An eternal life is a worthless life.

[Violet]

I don't think you fully grasp the idea of eternity.

You can read the same book a million times in a row and still have eternity to look forward to.
You can read a million books one after another and still have eternity to look forward to.
You can read the million books in all possible (factorial) orders and still have eternity to look forward to.
You can intersperse other activities in any finite number in any order between reading those million factorial ordered books and still have eternity to look forward to.

The only thing worse might be eternity singing hosannas in praise of a celestial despot.

Sounds great to me. The universe is infinite, and it's expanding infinitely. I can do anything forever... and the universe's expandingness (all the more evidence of the Dream) suggests that it will go on forever.

That fucking rocks. Say I get bored of something for a few hundred billion years? Well, wait long enough, and be willing to be entertained again.

One's brain attic, after all... is anything BUT limitless. The head forgets.

---

No no not those... though i knew a girl who said she was a vampire and said my soul was beautiful excuse me i'm going to watch blade or something.

I don't know enough about your soul to judge how it looks. We'll see when you die, yeah?

[Godscreated]

This just came to my mind.

This thread devolved quickly didn't it. Leave it to unbelievers to go from eternal life to eternal death, the vampire is the living dead right.

Everything we enjoy in our lives we enjoy because it ends. We enjoy food because the molecules that compose it react with our taste buds in a pleasant way.

What has taste got to do with eternity, after I've enjoyed a meal I look forward to the next without considering that I may not have a next. The developed countries enjoy the taste of because we brought extra flavor to the food, salt, spices, sugars and ect. We incorporate air into it, add heavy creams and many other things. We did not do this because we were going to miss a meal, we did it because we do have taste buds that a excited by certain flavors and we wanted to enjoy these taste every day. In the poorest places of the world they really do not care about all these flavors, they eat because the want to go on living and each of us would to if we were in their position. So when you boil it down (pun intended), we eat to live.

We enjoy having sex because it releases endorphins and a whole lot of other chemicals.

I can agree to a point about sex, I however look forward to my next experience not because the present one ended but, because the next one has a beginning.

But we enjoy those things because they have an end - that is, we value them because they are limited. It's like money: the more there is around, the less it is worth.

You seem to think the end has more significance than the beginning, just like a boy new to puberty. After you have lived several more years come back and revisit this idea you have.

We value the time we have in our life because it is limited. It has value, therefore it is worth something because it will eventually end and is a temporary condition that we must make the most of.

With this one I agree even more but not completely. I think that you have taken fun out of life by once again focusing on the end, one should enjoy the things in life be alive. Most normal people do not want to die, even Christians. Christians see life as a gift and desire to enjoy a gift, even though we know it will be restored to us in the future. We look forward to our eternal life because we understand God wouldn't bring us into His kingdom to be bored, we look forward to the unending experiences to come.

On the contrary, take an eternal life. Any experience you could have in that is potentially infinitely replicable. Wouldn't that mean that any experience you could have in an eternal life is ultimately worthless and meaningless? Why, then, would anyone even want an eternal life? Isn't then the very concept of eternal life an illogical exploitation of our natural fear of the unknown?

You are speaking like someone who can get bored easily, who doesn't enjoy the same experiences again and again, like a boy new to puberty you look to the end and not to the beginning, you might (this is a suggestion only) want to reevaluate the way you see life.

GC

[Marsellus Wallace]

NO, I want to live forever , I don't care if its mentally painful , I just want to exist .

[Minimalist]

When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever. I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
— H L Mencken

[JuliaL]

Sounds great to me. The universe is infinite, and it's expanding infinitely. I can do anything forever... and the universe's expandingness (all the more evidence of the Dream) suggests that it will go on forever.

That fucking rocks. Say I get bored of something for a few hundred billion years? Well, wait long enough, and be willing to be entertained again.

One's brain attic, after all... is anything BUT limitless. The head forgets.

You're going to be examining an awful lot of vacuum and large balls of hydrogen. And that only happens if you can figure out how to get off of this rock. Lots of travel time will be spent in a can unless you've got some magic FTL drive up your sleeve. With your anything but limitless head, that might be a problem.
Sounds really dull.
If your hope of tolerating a life that extends forever lies in forgetting your past experiences, how does that differ from reincarnation?

[Napoléon]

Never really bought into the idea that an infinite life would automatically be an unenjoyable one. Or that things have value just because they come to an end.

Take a look on the flipside of the coin. If life is finite, isn't everything we do ultimately worthless and meaningless? We won't be around in a few years to experience things, it only depends on your outlook as to whether that adds value or detracts value. In the end, nothing matters. Whether we live for an eternity or for a few seconds. The truth is, we live in the moment. We don't live for time. We live in it.

[dyresand]

No no not those... though i knew a girl who said she was a vampire and said my soul was beautiful excuse me i'm going to watch blade or something.

I don't know enough about your soul to judge how it looks. We'll see when you die, yeah?

If i had to guess what my soul looks like well....

[vorlon13]

Never really bought into the idea that an infinite life would automatically be an unenjoyable one. Or that things have value just because they come to an end.

Take a look on the flipside of the coin. If life is finite, isn't everything we do ultimately worthless and meaningless? We won't be around in a few years to experience things, it only depends on your outlook as to whether that adds value or detracts value. In the end, nothing matters. Whether we live for an eternity or for a few seconds. The truth is, we live in the moment. We don't live for time. We live in it.

As the universe expands, it continually dilutes itself with more and more vacuum. And it's only 13+ billion years old now. It can continue to expand for trillions taken to the power of trillions years to come. All the while dissipating itself into an ever more perfect and seemingly infinite void.

The universe is erasing itself, and it is erasing itself permanently, and completely, and infinitely. Even black holes are not eternal, they dissipate (slowly) and the weak and meager photons they dissipate into will experience more and more redshifting as the universe continues to expand, even in that dissipated and frigid age, and they will be erased too as the redshifting increases and robs them of their minute energies even further.

Enormous tracts of space, that dwarf in size anything we can imagine now, will be totally empty, separations between individual photons will staggeringly huge, and the expansion continues, and continues, and continues . . . . .

[Esquilax]

By definition, if you have an eternal life, you have sufficient time to do everything there is to do, and then continue to do all of those things until you get so bored of them you can't stand to do them anymore. And you still wouldn't be even half done living.

Do people forget things, in heaven? That might help for a little while, but it won't fix the issue, just postpone it. Think you can forget something you've done eighty million times? Most of us get bored having to do the same thing for a week straight.

In eternity, you have the time. Even for negative things like crushing boredom, you have the time.

[dyresand]

By definition, if you have an eternal life, you have sufficient time to do everything there is to do, and then continue to do all of those things until you get so bored of them you can't stand to do them anymore. And you still wouldn't be even half done living.

Do people forget things, in heaven? That might help for a little while, but it won't fix the issue, just postpone it. Think you can forget something you've done eighty million times? Most of us get bored having to do the same thing for a week straight.

In eternity, you have the time. Even for negative things like crushing boredom, you have the time.

what about the paradox of a eternal life.. though what if you could die in your eternal life... meaning you could live forever be young forever and could die.... would one simply not exist anymore or his soul has a soul inside of yet another soul.