I don't know what I would do since I have no idea what it would be like as I said! I only tried to compare that Heaven with other religious Heavens and try to find where the differences lie"¦ so far, the technological heaven at least seems to be plausible in the far-off future, whilst religious heavens remains a pipe dream.. forever.

No, the comparison you made was what I had told you before - a ten-year-old's version of the Christian afterlife versus a teenage Muslim's version of heaven with The Matrix thrown in to spice it up.

The technological heaven seems plausible and desirable to you even though you've admitted you have no idea what it's going to be like. That is quite a bit of faith you have on display there.

If the current people I interact with in our current virtual worlds are any indication of what the Kurzweilian future is going to be like, I feel safe in saying that you are headed blindly (but very cheerfully) toward a precipice.

What do you mean we transcended the apes? If you observe human behavior on a daily basis, I think that not only did we not transcend anything, we're lagging behind! Did you see the movie Idiocracy? Sometimes I feel that's the world we're living in.

No, I didn't see the movie you're talking about. I don't watch fictional movies for deep insight into humanity; that seems rather silly.

If you don't think we transcended the apes, then you should never have problems with injustice and unfairness - you should not be able to detect them.

There is no such thing as justice and fairness in the non-human world. The strong dominate and/or eliminate the weak, and this is the way it has been for billions upon billions of years. Apes don't even have an inkling of what is "fair" or "right" or "decent", because these "things" simply don't exist.

They exist as much as a Big Daddy in the Sky exists. They are simply little neurons firing off in a particular spot in a deranged monkey brain, just like religion.

So when a hairless ape gets angry at a non-existent entity for failing to have a non-existent quality, that ape must be quite off in the head.

Yeah, but most theists & atheists either argue for that "bearded guy in the sky" or refute the arguments as implausible - we are the minority.

Can't we put this sheer crap to bed once and for all?:roll:

I'm a lifelong Catholic from a family of lifelong Catholics on both sides. Not one of my relatives regards God as a guy in the sky with a beard. As a small boy, I was taught that God is 'pure Spirit' and physically invisible. I was also taught that the Incarnation was a big deal for that very reason: God loved us so much that his eternal Word "took flesh and lived among us", died for our sins, giving his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the supreme act of self-sacrificing love, an act that is made sacramentally present in the Mass. In other words, the astonishing thing about God is precisely that he became human for our salvation. He didn't have a beard as God, but (probably?) had one in Christ's human body.

Credo in unum Deum Patrem omnipotentem; factorum coeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.

Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri; per quem omnia facta sunt; qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis, et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria virgine, et homo factus est; crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est; et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas…

I've also known quite a few Anglicans, evangelical Protestants, and some Jews both in Britain and California, plus a few Muslims. Not one of them regards God as a guy in the sky with a beard.

The following are excerpts from Merriam Webster, Wiki, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

1 capitalized: the supreme or ultimate reality: as a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe

b Christian Science : the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit

: infinite Mind

God most commonly refers to the deity worshipped by followers of monotheistic and monolatrist religions, whom they believe to be the creator and ruler of the universe.[1]

Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the various conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. God has also been conceived as being incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent".[1] These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers, including Augustine of Hippo,[2] Al-Ghazali,[3] and Maimonides.[2]

Theism is the view that God is unlimited with regard to knowledge (omniscience), power (omnipotence), extension (omnipresence), and moral perfection; and is the creator and sustainer of the universe.

3. Divine Attributes

Classical theism is found in the Greeks since Plato; in the Judaism of Philo, Maimonides, and others; in Christian orthodoxy generally, and in Islam as early as al-Kindi. Discussions of God in classical theism have centered on a number of specific attributes. The working assumption from the Greeks onward has been that God is the most perfect possible being…

a. Incorporeality

Incorporeality. God has no body (from Latin, incorporale), or is non-physical. This is a central tenet of monotheistic religions, which insist that any references to God's eyes, ears, mind, and the like are anthropomorphic. Christian belief in the incarnation is a unique case in which God takes on human form in Christ.

