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after life and desires


ask21771

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I have heard many time we create our own afterlife, that lead me to have the following questions

1. Do we get whatever we want

2. If we want a specific person be they real or "fictional" will they be there

3. What are the limits

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I have heard many time we create our own afterlife, that lead me to have the following questions

1. Do we get whatever we want

2. If we want a specific person be they real or "fictional" will they be there

3. What are the limits

I would say your questions bring out the problems in the idea.

Well said, Frank. Your response made me laugh out loud. Does it have to be a person? Can I have Foghorn Leghorn when I go to heaven? Because he always makes me laugh.

Edited by Beany
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i think the idea would be that, if it's entirely a construct of your own making, the people in it would be how you perceive them, and the limits would only be your own creativity.

I dunno that i agree with the concept, but that's how i've always seen it.

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I have heard many time we create our own afterlife, that lead me to have the following questions

1. Do we get whatever we want

2. If we want a specific person be they real or "fictional" will they be there

3. What are the limits

Don't worry. You'll find out soon enough.

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I have heard many time we create our own afterlife, that lead me to have the following questions

1. Do we get whatever we want

2. If we want a specific person be they real or "fictional" will they be there

3. What are the limits

1. No

2. No

3. You tell me....

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This is a popular SF and Fantasy genre theme, but I've never seen it developed with any rigor by a philosopher or a theologian.

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There is a scene in one of the Terry Pratchett novels where Death is busy escorting Nordic-type victims of a battle to a Valhalla-like place.

In another place Death is talking to a recently assassinated king and the king asks if he is now to take the long walk, and Death tells him no he is to become a ghost. He tells him he has unfinished business (after all, he was just murdered, and he has to see to it the usurper doesn't get away with it and his rightful heir gets the throne).

Heinlein uses this here and there too. One time he has Neitzsche in a closet throughout eternity.

Edited by Frank Merton
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There is a scene in one of the Terry Pratchett novels where Death is busy escorting Nordic-type victims of a battle to a Valhalla-like place.

In another place Death is talking to a recently assassinated king and the king asks if he is now to take the long walk, and Death tells him no he is to become a ghost. He tells him he has unfinished business (after all, he was just murdered, and he has to see to it the usurper doesn't get away with it and his rightful heir gets the throne).

Heinlein uses this here and there too. One time he has Neitzsche in a closet throughout eternity.

Sorry but what does this have to do with my questions

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It was a follow on to my earlier post that this theory is more SF and Fantasy than it is serious theology or philosophy.

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It's serious too me

That's fine. Do you have any references where the idea has been worked up with intellectual vigor or is it your own thoughts?
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I have heard many time we create our own afterlife, that lead me to have the following questions

1. Do we get whatever we want

2. If we want a specific person be they real or "fictional" will they be there

3. What are the limits

The afterlife you are asking about is specifically the Christian Heaven. In essentially every other mythology, heaven is the abode of the gods or equivalent celestial beings and not an afterlife destination for humans. Though there are places like the Elysian Fields that are a pleasant afterlife, the Christian Heaven is unique, in that it states that all righteous souls will abide with the Creator, and it's out of this system that your questions can have answers.

To the first: The answer is no, but only because what you want now won't be what you will want then, just like it's not what you'll want tomorrow or what you wanted yesterday. Imagine a place that exists without the concrete rules our reality and has (literally) God only knows what you could ever want. That said, it is a place that you will have a chance to create in your own image and to your desires.

I'll get to the methods in a second, but most people have heard the bit from John that, "my Father's house has many rooms... I go there to make a place for you." Think of creating your own Heaven and getting what you want as sort of decorating your individual room to your own tastes. Your room is a part of a much, much, much bigger house, but your space is yours and made for you.

To the second: Do not make the mistake to think that someone's status as fictional limits their existence in the slightest.

Every human soul, at its deepest core, bears a Divine Spark. This Spark was ignited when the Lord breathed the first breath from within Himself into the body of the first man to give him life. Coming directly from the Creator, it is made of the same stuff that exists outside of existence and is co-substantial with the Almighty Himself. What we inherit from this Spark is not only our free will, but the ability to create from nothing in a method similar to our Father's; creation by thought and word.

