RE: Afterlife Illogical?
July 18, 2013 at 10:44 pm
(This post was last modified: July 18, 2013 at 10:45 pm by MindForgedManacle.)
Some of the real problems with the afterlife concept are:
1) Identity issue: Given that an orthodox Christian belief about Heaven is that you are not able to sin there because sin cannot be in the presence of God (or something along those lines). And given that, you are by necessity restricted on what you can do and how you can be. This - along with the problem of if/how the soul is actually you - shows that it can't really be said to be you who is in Heaven. No amount of "power" circumvents this issue.
2) Given the objective is for them to go to Heaven, creating them in Heaven to begin with resolves all problems and since many Christians think that you still retain your free will in Heaven, God doing as he supposedly did is contrary to the better option. The only real attempt at a response to this that I'm aware of is the soul-building theodicy, and I find it both silly and ignores God's omnipotence.
Also, the sort of Libertarian free will dominant among theists and theistic philosophers - and necessary for moral blame to not be on God - isn't even a coherent position in philosophy currently.
1) Identity issue: Given that an orthodox Christian belief about Heaven is that you are not able to sin there because sin cannot be in the presence of God (or something along those lines). And given that, you are by necessity restricted on what you can do and how you can be. This - along with the problem of if/how the soul is actually you - shows that it can't really be said to be you who is in Heaven. No amount of "power" circumvents this issue.
2) Given the objective is for them to go to Heaven, creating them in Heaven to begin with resolves all problems and since many Christians think that you still retain your free will in Heaven, God doing as he supposedly did is contrary to the better option. The only real attempt at a response to this that I'm aware of is the soul-building theodicy, and I find it both silly and ignores God's omnipotence.
Also, the sort of Libertarian free will dominant among theists and theistic philosophers - and necessary for moral blame to not be on God - isn't even a coherent position in philosophy currently.
