steve (04/04/83)
One of the major claims of the Christian religion that is continually trumpetted goes something like "Whosoever believes in me shall not perish but shall have eternal life". Now aside from the very natural fear that any living being has of death, and the comfort that knowing that your death is merely a transition to another place where you pick up and continue; consider this: After 5 or 10 million years of existence, wouldn't boredom convert ANY immortality (regardless of where) into a very real Hell? So, let's hypothesize that the second coming is in about 17 more years, and the universe is ended at that time. Then the total population of heaven and hell combined would be on the order of 10 billion individuals. What forms of intellectual entertainment do these disembodied souls use to keep themselves going? Well, I suppose you could become friends with every one of those 10 billion individuals. If you spent a year talking to each (and remember - angels don't sleep - these are 24 hour days) then you have used up your first 10 billion years of immortality. Perhaps of those 10 billion individuals 10% are interesting enough to spend another 100 years each with. This is another 100 billion years. Great - now you have used up 110 billion years. Then there is a complete search of the history of the universe and its mechanical activity - say another billion years or so. By now you really have trouble - 111 billion years of experience. One must hope that angels have better memories than us poor humans - otherwise when Joe from India the 4,273,198,332nd person you talked to in your quest to meet and talk to every soul who ever lived walks up to you and says "Hi" you might not remember him too well. These time spans may seem preposterous, but remember: "eternity" means "infinite time". You have just survived 111 billion years. What are you going to do for the next 400 billion? Play Mah Jong? What about the 700 billion after that? Just a drop in the bucket of time... I think that an eternal life is possibly the most undesireable fate I can conceive of. I think that perhaps that length of the life I can expect may not be long enough (though I am not sure) - 80 years seems too short - but I don't think I would want to live more than 200 or so. At the end of that time I think that to die and go to oblivion would be a great relief. ---------------------------- Despite the facetious sound of the above discussion, I think I have a reasonable question: Why is eternal life considered a blessing? Steve Den Beste Tektronix Logic Analyzers [decvax|ucbvax]!teklabs!tekmdp!dadla!dadla-a!steve