Dolphins can recognize individuals and communicate with them by name. Great apes can think in the abstract and feel a range of emotions comparable to humans. Certain hominids may have even had some idea of an afterlife, burying their dead with tools and grave goods. But put them all in a room together to collaborate for a few decades and I doubt that you'll come back to find them discussing the details of Westeros or Middle Earth or Pandora.

The human ability to create something purely in the abstract is a legacy unique to us, and one that's meant to be realized at the source of our strength in our Father's domain.

Finally, the limits: As soon as I find one, I'll let you know, but as far as I know, the current purview of human comprehension isn't expansive enough yet to find the limit of the place.

I think sometime around the point when our numbering of physical dimensions breaks into triple-digits, we might be able to see one from there, but I think the collective will of our species will always keep it elusive. I mean, I heard Minecraft currently has scaled playable space that's about three times the surface area of the earth, image what that would be like when you jump from, like, six game developers to the hundred or so billion humans that have existed so far.

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The afterlife you are asking about is specifically the Christian Heaven. In essentially every other mythology, heaven is the abode of the gods or equivalent celestial beings and not an afterlife destination for humans. Though there are places like the Elysian Fields that are a pleasant afterlife, the Christian Heaven is unique, in that it states that all righteous souls will abide with the Creator, and it's out of this system that your questions can have answers.

To the first: The answer is no, but only because what you want now won't be what you will want then, just like it's not what you'll want tomorrow or what you wanted yesterday. Imagine a place that exists without the concrete rules our reality and has (literally) God only knows what you could ever want. That said, it is a place that you will have a chance to create in your own image and to your desires.

I'll get to the methods in a second, but most people have heard the bit from John that, "my Father's house has many rooms... I go there to make a place for you." Think of creating your own Heaven and getting what you want as sort of decorating your individual room to your own tastes. Your room is a part of a much, much, much bigger house, but your space is yours and made for you.

To the second: Do not make the mistake to think that someone's status as fictional limits their existence in the slightest.

Every human soul, at its deepest core, bears a Divine Spark. This Spark was ignited when the Lord breathed the first breath from within Himself into the body of the first man to give him life. Coming directly from the Creator, it is made of the same stuff that exists outside of existence and is co-substantial with the Almighty Himself. What we inherit from this Spark is not only our free will, but the ability to create from nothing in a method similar to our Father's; creation by thought and word.

Dolphins can recognize individuals and communicate with them by name. Great apes can think in the abstract and feel a range of emotions comparable to humans. Certain hominids may have even had some idea of an afterlife, burying their dead with tools and grave goods. But put them all in a room together to collaborate for a few decades and I doubt that you'll come back to find them discussing the details of Westeros or Middle Earth or Pandora.

The human ability to create something purely in the abstract is a legacy unique to us, and one that's meant to be realized at the source of our strength in our Father's domain.

Finally, the limits: As soon as I find one, I'll let you know, but as far as I know, the current purview of human comprehension isn't expansive enough yet to find the limit of the place.

I think sometime around the point when our numbering of physical dimensions breaks into triple-digits, we might be able to see one from there, but I think the collective will of our species will always keep it elusive. I mean, I heard Minecraft currently has scaled playable space that's about three times the surface area of the earth, image what that would be like when you jump from, like, six game developers to the hundred or so billion humans that have existed so far.

I definently wouldn't use the term "Christian"

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The afterlife you are asking about is specifically the Christian Heaven. In essentially every other mythology, heaven is the abode of the gods or equivalent celestial beings and not an afterlife destination for humans. Though there are places like the Elysian Fields that are a pleasant afterlife, the Christian Heaven is unique, in that it states that all righteous souls will abide with the Creator, and it's out of this system that your questions can have answers.

To the first: The answer is no, but only because what you want now won't be what you will want then, just like it's not what you'll want tomorrow or what you wanted yesterday. Imagine a place that exists without the concrete rules our reality and has (literally) God only knows what you could ever want. That said, it is a place that you will have a chance to create in your own image and to your desires.

