Why would anyone want eternal life?

Tinfoil Hater

Graduate Poster
Tinfoil Hater
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Religious people take their books too literally, most of them are filled with metaphor. Immortality likely is through ones offspring, not lingering in some ethereal afterlife. Even if religions are correct in their belief of eternal life- who would want that?? George Carlin commented on the boredom that would set in- how would one pass the time? He thought maybe takeing up playing saxophone for 100,000 years. Why would anyone want to live forever? How would they pass the time? Being a slave to some deity is not my idea of a fun time
 
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I have no problem filling my time with new things. I would love to live forever, imagine the science 'non'-fiction world that is yet to come. :)
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
imagine the science 'non'-fiction world that is yet to come. :)
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I watch and read a lot of dystopian sci-fi, so that thought is much more :eek: and :yikes: to me than :).

I'm curious about how things will go, but...I'm cool with exiting the scene early too, I think.
 
Eternal youth I'll take.

If live to old age and die, rise, and become transmuted into spirit, it would really suck if I had to perpetually drag my old man spirit around. Or perhaps we'll get granted one wish at the Gate, which we'll probably have to request first to get in...

Then time for that big seminar where God answers all our hard questions that we wanted to know while we were alive.
 
You won't be bored, because it's heaven.
That doesn't make sense you say?
Well, neither does believing in an eternal life after death. Making it a happy eternal life is only a tiny step from there and doesn't really affect the sensemakingness of the proposition.

Why do you keep posting threads that amount to rhetorical questions about people being wrong?
 
How about if your memory is reset at the end of each day so that you live the same day over-and-over again for eternity without realizing it?

Eternal life doesn't have to mean eternal memory or eternal new experiences.
 
I'd love to be immortal (as long as that implies being young, intact, and healthy, rather than being a conscious skeleton unable to move), just so long as I had the ability to kill myself at will.

Forever is a very long time, and I can see how having no means of escape could be awful. But a million years? I'm sure I could amuse myself.
 
I'll take the kind of immortality they have in The Highlander, please.

Eternally young. Or youngish, anyway.

Most any form of physical harm will repair itself.

...but with a way to end your life which is very unlikely to happen by accident, but still relatively easy to do if/when you've had enough. So if I do get bored after a few thousand years, I can quit.

But no beheading competition for a weird prize, please.


If there were one other twist I'd want... I would want to be able to grant the same power to other people at will. That would be tremendously useful in several ways.
 
I would just travel the universe insulting everybody ... in alphabetical order.
 
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Porpoise of Life said:
You won't be bored, because it's heaven.
That doesn't make sense you say?
Well, neither does believing in an eternal life after death. Making it a happy eternal life is only a tiny step from there and doesn't really affect the sensemakingness of the proposition.

Why do you keep posting threads that amount to rhetorical questions about people being wrong?
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Tinfoil Hater will stop posting when his question mark key gets stuck.
 
I'm not sure I would enjoy eternal life, but I am sure that I'm terrified of dying. There is literally no age at which I would be happy with the concept.
 
Tinfoil Hater said:
Religious people take their books too literally, most of them are filled with metaphor. Immortality likely is through ones offspring, not lingering in some ethereal afterlife. Even if religions are correct in their belief of eternal life- who would want that?? George Carlin commented on the boredom that would set in- how would one pass the time? He thought maybe takeing up playing saxophone for 100,000 years. Why would anyone want to live forever? How would they pass the time? Being a slave to some deity is not my idea of a fun time
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Eternal life is not the same as 'living forever'. Eternal life is not achieved until one dies.
 
Life is eternal, or as near to it as the global ecosystem's durability allows. You don't need to pass on, resurrect, or reincarnate when you die, because you're already amply polyincarnated.

The fear of death is an irrational attachment to a particular set of memories or genes. Of course, given the cognitive devices our species has developed to apprehend and negotiate the world, that's hard to avoid.
 
I like Bill Burr’s take on the idea of eternity in heaven if the people you love didn’t make it: NSFW



Also, the punishment is supposed to be eternity in hell. I think that you would get used to it eventually. You can live with a really bad toothache after you get used to the pain. I think it would be like that. Eventually eternal roasting would become normal to your body and it would cease to be suffering.
 
Vixen said:
Eternal life is not the same as 'living forever'. Eternal life is not achieved until one dies.
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I would say that eternal life is not the same as living forever. Eternal life is not achieved until. One dies.
 
FenerFan said:
Also, the punishment is supposed to be eternity in hell. I think that you would get used to it eventually. You can live with a really bad toothache after you get used to the pain. I think it would be like that. Eventually eternal roasting would become normal to your body and it would cease to be suffering.
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I once read a short story along those lines. A guy was in hell boasting to the devil that it didn't matter how hot the fires were, humans are adaptable and he'd be able to withstand them eventually. The Devil said "we'll see" and unimaginably hot fires started burning the sinner. Over the course of millions of years, he adapted and eventually came to be able to tolerate the pain.

