Late Night Philosophy

Heaven and Hell

 (This entry was edited by synthetic on 04-03-01 @ 4:15 pm EDT)

Even though I am a nihilist and I only really beleive in God being the creator of the universe, not the loving God of Christianity, I was born a Christian. This really bothers me becasue I'm having to fight against the beleifs that were ingrained in me at an early age. Specifically, Heaven and Hell.

As it stands, I'd like to beleive that when we die, we get some kind of reward or eternal life or something. I'd like to think that I would go to "Heaven" and meet the Creator and get all my questions answered. On the other hand, I could be judged "evil" and sent to Hell to suffer. I really would like to belive in an afterlife, but, let's face it, if I'm right, God doesn't care and there is no Satan, Hell, or demons, or angels (at least not in the traditional sense). If Heaven did exist, that would imply that God cares enough about life and consciousness in general to create a place for the dead. Also, afterlife implies that consciousness is independant of the human body and does not exist solely in our brains.

Assuming that I am right and that the Creator does not prefer humanity (as religious-types would preach, but consciousness is more than the sum of our brains, than there may be some sort of "afterlife" whether it be just a bodiless entity that is free of physical contraints and can wander the universe at ease (basically a completely free soul) or a passage into another "space" (Heaven, Hell, Nirvana, etc) or be reincarnated into new body (terrestrial or not; derived from Hindu and Buddhist beleifs).

The biggest complication to this is that I don't belive that humanity is ready or even deserving of an afterlife of complete freedom and knowledge. I mean, as it stands, the average human uses less than 10% of its brain. To me, that means that there is a LOT of room for improvement. I beleive that there is probably some sort of threshold of transcendance whereby, at that point, we are free to discard our bodies and our minds and souls can exist freely. As it stands, I don't think our souls, if they were freed (as in death), would be able to exist for very long outside the body before perishing to unknown forces. That theory does include the idea of reincarnation; as one soul moves from body to body in an effort to stay "alive", but it does raise the question of new souls.

The point is, souls or not, humanity is not developed enough to transcend in its current form.

The idea of death and the afterlife inspired one of the key beleifs of Creation Nihilism. It is that I will never commit suicide or allow anyone to kill me. Of course, the thought of suicide would never cross the minds of most people, but for me depression and thoughts of suicide are a constant struggle. Creation Nihilism is not an easy path to follow. It is, by nature, a depressing and self-destructive belief system. But I beleive that I have expanded my mind through my faith, if it can be called faith.

You see, there are two possible results of death. The first is that my mind does not undergo any transcendance and I simply cease to exist. This is a very likely possibility for the above reasons and it would verify my theory that God is not too concerned about our species (or any other for that matter). Of course, being dead I don't think that I'd care too much, but, because nothing matters, I'm not too concerned about weather or not I care. The second possibility is that there is some sort of afterlife where I can learn and explore without any boundaries of understanding. I would like to beleive that the second will occur and that I will finally be able to understand the universe more fully than I can right now.