Paradise (Where is it now?)

by dhw, Thursday, December 31, 2009, 15:30 (5440 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George: There has been some talk here in the past about near-death experiences, which are supposed by some to be a foretaste of Paradise.-As Matt points out, some of these experiences are far from paradisal, but in any case the pleasant ones that I've read about talk mainly of a deep feeling of peace and love. I can think of nothing more peaceful than a dreamless sleep, which would make the state of death perfectly OK with me. The only unpleasant elements then would be the process of dying (we all dread a messy death) and the grief of those left behind. But a dreamless sleep eliminates identity. Is there anything, though, other than a dreamless sleep that we could conceive of as being bearable for all eternity? To be oneself, to love and to be loved, to listen to Beethoven, to eat chocolate, to score a century/take five wickets (cricket feats for the deprived among you), to score the winning goal (easier to understand?), to hear children laughing, to watch the sun set behind the mountains....over and over and over and over again, without end? It's their transience that makes these experiences so special, just as we need BBella's contrast of dark and light to set things off against one another. Endlessness, even without suffering, sounds to me like an unbearable prospect, and if there is a God, I really wonder how he can cope, other than by constantly devising new entertainments for himself. So what would all of us do for the rest of time?-George is quite certain that Paradise doesn't exist anyway. For me it's inconceivable, just as a Universal Intelligence, a chance creation of life and the stars, a D-I-Y mechanism for consciousness, a Big Bang from nothing etc. are all inconceivable. But we're told 96% of the universe consists of unknown matter and energy, and I probably only understand about 0.0000001% of the 4% we do know, including human reality. So I'm certainly not qualified to say what's possible.