An afterlife or no? You choose (for athiests and agnostics)

Faced with the possibility of there being no afterlife of any description (the atheists are right) and an afterlife (the atheists somehow got it wrong) where you had no idea whether it was going to be 'good' or 'bad' (insert own defintions of good and bad here) what would you prefer to be the case and why?This message has been edited by iano, 09-Feb-2006 11:17 PM

Hi, iano.I guess if there was even a slight risk of an eternity of extreme badness, I would prefer oblivion. (I am an atheist, in case you didn't remember, heh.)

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

Give me nothingness. I'll have plenty when this ride is over.

"Do you want to go home empty handed or take what's in the mystery box... bear in mind the mystery could be bad as well as good"?I'll choose oblivion... no existance = no pleasure or pain or perception of oblivion.ooops meant to reply to iano...This message has been edited by Creavolution, 02-09-2006 07:28 PM

Sign me up for oblivion as well.I think an eternal existence would get boring after a few thousand years, regardless of how good that existence was. It certainly doesn't help if it's a terrible existence.This message has been edited by Madfish, 02-09-2006 07:58 PM

I note you didn't say anything about eternity, iano. Another life wouldn't have to mean a forever life, now would it? All the old stories say when some clever fellow starts making offers, the devil is in the details.Oblivion sounds restful...but given the choice, I'd take my chances.

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Whatever happens will happen. At the very least, hopefully, my questions will be answered.

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"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine

I agree with Madfish on this one and a simple bit of the "math of eternity" can drive this home.Eternal life 101 : You will live forever and never stop living.Starts with year 1.Then we measure in decades.Now we go to centuries, millenia, epochs eras and eons.With eons we shall start with a small value set at 100,000,000 yearsLet us expand the scale of time now to crunch the numbers so to speak
100,000,000 million years times 100,000,000 years now passes to reveal an existance spanning 10,000,000,000,000,000 years.Here we are taking the next step in the journey of eternity.
Ten million billion years have elapsed setting the next stage to our excursion. 10,000,000,000,000,000 times itself results in a new level
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 yearsNow we further outr odyssey to another realm {have you said wow to yourself yet?}10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.And again100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.One more time shall we ? Please?10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
yearsThis is the result of running in simple squaring of intial values a mere ten times.Let us continue the pilramage with someting equivalent but easier on the eyes, Exponetial notation.
Our step ten number is expressed as 10^255. The high value placed on the number of particles in the known universe is a mere 10^87 to give you an idea off the size.To ease things up and to take account of the vagueness of my original values such as epoch we shall reduce this to 10^100.
This number value actually has a name. It is called a googol.{ quick trivia tidbit. The search engine google is named after this but is slightly different because of an error in spelling.}To quickly drive home the point here let us continue our steps up to and including 20 by taking 10^100 and squaring it.10^10000 years step 11 squared{sq}10^100000000 years step 12 sq10^10000000000000000 years step 13 sq10^100000000000000000000000000000000 years step 14 sq10^10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
years step 15 sqI am going to stop there, at fifteen and not twenty.This exceedingly large number is less than a number known as a googleplex{ I am not making this up} which is represented as this exponential number here10{10^100} yearsLet us finish this with one final example of truly large number.Factorials are a way of generating immense values that simple squaring of a number cannot match.This is a sample of factorials of the numbers 0 through 201, 1, 2, 6, 24, 120, 720, 5040, 40320, 362880, 3628800, 39916800, 479001600, 6227020800, 87178291200, 1307674368000, 20922789888000, 355687428096000, 6402373705728000, 121645100408832000, 2432902008176640000, ... We write thus 0!,1!,2!,3! etcYou can see how fast they expand. Now take the googleplex and take the factorial of that in and this will be the final step in my demo here10(10^100}!If you can begin to appreciate this then here is the final note in tonights song.There is no scale large enough at all to even begin a journey which has no end.Do you still think you would like to have endless existence my friend?

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But I realize now that these people were not in science; they didn’t understand it. They didn’t understand technology; they didn’t understand their time. R.P. Feynman

I doubt that eternal torment - think of traditional Hell - could ever be called 'boring' in any meaningful sense of the word. I've tried to imagine the Devil coming over to me and saying, "Hello again. It's time for your 10^42nd excruciatingly painful roast", and me, yawning, "Really? Oh well, if you must..."As storylines go, somehow this one doesn't work for me. For the same reason, eternal bliss can never be boring either, by definition. Nerve-racking maybe, but not boring.Now, 'oblivion' sounds quite peaceful actually. I'm in.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I cannot conceive of an eternal life in which I can both enjoy myself for eternity and continue to be myself. I therefor choose oblivion.

I have a sister who hates the idea of oblivion. She's so reluctant to let go of consciousness that she would rather spend an eternity in hell. Obviously I find her view quite hard to fathom, what with me being an oblivion kind of guy.Perhaps though, in a conscious universe like ours, oblivion is an impossibility.

quote:

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I cannot conceive of an eternal life in which I can both enjoy myself for eternity and continue to be myself.

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Good point. If the afterlife took place on an Earthly paradise, would the brain be able to cope with one billion years worth of memories? It takes considerably less time for language itself to evolve. After ten thousand years, there's no way you'd still be yourself. Then again, what is self?

Although no one could know what an afterlife might look or feel like until they get there, there is at least one model of it which excludes linear time as an intrinsic property of it. Whilst I don't think anyone living in linear time can get their head around the idea of eternity, the model gives little clue as to what its like. For a person living in eternity looking at time, our linear yesterday, today and tomorrow are all present tense for them.I think it is reasonable to prefer oblivion to linear time life never ending. But is it preferable to a life of no time? It could be exciting with no time to dull things unto boredom I don't think it's a matter of choice to be honest. The OP just respects the views of athiests

A very sensible choice I think

Yea but 111,111x111,111=12345678987654321Maybe eternity cannot be measured since it takes place where there is no time or distance. That means you could never get bored.I personally have changed my thoughts about infinity, it doesn't exist in our demension, or our universe. The universe is measurable.If the glue that holds together the universe (gravity) stops holding, then matter and anti-matter will cancel each other out, leaving nothing. Thus bringing the universe to a measurable end.I find that people who do not believe in the after-life, always wish somehow to live on by the works they do, and leaving a name. This message has been edited by riVeRraT, 02-10-2006 06:52 AM

One does what one can and this is about all that is available. Although why someone who believes they are not going to exist would care about how they are viewed when they don't exist is a question worth asking.