{"id":8457,"date":"2013-10-01T16:48:06","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T16:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/10\/01\/conceiving-the-afterlife-life-20-or-beatific-vision-2\/"},"modified":"2013-10-01T16:48:06","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T16:48:06","slug":"conceiving-the-afterlife-life-20-or-beatific-vision-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/10\/01\/conceiving-the-afterlife-life-20-or-beatific-vision-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As
\nfar as I can tell, the popular Islamic conception of the afterlife is
\nunbelievably crass, a form of what might be called 'spiritual materialism.' Muslims
\nget to do there, in a quasi-physical hinterworld<\/span>, what they are forbidden to do
\nhere, for example, disport with virgins, in quantity and at length. And
\npresumably they are not wrapped up, head-to-foot, like the nuns of the 1950s.
\nYou can play the satyr with their nubility for all eternity without ever being
\nsated. But first you have to pilot some jumbo jets into some skyscrapers for the
\ngreater glory of Allah the Merciful.<\/span><\/p>\n

That the afterlife is a garden of sensuous
\ndelights, a world of goodies with none of the bad stuff endemic to our sublunary
\nsphere, strikes me as a puerile conception. It is a conception entertained not only
\nby<\/span> Muslims but also by
\nmany Christians. And even if many do not think of it in crassly hedonistic
\nterms, they think of it as a prolongation of the petty concerns of this life. 
\nThey think of it, in other words, as Life 2.0, an improved version of life here below.  This, however, is not what it is on a sophisticated
\nconception:<\/span><\/p>\n

 . . .
\nthe eternal life promised by Christianity is a new life into<\/span> which the Christian is reborn by a
\ndirect contact between his own<\/span> personality and the divine Spirit,
\nnot a prolongation of the<\/span> 'natural' life, with all its
\ninterests, into an indefinitely<\/span>  extended future. There must always be
\nsomething 'unworldly' in the<\/span> Christian's hopes for his destiny
\nafter death, as there must be<\/span>  something unworldly in his present
\nattitude to the life that now<\/span>  is. (A. E. Taylor, The Christian
\nHope for Immortality<\/em>, Macmillan<\/span> 1947, p. 64, emphasis in
\noriginal)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\nA. E. Taylor is no longer much read, but he is 'old school' in the depth of his erudition, unike most contemporary academics, and is thus well-worth reading. In the passage quoted he makes a penetrating observation: the true Christian is not only unworldly in this world, but also unworldly in his expectations of the next.  This by contrast with one who is worldly in this world and desires his worldliness prolonged into the next.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n\"Sinatra<\/a>The epitaph
\non Frank Sinatra's tombstone reads, "The best is yet to come." That may well be,
\nbut it won't be booze and broads, glitz and glamour, and the satisfaction of
\nworldly ambitions that were frustrated this side of the grave. So the believer
\nmust sincerely ask himself: would I really want eternal life?<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

At
\nfunerals one sometimes hears pious claptrap about the dearly departed going off to be with
\nthe Lord. In many<\/span> cases,
\nthis provokes a smile. Why should one who has spent his whole life on the make
\nbe eager to meet his Maker? Why the sudden interest in the Lord when, in the
\nbloom of life, one gave him no thought? If you have loved the things of this
\nworld as if they were ultimate realities, then perhaps you ought to hope that
\ndeath is annihilation.  Do you really desire direct contact with the divine Spirit?<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, it is the puerile conception
\nwith which some mortalists and atheists want to saddle sophisticated theists. (A
\nmortalist is not the same as an atheist, but most of the one are the other.)
\nBut is there a non-puerile, a sophisticated conception of the afterlife that a
\nthinking man could embrace? The whole trick, of   course, is to work out a
\nconception that is sophisticated but not unto <\/span>utter vacuity. This is a hard task, and I
\nam not quite up to it. But it is worth a try.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our opponents want to saddle us with
\npuerile conceptions: things on the order of irate lunar unicorns, celestial teapots<\/a>, flying spaghetti monsters, God as cosmic
\ncandy man, and so on; but when we protest that that is not what we believe in,
\nthen they accuse us of believing in something vacuous. They would saddle us with
\na dilemma: you either embrace some unbelievable because crassly materialistic
\nconception of God and the afterlife or you embrace nothing at all. I  explore
\nthis at length in Dennett on the Deformation of the God
\nConcept<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Self-professed mortalist and former Jesuit
\nPeter Heinegg writes, "It was and is impossible to conceive of an afterlife
\nexcept as an improved version of this life (harps, houris, etc.), which doesn't 
\nget one very far." (Mortalism<\/em>, Prometheus 2003, p. 11) Granted, the
\nharps-and-houris conception is a nonstarter. But is it really impossible to
\nconceive, at least schematically, of an afterlife except as an improved version of this life?<\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose that a bunch of young adolescents
\nwere to claim that it is  impossible to conceive of adulthood except as an
\nimproved version of adolescence. These boys and girls imagine adulthood to be
\nadolescence but with the negative removed: no pimples, no powerlessness, no
\npestering parents, no pecuniary problems, no paucity of facial hair or mammary
\ndeficiency, etc. They simply cannot conceive of anything beyond the
\nadolescent level. If you were to try to convince them that  their horizon is
\nlimited and that there is more to life than  adolescent concerns you would not
\nget through to them. For what they  need is not words and arguments; they need
\nto grow up. The notion of growing up, though it entails persisting in time, is
\ndistinct from it:  it involves the further notion of maturation. They need to
\nshed false beliefs and values and acquire true ones.<\/p>\n

