(April 10, 2015 at 5:13 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: 1. How do you know that the method to get an afterlife is what you have outlined here on this forum?
2. How do you know there aren't other criteria to get an afterlife other than your method?
"My" method is necessary but not sufficient, because as I pointed out earlier, for most people eternal life in their present spiritual state would naturally be miserable. They would ask to die. Their afterlife will naturally fail to be eternal. They might even hate others and try to harm them in paradise!
Thus, it is essential, for example, to learn at least not to hate others and not to commit violent crimes.
Even for a peaceful individual, the kingdom of God within him is highly personal. My ideal personality (in which I approve of everything I do, and fail to do nothing of which I approve in myself) will be very different from your own best self.
As C.S. Lewis points out: "Your soul has the curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions."
Let me give you a distinctively Christian understanding of this particular point. Please don't scream at me; this is an addendum; it's not essential and can be for the sake of argument ignored.
Human souls are naturally imperishable. It is simply not within God's power to let your immortal soul just disappear. As a result, you have no choice but to come to enjoy your eternal life (in the process making it indeed eternal). Failure is not an option. Your soul cannot die like your body; as a result, you must either live spiritually eternally or die spiritually. But spiritual death is indeed an unmitigated horror.
Now I happen to think that the Christian hell exists but in actual fact is empty; this is because no one upon being exposed to hell can fail to turn around. Hell is not a place a punishment but a disincentive that is so potent that it always works to deter self-destructionism of any kind. In short, you are forced to be happy. Or rather, you are forced by the threat of hell to become fit for or in Kant's words, "worthy of" true happiness.
There are no half-measures. There is not eternal existence that is boring or joyless or sort of barely satisfying. It's "you are fully in or fully out." You are either having a genuinely unambiguous marvelous time, or you are burning in hell. Again, there is no one actually in hell, because hell is a perfect deterrent.
It is pointless and a waste of time to complain or revolt about these spiritual laws, anymore that it is sensible to complain about laws of physics.
(April 10, 2015 at 5:13 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: How do you know there aren't other afterlives in addition to the one you believe exists, that are as good or better than yours, and your method will not let you have one of those?
The question does not apply, because I have not specified any particular afterlife, other than the aspect of our humanity perpetually to improve. To the extent that human nature is preserved after death, there is improvement in heaven, and it presumably starts out from the spiritual state of the newly ascended.
(April 10, 2015 at 5:13 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: 4. How do you know that the way to be left out of an afterlife is to be credulous and gullible, and to fall for idiotic arguments like Pascal's Wager?
I have been arguing that it is precisely heeding Pascal's wager that is most prudent and is not at all credulous and gullible. An agnostic who chooses atheism may have credulously and gullibly listened to atheists like you.
