If eternity is defined as the absence or negation of time, rather than simply as an unending future, then what implications would this have for my life after death?

Eternal life would not simply mean an unending future life but, rather, a life unfettered by time, freed from the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future.

Upon my death, I would not merely encounter in heaven only those persons who died before me, but I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who I thought I was leaving behind, and I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who would be my future descendants.

Any comments about this? — charles ferraro

Why do you believe in an after life?

What I proposed does not necessarily mean that I believe in an afterlife. I simply wanted to investigate the implications a certain interpretation of the meaning of eternity would have on an afterlife if one assumed it existed.

What I proposed does not necessarily mean that I believe in an afterlife. I simply wanted to investigate the implications a certain interpretation of the meaning of eternity would have on an afterlife if one assumed it existed. — charles ferraro

Why think about something you don't believe in?

It's intellectual fun!

eternal life is to be understood as existing in another reality, not in this universe.

time in that another reality is to be understood as not correlated with time in this reality, it is impossible to imagine the speed of time in another reality because it's eternal, any limitation to time would question eternity.

Upon my death, I would not merely encounter in heaven only those persons who died before me, but I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who I thought I was leaving behind, and I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who would be my future descendants. — charles ferraro

Yes, because afterlife in another reality means transition of soul from this reality to another reality and the process as well as death is unavoidable.

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits. — Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

For each of us, death is the MOST SIGNIFICANT and DEFINITIVE EVENT we will ever experience in our life, because it puts a definite end to our life, it cancels it.

We each live awaiting this ultimate, inevitable cancellation of personal life.

Eternal life, if it does exist, DOES NOT belong to those who live in the present, because eternity, unlike time, is dimensionless; it lacks past, present, and future.

Eternal life, if it does exist, transcends ALL temporal dimensions.

We each live awaiting this ultimate, inevitable cancellation of personal life. — charles ferraro

:death: :flower:

A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life. — Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata

I'm tired of responding to Ludwig and Benedict. How about what YOU think!!!

As a state-of-affairs, "the afterlife" – life after life – belongs in the same spitoon of nonsense with e.g. "north of the North Pole", "disembodied person", etc.

Eternal life, if it does exist, DOES NOT belong to those who live in the present, because eternity, unlike time, is dimensionless; it lacks past, present, and future.

Eternal life, if it does exist, transcends ALL temporal dimensions. — charles ferraro

If eternal life transcends all temporal dimensions then it cannot be "after" anything, least of all death.

If eternal life transcends all temporal dimensions then it cannot be "after" anything, least of all death. — Janus

:clap: :smirk:

My thoughts about it are that the intuition of 'the deathless' represents a supremely important understanding, but that it is very difficult to understand correctly.

There's a Buddhist sutta (verse) called The Eastern Gatehouse. It comprises as dialogue between the Buddha and Sariputta. (It ought to be said that the figure of Sariputta, one of the Buddha's closest disciples, is customarily the figure in the Buddhist scriptures with whom the Buddha converses about matters of great depth or profundity.) The Buddha opens the dialogue with a rhetorical question:

Sariputta, do you take it on conviction that the faculty of conviction, when developed and pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation? Do you take it on conviction that the faculty of persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation?

In such verses, 'the Deathless' is a synonym for Nibbana, which is elsewhere depicted as freedom from the eternal round of birth and death. It might also be pointed out however that neither is Nibbana heaven - there are indeed heavens and hells in the Buddhist world but they are still aspects of saṃsāra, the round of birth and death.

I think that description is congruent with your second paragraph, but not with the idea of retaining one's sense of self and sense of others. Of course, for this reason, nibbana (Nirvāṇa) is often taken as a nihilistic idea, being the complete cessation of awareness or of being. But another sutra rejects this as a wrong notion (notice again that it is addressed to Sariputta but here represented in the Sanskrit as distinct from the Pali language, because from a Mahāyāna scripture):

Śāriputra, foolish ordinary beings do not have the wisdom that comes from hearing the Dharma. When they hear about a Tathāgata’s entering nirvāṇa, they take the wrong view of cessation or extinction. Because of their perception of cessation or extinction, they claim that the realm of sentient beings decreases. Their claim constitutes an enormously wrong view and an extremely grave, evil karma.