The final line of the story is (paraphrased): "And then the flames were extinguished".
 
Is that a trick question?

Do people really fear boredom so much that they'd rather be dead than face it?

I figure I'd have forever to learn how to deal with piddling little problems like boredom. I might not be y'all's favorite son, but I'd be ROCKIN before I was done.

And I never would be done.
 
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I think humanity has developed an unhealthy relationship with death.

History Professor CGP Grey breaks this down in one of his videos*

Because the Reaper comes for all eventually humans have formed a relationship with death, perverse.

"Death gives life meaning." This is madness. Misery doesn't give happiness meaning. Happiness is meaning itself. If you tortured people to better give them an appreciate for the joys of life... you'd be a monster.

"Death is a part of life." So was Cholera until humans developed wells and sewers to separate drinking water from waste water.
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Outside of the vague "Death gives live meaning" chestnut the two more concrete defensive of death are common.

1. Societal/Cultural Stagnation. The idea that without the older generation dying off there is a hard and fast ceiling on progress, that old "bad" or no longer applicable ideas simply won't die off.

2. Over-population.

Here's the thing with both of those those. The reasons both of those exist and/or aren't be solved is because as of right now no human on Earth has a reason to make really, really long term plans. Every person on this planet's long term plans max out at about a... century. Two if we're being generous.

I'd wager our mortality is putting a hard and fast limit on our progress, both scientific and cultural, by capping it as things that can happen in a lifetime to some degree.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C25qzDhGLx8
 
I think that most people would have serious qualms if presented with the option of eternal life. Boredom, outliving you loved ones, etc. But virtually no one wants to die tomorrow. And if you make it that far, the next tomorrow. Live forever? No! Die? No! A conundrum.
 
ynot said:
I would be able to win Lotto.
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But you would figure to be able to save up more than you'd win, by simply putting the money you would otherwise spend on tickets in the bank.

The possibilities are endless...
 
Toontown said:
But you would figure to be able to save up more than you'd win, by simply putting the money you would otherwise spend on tickets in the bank.

The possibilities are endless...
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But I want a genuine "I won Lotto" T-shirt regardless of the cost
 
I would! Even if I get board after doing everything I could imagine for a few hundred quintiliion years. I could always just sleep for a couple hundred trillion years here and there to relieve the boredom.
 
I would take eternal life, with the option to die.

In case some omnipotent anal sadist tosses me into a lake of fire or something.
 
Loss Leader said:
I'm not sure I would enjoy eternal life, but I am sure that I'm terrified of dying. There is literally no age at which I would be happy with the concept.
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I think that's the crux of it. It's like income; most people would agree that there's a level of earning that's far more than anyone could reasonably desire, but it's always more than they personally are earning at the moment. I can see that living forever may not be that great, but I can't see the coming of a day when I'd be happy not to have one more year.

Besides, there's Netflix.

Dave
 
I need more than just eternal life: I need a hundred clones all living forever: otherwise, I'll never be able to catch up on the hours of YT-videos uploaded every minute.
 
Giordano said:
I think that most people would have serious qualms if presented with the option of eternal life. Boredom, outliving you loved ones, etc. But virtually no one wants to die tomorrow. And if you make it that far, the next tomorrow. Live forever? No! Die? No! A conundrum.
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Loss Leader said:
I'm not sure I would enjoy eternal life, but I am sure that I'm terrified of dying. There is literally no age at which I would be happy with the concept.
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And that's the paradox mortal creatures have had to create for themselves.

Most all of us are perfectly happy to agree to have a sitdown with the Reaper, as long as that meeting is A) not exactly defined and B) far enough in the future to be an abstract, not a concrete.

We've most all happily penciled in a TBD meeting with the Reaper, safe in the assumption that "Future You" will be happy to keep that promise.

But there is no "Future You." "You" always lives in the now. And in "the now" almost nobody wants to have that meeting.
 
The spirit world teaches that we reincarnate many times in a cycle of rebirths, and it only ends when we have reached a higher stage of spiritual evolution. We then continue to evolve as immortal spirits in a body of light that can fly and teleport itself.

The spirit body is perfect and asexual and it resembles the person as they were in the prime of life in their last incarnation.

The spirits say you cannot die and are destined to be immortal whether you like it or not.
 
Why would anyone want eternal life?
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Certain types of immortalities I'd want, like if I were perpetually reincarnated in various people of various universes, hopefully keeping at least some of my memories and personality throughout, etc.
 
Belz... said:
Certain types of immortalities I'd want, like if I were perpetually reincarnated in various people of various universes, hopefully keeping at least some of my memories and personality throughout, etc.
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You keep all of your memories stored in the soul body in perfect detail. We finally gain access to our past life memories when our cycle of incarnations is complete. We do not normally remember past lives until reaching the end of our incarnations, as this would be a burden to us.
The medium Ursula Roberts said in a trance lecture I attended, that if we remembered what we had done in past lives prematurely it might drive us mad.
 
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