Let’s say you’re God (just go with it), and you need to train a bunch of mortals to behave themselves. What sort of teachings about the afterlife will be most effective?
- The mortals get one life and one life only. When it’s over, you (God) judge them. People who did well go to heaven. People who didn’t do well go to hell. People who never heard of you also go to hell. That isn’t entirely fair, but it doesn’t matter. You could have damned everyone to hell. The fact that some people went to heaven is better than anyone had a right to expect.
- The mortals get one life and one life only. When it’s over, you (God) judge them. People who did well go to heaven. People who didn’t do well go to hell. This wouldn’t be entirely fair, since some mortals were born into horrible situations and some never heard of you. So you put together a “second chance” place where some mortals can learn about you and decide whether to believe. Then they can go to heaven. People who learned about you don’t get a second chance at all if they made the wrong choices in mortality though.
- The mortals get reincarnated after they die, and their next life depends on how they treated people in the life that just ended. Mortals start in crummy life situations. If they’re good people, then they get born into progressively better situations. If they’re bad people, they get born into worse situations until they learn their lesson. They don’t remember anything about their past lives. Eventually, some of them are good enough they can stop the reincarnation cycle and go somewhere happy forever.
- The mortals don’t believe in an afterlife. What happens in mortality is all there is. Some mortals try to get away with really bad behavior because they don’t believe they’ll ever be punished. Other mortals spend their lives trying to make life better and more fair, reducing suffering however they can, because they don’t believe that an afterlife will provide justice for those who are wronged in this life.
- After they die, the mortals get sent to a community where they’re assigned a teacher who helps them understand the difference between good and bad behavior. They study moral philosophy and what mortals owe to each other without reference to any God. Some people learn the lessons faster than other people. No one is allowed to actually cause harm to anyone else because their teacher stops them and helps them reason out why that action is bad. The people learn and progress until they’ve learned how to treat people and experienced everything they want to experience. Then, they choose whether to continue existing, or to let their consciousness dissipate into eternity and surrender their individuality.
Teachings about the afterlife are intended to influence our behavior in this life. No one really knows what happens after you die. Even people who say they know really just mean they have a strong feeling and strong opinion about the afterlife. So when someone says, “here’s what happens after you die,” the next sentence is “and here’s what you should do now so good things happen after you die.”
Which afterlife teaching do you think would be most effective in encouraging people to behave a certain way?
What’s the connection for you personally between your beliefs about the afterlife and how you behave in this life?
If you got to design an afterlife to motivate people in this life, what would it be?
Do you think threatening people with hell or other punishment is a good way to motivate good behavior in mortality?
Do you think promising people eternal joy is a good way to motivate good behavior in mortality?
What motivates you to try and behave well?
Would you behave badly if you thought you could get away with it?
FYI, the afterlife descriptions above are loosely based on (1) evangelical protestant teachings; (2) LDS teachings; (3) Hindu and Buddhist teachings; (4) agnostic or atheist teachings; and (5) the tv show The Good Place.
Wheat & Tares 
If threatening people with punishment worked we wouldn’t have over-crowded prisons in this life.
I believe the idea of punishment in the next life is a human-created idea designed to help us feel better about ourselves and to feel superior to those around us. “WE are going to heaven, those other people are going to hell.” That’s why on the first Sunday of every month we hear how everyone knows “this is the only true church”; it’s another way of saying we are going to heaven, the rest of the world is going to hell.
It’s interesting to me that we humans portray God as all-knowing and all-wise, yet He can’t come up with a better motivational strategy than threats of hell?
The threat of eternal punishment is such a desirable tool in religious leaders’ tool box, they have deliberately eliminated the teaching of a female deity. Patriarchal leaders knew, and know, the idea of a divine feminine contradicts the idea of eternal punishment. In contrast to the Old Testament portrayal of God, the traits of a female God would be kindness, patience, compassion, long-suffering. A female deity undermines the power of patriarchy, and power always protects itself.
I believe the most effective afterlife model would be a deity of equally yoked Heavenly Parents who’s soul goal is to lovingly lead their children into “Heaven”, no matter how long that takes.
For maybe a little insight into using descriptions of the afterlife to motivate human behavior, see D&C 19:6-12, with special attention to v. 7. God doesn’t always mean what he says, and sometimes he says things for effect?
