[ExI] Christianity: where to now?

[Lee Corbin]

Stuart writes

From: "The Avantguardian" <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2008 8:55 PM


> One can't live forever and experience time.

On the face of it, that's an absurd claim!  After, what if
there are now people (who can't possibly know it, of course
but)  who in fact will never die?  It's not logically impossible!

You surely cannot be saying that such persons actually
experience time differently from the rest of us!

> Time is our gift as mortals, we should use it wisely.
> We should also realize that for it to have any value to
> us, it must be finite.

Let me see if I follow you. Yes, it's true that people less
than 20 years old often seem to never regret time wasted.
The illusion, is, of course, that they still have infinitely
much time left. Alexander Solzhenitsyn once remarked
in a book that once when he was quite elderly, a visitor
had unexpectedly shown up at his door "at a time in my
life in which every half-hour is precious". 

But I have known people much less than 20 years old
who hated "wasting time". 

But this, your second statement, also seems flat-out false.
Suppose that we have X, a given person who knows or
strongly believes that he is immortal. How likely would
X react to the proposal that he be asleep for the next
two centuries?  You will find that if you ask most people,
most people will prefer being awake rather than asleep
or dead.

> Time has existed for 13.5 billion years, I have been
> dead for most of that time. Being dead is my default
> state. If it didn't bother me before I was alive, why
> would it bother me after?

Does having an IQ less than 200 bother you?  Does
not having quite a number of other H+ abilities bother you?

Okay, so you want to live to be several hundred years
old. Why that figure?  Why wouldn't you be just as
happy to die tonight?  Or tomorrow night?  Your
claims aren't really believeable to me, sorry. 

If being dead (your "default state") was so great from
13.7 billion B.C. to the late 20th century, and won't
be so bad after "a few hundred years", why not be
dead now and get it over with?

> Stuart LaForge
> alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu
> 
> "Fear is proof of a degenerate mind [...]
> Fortune favors the bold [...] Persevere
> and preserve yourselves for better
> circumstances [...] Love conquers all."- Virgil

Lee (who being afraid of many things, must evidently be degenerate)