to me
to go that direction than to take a chance that I be wrong and pay the conquences. For if
there is not life after death, I won’t care anyway since I won’t exist and won’t know what I
missed and in fact at that point it won’t make any difference to anyone.
B
Bohm_Bawerk
Guest
Pascal’s wager?
S
Sair
Guest
What evidence is this?
S
Sair
Guest
That’s the whole point - meaninglessness is only ‘the way it is’ if you refuse to engage with the experience of being alive.
Does your life have no value to you? Do you only enjoy it because you are convinced it will last forever?
Gratitude does not require a personal object, just as sorrow and regret do not require feelings of personal guilt. Approaching life with a sense of gratitude - to the impersonal universe, if you must have an object - entails an appreciation of just how improbable it is that you, as an individual person, exist at all. Perhaps this is a glass-half-full philosophy, but it works for me. Why should I allow my days to be consumed with regret for all the things I’m not, rather than wonder at all the things I am?
Only absurd if you ignore the experience of the moment. If you believe this life to be important in and of itself, because it’s the only one we get, the motivation to make life better for all with whom you interact is far more compelling than the feeling that you can just leave it to eternity to decide the fate of your fellows.
Atheism is nihilism for those who wish there to be more to life that what we find. To those who are not satisfied with what evidently is, all will seem inadequate. Lack of belief in an immortal soul and eternal life does not entail a devaluing of the life we have while we have it. Think about it - rarity, when it comes to desirable commodities, leads to a higher value being ascribed to those commodities. Your life, as an individual, is unique - why would not this lead to the highest of all values being ascribed thereto? If this life is all we get, surely that should lead us to make the most of it, not to write it off as unimportant.
What else do you wish them to be, other than life-sustaining activities? Why should any experience lose its value if it is finite?
Yet if life is not infinite, it must still be temporally important to those who experience it - you cannot get away from that. We still exist for a time, and that time can never be denied its existence. All meaning is contextual - in the context of our temporal existence, all life experience is important. It can diminish in importance if one prefers to take an eternal view, much as the savour of a delicious meal, the delight of a moving musical phrase, the sweetness of a lover’s caress, can all diminish if we become accustomed to them.
If we have not eternal existence, then our experience does not matter, ultimately, to the eternal universe (and by ‘universe’ I mean, ‘all that exists’). That does not mean it has no importance for us, while we exist. That is the fundamental difference between clinging to the hope of an eternal self and reaching a full appreciation of what we have while we have it. Carpe diem!If there is no eternal nature to our existence, nothing matters. If there is an eternal nature to our existence, EVERYTHING matters!
S
Sair
Guest
One might even ask, what is the point of exerting onesself in this life, of achieving anything in this life, if we have an eternity to ponder what we might do and then perhaps bring it about? Where is the motivation to live well here and now if we have infinite opportunity?
B
Bohm_Bawerk
Guest
Hello Sair,
As you may know, I’m a former Catholic, but I do have the answer to your question. Scripture records St. Paul writing in several of his letters that followers of Jesus should work and not remain in a state of idleness: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Even at the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis, God cursed Adam (father of humanity) that he would work, and work with struggle: “To Adam he said, . . .] "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17).
Catholics, indeed all Christians, believe that God gives every person a purpose. Nowhere is this more evident than when God says to Jeremiah he made him a prophet to the nations before the beginning of time: “"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). Had Jeremiah remained idle or gone to a different occupation (with full knowledge), he would have been committing a sin, as idleness was not what he was called to do. As a matter of fact, idleness is considered a capital sin. Scripture regards God as raising up Pharoah for a specific purpose - “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (Exodus 9:16).
The way I to think of it is that humans have to cultivate the field (Earth) before enjoying the reward (Heaven), and it’s not mutually exclusive to be the best that you can be whilst giving glory to God. Unfortunately however, you have some Catholics who try and push everyone into the priesthood/religious life, even though not everyone is “called” to do that. Some people want to be engineers, others want to be writers, others as musicians/actors, and so on and so forth. Personally, I consider it wrong to look down on those who enter into a non-religious field. I have respect for priests, but not everyone wants to be a priest.
That’s the way I understood it though.
S
Sair
Guest
That’s kind of the way I understood it too (also a former Catholic), but I now believe this to be a counterproductive view. Some joy, to consider everything we have as the grudging bestowal of a disappointed deity.
If there isn’t any ultimate ‘reward’, then, towards what are we working, other than such rewards as this life offers? If one is brought up to believe in eternal life (as I was), then the realisation that - in all likelihood - this life is all we have can be devastating. One then has a choice - accept or rebel. There is a tremendous peace to be found in acceptance. We have a choice - accept what is, or rail against what is and pretend there is more to life than what we have here and now - I know what I prefer, and what has brought the greater satisfaction with my life.
- Status