While some regard God's incorporeality as true analytically (that is, true by the very definition of the word "God"), others derive it from one or more other attributes. Accordingly, God cannot be corporeal because that would preclude his being eternal, immutable, and simple, for example. Furthermore, if God were corporeal and omnipresent, it would seem that all physical things would be part of God. Others derive divine incorporeality from an apparent incorporeal element of human nature, termed the soul or spirit.

b. Simplicity

Simplicity. God has no parts or real distinctions. The neo-Platonist Plotinus regarded God as therefore characterless, but Christianity generally recognizes the legitimacy of talk of attributes. For Aquinas, to be simple God must be (among other things) incorporeal as well as identical to his nature, not a member of a class that shares a common nature. Aquinas said that God has the perfections we ascribe to him, but that they exist in him in an incomprehensible unity such that we cannot understand the reality behind our statements. When we ascribe goodness to God, goodness does not mean exactly what it does when we ascribe it to a creature (univocal meaning), nor does it mean something entirely different (eqivocal meaning). Its meaning is analogical: in some sense the same and in some sense different. Maimonides insisted on equivocal meaning only, with the result that negative attributes alone can be ascribed to God. Yet he recognized that even negative attribution gives some understanding of the divine being. In Islam, most philosophers (such as al-Farabi) accepted divine simplicity, whereas most theologians rejected it. Some used it to reject the Trinity. Augustine had recognized a potential conflict between simplicity and the Trinity, but believed the resolution lay in proper understanding of the Trinity.

c. Unity

Unity. Monotheism maintains that there is one God. To this Christianity adds that there is a threefold distinction within one God. Stated roughly, God is one substance in three persons. Aquinas argued that there cannot be two gods because neither would be absolutely perfect since one would have a quality that the other lacked (Summa Theologica Ia, 11, 3). Richard Swinburne says that theism is a simpler hypothesis than polytheism, the latter positing more beings with various capabilities and relations. Theism is therefore more likely since simpler hypotheses turn out to be true more often. Moreover, the universe exhibits a unity, in its universal natural laws for example. This unity argues for one deity as its originator (The Existence of God, 1991, pp. 141-2).

d. Eternity

Eternity. Biblical authors spoke of God remembering the past, knowing the future, and acting in the present. According to early Christian thought, God exists forever, without beginning or end. For him events are past, present, and future. Later Christian thought, under the influence of Platonism it is said, held that God exists not inside time, but outside it. God is atemporal in that for him everything is simultaneous, there being no past, present, or future. This later view was held by Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas; and classically expressed by Boethius, "Eternity is the complete and total possession of unending life all at once" (Consolation of Philosophy, V, vi). Boethius regarded a timeless being as superior because it does not lack a past and future; its entire existence is in a timeless present.
In modern times the timeless view has been defended by E. L. Mascall, Norman Kretzmann, Eleanor Stump, Paul Helm, and Brian Leftow. Arguments in favor include: it makes God more transcendent, it simplifies foreknowledge, it proposes the same divine relationship to time as to space–God is outside it; furthermore it allows for the creation of time along with matter. Arguments for the earlier view, that God is eternal but exists within time, include: personhood requires existence in time because only in time can there be intending, acting, knowing, remembering, and the like; it is difficult to explain how a timeless God can know or respond to events; and the notion of timeless eternity is incoherent.

e. Immutability

Immutability. Those who accept the view that God is outside time are able to argue that God cannot change because any change would have to take place inside time. The view that God is an absolutely perfect being can also lead to the conclusion that he cannot change: if he is perfect he could change neither for the better nor for the worse. Simplicity can be grounds for accepting divine immutability since the only things subject to change are things with parts. Immutability has been taken in a strong sense to mean that if a predicate p applies to God at any time then it must apply at every time. But this is so broad that it brings into the discussion of immutability things that, while changing, are in no way changing within God. For example, "Smith believes in God" could be false yesterday and true today, yet nothing within God has changed. God is immutable in a weaker and less problematic sense if it is required only that he does not change in his character and purpose. The weaker sense fits well with the view that God exists in time, since he could be considered immutable yet begin an action, forgive a person, and so on. Thus, predicates like, "God is protecting r from harm" could be the case at one time but not another and God would still be immutable. The stronger sense of immutability fits well with a God outside of time.

