Illustrated nicely. Click through. There are a few more possibilities than you may think.
ADDED: Imagine that at the age of 10 it is revealed to you that you will spend eternity living — over and over — this life you are about to live for the first time. This life will be exactly the same, every time. No readjustments will be possible. No "Groundhog Day"-style do-overs. Just all the same moments, in order, over and over again. Billions of times. After the first life, you become a silent, passive passenger in the mind of the first-time you. How would you live? What would you do?
December 17, 2015
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I loved that a Chrono Trigger reference was used, but I'm not sure how many people will understand it.
I follow Blaise Pascal's reasoning. There's no eternal downside if you believe but it turns out God doesn't exist. Whereas if you don't believe but God does exist, you've made a BIG mistake.
I think what you're talking about is Nietzsche's Eternal Return. If matter is finite and time is infinite, then over a period of eternity every possible combination and permutation of atoms will endlessly recur. Not as good as heaven, but better than nothing........it's also possible that there are other possibilities that we do not have sufficient knowledge to even imagine. Galileo could see the heavens with more clarity than his predecessors, but he could not even imagine the possibility of dark matter and black holes.......My best guess is oblivion, but I recognize that this belief is just an artifact of the time and place in which I live. Hermeneutics. There are bigger windows on higher floors than the ones where I live.
I'd like to believe in the Reincarnation possibility, but I'd like to believe lots of things and they aren't true either.
@PB The downside is that God might not like the way you believe in him, either because it's not true belief or because he's not impressed by your self-interested, low-risk gaming of the system.
And then there's the dangerous possibility of the God who doesn't want to be believed in. What if I believe in that God? The idea is: this God made a world in which his existence is totally hidden. Those who think they detect signs of God are disrespecting His Perfect Creation. The perfection — in His opinion — lies in the absence — in His opinion — of signs of His existence. So the believers displease him.
This is similar to one of the scenarios in Einstein's Dreams, although in Lightman's version people are unaware that they've lived their lives an infinite number of times before and will live it again an infinite number of times afterward. I think perhaps one of the problems with your scenario is why wouldn't the person's life have played out an infinite number of times previously to when they suddenly find out at 10 years old? In that case the apparent "choice" how to live one's life from that point forward would be an illuson.
This is similar to one of the scenarios in Einstein's Dreams, although in Lightman's version people are unaware that they've lived their lives an infinite number of times before and will live it again an infinite number of times afterward. I think perhaps one of the problems with your scenario is why wouldn't the person's life have played out an infinite number of times previously to when they suddenly find out at 10 years old? In that case the apparent "choice" how to live one's life from that point forward would be an illuson.
"Whereas if you don't believe but God does exist, you've made a BIG mistake." Pascal was a smart guy, but the wager always seemed silly. Why should God prefer an insincere wager-style faith over sincere, freely chosen unbelief? The force of the wager depends on a particular, odd conception of "God."
It was kind of anticlimactic after the first slide.
Hang on let me go get my bong. I'll be right back.
I have a couple of nice kids. That's where I'm putting my money!!
A lot of people have theorized that religions, with their afterlives, were invented to help deal with the knowledge that you're gonna die.
The McKenna quote ("stranger than we can suppose") is a minor variation on JBS Haldane's original, from at least 20 years before McKenna was born.
"All the possibilities for life after death."
I didn't see Valhalla mentioned anywhere.
Tlalocan and Mictlan might be equivalent to heaven and hell, but your destination depends on how you died, not how you lived. Or you might become a hummingbird and help nature.
My pet cat died some months ago. What happened to her?
In my hypothetical, one child happens to discover the truth. Let's say he just becomes convinced it's true and he's right. He's the first timer. After death, his consciousness will just be that life, experienced as a passive brain rider. My question is what does thefirst timer do with his life when he belives that he will have to see and feel the same thing over and over forever. Actually, it doesn't matter whether the child is correct in his belief. I am interested in how he chooses to live and how it's different from what he'd do otherwise.
If the child believes it's all happened before and this is a predetermined repeat, how would that affect how he lives? Assume he's wrong, but he believes it.
Life's a bitch and then you die – unless reincarnation is true, in which case: Life's a bitch, then life's a bitch, then life's a bitch… (ad infinitum).
I expect to be reincarnated as a torque converter on a 51' Nash.
Re. Pascal: "When you die, if you get a choice between regular heaven or pie heaven, chose pie heaven. It may be a trick, but if it's not, mmmmm boy." -- Handy
"We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me."
More here.
readering said...
