(August 13, 2016 at 8:58 am)purplepurpose Wrote:(August 13, 2016 at 8:42 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: That strikes me as somewhat off the mark. Atheists (as atheists) don't exactly wish for permanent death. We simply accept it as the inevitable result of being alive. We reject the notion of immortality as a fairy story dreamed up by people who aren't prepared to accept the realities of basic physics and biology.
That being said, there is a POV in which ALL living things are, in a sense, immortal - Sagan's 'star stuff'. Every atom and subatomic particle of your being is coeval with the instantiation of the universe - the bits that make you 'you' are either original atoms, or the products of these original atoms. The oxygen molecules that keep you going have been breathed by uncountable trillions of organisms that existed before you came along, and the decay that will occur after your death with become part of trillions more individual organism, and this happy state will continue at least until the heat death of the universe.
In that sense - and that sense only - is the concept of immortality in any wise coherent.
Boru
Imagine. God in afterlife gives you two options:
1. Become his servant and start endure the pain of caring for others in your next afterlife.
2. Choose permanent death.
Theoretically, what would you choose?
The question is incoherent to me. It's like asking if I'd rather take the One Ring to Mordor, or have a corned beef sandwich. The choice between a delusion and a reality isn't a 'choice' at all.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson