Eternal Bliss - I'd Take Eternal Death Any Day

[kobra500 1]

This doesn't set out to be offensive, it doesn't really set out to do much more than convey my opinion, and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on what I have to say, but don't just quote scripture at me, I want people own, individual thoughts on the subject and what I have to say.Now this post won't really delve deep into a religious debate, that's not what I'm after, I just want to draw on a few things about the concept of eternal bliss after death and this apply's to all religious that hold that concept. I'm going to base this on assumptions, and this is opinion not science, the first is as follows. In life without suffering it's impossible to really not take for granted the good things, if you have infinite wealth you don't value your money whereas someone with £5 to their name will likely value that £5 a lot more, especially if they've got to live on that money. The same concept apply's, if you work in a morgue you become immune to the trouble that seeing death and seeing the dead gives to most people, is the same not true of happiness, eternal bliss. If you never suffer the value to you of the experiences you have that would be significantly lower, almost to the point perhaps as just plain boredom, where you will take things for granted and it works both ways, someone who escaped the slums of Africa due to charity will value their good experiences much more than I value mine at the present, they don't take the good things for granted at all because they have the knowledge of their own suffering which leads on to my second point.If you die and go to heaven, you meet all your long forgotten relatives the idea that the you won't suffer, that all your suffering and emotional baggage will just disappear, and of course it can't disappear else it would be a cold shell of your former self that went to heaven since we are the product of our experiences, secondly nothing has changed, your relatives and friends that outlived you are the equivalent of dead to you, you may as well be alive and the others dead, the only thing you've done is swap one set of people for a different set and you would have accepted that one set was dead already leaving you with more people to now accept and I don't think that now because you KNOW you'll see them again when they die it makes it any better because time will have passed and they will have moved on, it's impossible to recapture the same effect after it has passed, I think everybody had tried that and I doubt it has ever been the same the second time round. Then we come back to my first point, if heaven is eternal bliss then that seems to me to be incredibly dull, an eternity of the same anything well get boring and the lack of suffering will in my opinion devalue the experience you do have, sure you still have your baggage but after 1 million years that will be so far behind you it will be ridiculous.Isn't it easier to just die, religion is clearly born out of this fear of dying, surely even the most religious people will accept that the religions that they believe are false have death as a factor to there existence or at least they should. Though I'm talking about the God's they don't believe in. But I don't get the huge fuss around death, sure it doesn't sound fun but it is inevitable and you should accept that, acceptance shows you are healthy, wouldn't it be easier to just not exist, except as part of everyone no matter how briefly you have touched in your life, as part of their experiences however, small passed down generation to generation but never truly dieing out just becoming less and less significant. Why can't you just rest? why don't people want to? before you were born never bothered anyone before! what is wrong with the idea of the end? the end is peaceful, less than sleep, less than blackness, "nothing" a concept no one truly can understand. why not? what is so bad about it? Why do you need eternity? I would choose death any day!

Edited June 3, 2010 by kobra500 (see edit history)

[truefusion 3]

If you die and go to heaven, you meet all your long forgotten relatives the idea that the you won't suffer, that all your suffering and emotional baggage will just disappear, and of course it can't disappear else it would be a cold shell of your former self that went to heaven since we are the product of our experiences, secondly nothing has changed, your relatives and friends that outlived you are the equivalent of dead to you, you may as well be alive and the others dead, the only thing you've done is swap one set of people for a different set and you would have accepted that one set was dead already leaving you with more people to now accept and I don't think that now because you KNOW you'll see them again when they die it makes it any better because time will have passed and they will have moved on, it's impossible to recapture the same effect after it has passed, I think everybody had tried that and I doubt it has ever been the same the second time round. Then we come back to my first point, if heaven is eternal bliss then that seems to me to be incredibly dull, an eternity of the same anything well get boring and the lack of suffering will in my opinion devalue the experience you do have, sure you still have your baggage but after 1 million years that will be so far behind you it will be ridiculous.