Andy Weir’s very short story “The Egg” is a great mix of #3 and the Mormon idea of theosis: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
I think most LDS people live with a mix of 1 and 2. I did until I began questioning things and then I began to wonder, “what if there is nothing after I die? What kind of person would I be?” As I thought about this I realized that I didn’t really need or want an external motivator from any religion trying to manipulate me into some type of behavior. I either was good or I wasn’t and I didn’t want to acknowledge of blame religion for who I was. I thought it was interesting because after I had this thought, things like “justice or love” meant more to me and I realized that instead of doing something for a grand scheme, it was better for me to realize that my sphere of influence on my family, friends, or job was more important and that any “eternal” reward would be realized in a bit of me living on in them. Did I ever come to any insight on if we live after this life? No, I really didn’t but I did come to understand virtually everyone doesn’t know either. I came to understand a dichotomy. People who believe there is something won’t know if there is life after death if there is none and people who believe there is none will be surprised if there is and thus be grateful but will also know there life was at least, honest.
Your description doesn’t match LDS theology. You depicted the spirit world before judgement.
After judgement, we don’t exactly believe in hell, other than a hell of the mind in wishing you had made better choices and shrinking before God. We believe in outer darkness for those who really know that Jesus is the Christ and reject him (so basically almost nobody goes there). The comments about D&C 19 are very valid.
Everybody else goes to heaven (Joseph Smith said the telestial kingdom where murderers are sent is so wonderful you would kill yourself to go). Heaven is divided into levels or mansions so that all the different people have a place they are comfortable.
I believe in eternal progression, so even after judgement day we can learn and grow and become comfortable in different places.
A more black and white older approach I don’t believe in is the idea that only married people go to the highest level of the celestial kingdom and single people are their servants. In this view, anyone not sealed in the temple is a servant.
I also don’t believe in the “empty seat at the table” idea that you will lose your loved ones if they don’t comply with the commandments and ordinances as spelled out in the covenant path.
There are lots of different and conflicting ideas about afterlife put forward by church leaders. Sometimes they say things to scare you into conforming with whatever they want to say is a commandment. Ultimately, I don’t believe they know any more than I do. Certainly only I have the personal authority to decide what I will and will not believe. Some beliefs I find to be destructive while others are comforting as the Holy Ghost is promised to be.
I get to believe what is confirmed to me
by the spirit, so I don’t see your exercise as idle fantasy. I can with faith believe what the spirit tells me that is consistent with loving Heavenly Parents.
My faith transition has given me an opportunity to quit depending on outward authority. In pondering the fate of my sons that have rejected the church I had a vision of the three of them in the temple celestial room with us happy and dressed in the robes of the temple. It was accompanied by a powerful spiritual good feeling that lasted hours. For me this vision has as much validity and authority to me as any vision or teaching of a prophet or church leader or sacred writings. To me it was a sacred vision.
I believe my vision was symbolic that they are in God’s hands and on the path he has planned for them. I believe in eternal progression for them and everyone. I believe anyone who says otherwise is mistaken. That is the view of the afterlife that is motivating for me in this life and this time.
I’m Team Good Place, although I interpreted their version of the afterlife differently.
Immediately after the afterlife, the revised version didn’t seem to me to be about teaching them how to be good but rather about healing the things about them, the wounds they had, that had caused them to have dysfunctional relationships and mistreat themselves and other people. After that, when they are healed and whole, they get to go have all of the experiences they want to have and spend all of the time they need with the people they love. And then, finally, they get to rejoin the universe somehow in some mysterious way that they still didn’t understand.
Anyway, under that reading of The Good Place, I like that version. And it has nothing to do with scaring people into leading a better life here (which I think is pretty wildly ineffective).
I think afterlife conceptions in other cultures are interesting. Many times they address a particular aspect of life in those cultures that may be foreign to me as a white wealthy American. (Like how in extremely hierarchical cultures where you can’t move up the hierarchy chain, you can still have hope to be born into a higher caste later.)
I admire people who do their best to be good and moral people for whatever reason. Maybe they are seeking an eternal reward. Maybe they are trying to avoid eternal punishment. Those are good reasons to be good and I admire people who try.
But I REALLY admire people who are good and moral just because that’s who they are. They don’t necessarily think about eternal consequences. They are just trying to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. I used to strive to be one of the folks in paragraph 1. Now I’m trying to be a part of paragraph 2.
So your summary (2) doesn’t really capture LDS theology very well. lws329 has already pointed that out, so I won’t get into it. I have a number of scattered thoughts…
First, the conceit of the question is that as “God” you are free to design an afterlife in whatever manner you desire. That you are omnipotent in the sense that you get to will into existence what ever physics, metaphysics, ethics, etc. that you desire. If that is type of hypothetical universe we are operating in, why not just will into existence an afterlife where everyone wakes up with a perfect knowledge of ethics, the will to do good, and the wisdom to execute it?