f. Omnipotence

Omnipotence. The claim that God can do anything has been the subject of a number of qualifications. First, many affirm the biblical view that God cannot do what is morally contrary to his nature. Similar to Anselm (Proslogion 7), Aquinas says that God cannot sin because he is omnipotent, since sin is a falling short of perfection (Summa Theologica, Ia.25.3). Nelson Pike says that it is logically possible for God to sin but he would not do what is against his nature. Aquinas also says that God cannot do other things that corporeal beings can do. And, he cannot do what is logically impossible, such as make a square circle. Descartes is one of the few to hold the contrary view, that the laws of mathematics and logic are subject to the will of God (Descartes' Conversation with Burman, 22, 90). Perhaps the most significant challenge to omnipotence involves the existence of evil. It seems evil would not exist if God is both good and omnipotent. Process theology denies omnipotence, Christian Science denies the ultimate reality of evil, and some post-Holocaust thinking seems to question the goodness of God. Augustine defends the orthodox Christian concept of God on grounds that he did what was good in creating free beings yet they used their freedom to do evil. Some suffering is the just consequence of sin. Furthermore, where evil is a lack of good we cannot ask why God created it since it is merely the absence of something. Aquinas, Leibniz and others recognize that some good things exist only in the presence of certain types of evil. For example, forgiveness exists only where there is sin. In the light of these secondary goods, Leibniz argues that out of all the possible worlds God created the one with the best possible balance of good and evil. Some thinkers appeal to a future life to settle apparent discrepancies in the balance of good over evil. God's future blessing, it is said, can more than make up for suffering in this world. William Alston develops the idea that as limited beings we are incapable of discerning-and therefore questioning-whether God has sufficient reasons for allowing the evil that exists.

g. Omniscience

Omniscience. While a few like Avicenna and Averroes seem to have held that a God who lacks certain types of knowledge would be more perfect, most have claimed that God knows everything. This is sometimes refined, for example, to the claim that God knows everything that is logically possible to know. An area of concern going back to Aristotle (On Interpretation 9) is the claim that propositions about future contingent events (i.e., those whose causes are not determined by past events) have no truth value. If so they are unknowable, even by an omniscient being (a view held in modern times by so called Open Theism). Some have claimed that even if future events have a truth value, they are logically unknowable. Of special concern is the relationship between omniscience and human free will: if yesterday God knew infallibly that I would do x today, it seems I have no alternative but to do x today–a conclusion that seems to violate free will. To solve this, Boethius and Aquinas appealed to the concept of God's timelessness, which entails that none of God's knowledge is past or future. Aquinas also said that God determines all events and determines that they will be done freely. De Molina objected that this amounts to removing free will. He constructed his own view, which said that God's knowledge is logically prior to his decree of what will be. God knows what an individual will do in all possible circumstances (a capacity called middle knowledge), and he decrees those circumstances in which a person freely cooperates with the divine plan. Thus foreknowledge is compatible with free will. Others have conceded that foreknowledge is incompatible with free will but claim that God voluntarily limits his knowledge of future events so that there can still be freedom. This makes omniscience a matter of having an ability to know rather than having specific knowledge. Another solution to the problem of omniscience and freedom challenges the idea that God's knowledge limits future free actions in any way. While God knows necessarily that I will do x tomorrow that does not entail that it is necessary I do x. What God knows is what I will freely choose to do. So God knows today that I will do x tomorrow because tomorrow I will freely choose to do x. But if tomorrow I choose to do y, then today God knows that tomorrow I will do y. This view is consistent with what we know about less than infallible knowledge of future events. I may know that a person will choose steak over bologna though I in no way influenced their choice. [This is roughly the Molinist account that I favor----stunney]

