An afterlife would be terrifying for me

[no one]

Everyone is attending Ninja Academy.

[Apollo]

You can't earn endless bliss in heaven. And you can't earn endless torture in hell. It sounds retarded no matter how you look at it.

Ideas like afterlife are quite primitive and not very well thought out—and for a reason.

When you’re are living in a hunters and gatherers sort of society, things are pretty uncertain and simple. You need food, you need sleep, you need shelter and you need sex. Whatever time is left after that is spent on storytelling and bonding etc. Not much going on pondering complexities of life or nature because you don’t know whole a lot about life and nature beyond your day to day survival—so all your stories and ideas are going to reflect your present lifestyle and aspirations—unlimited supply of sex and food would do it without much worrying about predators.

These ideas are then transmitted through culture and upbringing and stick with us since we humans, like many other animals, excel at passing on knowledge. We are actually better than any other animal species at that.

We never really do go back and revisit those fantastical ideas to update them to be consistent with present knowledge and understanding of nature. Except for perhaps past few centuries where some small number of us (relatively speaking in terms of world population) have started seeing the logical and scientifically clear flaws in the story.

[Belacqua]

so all your stories and ideas are going to reflect your present lifestyle and aspirations—unlimited supply of sex and food would do it without much worrying about predators.

The kind of afterlife described by Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Boehme, and many others, doesn't resemble this at all. 

What argument can you present to show that their ideas originate in hunter-gatherer fantasies of comfort?

have started seeing the logical and scientifically clear flaws in the story.

I think you may have historical flaws in the just-so story you've told above. 

There may be logical or scientific flaws in the theological views of an afterlife, but you'd have to know what they say in order to address them.

[snowtracks]

Spiritual beings exist beyond physical death. Some do not want to be under God's moral authority, and he will accommodate their wishes. For them, he will withdraw his involvement so that they will become untethered from his influence. If that appeals to you, then eternal separation would be your preferred choice. That choice would mean one would not know what the truth* is on any matter.

*John 14:6  - I am the way, the truth, and the life.

[Apollo]

so all your stories and ideas are going to reflect your present lifestyle and aspirations—unlimited supply of sex and food would do it without much worrying about predators.

The kind of afterlife described by Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Boehme, and many others, doesn't resemble this at all. 

What argument can you present to show that their ideas originate in hunter-gatherer fantasies of comfort?

have started seeing the logical and scientifically clear flaws in the story.

I think you may have historical flaws in the just-so story you've told above. 

There may be logical or scientific flaws in the theological views of an afterlife, but you'd have to know what they say in order to address them.

Of course every culture and generation further adds to the idea in favor of (and not the contrary). If Mo told the exact same thing about god and afterlife as Jesus or jews then how he’s going to get his own cult going. But the point is that these are all offshoots of original ideas of a plentiful happy life without giving much thought to what is happiness to begin with and what are its various forms and sources (only speaking in terms of heaven and not hell).

[Belacqua]

these are all offshoots of original ideas of a plentiful happy life

So you're sure that it all started out as a fantasy in a pre-literate society, and then evolved into something somewhat different. 

It's sort of hard to know about the fantasies of pre-literate societies. Other than the fact that this sounds good, how would you go about demonstrating that your explanation is more than a just-so story?

 without giving much thought to what is happiness to begin with and what are its various forms and sources.

The standard Christian view of heaven, as developed by the people I named, gives a great deal of thought to the various forms and sources of happiness. Arguably no one has ever given more thought to that subject than the Greek philosophers whose ideas were taken into Christian theology. 

Have you read the Philebus? or the Nicomachean Ethics? These were influential in Christian theology. The Platonic and Neoplatonic systems which gave rise to the view of Heaven described by Dante, for example, has detailed and elaborate arguments about what human happiness consists of, why we generally lack it, and how it is to be gained. 

So I'm not sure who you're talking about here, but Christians and the philosophers who came before them gave a great deal of thought to this.

[Apollo]

these are all offshoots of original ideas of a plentiful happy life

So you're sure that it all started out as a fantasy in a pre-literate society, and then evolved into something somewhat different. 

It's sort of hard to know about the fantasies of pre-literate societies. Other than the fact that this sounds good, how would you go about demonstrating that your explanation is more than a just-so story?

 without giving much thought to what is happiness to begin with and what are its various forms and sources.

The standard Christian view of heaven, as developed by the people I named, gives a great deal of thought to the various forms and sources of happiness. Arguably no one has ever given more thought to that subject than the Greek philosophers whose ideas were taken into Christian theology. 

Have you read the Philebus? or the Nicomachean Ethics? These were influential in Christian theology. The Platonic and Neoplatonic systems which gave rise to the view of Heaven described by Dante, for example, has detailed and elaborate arguments about what human happiness consists of, why we generally lack it, and how it is to be gained. 

So I'm not sure who you're talking about here, but Christians and the philosophers who came before them gave a great deal of thought to this.

Of course this is all guess work based on various prehistoric archaeological finds and how some of the dead were buried or other signs. No one knows for sure but it makes logical sense that prehistoric view of afterlife would be simple rather than complex.

I am not much familiar with afterlife thought works of greeks or Christians but Islamic afterlife is full of rivers of milk and honey and wine and abundant of sex.

[Belacqua]

Of course this is all guess work based on various prehistoric archaeological finds and how some of the dead were buried or other signs. No one knows for sure but it makes logical sense that prehistoric view of afterlife would be simple rather than complex.

I suppose which guesses seem logical depend on one's imaginings about those people. You may be right. 

Whether their fantasies had anything to do with later theories is a difficult question.

I don't know anything about Muslim theology. I don't know if the rivers of milk and honey are symbols for otherwise ineffable things or not. 

Certainly the views of the Christians I named are deeply philosophical, rooted in centuries of work about what happiness consists of, and how people lack this happiness.

[Apollo]

Of course this is all guess work based on various prehistoric archaeological finds and how some of the dead were buried or other signs. No one knows for sure but it makes logical sense that prehistoric view of afterlife would be simple rather than complex.

I suppose which guesses seem logical depend on one's imaginings about those people. You may be right. 

Whether their fantasies had anything to do with later theories is a difficult question.

I don't know anything about Muslim theology. I don't know if the rivers of milk and honey are symbols for otherwise ineffable things or not. 

Certainly the views of the Christians I named are deeply philosophical, rooted in centuries of work about what happiness consists of, and how people lack this happiness.

Can you give some examples of such complex ideas of happiness in afterlife in Christianity? This is interesting.

[Belacqua]

Can you give some examples of such complex ideas of happiness in afterlife in Christianity? This is interesting.

It's a fascinating topic!

There are a lot of variations, of course. One thing you can count on with Christians is that they'll disagree with other Christians. 

It's probably simplest to start with Dante, whose descriptions are in nearly all cases (allowing for poetic license) standard Catholic views. 

For him, God is the form of the Good, as in Plato. The more people have access to the Good, the happier they are. In the material world, in life, our access to the Good is limited and divided. What goodness we perceive in the world is an emanation from God, and shows some tiny percentage of what goodness is. (If we can speak of a percentage of something infinite.) So moving toward what we perceive as good both makes us happy and also brings us nearer to God. In the material world, goodness is divided into different aspects, so we perceive different good things, but these have their source in the one Good, and in heaven are united into One. 

For many Neoplatonic Christians, like Eriugena (though perhaps not Dante) the Fall of Man didn't occur because of disobedience, but because our perceptions of the world shattered into division -- we lost the view of the One, which is the Good, which we will have in heaven.

We are likely to be mistaken in what we perceive as good while it is divided in this world, and this is where Dante follows the Nicomachean Ethics almost completely. When we love the good properly, we have good results. When our love is misguided, this is called sin. Sin is based on love for something which we think is good but isn't. 

Heaven is direct unimpeded access to the form of the Good. It is, like the Platonic forms themselves, outside of matter, outside of space and time. There is no change, playing around, having parties etc., which sounds boring to us because we can't conceive of being without time. Those things demand division, though, and a partial view of the Good which is incompatible with the full unity of the One.

I'm not saying that anyone should believe this. Only that the standard theological view of heaven in Christianity is not simply a pretty picture of an improved earthly life.