My pet cat died some months ago. What happened to her?
Doggie heaven.
Eternity isn't an endless sequence of time. It is all time, all at once. If time was a limitless ocean, eternity would be the space the ocean existed within.
Life is too long to live it over just to improve your lines to get the girl.
In TV Tropes, there is a trope named "Clap Your Hands If You Believe." Essentially, if someone truly believes something that makes it true. This is a typical escape hatch for authors who want to present characters in the afterlife without committing to a specific religion/philosophy. If Joe is a fervent Christian, then he goes to Heaven or Hell based on Christian principles. If he believe in Purgatory, then he goes there, else Purgatory does not exist for him. If Jane thinks she goes to Heaven regardless of what she does, then she does, though this rarely makes for good storytelling. Meanwhile the Jack the atheist goes poof. Again, not exactly literary gold there.
One of the interesting examples provided is Dr. Thirteen. Dr. Thirteen is always disproving the existence of ghosts and the supernatural in his comic books, except he happens to live in the DC universe (Superman, etc.) where ghosts and the supernatural explicitly exist. Essentially, he was a brilliant skeptic where skepticism was not warranted and, furthermore, is provably stupid. They eventually dealt with that logic snarl by having the good doctor be so certain of the non-existence of magic, etc. that he literally lived in his own universe where there was none, despite interacting with the greater universe where magic is a fact of life.
The nice twist to this trope is to have it true but only in a limited sense. The bad person, however that is defined, goes to the Heaven he believes he deserves and finds himself miserable.
OK I have no memory of a previous existence and no desire to spend any time discovering one. So this is it. I see God in Love and am taking the Heaven plan although I'm not sure humans (e.g. The Bible) have described it right -- its got to be more complex than we can understand -- so while I can conceptualize oblivion as a scientist, I'm living for eternity in some form or fashion beyond just adding my atoms back into the mix.
Ann, to tackle your hypothetical, I would assume that the child would try to live a life that he (or she) thinks will be most rewarding by the child's standards. Might try to maximize pleasure, might try to make the world a better place for everyone else even if his or her life suffers, might try to take over the world, something like that. Long-term planning goes out the door, save for making that goal happen. The problem is children tend not to have the wisdom to make their ideals reality or even consider if their ideals are possible or even desirable. Lots of people who try to maximize pleasure end up miserable addicts suffering from disease, assuming they live that long.
I would also tend to think that something out of Albert Camus's catalog could apply.
Or something out of a Hollywood script might be the ticket as those tend to be interesting at least. When there are no supernatural consequences, eccentricity for fun makes logical sense.
But, yes, if you know or think you know the true meaning of the universe and it is different than what you expected, it would change behavior massively. A Christian who discovers there is no afterlife drops the concept of sin and lives as he or she feels like, or perhaps decides that if Christianity does not exist in a supernatural sense that he or she should invent it in the natural to recreate the world in his or her image. An atheist who learns those Christians were right quickly converts or, in more stubborn cases, decides to defy it anyway. We are talking a singularity moment here. The options are myriad.
It's turtles all the way down...
Even as a child (and before I became an atheist) I reflected upon Pascal's deception and concluded, "that'll just piss God off".
I agree with Sebastian. Belief is not simply making a proclamation; it runs deeper, and although "drawn" to God as all people are, you are free to reject Him regardless of your words. It is a heart thing.
AA: "And then there's the dangerous possibility of the God who doesn't want to be believed in."
There may be, but not the Judeo-Christian God who understand covenant better than a lawyer and makes his intentions abundantly clear through both covenants.
I'm going to start believing in God again so there's absolutely no chance of going to Hell where I'll forever vomit lava and be raped in the ass with giant thorns.
I take Pascal's Wager in a way that he didn't intend it (at least from my understanding of his writings.)
If I'm not mistaken, he didn't present it as a proof of God argument, but to me it works that way. What I mean is that, in addition to the ability to perceive the hand of God in nature, I find that making the choice to live as though I believe actually causes me to believe. That, in my experience, is proof that either God exists or that we have some evolutionary need to live as though He exists. To the extent that the latter might be the case, who cares? I prefer living in the world that I believe was created by a God who is everything that is good. The things I have to give up in order to live this way are well worth it. And if the critique of my choice is that I'm not sincerely seeking truth (because I accept that my belief could be incorrect) I dispute that. I feel at I am seeking truth, by testing the hypothesis that I was created by a God who loves me and wants me to interact with the rest of His creation in a particular way. I am aware, though, that this is not a falsifiable hypothesis and all I can hope to do is continue testing the hypothesis through my daily thoughts, actions, and experiences.
