tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post3428178611639061163..comments2024-03-29T12:03:37.344+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: We need a post-mortal utopia to guide usBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-73754031841796377552018-01-12T06:36:04.236+00:002018-01-12T06:36:04.236+00:00@SA - good comment.
@DOI - I agree mostly - but ...@SA - good comment. <br /><br />@DOI - I agree mostly - but it is surely a constraint that not everybody wants Heaven - even if we want them there. <br /><br />@CCL - On the whole, too much is made of qualifying for Heaven - Heaven is reality, 'qualifyting' is coming to know and live byt the real, and those who know reality are qualified... <br /><br />But there is a superficial level of wanting that clearly is out of step with reality - the way that we 'want' something, until we have it - then we don't want it. In other words, what we want is not real, and reality is what we want. Thus the need for theosis/ spiritual development; and the need for many 'levels' of Heaven (in some sense) - through which (post-mortal) people can develop toward full divinity (if they choose). Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-44443499718990351312018-01-12T05:29:46.376+00:002018-01-12T05:29:46.376+00:00I still think that there has to be a difference be...I still think that there has to be a difference between <i>knowing</i> something and <i>deciding</i> it.<br /><br />I am willing to assent to the idea that God will not <i>tell</i> us whether we have qualified for Heaven or not till <i>we</i> tell <i>Him</i> whether we want it.Chiu ChunLinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03519192610708043962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-27693370361439507612018-01-12T03:55:28.664+00:002018-01-12T03:55:28.664+00:00My take on the Afterlife has always been that it i...My take on the Afterlife has always been that it is, by definition, a place where there's other people- indeed, where everyone is. So any positive Afterlife is necessarily one that involves relationships with other people, and this is a natural consequence of the way mortal life is ordered: you're born, and thus you have parents, and a family, and a nation. That becomes part of your body, and your body is part of your soul, it's who you are. So to not want to connect with those other people is an injury to your soul and to the souls of those people you sever yourself from. It's an inherent injustice. A just world is necessarily built on continuity of human relationships.<br />- Carter CraftTheDoctorofOdoIslandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06654695224557150961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-73556705052153228782018-01-12T02:55:30.893+00:002018-01-12T02:55:30.893+00:00In the beginning, any strong desire comes of God a...In the beginning, any strong desire comes of God and is fundamentally good. (As suggested by William Blake's concept of Energy.) However, the nature of that desire is typically misinterpreted and can be mixed-up with a self-delusion about how to achieve the desire. Desires that are really-satisfied separately can be joined-up together, and desires that ought to be joined-together can be separated, producing a delusion of 'impossible' or 'immoral' desires. Corrupt culture and mass-media helps to entrench such delusion and make it universal, and then use that as a basis to motivate reality-denying and meaningless behaviours.<br /><br />In practice, most successful and appealing depictions of utopia are <i>mortal</i>, and not particularly utopian at that. It is very hard to depict post-mortal utopia without coming up with something insipid, or veering into a morass of distracting technical questions about how things that obviously work one way in a mortal, decaying world would work in an immortal, undecaying world. In a sense, this is like someone settling down to write a novel that captures the essential differences between Britain and America, and then getting completely sidetracked by an inability to explain why the electrical outlets are shaped differently. On the other hand, projecting post-mortal utopia down onto a mortal world can allow an author to convey the feeling of a completely meaningful existence without being distracted by the machinery required to enable it... even if the resulting secondary world has an underlying inconsistency to it.<br />Seijio Arakawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02615803270163614513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-21488630890569781652018-01-11T19:35:48.116+00:002018-01-11T19:35:48.116+00:00@Nathaniel - Well, I don't believe that there ...@Nathaniel - Well, I don't believe that there is any predistination - God does not know what will happen to a soul because we have genuine agency. However, perhaps for different people, mortal agency has a different starting point: some have come intending to retunr to Heaven, perhaps other have come with other intentions (although I presume None are incarnated with the advance intention of actively-choosing hell - that happens during mortality). All this - maybe... Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-52332953724557187272018-01-11T18:48:54.167+00:002018-01-11T18:48:54.167+00:00I think your "notes" are often worthy of...I think your "notes" are often worthy of their own posts!<br /><br />What you wrote is the best explanation for Christian "predestination" that I've ever heard.Nathanielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04531664498277638757noreply@blogger.com