I don’t see how an “afterlife” solves anything. If such a state exists, we have no reason to believe that it has to last forever, except through arbitrary doctrine. For all we know, the entities in the afterworld experience existential terror from the knowledge of their eventual oblivion, and they engage in terror management through anxiety buffers like religion, self-esteem and beliefs in their own exceptionalism. As H.L. Mencken asks in his book, “Treatise on the Gods,” do ghosts die and become higher-level ghosts?
Even in the christian context, I don’t see how “going to heaven” solves anything. What if you get to heaven, then you choose to rebel against god and become alienated from him again? How do you know that can’t happen, again apart from arbitrary doctrine? God doesn’t have to arrange his creation for your convenience; he doesn’t have to love you, give your life meaning and treat you fairly according to your lights. Perhaps god intends to screw you as part of his greater plan, and you just happened to draw the short straw.
I don’t see how an “afterlife” solves anything. If such a state exists, we have no reason to believe that it has to last forever, except through arbitrary doctrine. For all we know, the entities in the afterworld experience existential terror from the knowledge of their eventual oblivion, and they engage in terror management through anxiety buffers like religion, self-esteem and beliefs in their own exceptionalism. As H.L. Mencken asks in his book, “Treatise on the Gods,” do ghosts die and become higher-level ghosts?
Even in the christian context, I don’t see how “going to heaven” solves anything. What if you get to heaven, then you choose to rebel against god and become alienated from him again? How do you know that can’t happen, again apart from arbitrary doctrine? God doesn’t have to arrange his creation for your convenience; he doesn’t have to love you, give your life meaning and treat you fairly according to your lights. Perhaps god intends to screw you as part of his greater plan, and you just happened to draw the short straw.