“Furthermore, Śāriputra, from the wrong view of decrease, these sentient beings derive three more wrong views. These three views and the view of decrease, like a net, are inseparable from each other. What are these three views? They are (1) the view of cessation, which means the ultimate end; (2) the view of extinction, which is equated to nirvāṇa; (3) the view that nirvāṇa is a void, which means that nirvāṇa is the ultimate quiet nothingness. Śāriputra, in this way these three views fetter, hold, and impress [sentient beings].

Which, of course, raises the question of the manner of a Buddha's existence in the 'deathless realm' - a question which cannot be answered from within the frame of reference of sentient beings.

"eternal life belongs to those who live in the present" — 180 Proof

Taking into account one's entanglement with actions that are to have future consequences. In other words, living fully in the present would imply the ending of all such ties - holding no hopes, no regrets, fully reconciled in the moment.

Perhaps. But since you and I are still alive, we cannot yet know, with complete certainty, if it belongs in your ontological spitoon, can we?

Upon my death, I would not merely encounter in heaven only those persons who died before me, but I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who I thought I was leaving behind, and I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who would be my future descendants.

Any comments about this? — charles ferraro

I have no belief in an afterlife and I find the idea incoherent. Death holds no fascination for me and the idea of eternity is meaningless. I consider that before I was born I was effectively 'dead' for 'eternity'.

Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity - and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.

Nietzsche

Technically, you're correct.

"Complete certainty" only pertains to formal systems and not to matter of facts or predictions therefrom. There is not any objective evidence that warrants belief that there is an "afterlife" (i.e. survival of personality – metacognitive self-continuity – after irreversible brain-death). Yeah, high improbability ain't "complete certainty", but it'll do until complete certainty (my death) gets here. :death: :flower:

:up: You're on target 180 Proof. The thing is there's no strong evidence the other way round too i.e. we don't have any strong justification to say that we don't survive physical death. This, to me, is the crux of the issue and explains why the belief in an afterlife is so persistent. True there's denial, hope, fear mixed in there as well, but the nub of it is that we really don't know, oui?

We know enough – people die and they are no longer communicable-participants in our lives, or the commons. Thus, the affirmative claim that "the dead survive" bears the burden of proof, and not the other way around. False equivalence, Smith.

There is not any objective evidence that warrants belief that there is an "afterlife" ( — 180 Proof

Neither is there that warrants there is none.

Non sequitur. Apparently, you don't understand my last post or haven't read it.

I read it indeed after I posted. Why should the burden be on the afterliver? And what about the proof of theoretical induction, pointing merciless to infinite replay mechanisms?

Why should the burden be on the afterliver? — Haglund

Because the burden of proof falls both on the positive claim and on the extraordinary claim which is contrary to ordinary experience and facticity. One is born, one lives, one dies. On what grounds do you claim more than that? How do you know this? Or why believe it if you don't know? What's your evidence? :chin:

Taking into account one's entanglement with actions that are to have future consequences. In other words, living fully in the present would imply the ending of all such ties - holding no hopes, no regrets, fully reconciled in the moment. — Wayfarer

That's the spirit!

Why should the burden be on the afterliver?
— Haglund
Because the burden of proof falls both on the positive claim and on the extraordinary claim which is contrary to ordinary experience and facticity. — 180 Proof

So the burden of proof lays on the believer because it lays on the believer? Why should they proof it in the first place? If they could, it wouldn't be a belief anymore. Of course it could be a fantasy then, but isn't the big bang a fantasy too then? How you wanna proof the big bang?

Oh man, you're "trying" way too hard ... :lol:

Oh man, you're "trying" way too hard ... — 180 Proof

"Try" what?

:rofl:

The laughter of despair?

:up: