The Afterlife has to Suck

[MrFalconfly]

The idea of an eternal afterlife hasn't been thought through.

Sure the first 100 or 1000 years could be fun. But what about 1 million years? What about the next million years? What about the 100 million years? What about the billions of years?

Surely it'll get repetitive at some point.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1125043/pg1

Its called the "egg". Its a fantastic little read. The afterlife might be like this instead! As an atheist this is the most interesting concept of afterlife ive ever come into contact with.

Interesting, but flawed from so many angles, and it?s been done before.

But, you see, despite being an Anti-Theist Atheist, this is one part that I actually like about religion. A lot of the mythology and philosophy is genuinely thought-provoking, even if it?s not necessarily real in the end. By the way, you guys should read or watch Dragon Ball. Their afterlife and god hierarchy is pretty cool too.

On the topic of whether or not the afterlife will suck, since I don?t believe in, well, anything (except, maybe, reincarnation), I wouldn?t worry about it. There are multiple interpretations of the afterlife that may or may not be the ?right one?, and I?ve personally given up on trying to grasp the concepts of Heaven and Hell (I think Satan, in how he?s depicted in various fictions, isn?t as bad as the biased perspectives make out). If Heaven was meant to be a paradise, I don?t think any god would make it so you?d go insane out of boredom, unless it?s the worst practical joke in history and you?re actually in Hell.

 

[Guffe]

That's why it'd be nice with a afterlife like in the Lionherths brother story were there's an afterlifes afterlife and so on. Every place is new, sort of like an reincarnation but never to the same planet/place/dimension/whatever.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

I've been thinking: the afterlife, no matter what it is, has to suck, right? I mean, because it goes on for eternity, you know? Look at it this way: let's say the afterlife is heaven, in the traditional christian view. And let's say that once you're there, you can have and do whatever you want, and be happy forever. But the problem is just that: FOREVER. As in NO END. Eventually, you'll run out of things to do. Even if that takes, let's say, a trillion years. Now, a trillion years is a madly, insanely huge amount of time, far beyond what any human can concieve. But let's say it takes that long for you to do everything you can imagine for fun, to burn through every inch of happiness heaven has to offer, and get bored. Well, okay, that's just boredom, whatever. But what do your have to look forward to after that? Another trillion years of the same. And another. And another. And on and on until you go insane. And even when you do go insane, IT STILL CONTINUES. For eternity.

I mean, that's the theory, right? That the afterlife goes on forever? Well, forever is A FUCK OF A LONG TIME. Even if the afterlife is something horrible like hell or something. That gives you adversity, which will take longer to get boring, but the same principle will apply.

This is kind of a scary thought, right?

Captcha: They ate it.

...

...Yikes.

I recommend that you watch the Supernatural episode titled Dark Side of the Moon, Season 5, Episode 16. Aside from all the things that are going on in the plot, it is more or less a certain perspective of heaven, which I believe would be the coolest if it were true.

Long story short, everyone that dies gets their own slice of heaven, i.e. they get to relieve their most memorable and happy times in their life up to their own death (which is where the expression "your life flashed before your eyes" ties in). Everyone else's heaven is connected by some personal highway, be it a road, a river, etc. You can actually go to other people's heaven and soul mates get to share a heaven together. Since you are reliving your own memories, it doesn't feel like an eternity, but like you are reliving your life with only the good parts highlighted.

 

[Innegativeion]

Assuming there is a paradise in the afterlife, maybe the deity that created it removes boredom from that realm of existence? Bam, something that's cool for ten seconds is now cool for a trillion years.

This was always my thought.

Once you're dead you're no longer really human. You'd be purely spirit. Monotony wouldn't really be a factor.

 

[Auron225]

I agree with others that we can't understand the idea of eternity or infinity enough to make any conclusions about it. If heaven itself is infinite, then we'd have an infinite amount of time to do an infinite amount of things - not just what we would imagine or think of as fun.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

In that infinite time someone would create some sort of memory erasing thing that everyone would use to erase their memories of fun things and make everything new and fun again.

That sounds an awfully lot like a dystopian hell-future to me.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

My thinking is that when you get to heaven, or whichever afterlife you prefer, you won't care when you get there, and the concept of boredom is non-existant.

There's no way we can use human understanding to something we have no clue about, or even what the experience will be like there.

I was about to post something to this effect. Yes, you cannot comprehend what it's going to be like because you probably won't have a body, nor will you be restrained by any physical limitations. Now, of course, I have no idea if it's going to be like that or not, but hey, one can hope.

 

[Toilet]

What you have to consider is that if the afterlife is real, is for everyone that has ever died, ever will die and is therefore is infinite you have to imagine the vast scale of what the afterlife will be.

If you are dealing with quantities that large the afterlife will probably so vast that you could probably walk for years and (if you forgive the pun) never see another soul.

(Hows that for depressing?)

 

[Faladorian]

People are saying this:

Boredom won't exist in the afterlife.

When they should be saying this:

The afterlife doesn't exist.