h. Impassibility

Impassibility. Various views have been held as to whether God can be affected by outside influences. Because Aristotle regarded change as inconsistent with perfection, he concluded that God could not be affected by anything outside himself. Furthermore, God engages not in feeling, but thinking, and he himself is the object of his contemplation. God is thus unaffected by the world in any way. The Stoics ruled out divine passibility because they regarded imperturbability as a virtue, and God must be the supreme example of it. John of Damascus agreed that God is imperturbable, but stressed it is because he is sovereign, not because he is uncaring. Aquinas accepted Aristotle's view that God cannot change and is impassible. He can act, but nothing can act upon him. So emotions that proceed from God, such as love and joy, are in God; but other emotions such as anger and sadness can be ascribed to him only metaphorically. Early, medieval, and Reformation Christianity generally affirmed that because God could not suffer, Christ suffered in his humanity but not in his divine nature. However, the idea that God is unaffected by the world is being rethought in modern times. Moltmann, who was for a time a German prisoner of war, and Kitamori, a Japanese thinker, both witnessed World War II and its aftermath. They concluded that God must be moved by suffering. Richard Creel defends impassibility as being uncontrolled by outside influences. He says, among other things, that: God has emotions but they are not controlled by anything outside himself, he takes into account the ultimate good that will come from suffering, suffering does not make love more admirable, a God who suffers would be more appropriately an object of pity than of worship, justice does not require passibility because it need not be based on emotion; and omniscience does not require passibility because God need know only that a person has an emotion, he does not need to experience it. A mediating position would allow emotion in God but not control of him in any way by creatures. God would be affected by the world but only in the way and to the extent he allows.

i. Goodness

Goodness. Whereas classical Greek religion ascribed to the gods very human foibles, theism from Plato onward has affirmed that God is purely good and could not be the author of anything evil (Republic). In Judaism divine goodness is thought to be manifested especially in the giving of the law (Torah). In Islam it is thought to be manifested in divine revelation of truth through the prophets, especially as revealed in the Qur'an. And in Christianity it is manifested in the gracious granting of Christ as the way of salvation. While goodness encompasses all moral perfection (e.g., truth telling, justice), benevolence is that particular aspect of goodness that wills the benefit of another. The Reformers, and Protestantism generally, stressed that God's desire for the benefit of creatures is dependent not on their merits but purely on divine love. Divine love is not only irrespective of merit but it is shown most clearly where it is entirely unmerited, as in grace shown to fallen humanity. Therefore divine forgiveness and redemption are taken as the highest expressions of benevolence. Benevolence intersects with omnipotence in providence, wherein God orders events for good ends. It also raises the possibility of a clash between the divine and human wills, as when a person spurns God's action in the world.

Divine goodness raises the question of whether God wills x because it is good, or x is good because God wills it. The former seems to weaken divine sovereignty, but the latter seems to make goodness arbitrary. The arbitrariness may be somewhat relieved if God's will is understood as bounded by his unchanging character. God would not, for example, decide to make torturing for enjoyment right since his nature forever condemns it. The issue has implications for divine command ethics, according to which acts are right or wrong because God commands or forbids them (as opposed to, for example, a competing view that acts are right or wrong according to whether they promote the greatest happiness).

As to our knowledge of divine goodness, Aquinas separates the order of being from the order of knowing: all goodness derives from God but we understand divine goodness by extrapolating from the goodness of creatures. For Aquinas, this requires an analogical (as opposed to an equivocal) relationship between divine and human goodness. For Kant, divine goodness is known as a postulate of pure practical reason: God must be there to reward virtue and punish evil.

The greatest challenge to belief in divine goodness has been the fact that evil exists, or more recently, the amount and type of evil rather than the mere fact of it. The problem is lessened if it is acknowledged that divine goodness does not require that each creature always be made to experience as much happiness as it is capable of experiencing. Reasons may include, for example, that: it is impossible that all creatures collectively experience maximal happiness (e.g., because the maximal happiness of one precludes the maximal happiness of another), or that there is some higher good than the happiness of all creatures (e.g., John Hick's view that maturity is that higher good, and acquiring it may entail some displeasure), or that some forms of good are manifested only when certain types of evil exist (for example, forgiveness requires wrongdoing; mentioned in "6," above); or because God's favor is undeserved and not given in response to merit, it cannot be owed and God cannot be faulted for not giving it.