In this life, we
\nadults are like adolescents: confused, unsure of what we really want, easily led
\nastray. We have put away many childish  things only to lust after adult things,
\nfor example, so-called 'adult
entertainment.' We don't read comic books, we
\nready trashy novels. We don't watch cartoons, we watch The Sopranos<\/em>
\nand Sex in the City<\/em>. We  are obviously in a bad state. In religious
\nterms, our condition is  'fallen.' We are not the way we ought to be, and we
\nknow it. It is also clear that we lack the ability to help ourselves. We can
\nmake  minor improvements here and there, but our basic fallen condition  cannot
\nbe ameliorated by human effort whether individual or  collective. These, I
\nclaim, are just facts. If you won't admit them,  then I suggest you lack moral
\ndiscernment. (I am not however claiming  that eternal life is a fact: it is a
\nmatter of belief that goes beyond  what we can claim to know. It is not
\nrationally provable, but I think  it can be shown to be rationally
\nacceptable.)<\/p>\n

Contrary to what Heinegg says is impossible, I am able,
\nemploying analogies such as  the foregoing, to conceive of a radical change that
\ntransforms us from  the wretched beings that we presently are into beings who
\nare  genuinely and wholly good. (I concede, though, that conceivability is  no
\nsure guide to real possibility; but the issue at the moment is  conceivability.)
\nWhat is difficult and perhaps impossible is to conceive the details of how
\nexactly this might come about. As I said,  it can't be achieved by our own
\neffort alone. It requires a divine  initiative and our cooperation with
\nit.<\/p>\n

It won't occur in this life: I must pass beyond the portal of death,
\nand I must somehow retain my personal identity through the passage.  Much will
\nhave to be sloughed off, perhaps most of what I now consider  integral to my
\nselfhood. As noted, the transition is a transformation  and purification, not a
\nmere prolongation. Will anything be left after this sloughing off? I suggest
\nthat unless one is a materialist, one  has reason to hope that the core of the
\nself survives.<\/p>\n

And this brings us back to what Schopenhauer called the
\n'world-knot,'  the mind-body problem. If materialism could be demonstrated, then
\nthe  foregoing speculations would be mere fancies. But materialism, though  it
\ncan be assumed, cannot be demonstrated: it faces insuperable  difficulties. The
\nexistence of these difficulties makes it reasonable  to entertain the hope of
\neternal life.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n\"Beatific<\/a>But if the afterlife is not Life 2.0  and is something like the visio beata  <\/em>of Thomas Aquinas, wouldn't it be boring 'as hell'?  Well, it might well be hell for something who was looking forward to black-eyed virgins and a carnal paradise.  But suppose you are beyond the puerility of that view.  You want not sex but love, not power but knowledge, not fame but community, not excitement but peace and beatitude.  You want, finally, to be happy.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Would the happy vision be boring?  Well, when you were in love, was it boring?  When your love was requited, was it boring?  Was it not bliss?  Imagine that bliss ramped up to the maximum and made endless.  We tire of the finite, but the divine life is infinite.  Why then should participation in it be boring?  Or consider the self-sufficient bliss tasted from time to time here below by those of us capable of what Aristotle calls the bios theoretikos<\/em>.  Were you bored in those moments?  Quite the opposite.    You were consumed with delight, happy and self-sufficient in the moment. Now imagine an endless process of intellectual discovery and contemplation.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I am suggesting is that an afterlife worth wanting would be one, not of personal prolongation, but one of personal transformation and purification along lines barely conceivable to us here below.  God is just barely conceivable to us, and the same goes for our own souls.  So we ought to expect that the afterlife will be the same.  If we descry<\/a> it at all from our present perspective, it is "through a glass darkly."
<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Afterlife Again<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Mortalist's Hope<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Mary Neal's Out-of-Body Experiences<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As far as I can tell, the popular Islamic conception of the afterlife is unbelievably crass, a form of what might be called 'spiritual materialism.' Muslims get to do there, in a quasi-physical hinterworld, what they are forbidden to do here, for example, disport with virgins, in quantity and at length. And presumably they are … Continue reading “Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-death-and-immortality","category-heaven-and-hell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}