Second, an afterlife points to the future, but perhaps more importantly, it tries to explain the present. I’m not sure that your discussion questions properly capture this. You are asking how and should we teach about the afterlife in order to achieve certain earthly objectives, but I think that most people care less about the afterlife as a means to herd the crowd, and more about it in order to understand the meaning of life itself.
Third, and related to the point above, I don’t think that the natural follow-on to an explanation about what happens after death is a list of things to do in order to get a good after-life. If someone states that after death, there is just eternal darkness, they are only making a statement about their conception of reality.
Finally, you state that know one really knows what happens when you die, but that it only true in the soplistic sense that no one really knows what the truth and reality of anything is. It doesn’t add much to the conversation. A Christian for example could say, that Christ came back to life, and thus Christ can speak from experience what happens after death.
I believe everyone will eventually be in the tippy top heaven. The Atonement is infinite and eternal – we literally have forever to fix people. Although out of the above options, reincarnation makes the most sense. Keep doing it until you get it right.
I think if God created a plan that would most educate Their children, help them reach their full potential, and strengthen eternal bonds of love, it would be this: This Earth is Our Home. It is up to You to bring about its Paradisiacal Glory and Eternal Peace among its inhabitants. Be humble and teachable. Learn all you can. Become aware of your blind spots and prejudices and eliminate them. It may take more than one life to learn and progress. You may have to live life as a person against whom you have a prejudice in order to learn. Some children will progress faster than others. They will have to wait for the others to catch up. But their lives will be influential. They will become the humble sages of groups you might not listen to. Listen to them. (By their fruits.) Have compassion and lift those who suffer. The Peace and Love that awaits you is beyond Anything you could possibly imagine. God waits for you. Do not delay. Come quickly. There is so much more ahead.
I’m going to follow-up now and engage your questions.
I asked why not design an afterlife where everyone just wakes up happy and good? This goes to my point that people want to know or ascribe meaning to life. Such an afterlife makes this life meaningless.
I think that this is the attraction of heaven and hell. Not so much as a means to guide behavior, but to give people’s choice meaning and weight in an otherwise capricious and uncaring universe.
However, you design your afterlife, ultimately people need to feel like their choices matter.
I am SO pleased that you included The Good Place as one possible option. After seeing that series out to its [happy] conclusion, I was completely captivated – and I will vote for that version of the afterlife, in whatever ballot is taken.
Oh man, ever since watching the Good Place, I’ve wanted the afterlife to be similar to #5. That sounds pretty great. Why couldn’t Joseph Smith have come up with that scenario? What a different church.
In all seriousness, and perhaps this says more about me than anything, I think I’ve gotten more insight about the meaning of life and how to treat my fellow man from the “Teachings of (The Good Place creator) Michael Schur” than nearly any other prophet, including Mormon apostles and prophets. (Okay, I should note that certain teachings attributed to Jesus in the NT Gospels are pretty great, too.)
As for me, I no longer know for sure that there is an afterlife. Janey is right. No one knows despite how fervently they may believe.
I fervently(!) hope there is as afterlife, something more to come after death, but I have doubts.
The argument that humans invented afterlife concepts to stave off the universal fear of death and provide meaning and a reason for existence is very persuasive.
Nor do I have any reliable sense of what an afterlife would be like. Maybe it would be terrible. Maybe this mortal life on Earth, for all its potential ills, is as good as it gets and when we die we return to being a sentient consciousness but with no ability to act and only our memories to keep us company, for good or ill. Yikes. That’s bleak.
Okay, happier note: I try to live as if this life is all there is. And if I can made things easier or better for others here and, maybe if I’m really lucky, better for people still to come, then that is worth living for and gives me some meaning.
And if there is an afterlife and there is some sort of reckoning, I can have a clear conscience that I did the best I could, according to my knowledge and integrity.
@East Coast, love your last two paragraphs. It’s as simple as that. Why do we overcomplicate things? Why do we think people needed to be controlled by a series of afterlife rewards and punishments? As I referenced above, in many cultures the afterlife theology tends to legitimate existing social hierarchies and problems. Opiate of the masses and all that.
