heaven- what is it? who believes in it? and why/why not?

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no offense, but you're making my brain hurt:+( ouch
let me see if i can right myself and make a little bit o' sense here- you would indeed "know it" in that, if your childhood sucks you surely would know it sucks, you would not believe it was all in your head [so to speak], even if it was, no matter what your previous life was about, no matter if you are aware of repeating anything. your perception of your childhood makes the world you live in. if you are living a sucky life in a sucky world, surely you are aware you are living a sucky life in a sucky world. a tautology or what?

That would be making a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we did turn our backs on each other and live in our own worlds - at the least we might have a huge population drop with a significant loss of quality in life just by loss of culture and productivity (our social skills would plummet, there might be no paradigm for social skills anymore, we'd be terrible with opposite sex so no almost no one could find a good partner nor be one themselves), or alternately we could have full collapse, or even fall prey to the next big religion to go back to kill-or-convert tactics, which could mean a proud move to some sort of theocratic totalitarianism or caliphate.

For better or worse our efforts with each other matter a lot. Even internal self development needs others for fuel, inspiration, etc.

Hate to be ironic but you seem to have a similar outlook on oblivion, I mean in oblivion you wouldn't know it but - you definitely indicate you'd rather pass on it.

What I'm happy about is that I have terrible experience behind me and even if I have some rough patches or even permanent singlehood with no kids ahead of me; anything's better than where I was, as I have far more mastery of my situation and a lot of what happened back then couldn't realistically happen again - I could say have a stroke or something that outwardly disabled me but I'd still have the psychological coping skills and self-knowledge to grapple with it. Pain is pain though, wiping memory clean and going back to it still doesn't change anything.

a self-fulfilling prophecy, yes. but think of it as a general world strike, a passive or non-violent resistance strike on the part of humanity, not all on purpose but due mostly to the flawed clockwork grinding to a halt on a flawed machine. god would have to pay attention, because with no reproducing humans to continue the grand illusion project, it would fail in a human lifetime. and if god is a merciful deity, then s/he would have to remold the human model and make it more humane/less contentious. [maybe?]. think of it as if god were FDR and he was trying to save the "capitalism" of his "national" earthly dominion, as it were. if you were god, then how hard could it possibly be to insert a powerful compassion/tolerance gene into all humans? a gene that would ameliorate "the thousand natural shocks flesh is heir-to."

on the flipside, what darwinian flaw could there be to this scheme? would it all lead to the same end no matter what any deity or devil could do? if i were god as FDR, i would at least "do something" in the hope that maybe one thing [out of many] would work.

Alternately if he doesn't exists - things happen and keep happening exactly as they should.

Or alternately, just looking at history, social groups have evolutionary strength as well. One of the most evolutionarily alpha groups right now in terms of purpose and drive are radical muslims. Whoever has the most thirst for power or the strongest religious message will take over a society that just stops working. So - it could be brutal despotism or theocracy, making the situation FAR worse than it would have been if we just kept a stiff upper lip.


Darwinism would mean that the thug with the biggest army or the most cut throat tactics would take power. Power vaccuums almost always lead to far worse situations rather than better.

We're not talking about the mature you going back and re-living your childhood. We're talking about you as a child living it over again. It wouldn't be any different than before. If it was, you wouldn't be living your childhood, you'd be living something else.

some assorted thoughts here-
bottom-class outcasts [lone wolfs] continue to exist, so there must be some darwinian reason for this, they fit-in somehow in a big-picture kind of way, even if they no longer interact with a pack [having been booted-out]. hermits like me [human lone-wolfs that won't have a world that wouldn't have them] continue to exist also. and if god doesn't exist, then what agency determines whether or not things are "happening exactly as they should"?


i thought [mistakenly?] darwinism [NOT "social" darwinism] was survival of the fittest [i.e., most well-suited or adapted for one's environment], and that the brutes are not always the most fit in this respect [t-rex, anybody?] - the big bullies might last for a while but they eventually are driven to kill each other off [or get killed-off from some external agency] and then leave the long-suffering planet to the lower forms, cockroaches, germs or whatever else comes along. maybe this is god's own passive "reset button". anyways, i can't help but feel that the earth [gaia] would see this situation as better, even if us among the living are scared. the meek shall inherit the earth, no matter whether or not folk like us jerk themselves up by their own bootstraps and keep a stiff upper lip and battle evil together. if one is being ignored by the world [best-case scenario for me] then it just doesn't matter if i keep my upper lip from quivering. it hurts nobody. we all can't be helpful to the race [by being social go-getters and "overachievers"] but at least we can do no harm. just my 2-cents-worth.

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nobody is totally worthless, they can always serve as a bad example.

I understand that perfectly clearly. The mature me says no, if it happened its too late for the child me to know any different - if that happened death erases all memory and that's it. Though, if my consciousness traveled, I still would redo everything twice.

The fatal error that I do see in my 'superstition' as such - there's no such thing as free will so there's no way to mess up a life, unless the universe would sling you back into it for eternity, nothing can change. I guess pragmatically speaking though - no, I really did want to kill myself through high school but as of now I want to be able to say I crossed the finish line, call it a pride thing. I know I know - when I'm dead it doesn't matter. It matters to me now.

I can tell you from experience: it's a blast.

About oblivion. I wouldn't mind it too much if it wasn't permanent. The permanent lack of consciousness is the bad part, not the lack of consciousness.

If I am me, and I go to oblivion, then the point were I reach oblivion, I cease to be me. If I do not exist I can't be hurt at the moment I don't exist. But at any moment I do exist, I can be hurt. But that is an option.

On options. I don't care who makes them or who picks from them, as long as they're there. I am incredibly scared of permanency. If there is no inverse to the operation, I avoid it until there is no other option. I don't believe in free will either, but that doesn't mean there are no options. Even if there was free will, I would resign my options to fate, but that is merely a convenience.

In short, oblivion would be a great vacation, as long as it didn't last forever.

I don't believe in stability, nor permanency, so I don't believe death is the end. I won't know the system until it happens, so I have no reason to dislike oblivion, but that's only because I believe it isn't forever. If you want to assume it is the END, then I would have to disagree with you, but If it's like vacation to you, would, say, 100,000 years of oblivion suffice?

i can't say that my own world is a blast, but it is rather like the difference between a vacation among the dutch tulip bulbs versus a tour of italy- the latter is NT life and the former is my life- as low-key and calming as i can make it.

There seems to be some difficulty in people comprehending that oblivion is not a resting place where one can re-energize. It is total non-existence. One does not appreciate oblivion as there is no one there to do any appreciating.I enjoy existing. That's all there is to it.

Who's not understanding that? You're view of it as the worst thing imaginable are vexing as well - you won't be imagining or sensing anything to know. Its not dark and terrible, its not a five star resort and spa - its dead neutral, complete and absolute nothingness. On a topic like wholly being imolated into oblivion and ceasing to exist in any way, shape or form, people will have different ideas of what that means to them in relation and perspective to their own lives. What it means after death is obvious, what it means to us here and now will very without us needing to have any ignorant conceptions of it - we're all talking about possible permanent oblivion.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 27 Feb 2010, 6:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was more talking about isolating yourself into a fantasy universe of your own design as a form of escapism.

that is a blast.

*manic laughter*

some folk are drawn to excitement, others to calm. if i were god the universe would be calm all over. there needs to be a new computer app called "sim universe." or for the more advanced users, 'sim metaverse." each user/demi creator would be free to make a 'verse full of exciting worlds or boring worlds, the best of all 'verses. a "blast" for you, succor for me.