Would you want an eternal afterlife?

[Caaethil]

This question is mostly for atheists since most theists seem to agree 'yes'. But many atheists seem to disagree on this one. The basic question is:

Would you rather go to Heaven or equivalent, or die and stay dead?

There are many atheists who say that they don't believe in the afterlife, but would like it and would be happy if there was an afterlife they could go to for being good people. Others say the afterlife would be torture, as living forever would eventually get boring. There are also other reasons for this stance.

So the question is, would you want an eternal afterlife? This is, allow me to note, is not a religious discussion. It has nothing to do with whether God or the afterlife is real or not. Also, answer under the assumption you'd go to Heaven or similar. No "afterlife would suck because I'm bad and I'd go to Hell", and no religion-specific answers like "No because the Christian God is evil/it's just worshipping him forever/whatever."

It's just a hypothetical question. Call it 'paradise' if it makes you feel better. :3

 

[Dracowyn]

It'd be really boring. An eternal afterlife in something like heaven would be just as bad as in hell.

I'd rather stay dead. Or have a cycle of reincarnation where your memory is reset everytime you reincarnate.

 

[Somewhere_]

As long as it awesome, sure. But if its boring or something like hell, heck no.

 

[Murmansk]

I want to get an eternal this life.

 

[Elysieum]

To have eternal life means one would need eternal endurance of several different kinds, which I would not want to have.

I don't understand the fascination with living eternally. It's a desire that fuels the cosmetic industries of the world. Perhaps it's something inherent in select perspectives.

 

[Nah]

I don't understand the fascination with living eternally.

I'd imagine that eternal life/immortality sounds appealing to a lot of people since human beings are extremely afraid of death. Suppose it's natural since death kind of interferes with the primal biological instinct to reproduce and keep the species going.

 

[pastelspectre]

I'm not an atheist but I'd love to live eternally in Heaven. I'd imagine it would be fun, watching the lives of people from way up in the clouds. But, I'd also want to be reincarnated eventually, you know? Maybe live in the clouds for awhile, until they've decided I've done my good deeds, and then I can go back on Earth as another being, but with my memory refreshed and whatnot.

 

[Esper]

It all depends on what kind of "heaven" I would live in. If I had the chance to learn, explore, to meet people, have relationships with them, do things, better myself, and things like that then yes, I would like to live forever. If I have an infinite amount of time in which to learn and grow then eventually I will have learned of a way to change my circumstances, to go back to Earth or wherever else if that's what I wanted. Or to die if I find I'm tired of living forever.

But I mean, if getting "eternal life" requires blindly following some rules while I'm alive in this life then no thanks.

 

[donavannj]

It all depends on what kind of "heaven" I would live in. If I had the chance to learn, explore, to meet people, have relationships with them, do things, better myself, and things like that then yes, I would like to live forever. If I have an infinite amount of time in which to learn and grow then eventually I will have learned of a way to change my circumstances, to go back to Earth or wherever else if that's what I wanted. Or to die if I find I'm tired of living forever.

But I mean, if getting "eternal life" requires blindly following some rules while I'm alive in this life then no thanks.

This sums up my thoughts better than I could have on the matter at hand.

Though I'm personally a bigger fan of remaining alive and conscious in my current plane of existence. Forever, preferably. I just want to observe how humanity progresses going forward, if it does manage to do so. I want to witness the changes between 2016 and, for example, 4016. And then the changes between 4016 and 8016. And so on.

 

[aurevesque]

I'm Christian and for the longest time, I had a random dread of living forever. Something about it just didn't feel right. I was ok with the idea of death (as ok as any 6 year old could be), I guess because I believed everything needed an ending. Now as I get older (and more people that I love started dying) I'm warming up to the idea of having an eternity with loved ones.

 

[mayunaise]

As long as I dont have to live to see everyone I love or care about die and be left alone on earth, why not? As long as innovation keeps going, there will never be a boring period of life, always random and challenging as always..

 

[KorpiklaaniVodka]

If I could watch my favourite shows, play some games, get some booze and power metal, and hot girls surrounding me gradually (like 1st day there's one girl, the next day 2, the third 3 and so on to infnity) then hell yeah.