Up until this point it was easy to follow you. But if i can understand anything, i would assume that you assume that life in, say, heaven will pretty much consist slightly of the same things that are now with the exception that you will be given just about anything that pleases the self. This only supports the assumption without much if any change. But the proper way to look at it all may involve assuming that in heaven you can only be glad. For reference's sake, you may call this "irresistable happiness." It cannot be contradicted or denied; it cannot be devalued or degraded. It is as if it is a law that everyone follows which they cannot act against. This does away with any dilemma which you might assume would exist.

 

religion is clearly born out of this fear of dying

This assumption is clearly refuted by any religion that claims a heaven and hell (though merely the concept of hell is all that is needed, but where there is a hell there is bound to be a heaven too), for if the reason for the creation of the religion were so as to remove the fear of dying, why would they amplify any fear of dying (which is another assumption; that is, assuming that there is a fear of dying) by introducing hell? Don't ask me why people don't see this, as it is a question more proper for those who assume that religion is born do to fearing death rather than anything it states. What makes things more interesting is when you find scripture that likewise contradicts such an assumption (e.g. Ecclesiastes 7:1).

[kobra500 1]

Up until this point it was easy to follow you. But if i can understand anything, i would assume that you assume that life in, say, heaven will pretty much consist slightly of the same things that are now with the exception that you will be given just about anything that pleases the self. This only supports the assumption without much if any change. But the proper way to look at it all may involve assuming that in heaven you can only be glad. For reference's sake, you may call this "irresistable happiness." It cannot be contradicted or denied; it cannot be devalued or degraded. It is as if it is a law that everyone follows which they cannot act against. This does away with any dilemma which you might assume would exist.

 

 

This assumption is clearly refuted by any religion that claims a heaven and hell (though merely the concept of hell is all that is needed, but where there is a hell there is bound to be a heaven too), for if the reason for the creation of the religion were so as to remove the fear of dying, why would they amplify any fear of dying (which is another assumption; that is, assuming that there is a fear of dying) by introducing hell? Don't ask me why people don't see this, as it is a question more proper for those who assume that religion is born do to fearing death rather than anything it states. What makes things more interesting is when you find scripture that likewise contradicts such an assumption (e.g. Ecclesiastes 7:1).

 

Sorry, I don't think that religion is JUST born out of fear of death, there's more factors than that however, look at the religions, how many of them say that when you die, that's it. That at some point there isn't something or that you are reborn or whatever, every religion that I can think of including the ones you don't believe in and including the first religions has something to say about death. The hell part is simple, you need a threat keep people in line, hell is a deterrent of infinite volume but that's all it is, an empty threat but I think I'm write in saying that heaven came before hell, and I'm talking about in the heads of the fallible humans who are the parents of Christianity and all other religions. I don't think it's been refuted sufficiently enough the trouble with philosophy and theology is that they work on assumptions, even my own rebuttals at least to things that scientifically have no answer can be argued fully against and visa versa meaning although you can argue both sides, neither side can win. I think that the mere fact that all religions are so similar in there tales of a supreme afterlife is pretty sharp evidence for my point but I work as someone who already believes religion is man made and am simply interpreting the author(s) you see it as something more.

 

Your explanation is too easy from my perspective and an irresistible happiness as I said though maybe not degrading certainly deals away with, in my opinion what makes me, me. and I will also add that your argument is simply, you will be happy and this deals away with anything you've said, I don't want to be eternally happy, I don't want to be eternally damned either, I want to be eternally dead.

Edited June 3, 2010 by kobra500 (see edit history)

[anwiii 17]

i think you said a lot in the little amount of space you wrote it. i enjoyed reading it. i don't really have an opinion right now but i do pretty much agree with most of what you said. i do have to argue at one point the heaven and hell issues. i think you made a contradiction in your original post about "death".truefusion- i thought he mentioned no bible quoting haha. i have a gut feeling that he had you in mind when he wrote that

[kobra500 1]

You're a moderator now Anwii? god their just letting everyone in now and yes I did have truefusion in mind when I wrote that, only because I really wanted peoples takes on what I said, more than the bibles with no real input from the individual, saying that it didn't mean that I didn't want any biblical stuff providing it was relevant and I still say that an "irresistible happiness" which sounds more like "forced happiness" to me seems to take away something from me, which makes me, me. It just all sounds, for want of a better word: "eh"

