Yes, assuming a linear progression of time we can successfully trivialise the time we are 100% certainly alive in the above way.
Perceived time is an interesting one, with time progressing more like a hyperbola - time “flying” the older you get - and if the vertex of the hyperbola were to coincide with a lifetime, 100 years or otherwise, time alive actually equals the length of an infinite afterlife geometrically. If a lifetime is further on from the vertex, it’s actually more than an eternity.
But whether or not we take this into account, your time alive is already infinite itself given that we remain in the present moment no matter how long we live. The time from when you were born up to now is all your time, it is an eternity relative to whatever else you know (which is void/nothing). In the true spirit of infinity, you didn’t even experience a discrete boundary that marked the entry of your consciousness into the world, nor even one to separate the present from the past or future: infinite = no bounds. You are just as much present consciously now as you ever will be even if you were to check back in an infinite number of years - the elapsed time/memories of anything “before” still comes together at the present moment in the same way as it always did and always will, with only the “knowledge” in the abstract that what you’re recalling took place over a longer or shorter span of time. Concretely, instead of abstractly it is the same: pleasure or pain now is no different to the same at any other point in time when it too was “now” - you’re still present experiencing it just the same. Time is a funny thing… To quote Type O Negative’s hilarious song “Christian Woman”: “Would you suffer eternally… or internally?” The profound realisation is that they are the same.
But even back to your trivilising of life by not paying attention to your assumptions about time, you’re undoing your own logic of it being important that we choose God belief during our life because relative to eternity, any time alive making any choices at all is negligible. There’s a whole world of neglected philosophy in that one life-dismissing line of yours. Is it even moral to trivilise your entire lifetime in the face of eternity?
Is it moral to take in the sheer number of people already supposedly in hell and their ongoing maximal torture still taking place right now - are you okay believing this has any chance whatsoever of being possible, regardless of the severity or otherwise of their transgressions in their “negligible” time alive? Thinking Bayesian, an infinitessimal chance of this being true multiplied by the consequence of it being false is the same as the infinite chance of it being false multiplied by the eternity of the consequences of it being true - so indifference is the same as theism just as it is to atheism. There’s nothing to choose in the first place.
FYI I am an atheist in case you hadn’t guessed, and I see theism as nihilistic - in the Nietzschean world-denying way. If you need a story to make your life more than empty, you’re better off re-thinking your life while you’re here. Denial and delusion are cop-out solutions, and they’re also subservient (hence the honest name of one of their iterations, Islam). A realisation I had a few years ago was that if you’re in search for a meaning to your life, you’re looking for someone or something other than yourself to tell it to you. However if you are interested in mastering your life, you will realise that you have potentially infinite creations of your own to provide meaning to your life at any given point.
Nietzsche is dead. Remember what happened before he died? He went insane for no discernible reason at a relatively young age and spent 11 years in diapers.
I don’t think I’ve neglected philosophy…I’ve studied Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Socrates, Sartre and Cioran for years.
Now, in regards to Hell and it’s eternity, it’s indeed a terrible thought. In the Christian tradition, Jesus went to Hell to rescue people but many people didn’t want to be rescued. They are in Hell because they want to be there.
Yeah he’s dead. I get the joke, but I don’t see how they affect his points. I don’t see the insanity in his words, which I find truly astounding even to this day, even in his 40s he was a true genius, which is a term I’m so mean with I’d only definitely attribute to 2 thinkers in all history. Seems like an argumentum ad hominem fallacy to draw attention to his health and lifestyle.
Cioran! Awesome. But for all your study, you don’t seem to be applying it here is my point.
Doesn’t sound so bad if people want to be in Hell… - I guess an eternity of where I want to be seals the deal in favour of choosing atheism.
I did apply my existentialist and nihilistic philosophy for about 5 years…at least. Until I had a supernatural experience that made me believe in the supernatural which led me home to the Catholic Church
Are you English? It seems like your country is infested with atheism these days.
Yes, that’s the wager. My point is it’s based on false or at least questionable premises, and isn’t even a valid wager upon examination.
I’m sure he was. Ad hominem again?
Ooo I love these stories. What was this experience? I hope you will excuse my inevitable skepticism if you choose to divulge.
I feel safe already with the prejudice that even given the supernatural, the causal implication is never necessarily “therefore God”.
I am. Are you American? It seems like that country has been infested with theism for far longer a period than is dignified. But it is just opinion either way, isn’t it.
You won’t agree with this, and bear in mind I’m qualifying my judgment with “definite” attribution, but my criteria are that they continually present cases in ways I never thought of, no matter how deep I go. This is as opposed to measures like being the first person to be recorded thinking in certain terms, or the inventor of terminology or other things, which while legitimate don’t feel sufficient somehow. Other than Nietzsche I’ve only really found this in the contemporary thinker, Zizek. Even Pascal with all his highly laudible contributions in multiple fields outside his wager doesn’t have this x factor to my mind. Most thinkers frustrate or bore me with their oversights or lack of ingenuity at least occasionally, but not those two - who consistently deliver only inspiration.
Apologists? I’ve not familiarised myself at all with Augustine, and what I’ve come across of Aquinas is standard Confirmation Bias that everyone until the Enlightenment was habitually engaged in - the consequences for thinking outside the box were scary before then, and even after that for many, and even today still for far too many.
Augustine was one of the greatest philosophers and theologians in Western history. His classic book “Confessions” is easy to read. You may want to check it out.
I find Nietzche’s philosophy pretty uninspiring too. The whole “become what you are.” And then what after that? We die.
“Eternal return.” Blah.
If life all ends at death then human existence is ultimately pointless. Do you agree?
Not so much Eternal Return and the weirdly selected stuff they pick out to teach you in school, but even that is a better thought experiment than most and still worth plenty of consideration. “Become what you are” sounds fairly vaccuous without context.
I couldn’t agree less that human existence is ultimately pointless because we die.
Firstly I’ll draw your attention back to what I said about time 3 posts of mine ago. Secondly, I won’t be so glib as to say death is what gives life meaning, like many do - I don’t believe a time limit and any resulting fear or stress is the necessary ingredient to motivating you. Life is the necessary precondition to judge meaning, and death is null - it has no meaning nor anything, it cannot be imagined because it negates even imagination, it negates negation - well it doesn’t even do that. The best you can do is imagine before you’re born or try to see outside your vision: you’re going to come up short - by definition in all such cases. It’s not a concern, it’s the opposite of concern. Life, however? Life is all there is. In the present with no concrete spatio-temporal boundary you live eternally relative to everything you could possibly imagine about anything. Life is your source of and for everything, including both conceptions of purpose and pointlessness - you can try to create whatever you like from it, and only it. Conceptions of that which is beyond life are all in terms of life, whether you’re imagining God, afterlife, heaven, hell - it’s all taken from your experience of life and created into a story in terms of life, within life, while you’re alive. Death has nothing to do with it and by definition cannot. Human existence is the only possible point. You don’t need to project purpose through an external entity, you can own it, but either way purpose and pointlessness are yours to attribute however you will. Some ways of doing it are more consistent than others.
There’s no way that guy’s British, and you will notice my attentions are how they are for a reason.
I have addressed your absurd reverse wager. There is no evidence for it. There is tons of evidence for the most important man who ever lived. Jesus Christ.
You’re not credible in any logical way. No offense.