None of this has anything to do with fear or hope for eternal reward. It is the peace that comes from making a choice to believe that is the reward, and this is part of the "evidence" as I observe it. Since this choice gives me peace, I believe the choice points toward what is true.
Eternity seems to be in another Heaven than this muddy old Earth and its weird Universe. A personal Creator/Builder would likely have made some nice plans for both to keep up His reputation, sort of like Trump builds and then manages his Golf Courses.
John Calvin said God's Providence means there is an active administration of this world by God. He is interested. And if God can handle this one, then he can handle Eternity too.
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE INFERNAL CITY:
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO ETERNAL SADNESS:
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE LOST PEOPLE.
JUSTICE MOVED MY SUPREME MAKER:
I WAS SHAPED BY DIVINE POWER,
BY HIGHEST WISDOM, AND BY PRIMAL LOVE.
BEFORE ME, NOTHING WAS CREATED,
THAT IS NOT ETERNAL: AND ETERNAL I ENDURE.
FORSAKE ALL HOPE, ALL YOU THAT ENTER HERE.
The conception of Heaven at the link is infantile.
As for the hypothetical ten year old with special insight: Live a perfectly honorable life.
As a first timer I'd try to make the most of it, knowing every bad thing I'd done would have to be relived exactly the same way. Pack in as much pleasure, joy, experience, kindness, adventure, learning that I humanly could.
Living a predermined repeated life especially if the original life was squandered, well it would hardly be worth living. If the first life was great, reliving it might be wonderful and one could sit back and enjoy the ride. Reliving a squandered life, well that sounds like hell. I could see suicide, but that would not happen as it wasn't part of the original life. My brain hurts now.
"The conception of Heaven at the link is infantile."
Isn't that redundant?
Dante had free will and moral agency existing only in this world, during life. The souls in the Inferno cannot be other than they are. They cannot express regret for the actions that put them in Hell. In purgatory the souls weep with joy as they are purified. Every soul in Hell and in purgatory is in constant motion. The journey though Hell and purgatory is exhausting. When Dante leaves Virgil behind in purgatory he is drawn through the heavens with no effort, to the eternal, unmoving mover in a single instant.
There is also the possibility of being reused and recycled by Planned Parenthood et al. following an abortion without consent.
As for oblivion, that is an article of faith. Our post-mortem state cannot be assessed or predicted within a scientific frame of reference. Everyone has their individual belief or faith about their future disposition.
Kurt Vonnegat wrote a book like that (but not the whole life)
Funny that the real Christian answer isn’t considered in these imaginings of "all" possible post-life experiences. What Jesus and his disciples talked about was the promise of resurrection into a new and perfected world, with all the evil and sin and pain washed away. Read Revelation 21 (“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth . . . See the home of God is among mortals. . . . [H]e will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more . . . . See, I am making all things new.”). Christ’s resurrection was not a one-off; it was the first, and the proof and promise to us, who will die before the new Heaven and the new Earth come, that we will be raised to be a part of that tearless, deathless reality. Read I Corinthians 15 (“So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown perishable, what is raised is imperishable. . . . Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. . . . When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting.’”).
AA: "And then there's the dangerous possibility of the God who doesn't want to be believed in."
Not much of a God that can't cover his tracks. If one believes in God as it is commonly understood the he is the creator and master of the universe and everything that can exist can only exist within the laws of nature that he created and are known to him. So no, if God doesn't want us to be believed in he would set the rules that we wouldn't be capable of believing in him.
Way above my paygrade but presumably the human brain somehow operates on quantum physics principles which state information can't be destroyed and since we are ultimately information to the extent information is somehow stored in the fabric of the universe we would exist in some sort of state beyond our physical death. Whether or not that information can ever be accessed and played back so to speak is another matter. I suppose that is somehow better than nothing.
Wallace Stevens had a rather different idea of life after death than Dante.
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
"Actually, it doesn't matter whether the child is correct in his belief. I am interested in how he chooses to live and how it's different from what he'd do otherwise."
If your hypothetical is that the child's life repeats itself in the exact same way for all eternity, then the child has already had this realization, and has already made his "choice" about how to live his life in response to it, an infinite number of times in the past.
I've had only one patient who described a possible near/ after death experience. It gave us all chills but I doubt that there is anything after death.
The project of humans understanding the meaning of life has been compared to a convention of dogs trying to understand the essential nature of dogs.