[Emphases added]

I would add only that it is very useful to learn a bit about what Jewish and Muslim philosophers and theologians, both classical and modern, say about the concept of God. There's a wealth of insight and acumen to be found in their ranks, and as I move into early retirement due to my MS, I look forward to exploring their thinking about theism.

The comment and the entire thread (and several that were linked in relation to it) was interesting, thank you! I found the arguments about what constitutes an individual identity under materialism to be particularly fun. And it relates to my problem with some transhumanist dreams - an immortal copy of myself that necessitates the original (me) dying isn't me achieving immortality. Though my copy may be grateful.

dimasok,

Yeah, but most theists & atheists either argue for that "bearded guy in the sky" or refute the arguments as implausible - we are the minority.

I don't see this so much - generally by the time they're arguing, theists are employing more considered concepts of God than that. But I think we agree on enough here to just skip this, at least in this thread.

Indeed so. But, again, that depends on the nature of consciousness and the problem with some transhumanists is that they're so god damn sure that our particular type of consciousness can be safely transposed to other non-biological mediums that it's bordering on fanaticism. I'm still waiting to hear about the true nature of consciousness and after that get my hopes up"¦ it's too early"¦

It's not too early to have high hopes, IMO. Just too early to be specific about it. If it happens within my lifetime, wonderful. If it happens after my lifetime, the dead are nothing if not patient.

you might find this comment of interest.

Or not, as the case may be.

Oblivion would seem to be a fate preferable to billions upon billions of years of repetitive eating, drinking, and being merry. Many here on this very planet have found their short little lives too long to bear even when they practically had every monkeyish desire met.

To give people immortality on such terms would be as hellish as anything Dante wrote.

One of my favorite songs is Heaven by Talking Heads, which you can listen to at the link.

Here are the lyrics:

Everyone is trying to get to the bar.
The name of the bar, the bar is called heaven.
The band in heaven plays my favorite song.
They play it once again, they play it all night long.

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

There is a party, everyone is there.
Everyone will leave at exactly the same time.
Its hard to imagine that nothing at all
Could be so exciting, and so much fun.

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

When this kiss is over it will start again.
It will not be any different, it will be exactly
The same.
Its hard to imagine that nothing at all
Could be so exciting, could be so much fun.

Heaven is a place where nothing every happens.
Heaven is a place where nothing every happens.

David Byrne is a genius. He's also a native of Scotland. Though admittedly that fact alone may not in itself explain his genius.:wink:

Smells like a copout. I've noticed that questions become very inconvenient to you when you don't like the answers to them.

The reason why it seems so is because you ask me questions that no one knows an answer to.. Hell, I don't know what I would do with a billion dollars now! I have a pretty good idea, but nothing definitive. How am I supposed to know what i'll do given my abilities, which are by the way not conclusive anyway at this stage? I'd probably construct my perfect virtual world that would be just like this one but with the elements I want and live like that… isn't that enough? I think that's better than living with God in heaven.. what would I do there?

I had asked you what would you do for eternity in Ray's Heaven. Your response is to construct a strawman version of the Christian Heaven, beat it up a little, and then (in a somewhat guilty fashion) confess that your idea of Ray's Heaven is the same as the Muslim terrorist's idea of Allah's Big Bordello in the Sky.

I don't know what I would do since I have no idea what it would be like as I said! I only tried to compare that Heaven with other religious Heavens and try to find where the differences lie… so far, the technological heaven at least seems to be plausible in the far-off future, whilst religious heavens remains a pipe dream.. forever.

I didn't say it was bad to have monkey desires. It's especially good if you're a monkey. The problem is, we're not monkeys. We may have monkey DNA, we may have had monkey ancestors, but at a point in very recent geological time, we transcended the apes.

What do you mean we transcended the apes? If you observe human behavior on a daily basis, I think that not only did we not transcend anything, we're lagging behind! Did you see the movie Idiocracy? Sometimes I feel that's the world we're living in.

