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lapcat 3 hours ago

> I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife.

I feel that eternity in Heaven would actually be Hell, because nothing would matter. No danger, no failure, no challenge, no goals, no purpose. What gives life meaning are mortality, limitations, beginnings and endings, progress.

I recently watched the film "Eternity" on Apple TV, starring Elizabeth Olsen, in which everyone after they die has to choose their own form of afterlife and then stick with it forever. All I could think about was how bored I would eventually get. (The film itself was pretty good, not boring. That's because it had an ending!)

Fiction is ideal for playing out these scenarios. Think also of the film "Highlander", in which the ultimate "prize" of the immortals turns out to be mortality. MacLeod's life had become repetitive, and he couldn't fully invest in it, because he kept losing everyone he loved. They grew old and died, while he lived on and had to keep changing identities. For a while it's a grand adventure... until it isn't anymore.

I can certainly understand wanting to live longer, but eternity is unimaginably long, way too long. I don't think that's something to be desired.

card_zero 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Problems, yes. "Biology is going to kill me soon" shouldn't have to be one of those problems, and in fact I think it makes us all slightly crazy in different ways, from not caring about the future to unscrupulously believing in afterlives.

lapcat 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I suspect you indended to reply to the sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47827905 which contains the word "problems" rather than my comment which does not?

card_zero 3 hours ago | parent [-]

No, I was disputing "mortality" while agreeing with "challenges", which I've written as problems in the nice sense of "please let me finish my problem". That's some historical figure's alleged last words, I think.

(Edit: probably an embellishment of Archimedes, supposedly saying to the Roman soldier who killed him, "do not disturb my circles!" - not exactly a plaintive attitude about mortality, more just being a grumpy geometrist.)