Edited June 3, 2010 by kobra500 (see edit history)

[truefusion 3]

Sorry, I don't think that religion is JUST born out of fear of death, there's more factors than that however, look at the religions, how many of them say that when you die, that's it. That at some point there isn't something or that you are reborn or whatever, every religion that I can think of including the ones you don't believe in and including the first religions has something to say about death. The hell part is simple, you need a threat keep people in line, hell is a deterrent of infinite volume but that's all it is, an empty threat but I think I'm write in saying that heaven came before hell, and I'm talking about in the heads of the fallible humans who are the parents of Christianity and all other religions. I don't think it's been refuted sufficiently enough the trouble with philosophy and theology is that they work on assumptions, even my own rebuttals at least to things that scientifically have no answer can be argued fully against and visa versa meaning although you can argue both sides, neither side can win. I think that the mere fact that all religions are so similar in there tales of a supreme afterlife is pretty sharp evidence for my point but I work as someone who already believes religion is man made and am simply interpreting the author(s) you see it as something more.

While it is possible to consider truth as a mere assumption, if philosophy were merely a sport, where people engage in it for mere fun and interaction, then we might as well forget about truth, for it will merely be dropped anyway after the engagement. However, philosophy is a science on its own. If a person were to start off with an assumption, philosophy is there to help determine whether to continue the assumption or simply drop it. And in due time any assumption can in turn become a truth (i.e. not to say that an assumption was not first a truth before it being stated as an assumption). If hell was made merely to keep people in line, do to the fact that people were just as wild as today, the concept of hell would have been dropped shortly after. No one will continue a failed project unless they can see it through to accomplishment (i.e. not to say that hell is any project). And that is without considering how one mere person could justly go around claiming that just about everyone is doomed for hell and expect hell to be widely accepted. It is indeed very easy to state simple things like hell was created for keeping people in line without thinking in what manner all of this became widely accepted when these things could easily insult anyone.

Your explanation is too easy from my perspective and an irresistible happiness as I said though maybe not degrading certainly deals away with, in my opinion what makes me, me. and I will also add that your argument is simply, you will be happy and this deals away with anything you've said, I don't want to be eternally happy, I don't want to be eternally damned either, I want to be eternally dead.

Is being happy something that isn't you? Is also feeling saddness and anger and other negative feelings the only way that you feel (or believe that you are) complete? Tell me, what is it that makes you you? The flesh that covers you, that will merely decay upon death? So you can accept death, the very thing that prevents you from being yourself, but you cannot accept something that at least has you drown yourself in positive feelings, one of the very things that would make anyone feel alive (so to speak).
What is it that makes you you? The way the world molds you? If so, then you weren't yourself before then? Assume that the only thing that existed was you; what would make you you then? Is this not perhaps the best way to determine what makes you you? In this case, what is the only thing you can come up with at this point? I would presume that the only thing that would make you you is that you exist, nothing more. But since you are not the only thing in existence when we come back to reality, what then? Shouldn't we know that what molds us externally, therefore, is not what makes us us? Shouldn't we know that anything that does any molding after our (initial) existence, therefore, can never dictate what is us? For it is merely changing what we truly are. Some will accept gradual change and proclaim that this change is truly themselves, though they may not call it "change" (some might call it "self awareness," you know, "only you can answer yourself"), but is it truly them? Is it their *original* self?

So, what is it that makes you you?

[sukhi 2]

So, what is it that makes you you?

You have asked the fundamental question : what is you ? . If one says You is your body and mind then we have answered
it from a materialistic point of view which sees matter as different entities. But when looked from the Vedantic point of view
it is a deception created by the self or God or nature to fool us to belive it.

The ultimate realisation comes with the concept of self dissolving which gives a lof happiness.
That is why we have surrender to God terms etc . All of them trying the Self /Ego to belive that
you are not the self but there is something that is more than one self and has to be submitted to. Of course this is
the Dual perspective of Self. In the oneness perspective , Self is no different than You or there is No I and YOU.
Everything is You and that is the ultimate state of Bliss and Truth.