(Very happy to hear you're a theist, by the way; I had been under the impression that you're an existentialist, which, from my one week's worth of experience, is a very depressing worldview.)
My own experience was pretty much like that. I was raised in a secular family, but when I tried to really figure things out atheism made no sense to me, at least not as something that I could honestly live. I just couldn't escape the feeling that the call for us to bestow meaning on the universe was really an invitation to make stuff up.
Joss *is* an existentialist. What's interesting, though, is how much his world view resonates with me despite that. I'd have to write a lot to explain what I mean -- but maybe the simplest way to get at it is to point to his commentary on Objects in Space and say that a Thomist could hardly have said it better. A good atheist can root out flawed concepts of God, and while they think it's clearing out space for the belief that there is no God -- it's also clearing out space for a better understanding of God. So a theist can walk in his company for quite a while before having to take a different road.
It really bothers me that this is the common perception of the Christian afterlife in modern times, and I can only suppose that the people who embrace it must be of limited imagination. I'll quote David Darling on the "string of days" concept (even though I disagree with him that that's the proposed Christian afterlife): "Yes, it would be nice to be in paradise -- for a while. The problem is, it wouldn't end. Days there would stretch into weeks, weeks into years, and years into centuries. The novelty, it seems, would be bound to wear off. And the centuries would become millennia, and the millennia would become trillions upon trillions of years, because this is the life-everlasting -- the endless treadmill of the hereafter. In our desperation for a dash of excitement, a bit of daredevilry, we might almost be tempted to side with Mark Twain: 'Heaven for climate, hell for company.' The problem is -- time; there's just too much of it in eternity."
It's wacky, isn't it? A heaven that's a misery couldn't possibly be heaven. I agree with you that it's due to limited imagination.
I really like the last part of the quote from Siddhartha. Our actions are our true belongings. But notice that Joss would be right there with us on this.
I agree that the *process* of dying is scary as heck. I really am quite fearful of it. But if the non-being end really is our end, at least I could take comfort in the fact that there will be no me around to be scarred by the traumatic experience. In the meantime, my main argument is about the fear of being dead, not the fear of the process of dying. I can't help but think that our fear about the end of our consciousness is testimony to our utter inability to seriously imagine non-being as our final end. Our only idea of non-being is us experiencing nothing or maybe of us experiencing the loss of ourselves in a way that doesn't quite erase the us that experiences that loss. We just can't imagine non-being itself. So I think Stephen King is pretty much right on. In fact, the fact that the vast majority of people talk about and react to death as though there would be some experience of it, even when they are atheists, is taken as evidence that belief in an afterlife is hard-wired in us. (Whether that's because there is an afterlife or because we just have weird wiring is an open question; but there seems to be agreement that humans are overwhelmingly prone to thinking as though there will be an afterlife).
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Date: 2009-06-04 08:02 am (UTC)My own experience was pretty much like that. I was raised in a secular family, but when I tried to really figure things out atheism made no sense to me, at least not as something that I could honestly live. I just couldn't escape the feeling that the call for us to bestow meaning on the universe was really an invitation to make stuff up.
Joss *is* an existentialist. What's interesting, though, is how much his world view resonates with me despite that. I'd have to write a lot to explain what I mean -- but maybe the simplest way to get at it is to point to his commentary on Objects in Space and say that a Thomist could hardly have said it better. A good atheist can root out flawed concepts of God, and while they think it's clearing out space for the belief that there is no God -- it's also clearing out space for a better understanding of God. So a theist can walk in his company for quite a while before having to take a different road.
It really bothers me that this is the common perception of the Christian afterlife in modern times, and I can only suppose that the people who embrace it must be of limited imagination. I'll quote David Darling on the "string of days" concept (even though I disagree with him that that's the proposed Christian afterlife): "Yes, it would be nice to be in paradise -- for a while. The problem is, it wouldn't end. Days there would stretch into weeks, weeks into years, and years into centuries. The novelty, it seems, would be bound to wear off. And the centuries would become millennia, and the millennia would become trillions upon trillions of years, because this is the life-everlasting -- the endless treadmill of the hereafter. In our desperation for a dash of excitement, a bit of daredevilry, we might almost be tempted to side with Mark Twain: 'Heaven for climate, hell for company.' The problem is -- time; there's just too much of it in eternity."
It's wacky, isn't it? A heaven that's a misery couldn't possibly be heaven. I agree with you that it's due to limited imagination.
I really like the last part of the quote from Siddhartha. Our actions are our true belongings. But notice that Joss would be right there with us on this.
I agree that the *process* of dying is scary as heck. I really am quite fearful of it. But if the non-being end really is our end, at least I could take comfort in the fact that there will be no me around to be scarred by the traumatic experience. In the meantime, my main argument is about the fear of being dead, not the fear of the process of dying. I can't help but think that our fear about the end of our consciousness is testimony to our utter inability to seriously imagine non-being as our final end. Our only idea of non-being is us experiencing nothing or maybe of us experiencing the loss of ourselves in a way that doesn't quite erase the us that experiences that loss. We just can't imagine non-being itself. So I think Stephen King is pretty much right on. In fact, the fact that the vast majority of people talk about and react to death as though there would be some experience of it, even when they are atheists, is taken as evidence that belief in an afterlife is hard-wired in us. (Whether that's because there is an afterlife or because we just have weird wiring is an open question; but there seems to be agreement that humans are overwhelmingly prone to thinking as though there will be an afterlife).