I prefer to believe that there is a grand plan. Like Pascal, I may be wrong, but it comforts me to think that being generous and kind and trying to do the right thing is the way to go. I freely admit that I may be wrong, but my approach gives me comfort.
I like to believe we are all God and incarnating is way of experiencing temporal existence. When we are born we essentially go to sleep and dream, and when we physically die we wake up back to our God-self. Whereas dreaming while sleeping on the temporal plane is a singular experience, our temporal existence is a collective dream.
"My question is what does the first timer do with his life?"
According to my teenage daughter: whatever.
...I'm not sure I disagree.
What if this life isn't the first time? What if this life is Hell?
For the Classical pagans, the afterlife wasn't as good as this one. Bummer if this life was crappy, it would only be worse in Hades. Ezra Pound, Canto I:
Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour.
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and of the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
“Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
“Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?”
And he in heavy speech:
“Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe’s ingle.
“Going down the long ladder unguarded,
“I fell against the buttress,
“Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
“But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
“Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
“A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
“And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.”
"I am interested in how he chooses to live and how it's different from what he'd do otherwise."
Isn't that Christianity? What has been its effect on human society worldwide? Good or bad? Be specific; show your work.
...We are all Beasts in Nature. Who do you think John the Revelator was talking about? Someday, probably sooner than we think, we will find out what happens when we return there, now that we've gotten so "enlightened" and figured out the "real" truth.
It doesn't matter if it's right or real or whatever or not. It's about believing. It's all about believing in something that changes the way you choose to live. Faith is the victory and all that. Otherwise... well... why not? Why not be a Beast?
zzzzzzz.... honk honk.... zzzzzzz....
Amusing but as another said, infantile. Also occasionally illiterate. Purgatory isn't a boring room. It's a purification on the way to heaven. Some traditional descriptions of it are not entirely pleasant.
Reincarnation at least in the more highly developed Eastern religions isn't an interminable rebirth, or isn't only an interminable rebirth--the goal is release, eventually, into nirvana. Which is nothing like Christian heaven, but it ain't a permanent rerun reel either.
Sorry, but anytime nirvana comes up in casual conversation, i start singing Zappa:
"Acetylene Nirvana
Talkin' 'bout yer hemorrhoids baby!"
Which I used to think was, "A sailor needs NIRVANA! Open up yer airport baby!"
Which version is better? Me or Zappa?
You're wrong!
I like "Groundhog Day" (the movie) but the most interesting thing to me was that whats-his-name (the writer, started with an R i think) picked Groundhog Day! to live over and over. I mean, what day is Groundhog Day? i'm not sure i could pick it out of a lineup. Is it a Yankee thing connected to the "changing of the seasons" or something? Y'all have "seasons" right? Well, global warming will handle that. Trust me, you won't miss it.
i think Groundhog Day being such a nothing day is probably the point of the movie, huh? Genius! I guess it's a theater arts/RTF major wink-wink thing. All hail!
Wait... did i already post this up above somewhere?
Is this thing working? Shit, I'm gonna have to retype this whole comment again, aren't I?
When I was younger, I moved out to the far West from the Midwest. For the first time in my life I met Buddists. Not hippie Buddists, real, raised-in-the-faith (if faith is right word) Buddists. One of them was an engineer, a "huge aircrash" guy. He built missiles. I asked him if he ever had a problem building missiles that might be used to kill hundreds or thousands of civilians.
*shoulder shrug*. "No."
Those finding this interesting might find this interesting http://www.afterlife-knowledge.com/answers.html
hoyden said...
I like to believe we are all God and incarnating is way of experiencing temporal existence. When we are born we essentially go to sleep and dream, and when we physically die we wake up back to our God-self. Whereas dreaming while sleeping on the temporal plane is a singular experience, our temporal existence is a collective dream.
12/17/15, 8:04 PM "
Contemplated you comment and I respectfully disagree. Consider the number of assholes and worse one has to deal with and the concept of them also being God is a bridge too far.
Christopher: Purgatory has different interpretations defending on the faith. The Catholic purgatory is as you describe. The Islamic purgatory is more or less a whole lot of nothing until the souls within are upgraded to Paradise (assuming I am reading Wikipedia correctly). I suppose the the Greek paganism equivalent would be the Asphodel Meadows which, at least according to some versions, is a boring place for ordinary people. The Greek purgatory is dreary; once assigned no one leaves, nothing happens, and there is the option (or requirement) to drink from the River Lethe at which point the soul loses all memories permanently. There are worse fates though. Greek heaven was closer to Valhalla.
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