 

[BluRose]

ok so
i generally don't branch out of romhacking that often, but i'd like to make an exception here, despite the thread being old...
i would not like to live forever. there are so many things that would just be bland. like, already, i've observed that a change in routine is what i really like; "the grass is always greener on the other side" and all that. it just wouldn't be real. as i've gotten older, i'm already noticing my sense of time just become quicker and quicker, and i don't think that i'd want to let 1000s of years just go by in a blink. i mean, i guess it wouldn't really mean anything after death; you're dead, your body isn't limiting you, time isn't a factor in anything anymore. i guess it would be really nice at first but would then just become routine, and then people would want to go back to living or something. if it was an eternity in solitude, i think that would be worse than hell, and an eternity with all these other people would also eventually get bland as newish faces become "old" and vibrant personalities slowly deteriorate...
then again, that's also assuming that negative emotions will continue to exist. and then it will be like some sort of dystopic-appearing-utopic existence in which we can't even live completely, only as a fraction of previous life or whatever!
i just wouldn't want to continue living after death. biologically, life wasn't meant to be eternal; everything has a beginning and an end

although a cycle of reincarnation without remembering previous lives would be awesome~

 

[Arsenic]

It depends if eternal life offers constant new things for me. I don't want to do the same thing for eternity. That's a horrible existence.

 

[youngster_joey]

For my ideal afterlife, I would like to have my consciousness be constantly reincarnated into different bodies in different locations across the universe in different random time periods. I would prefer to forget everything of my previous lives every time I would be reincarnated. An infinite existence would become so boring and agonizing that, no matter the content, would be a hell in and of itself. However, if I were to constantly lose my memories I would be effectively repeatedly starting from the beginning, and each life would be it's own contained event.

Wow, I've gone on for a while about this.

 

[Shamol]

There is simply nothing objectionable about the concept of an eternal life itself. People who find the concept unpalatable are not thinking of eternal life simpliciter, but certain bad features of that life. Sure, we can all object to a bland, boring, repetitive eternal life. But that's the problem with a bland, boring, repetitive eternal life, not eternity itself. An eternal life that is by its nature adventurous and challenging and filled with different experiences of pleasure, where you get to meet and befriend persons of endless complexity, travel to whatever world that you want- would never become stale.

Unfortunately though, humans can't handle prolonged periods of extreme happiness without it getting boring, since increased serotonin would only translate into resistance of the receptors in the long run (this is partially why long-term drug addicts become miserable). So yes, in our current physiological states, eternal happiness of any one type wold be bland. But that's a limitation of humans, not of a hypothetical eternal life.

 

[Megan]

One could get philosophical and say that even if you die, you leave something behind, that kinda makes you immortal. But that would be a little too easy.

It's less about boredom and more about humans being incapabable to understand the concept of infinity. A being that is made for a finite purpose gaining eternal life would most likely drive it into insanity, as it struggles with its own existance which would be a contradictory one. Even worse: a being that contradicts the concept of time, would no longer belong in a world that is build upon it. It's most likely, that sooner or later, the person would vanish, anyway, just so that the order of the dimension gets restored.

 

[Her]

There is simply nothing objectionable about the concept of an eternal life itself. People who find the concept unpalatable are not thinking of eternal life simpliciter, but certain bad features of that life. Sure, we can all object to a bland, boring, repetitive eternal life. But that's the problem with a bland, boring, repetitive eternal life, not eternity itself. An eternal life that is by its nature adventurous and challenging and filled with different experiences of pleasure, where you get to meet and befriend persons of endless complexity, travel to whatever world that you want- would never become stale.

Unfortunately though, humans can't handle prolonged periods of extreme happiness without it getting boring, since increased serotonin would only translate into resistance of the receptors in the long run (this is partially why long-term drug addicts become miserable). So yes, in our current physiological states, eternal happiness of any one type wold be bland. But that's a limitation of humans, not of a hypothetical eternal life.

Have nothing to add but just want to point out that this is a very good post.

 

[Shamol]

Have nothing to add but just want to point out that this is a very good post.

Thanks! And I want to point out your signature looks custom-made for this thread.