The worse the afterlife is, the more similar people’s reactions will be to a world where there is no afterlife. In the limit, the afterlife is as bad as or worse than nonexistence and people would be as death-averse as they are now. Except that this is contrary to how people claim to think of the afterlife when they assert belief in it. The afterlife can’t be good enough to be comforting and still bad enough not to lead to any of the conclusions I described. And this includes being bad for reasons such as being like exile, being irreversible, etc.
And I already said that if there is a Hell (a selectively bad afterlife), many of these won’t apply, but the existence of Hell has its own problems.
The worse the afterlife is, the more similar people’s reactions will be to a world where there is no afterlife.
I’d phrase it as “the scarier the afterlife is, the more similar people’s reactions will be to a world where there is no afterlife.” The word “scarier” is important, because something can look scary but be harmless, or even beneficial.
And people’s reactions do not depend on what the afterlife is like; they depend on what people think about the afterlife.
And one of the scariest things to do is to jump into a complete unknown… even if you’re pretty sure it’ll be harmless, or even beneficial, jumping into a complete unknown from which there is no way back is still pretty scary...
But is jumping into a “complete unknown” which you think should be beneficial really going to get the same reaction as jumping into one that you believe to be harmful?
The worse the afterlife is, the more similar people’s reactions will be to a world where there is no afterlife. In the limit, the afterlife is as bad as or worse than nonexistence and people would be as death-averse as they are now. Except that this is contrary to how people claim to think of the afterlife when they assert belief in it. The afterlife can’t be good enough to be comforting and still bad enough not to lead to any of the conclusions I described. And this includes being bad for reasons such as being like exile, being irreversible, etc.
And I already said that if there is a Hell (a selectively bad afterlife), many of these won’t apply, but the existence of Hell has its own problems.
I’d phrase it as “the scarier the afterlife is, the more similar people’s reactions will be to a world where there is no afterlife.” The word “scarier” is important, because something can look scary but be harmless, or even beneficial.
And people’s reactions do not depend on what the afterlife is like; they depend on what people think about the afterlife.
And one of the scariest things to do is to jump into a complete unknown… even if you’re pretty sure it’ll be harmless, or even beneficial, jumping into a complete unknown from which there is no way back is still pretty scary...
But is jumping into a “complete unknown” which you think should be beneficial really going to get the same reaction as jumping into one that you believe to be harmful?
No, it should not.
The knowledge that there’s no return would make people wary about it, but they’d be a lot more wary if they thought it would be harmful.