(April 22, 2015 at 6:57 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: As for not existing, that is what you did in the year 1800. So that is what the year 2200 will be like for you.
There is however an asymmetry here, because it's not the nonexistence itself we are talking about, but our attitude toward nonexistence past and future while we exist now. I'm not too bothered by my nonexistence in 1800, but for some reason I find the idea of not being there to see Kirk and Spock fire their phasers at the Horta - an act they later regretted when they discovered the Horta was a silicon mother who was attacking people only because they were smashing her eggs - a bit disappointing.
(April 22, 2015 at 6:49 pm)noctalla Wrote: So I asked them if they were scared of everlasting life. They weren't. ... I think this attitude betrays a total incomprehension of the implications of eternity.
Indeed. Nobody's popped the question. It's not so much a matter of fright or the lack thereof, but that nonexistence and eternal existence are condemned to remain forever incomprehensible to us. (Oops, I meant for the rest of our lives.
)While I remain a theist with a deep attachment to the meanings discovered by Christianity and respect for truths of other religions as well, I'm through with religion itself because it refuses to ask the hard questions and admit we simply don't know the answers. Ditto for many strains of atheism I think overextend (philishophical) materialism to be an end all. Just because we need invoke no deity to explain physical cosmology within a materialist framework doesn't mean there are no good reasons for believing in the divine, provided we don't put it in a box.