I'll get to the methods in a second, but most people have heard the bit from John that, "my Father's house has many rooms... I go there to make a place for you." Think of creating your own Heaven and getting what you want as sort of decorating your individual room to your own tastes. Your room is a part of a much, much, much bigger house, but your space is yours and made for you.

To the second: Do not make the mistake to think that someone's status as fictional limits their existence in the slightest.

Every human soul, at its deepest core, bears a Divine Spark. This Spark was ignited when the Lord breathed the first breath from within Himself into the body of the first man to give him life. Coming directly from the Creator, it is made of the same stuff that exists outside of existence and is co-substantial with the Almighty Himself. What we inherit from this Spark is not only our free will, but the ability to create from nothing in a method similar to our Father's; creation by thought and word.

Dolphins can recognize individuals and communicate with them by name. Great apes can think in the abstract and feel a range of emotions comparable to humans. Certain hominids may have even had some idea of an afterlife, burying their dead with tools and grave goods. But put them all in a room together to collaborate for a few decades and I doubt that you'll come back to find them discussing the details of Westeros or Middle Earth or Pandora.

The human ability to create something purely in the abstract is a legacy unique to us, and one that's meant to be realized at the source of our strength in our Father's domain.

Finally, the limits: As soon as I find one, I'll let you know, but as far as I know, the current purview of human comprehension isn't expansive enough yet to find the limit of the place.

I think sometime around the point when our numbering of physical dimensions breaks into triple-digits, we might be able to see one from there, but I think the collective will of our species will always keep it elusive. I mean, I heard Minecraft currently has scaled playable space that's about three times the surface area of the earth, image what that would be like when you jump from, like, six game developers to the hundred or so billion humans that have existed so far.

So can I be with the people I want to be with

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I have heard many time we create our own afterlife, that lead me to have the following questions

1. Do we get whatever we want

2. If we want a specific person be they real or "fictional" will they be there

3. What are the limits

The problem with this is what you are asking is undefinable, and I say that AS a Christian who believes in the afterlife. Simply put: we don't KNOW what the afterlife is going to look like; the Scriptures don't tell us that much. They just tell us that it exists and that it is part of our hope, part of our "confident expectation."

But you don't just have to take my point of view as a Christian. I study comparative religion also. Most sacred texts that you will read are rather vague as to their depictions of the afterlife; again, they simply say that it exists for the most part. The end goal of Buddhism is cessation of the "self" altogether. Hindus differ. Some are impersonalists that say we are absorbed into the greater divine reality, whereas personalists say you have a true, higher self that survives life after life. So once again, you simply can't define it.

Lastly I would caution you in seeking such things as a kind of prerequisite to theistic or religious belief. Yes, we all want the hope of an afterlife. Yes, we all want to see those we loved and have lost again. But this ultimately is NOT why we follow a particular religious path.

We follow a particular religious path because we seek to be in relationship with the divine reality or the transcendent. In short, a reward or perk of this path should not be confused with the goal.

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Harps and clouds seem to feature quite heavily, with a bunch of dudes sitting around singing about praising someone.

1. If you get what you want, you probably won't want it. So I would guess No.

2. If a fictional person is there they won't be fictional any more. So No.

3. Don't ask what the limits are. Why should there be limits? You have moved beyond time and space and entered eternity and infinity.

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I definently wouldn't use the term "Christian"

So can I be with the people I want to be with

Of course, many rooms, but the same house. You're not confined to a cosmic gerbil ball, the whole point of the place is to abide in the presence of the Almighty.

And I'm not sure I understand your meaning by about the term Christian, could you elaborate?

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Of course, many rooms, but the same house. You're not confined to a cosmic gerbil ball, the whole point of the place is to abide in the presence of the Almighty.

And I'm not sure I understand your meaning by about the term Christian, could you elaborate?

You said Christian heaven

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Yea that's kinda my image of Heaven -- a paradise where you do what you want when you want and need nothing. After a time though I imagine this would get tiresome. That is the problem with us -- we are never satisfied.

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You said Christian heaven

Yeah, as in the Christian belief in Heaven as a destination vis a vis a place inaccessible to humans as in every other world mythology.

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