If you asked everyone if they would prefer not to cease to exist if they could be guaranteed to be blissfully happy and fullfilled for eternity, what do you think most people would say?
“I have no proof that God exists, and even if he does, he’s a cruel monster, and therefore, I must choose not to believe in him”…?
You’re right, it is a deep question. One issue is what would you do. After a thousand years has passed, you’ve still got eternity to go. After a trillion years there’s still eternity to go. A hundred trillion years doesn’t make even a little dent in eternity. And there’s no escape.
If you’re looking for objective proof for any of it, you won’t find it.
No matter how much a person changes, they are still themselves. That whole notion of “I’m not the person I used to be” is nonsense. You are still you, “you” in this case being the collective experiences of your lifetime. People change, but they generally do not stop being themselves.
It gets boring here because we are an overstimulated culture always seeking the next form in entertainment. You can’t compare our experience on Earth with the experience in Heaven. In Heaven, we will stand before the unfiltered presence of God. This is, literally, the reason we exist; it is the yearning of our hearts, minds, and souls, whether we realize it or not. Imagine the state of having every need and desire fulfilled not just on a superficial level, but to the very core of who you are as a person; perfect peace. No strife, no doubt, just pure unadulterated joy and fulfillment. In Heaven, if we are singing and dancing before God, it won’t be because it’s something to do, one activity of many; it will be because we are filled with a Love that must be expressed.
Except we haven’t thought about it a little, we’ve thought about it a lot. An individual may only have thought about it a little bit, but Catholic philosophers have been contemplating the nature of Eternity since the Apostolic age.
I suggest you look at centuries of controversy among philosophers on the nature of personal identity.
OK, imagine experiencing this fulfilment for a day or two. Then keep going for, say, another hundred days. What have you learned that you didn’t know a hundred days earlier? Nothing. Or is it just a hedonistic experience, a permanent high? Either way, imagine doing the same for a trillion days. What’s the point? What’s the point of existing forever when you’re just repeating ad infinitum the same experience you already had on the first day?
The promise (John 5) is that we will have eternal life, there’s no subclause that we have to do it without free-will.
Up to 400 years ago they thought heaven is a place beyond the stars and hell is underground. Now they say that was silly, heaven and hell are not places and are a bit of a mystery. Are there condos in heaven? Trees? Mountains? Dogs?
I suppose, then, that God himself must be incomprehensibly bored since he has existed eternally as “a frozen mind,” though apparently not in a “frozen body.” I would presume his bodily resurrection fills that part in. Are we to conclude that God must then be the most to be pitied of all since his “stay” in this less than rosy eternal state of merciless boredom had no beginning and no end?
Hi.
Very postmodern. But is it just endless entertainment? I take it we can’t become perfect in heaven, because what was imperfect can never be as perfect as God. So we will still change. We’re told we’ll have a body, after all, so unless we’re frozen we can move and think. But do you want to just be endless amused? After a trillion trillion trillion years have passed, the universe long since dead, will it still be amusing? What’s the point? Or do you instead want to accomplish, to grow? But after a trillion trillion trillion years have passed, what’s left to accomplish?
You probably didn’t intend that to sound kind of consumerist, like an endless mall of satisfaction. Is the purpose of life to be satisfied? Where’s it say that then?
And I thought I was being Aristotelian
Interesting how all of your complaints in your initial post were about how “boring” eternity will be and yet you accuse me of being the “consumerist.” Aren’t you the one who went on and on about how excruciating the experience of eternity would be? That sounds much more like a “consumerist” complaining with buyer’s regret than the point I was making.
Think: the light in Plato’s cave that blinded some while drawing others to it)Hate to break it to you but he wasn’t a Catholic. And he thought there were five elements. And that flies form spontaneously. Not exactly an authority on the afterlife.And I thought I was being Aristotelian
Hang on. People tell me (well, you tell me) that Catholic philosophers have worked out everything about the afterlife. Now you say it’s your argument.
All very fine in poetry corner but you didn’t get round to saying what’s the point of a trillion trillion trillion years of it. There isn’t any. Eternal life only works as wishful thinking. As soon as you think about it, it’s crystal clear that God is right to give us limited time, limited time is His gift to us.No, actually, I take satisfaction to be related to the wholeness of the being of the individual in question, in the sense of what it means to be fully human. Given that we have a kind of “open architecture” or open nature into which God himself can slip and become fully human while remaining fully divine, that seems to entail that what it would take to fully satisfy or complete our nature is intimate union with God himself, I.e., the beatific union. So let’s not reduce the idea to crass commercialism.
It is more a matter of our telos or the realization of our ultimate reason for being, I.e., God’s intended purpose for each of us, that which we can scarce imagine and very likely don’t even clearly desire in this life. Some might even recoil from it (