Tygan – That’s a really thought-provoking story. It would be an interesting essay to compare that story to Christ’s statement that, “inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Jesus had to experience the pains of mortality in order to help people (Alma 7:11-12). I can see the logic of reincarnation as a teaching tool, but I would want to remember at least some things from past lives.
Instereo – when I started realizing that I didn’t like the LDS version of heaven, and I didn’t really know what would happen after we die, I also started to see how my most important activities were the ones that affected my immediate circle. Like, spending an evening in the temple to help someone who died 600 years ago wasn’t nearly as important as helping my son with his homework. It also made the idea of relieving suffering on earth more immediate. I don’t want to trust that God will recompense suffering in the next life; if we can do something about suffering now, we should do it.
lws329 and Mike Sanders – yeah, the descriptions are “loosely based” on teachings. I didn’t want a lengthy detailed description, just enough to convey the idea that you get one mortality, and then there’s some adjusting to do justice.
Elisa – you’re right; in The Good Place, they start off with healing, and that healing makes it natural to treat people better, since they’re not taking out frustrations on others, or trying to get their needs met from people who just can’t meet those needs. Healing and developing more empathy happen in tandem. Then they move into the experience and enjoyment phase. And mentoring newbies. What I found fascinating about The Good Place is the near-absence of deity. God is basically a joke, and so are the demons, and they’re all wrong about how to treat humans fairly. Like, nothing in the afterlife is about worshiping deity properly; it’s all about learning empathy for other humans. The show made me really think about how much of my behavior is based on believing in God, and how much is based on empathy and respect for others. We see that discussion here at Wheat and Tares a lot. The community here frequently expresses frustration with the Church’s emphasis on worshipping God by following rules, and the Church’s lack of emphasis on helping others (like building temples instead of homeless shelters).
josh h – yeah, treating people right just because it’s the right thing to do is the goal. I remember sacrament mtg talks where the speaker talked about reasons to obey and which reasons are more morally pure. Obedience out of fear of punishment is the least pure reason to obey. Obeying in hopes of a reward is better, but still not great. Obeying out of love was the best reason for obedience. The speaker would use “love of God” as the reason, but I think that “love of our fellow humans” is equally good.
Mike Sanders – relying on what scriptures and prophets say Christ said about the afterlife is faith and testimony, not actual knowledge. Like I said in my post, people who say they “know” really mean that they have a strong opinion and a feeling. Taking Christ’s word for it isn’t knowledge; the New Testament stories were written down decades after the events took place by people who had never actually met Christ. Also, Christ isn’t typical. He’s the Savior and a God; I’m just an ordinary mortal. Jesus didn’t say much about the afterlife, certainly nothing very detailed. The book, “Heaven and Hell” by Bart Ehrman traced the development of the Christian doctrines of the afterlife really well, if you’re curious.
Also, I wouldn’t design an afterlife where people just wake up happy and good.
Lily – I don’t really want to be in the tippy top heaven. I don’t know what goes on there. The Church teaches eternal polygamy. I don’t want that. I believe we’ll all be happy, but I don’t believe we all have to inherit the same glory or be in the same situation or same place. Maybe that’s what you meant – that we’ll all be in a place we want to be.
Eagle Lady – I love that.
Raymond Winn and East Coast Guy – the Good Place really had some deep philosophy for a comedy, didn’t it? I think we could combine the Good Place ideas with Eagle Lady’s ideas and make an environment that would help people learn to be good people most effectively.
As what’s left of my testimony becomes more nuanced, I find that my priorities are to relieve suffering and bring justice in this life. I’ve got a small circle of influence, so that’s where my efforts are concentrated. I tried for many faithful years to have an eternal perspective about some issues. I’ve ditched the eternal perspective and worked to deal with those issues in this life instead. Things haven’t turned out like I thought they would, but I’m content.
If there really is an actual true plan that includes (1) where did we come from? (2) why are we here? (3) where do we go after this life ?, why is it that such a plan is not well known to the entire world? The closest we have to widespread knowledge of such a plan is probably Catholicism or Islam. It certainly aint from the COJCOLDS…2/1000 of the world’s population on the books but more like 1/1000 that actually understand the “doctrine”.
You folks who believe the COJCOLDS has the “true” explanation for the afterlife must wonder like I do why the true explanations are kept so exclusive even with 50k + missionaries and a huge PR budget. In sum: relatively speaking nobody out there knows what we (LDS) think we know. What a strange way to get God’s children back to him.
Janey – you write that wouldn’t design an afterlife where people just wake up Happy and Good? Why not? Presumably in this hypothetical you would know what true happiness is, Why not just give it to people?