There's something we humans need in much larger quantities than other animals, even apes - novelty. Given the extremely finite desires of the monkey brain versus the vastness of infinite time (or even the almost unimaginable finite number of years our universe has left), we would soon deplete novelty.

That's a very bold statement. Given an infinite time, perhaps there is no novelty to be depleted? Perhaps it will always remain an inexhaustible reservoir? If not, well then, 2000-3000 years would be just fine for me at the very least.

Oblivion would seem to be a fate preferable to billions upon billions of years of repetitive eating, drinking, and being merry. Many here on this very planet have found their short little lives too long to bear even when they practically had every monkeyish desire met.

Do you think that that's all we'd do if we manage to live that long? How about the novelty you talked about above? Even if we deplete it, wouldn't it be unimaginably more multi-faceted in the first few thousands/millions of years? Besides, maybe other creatures from other dimensions are so much beyond our desires just like you think we are beyond the desires of monkeys? Who knows, the universe is a strange place…

The people who kill themselves usually do it out of depression… I was haunted by suicidal feelings a lot and yet, after they passed, I kept enjoying life as I always did and never wanted it to end. What it points towards is not that our eventual lot is infinite boredom, but that boredom itself & misery should be cured using the tools of tranhumanism… there's a book I read that inspired me with that thought:
http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic...

I don't fully grasp what you're saying here. I'm guessing you're saying that everyone can't really desire anything beyond what monkeys desire, because they're descended from monkeys.

This may be true for you and the people you know. I don't happen to agree.

Fair enough. What desires would you ascribe to?

See my earlier response about oblivion being preferable to eternal (or near-eternal) boredom.

That reminds me of my two favorite pessimistic philosophers: Arthur Schopenhauer & Emile Cioran:

A: "We can regard our life as a disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness"

E: "Ultimately, it is entirely a matter of indifference whether we are something, even if we are God. On this, with a little pressure, almost everyone might be brought to agree. But how does it happen then that everyone aspires to further life, to additional being, and that there is no one who strives to sink, to descend toward the ideal default?"

Well, if that's so, what good did it do for us to take this detour from the oblivion we had before the universe, before consciousness, before anything? Now when we're been tempted with life and it's infinite possibilities, wouldn't it be incredibly cruel to go back to oblivion? Also, do you wish for oblivion for humans or for the universe itself? What do you think is the difference between the oblivion that appears to follow the extinction of each individual consciousness and the eventual destruction of the universe itself? Is that the same kind of oblivion? I never got a good answer to that question and I wonder if you might poke at that randomly with some answer.

Besides, what is oblivion anyway? Even the state of universal default seems to be… unimaginably richer than the somethingness we've always had. I find it hard to buy the idea that there was ever true nothingness.. it seems as if anything can be generated at will "for free" and that nothingness is indeed the infinite omega computer out of which everything emerges…

Thank you, dimasok, for your willingness to be honest. I'm enjoying this discussion immensely.

Well, that's one reason why living is worthwhile

Right - similar themes, as I said. But the specifics vary considerably. Anyone can cold read "You believe in God? Why, I bet you also believe God is a good entity too, yes?" But that's not where the meat of the discussion is, just as 'Bearded guy who lives in the sky, watching, always watching' isn't the God that serious theists and theologians consider.

Yeah, but most theists & atheists either argue for that "bearded guy in the sky" or refute the arguments as implausible - we are the minority.

That's Chalmers' idea. But it's just an idea, a possibility, based on technology we're nowhere near yet, with people disagreeing about the viability (Searle comes to mind). I'm sure we'll make progress down the road, but it seems far too early to even consider discussing technical solutions. When even the philosophical question of what constitutes an individual consciousness is as up in the air as it is, all we can do is wait it out and hope/know a solution is coming.

I have to agree with that. I even had a tug once or twice with some transhumanists about the future technologies and the time-frames of their development & implementation. I'm more pessimistic than most of them are in that area.

et it take 1000^googleplex years. It'll seem instantaneous to me, unless the substance dualists are right and my consciousness has a serious base in a world other than this one. In which case, hey, problem also solved. I have faith in the future whatever the case, but I'm pretty skeptical of specifics.