 

[DocBalance]

I've been thinking: the afterlife, no matter what it is, has to suck, right? I mean, because it goes on for eternity, you know? Look at it this way: let's say the afterlife is heaven, in the traditional christian view. And let's say that once you're there, you can have and do whatever you want, and be happy forever. But the problem is just that: FOREVER. As in NO END. Eventually, you'll run out of things to do. Even if that takes, let's say, a trillion years. Now, a trillion years is a madly, insanely huge amount of time, far beyond what any human can concieve. But let's say it takes that long for you to do everything you can imagine for fun, to burn through every inch of happiness heaven has to offer, and get bored. Well, okay, that's just boredom, whatever. But what do your have to look forward to after that? Another trillion years of the same. And another. And another. And on and on until you go insane. And even when you do go insane, IT STILL CONTINUES. For eternity.

I mean, that's the theory, right? That the afterlife goes on forever? Well, forever is A FUCK OF A LONG TIME. Even if the afterlife is something horrible like hell or something. That gives you adversity, which will take longer to get boring, but the same principle will apply.

This is kind of a scary thought, right?

Captcha: They ate it.

...

...Yikes.

Well, an Infinite After-Life only sucks if you assume that we do not become infinite beings upon ascending to it. Most traditional after-lives, however, assume a freedom from the restraints of mortality. This means being able to do things we cannot even comprehend. It is, quite literally, to be without restriction. They also assume the removal of things such as sadness and discontent, these being products of an unstable corporeal existence. So if we're going with the traditional after-life espoused by most ascendant religions, you can assume that we cannot quantify the actions that will be taken in full.

This is of course ignoring transcendent after-lives such as those espoused in Hinduism, which imply a sort of one-ness of consciousness that would transcend human experience and limitation, thus the label "transcendent". Again, such an experience would be non-quantifiable with present computational constraints. Your observation does hold water in the case of ideas such as the Egyptian After-life, if my studies on it are recalled correctly, since it is based mostly on materialism and an extension of earthly awards. Pre-Elysium Grecian After-Life would suffer from this same flaw by design, to encourage the pursuit of the trifecta of holy and virtuous lives required to attain ultimate rewards. By default I believe Mormonism would also impose this fate upon all other sects of Christianity? I must admit my studies of the Mormon after-life are mostly limited to observances that being eternally surrounded by all of my extended family members seems more akin to Hell than Heaven, and that by Mormon logic God is more of a Foster-Dad to the rest of Christianity that we only get to see on the weekends(yet given the general interpretation of God that Mormon's have presented to me, I would find this preferable, as He seems the sort of chap I would only get along with in small doses.)

People are saying this:

Boredom won't exist in the afterlife.

When they should be saying this:

The afterlife doesn't exist.

I liked the part where you criticized them for assuming their views are correct, and then committed the same fallacy. It was edgy!

 

[the abyss gazes also]

People are saying this:

Boredom won't exist in the afterlife.

When they should be saying this:

The afterlife doesn't exist.

Or you could look at this as a thought experiment and have fun with it...

But, back to the point, I know people keep saying that you'll be eternal and have a different view and outlook, but even if you are free of every bond there will be a finite amount of stuff to do in infinite time. Sure there may be spatial anomaly x and then spatial anomaly x+1 but after seeing so many (and presumably gaining infinite knowledge) then you could just fill in all the blanks and know everything. Boredom ensues.

 

[The_Echo]

Assuming that life in the afterlife works in much the same way as life on earth does, then yes, we would probably get bored.

However, I'd presume that heaven in the traditional sense imbues its population with ubiquitous contentedness. That's what the idea of Paradise brings to mind, at the very least.

The afterlife being a place transcendent of time and space, I would like to believe that the abundance of people coming from all sorts of time periods, cultures and places in the universe would keep most people from being too terribly bored. And new people show up all the time. Perhaps heaven has formed some sort of society, too, rather than just being a nebulous realm of happy souls.

snip

Bad form, friend. This isn't supposed to be a religious argument. Don't turn it into one.

 

[NiPah]

We're simple beings at our cores, we can imagine neither eternity nor what it would be like to not exist. Our brains simply cannot process it. Therefore we will not be able to comprehend death until we experience it.

We've all experienced it... Remember that time before you were born? when you didn't exist? Yeah death is like that only it occurs in the time frame after life. But the good thing is our brain won't have to do any processing after death because you know, you're dead, you won't even experience it because the act of experience requires an active conscience to reflect and apply reason to the given stimuli, which also requires active neuronal activity in a brain.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

My thinking is that when you get to heaven, or whichever afterlife you prefer, you won't care when you get there, and the concept of boredom is non-existant.

There's no way we can use human understanding to something we have no clue about, or even what the experience will be like there.

I was about to post something to this effect. Yes, you cannot comprehend what it's going to be like because you probably won't have a body, nor will you be restrained by any physical limitations. Now, of course, I have no idea if it's going to be like that or not, but hey, one can hope.

Maybe we can get one of them fancy halos that everyone's been talking about, that would be pretty sweet.

 

[Souleks]

If its anything near this awesome then count me in.

OT:It would probably get boring if its just having all your wishes come true
(I am pretty sure there is a twilight zone episode on that.)
However I do like the idea of eternal salvation.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Maybe we can get one of them fancy halos that everyone's been talking about, that would be pretty sweet.

As long as I get to fly, I'm happy.

 

[Bertylicious]

Maybe you go in an altered state, like you get incarnated as nothing more than a tentalcle with lips going around looking for chocolate to fuck.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

what if you can pick your afterlife, choosing between valhalla, heaven or rebirth?