I don’t think anyone knows what happens in the next life, but I hope there is one.
I actually love the idea of theosis. Although right now I view us as being in the Embryo of God stage, rather than the Child of God stage.
When my children were embryos, they weren’t really like me, they didn’t live in the same realm as me, and they had no idea what was coming in the next realm. I still loved them, but I didn’t communicate with them directly and straight up tell them what this world is like and how they need to develop. They were incapable of understanding what this world would be like, so even if I told them, they couldn’t comprehend it and it wouldn’t make sense. I did hope they would develop all the attributes that would help them be successful and grow to their full potential in this life (eyes, lungs, fingers, brain, etc…). The environment that they were placed in was designed to help them develop in the way that they needed to, even without them having a knowledge of what this world would be like. They had all the knowledge that they needed inside of their dna. Looking inside and following their dna, caused them to develop into what they needed to be to continue progressing in this life.
As an embryo of God, We’re not really like God, we don’t live in the same realm as God, and we have no idea what is coming after we leave this realm. I believe God still loves us, but He generally doesn’t communicate with us directly and just straight up tell us what the next world will be like and what we need to do to prepare for it. I believe we’re incapable of understanding what the next world will be like, so even if God told us, we wouldn’t comprehend it and it wouldn’t make sense. But I think God does hope that we develop all of the attributes that will help us be successful and grow to our full potential in the next life (love for ourselves, love for others, using our agency to help and heal others, honesty, etc…). The environment that we are placed in is designed to help us develop in the way that we need to, even without having a knowledge of what the next world will be like. We have all the knowledge that we need inside of our spiritual dna. Looking inward and following our spiritual dna (our conscience, or our spirit), will cause us to develop into what we need to be to continue progressing in the next life.
So here are a few new ones. Everyone’s life is recorded on a DVD. When we die, the DVD is placed in a library to be accessed by anyone who wants to use it. In using it you temporarily, or permanently in part, become one with that life. Thus everyone contributes to this vast library of experience for everyone to experience and grow with. The lessons of this life are lessons we cannot learn, we have to experience them. In this library we can learn all of the lessons.
God’s main interest, rather than punishing people, is to create something new in the vast, eternal, universe. Life, meaning Darwinian selection, is used as the process of producing that novelty. Even God cannot create the novel life that chaos can produce. So we are participating in this grand plan to create some wonderful new form of life and existence.
Beyond that, eternity is unbelievably long. In 1,ooo,ooo,,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo years, all the black holes in the universe will evaporate and nothing will be left of our universe but a faint whisper. Who are we going to be then? What is this sort of life going to be like? As you have pointed out, maybe in that huge time we will voluntarily allow us to dissipate into that faint whisper, also.
Mike Sanders – I don’t understand how/why you would make everyone wake up happy and good and what purpose that would serve. God can’t do that. It’s not one of the choices in this hypothetical we’re all talking about. So the reason I wouldn’t just make everyone wake up happy and good is because (1) people need to learn stuff; and (2) no God I’ve heard of can do that.
Janey – Why can’t a God do that?
I’m not trying to be argumentative. If there exists some principle of metaphysics that constrains God’s actions, then we need to lay that out. Or at least acknowledge that we a assuming a certain metaphysics when we design our afterlife.
This is a very salient point. For example, in the Good place, their ultimate solution was governed by the metaphysics of their universe. People could not be directly remade into new people, but they could be moulded by their experiences and actions. People could carry subtle shifts in the personality and being from one “mortal” experience to another even when deprived of their previous memories. There is no such thing as an eternal paradise, because even the most personalized ideal experience and lifestyle would eventually collapse under interminable ennui. There were no omniscient nor omnipotent beings, just very powerful ones who nonetheless did not know the nature and limits of their own universe and could be surprised by what was left to discover.
Mike Sanders – I’m going to push that question back on you. What makes you think God could make everyone just wake up with the knowledge of how to be happy and good? The afterlife, as I’ve been taught my entire life while attending LDS Church, is that our fate in the next life depends on how we live our life in this life. We don’t wake up with “how to be happy and good” just poured into our minds.
Yes, there is a limit on God’s actions. He won’t/can’t violate our agency. That was the whole point of the war in heaven. God’s plan was to give us commandments and see if we voluntarily followed them (with the help of the atonement and repentance). Satan’s plan was to save everyone, either by forcing everyone to make right choices, or by giving everyone the same reward no matter what they did. Your comment from 12:14 contained this line: “However, you design your afterlife, ultimately people need to feel like their choices matter.” Yes, I agree with you. Satan’s plan was the one in which no one’s choices mattered. The limit on God’s actions is that he’s got to allow us to make our own choices.