Indeed so. But, again, that depends on the nature of consciousness and the problem with some transhumanists is that they're so god damn sure that our particular type of consciousness can be safely transposed to other non-biological mediums that it's bordering on fanaticism. I'm still waiting to hear about the true nature of consciousness and after that get my hopes up… it's too early…

wouldn't bet on it. I think I can pretty much count on my left hand the concepts various people entertain based on their preferred teachings. They include some sort of afterlife, God, and cogitations about the origin of the universe - the concepts of God are remarkably homogeneous across many minds and accessible even by cold-reading if one would desire to find them out.

Right - similar themes, as I said. But the specifics vary considerably. Anyone can cold read "You believe in God? Why, I bet you also believe God is a good entity too, yes?" But that's not where the meat of the discussion is, just as 'Bearded guy who lives in the sky, watching, always watching' isn't the God that serious theists and theologians consider.

There are many approaches to that. One of them includes,

That's Chalmers' idea. But it's just an idea, a possibility, based on technology we're nowhere near yet, with people disagreeing about the viability (Searle comes to mind). I'm sure we'll make progress down the road, but it seems far too early to even consider discussing technical solutions. When even the philosophical question of what constitutes an individual consciousness is as up in the air as it is, all we can do is wait it out and hope/know a solution is coming.

Indeed, the Omega Point postulated by Tipler might be capable of resurrecting everyone who had ever lived"¦ that's so far into the future though that it's rather insane to talk about though

Let it take 1000^googleplex years. It'll seem instantaneous to me, unless the substance dualists are right and my consciousness has a serious base in a world other than this one. In which case, hey, problem also solved. I have faith in the future whatever the case, but I'm pretty skeptical of specifics.

The afterlife of the various Arahamic religions doesn't seem to be much better. The idea that I am going to die only to drink tea with all the relatives I've never known on some white cloud with pearly gates and a golden picket fence, or face the eternal fires of hell is a pretty dumb reality to live in. To me, living in that way is really living inside of a very small, scary, intimidating box.

Besides, why is it bad to have monkey desires as long as most of them will get fulfilled? Can you imagine any other state of bliss better than that?

AFAICS, Heaven & Hell include the concept of very fragile souls being punished or rewarded for monkeyish behavior here on earth - makes even less sense. What desires would fall out of the monkey realm? Wouldn't the desire to be a God essentially represent an ultimate expression of super-monkeys mentality?

I had asked you what would you do for eternity in Ray's Heaven. Your response is to construct a strawman version of the Christian Heaven, beat it up a little, and then (in a somewhat guilty fashion) confess that your idea of Ray's Heaven is the same as the Muslim terrorist's idea of Allah's Big Bordello in the Sky.

I didn't say it was bad to have monkey desires. It's especially good if you're a monkey. The problem is, we're not monkeys. We may have monkey DNA, we may have had monkey ancestors, but at a point in very recent geological time, we transcended the apes.

There's something we humans need in much larger quantities than other animals, even apes - novelty. Given the extremely finite desires of the monkey brain versus the vastness of infinite time (or even the almost unimaginable finite number of years our universe has left), we would soon deplete novelty.

What then?

Oblivion would seem to be a fate preferable to billions upon billions of years of repetitive eating, drinking, and being merry. Many here on this very planet have found their short little lives too long to bear even when they practically had every monkeyish desire met.

To give people immortality on such terms would be as hellish as anything Dante wrote.

Unmonkeyish desires are incoherent since everyone, religious or not, has pretty much the same ones anyway.

I don't fully grasp what you're saying here. I'm guessing you're saying that everyone can't really desire anything beyond what monkeys desire, because they're descended from monkeys.

This may be true for you and the people you know. I don't happen to agree.

If we condone this life and the afterlife as outlets for monkeyish desires, then we almost sound like someone who thinks it would be better if there would be nothing instead of something (i.e. any universe of the possibilities in modal realism).

See my earlier response about oblivion being preferable to eternal (or near-eternal) boredom.

Thank you, dimasok, for your willingness to be honest. I'm enjoying this discussion immensely.