• Replies 55 replies
  • Subscribers 35 subscribers
  • Views 1927 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Infinity issues

Daniel_EC

Hello again. Wanted to share something that always seemed nonsense to others, but quite logic for me. I always had trouble with the idea of eternal life after death. While others always seemed to find relief in this possibility, to me it`s been the most horrifying thing imaginable. Thinking about existing forever was always far beyond distressing, and the certainty that it is either that, or ceasing existence at all, would make me feel trapped, doomed, and that there was no solution available at all. It used to be so bad, that I couldn´t even sleep as a child, and stress caused me the feeling that someone was whisperng in my ears, like when someone is mad at you, but it was not a hallucination because I knew it was in my head. I would love to know if anyone else has had this kind of trouble with time, death and eternity as well.

Parents

  • I used to think about the afterlife a lot, and still do although it doesn’t hang over me as much as it used to. I once believed in God and was preoccupied with eternal punishment because I believed I was bad, although my understanding of theological teaching evolved as I got older and it stopped being a preoccupation. Now, I don’t believe in God, although I would like to as the reassurance was comforting. I think a lot about the state of ‘nothingness’ after death, about ‘how come I was born in this body rather than as an animal such as a rabbit’. Thinking about infinity takes up some time, imagining it going on and on and on, putting up an imaginary wall at the end of it, but something is beyond the wall …. Nobody has ever satisfactorily answered these questions. I find it helpful to imagine looking down on the earth and considering how minute and insignificant I am among all the created world and thinking about how all life, plants and animals die. New life is always being born and eventually, according to astronomers, the earth will eventually cease to exist. Somehow, knowing I came from non existence and will return to that non state, is consoling. 

  • in reply to ArchaeC

    I think the religious obsession with "eternal" and "eternity" is based on a failure to truly comprehend infinity.

    Eternal punishment.  So you burn for a billion years. Then a trillion more. But even then you're not even a quadrillionth of the way through your time in the fire.

    What kind of crime could possibly deserve such a horrendous punishment? I wouldn't even do that to Hitler.

    And yet we are told a "loving god" would do this to people for trifling misdemeanours?

  • in reply to A

    Yes you have made an interesting point, but does anybody fully comprehend infinity? Most of the world’s major religions think along the same lines about the afterlife. Perhaps some types of Buddhism might differ, and I wonder about how our human ancestors, such as Neanderthals, Denisovans as well as Homo Sapiens, first began considering where we came from and how the earth evolved. It is fascinating stuff but we will never know. The catechism of the Catholic Church does not definitively state that anyone will go to hell. It states that hell is a real place, but that our hope is that ‘all will be saved’. The belief is that after death, if we haven’t already repented and had our sins forgiven, we will be given the opportunity to say sorry and to go to heaven - that applies even to Hitler. It is a matter of hope and faith rather than proof. I don’t like to think of anyone suffering forever either and I just thought I’d put the record straight for people who might have a belief in God from a Catholic perspective. As a non believer now, I still appreciate how people derive meaning from faith in God. 

  • in reply to ArchaeC

    ArchaeC wrote: "There is much to digest in what you say. Embodiment can mean different things to different people, for different purposes. Are you talking about the sense of giving form to our emotions, beliefs, likes, hearing, pain, etc?"

    Not quite ~ in that our emotions etcetera are all experienced through the rational, sentimental, communicational, emotional, imaginal, reproductional and sensational sensibilities ~ as which altogether in the dimensionally and formationally interwoven sense embody us as a conscious ‘spatial’ being.

    Hence it is more accurate to state that emotions etcetera are given form through the experiential embodiments of our embodiment.

  • in reply to Deepthought

    "..it" always rolls downhill.

    Take the compliment!

  • in reply to Debbie

    Teehee, I confess I nicked some of that phrase from one of Doctor Who's more arthouse episodes :-)

  • in reply to Shardovan
    Shardovan said:
    and when the first test post finally appears, the first second of eternity will have passed.

    Were you the scriptwriter for Bladerunner?

  • in reply to Deleted User

    ..and when the first test post finally appears, the first second of eternity will have passed. :-)

Reply Children