I’m not positing an afterlife in which Satan is in charge. Therefore, we won’t just “wake up with the knowledge of how to be happy and good.” Why do you think God could do that?
Janey – I don’t think that God could do that, not in our actual reality. So let’s layout the constraints imposed by the metaphysics of our reality.
From an LDS perspective, here are a number of constraints (in no particular order, and not exhaustive):
-God cannot violate the principle of Justice.
-At the core of everyone is a part that is uncreated and coeternal with God.
-There exists a gradient in the quality of these uncreated things. Some can be equipped with power and can be expected to support the full demands of divinity (Jesus), others if so equipped would fail to meet the demands of divinity (everyone else).
-There exists a process by means of a divine atonement whereby through an exercision of will, those incapable of divine law can be made into those capable of supporting divine power.
-The divine image is found in the union of maleness and femaleness.
-Eternal paradise is possible.
One of the weirdnesses of eternal life is sex. Sex is the Darwinian response to changing environment. Sex mixes the genes, so that if the environment changes there is enough diversity in the gene pool to allow the species to survive. Sexual reproduction is a survival adaptation in the face of existential threat. In this life there is hardly a lifeform that does not participate in some sort of sexual reproduction, even bacteria.
In the eternities there is no existential threat. Therefore no need for sexual reproduction. So, what good is sex in eternities, what purpo9se does it fulfill? Just sport? For old time’s sake? So, for spirit offspring, we are mixing spirit DNA? What purpose is that? What purpose is there for creating spirit diversity? And, after a mating pair mates for several million, or billion, times, most of the random mixings will have been produced. What further need is there for more spirit DNA mixing from this couple? And to what end? So that the bad mixings can be cursed to hell? It sounds very Kafka-esk.
In infinite times there can be infinite pairings with infinite numbers of partners. With infinite time, even the worst mixings (individuals) can be allowed to “progress.” So, my thesis is that God is creating the diversity of life, in all its manifestations, in this infinite universe. If that is the case then there is an argument for spiritual DNA and some sort of selection, where diversity, novelty, and ability are the values for that selection.
To avoid eternal sorrow and torture, a way must be given for even the slowest and most disadvantaged to progress to be happy. In infinite time, even a millimeter a year is infinite distance. Everyone can move that slowly unless giving up.
We have no idea about eternity. Or about God. As LDS, we feel that God is benevolent, and does not want to torture his children for eternity. Anyway, who washes the dishes in eternity? Sentient AI? Do we enslave the less capable to take away the garbage and do the cooking? Who keeps entropy in check? Does the expansion of this large but finite universe into infinity effectively reset entropy to zero? So many questions, so few answers. We are but hairless apes, barely literate.
After they die, the mortals get sent to a community where they’re assigned a teacher who helps them understand the difference between good and bad behavior. ..without reference to any God.
Look, I enjoyed The Good Place as much as anybody, but thinking the afterlife could actually be like that has some implications that commenting fans seem to be missing. The premise of the thought experiment is that the prospect of such an afterlife would be a teaching from God (transmission method unknown) that makes no reference to God. If I were somehow taught this under the given conditions, I would immediately try to figure out how such an afterlife could exist. As a mortal, I can plausibly deny the existence of God because I have science to fall back on. But I cannot use science to forecast such an afterlife. I could attribute it to God, but that would undermine the “without reference to God” part–if I believe God created the place, then there are implicit references to God everywhere I turn. What does that leave? [This is the part where I insert a clip of an Intelligent Design proponent insisting that Intelligent Design does not imply that God is the intelligent designer.] Bring on the flying spaghetti monster!
I loved the finale of the Good Place, specifically the idea of graduating from the need to be an eternally living being to peaceful acceptance of a perfectly natural oblivion. Honestly, it was the first time I had ever felt true peace re: the concept of death. And I mean real death.
In the church (and afterlife promoting religions in general), we are never taught to accept or even grieve the ending of life, only to take comfort in the idea of it never really ending. Even most of these comments, while expressing skepticism of the correlated Plan of Salvation narrative, still presuppose 2 things:
– The idea that a benevolent God (whomever they are) is the designer of the universe and any theoretical afterlife
– The idea that human consciousness exists independent of our physical bodies and therefore may persist after death
The problem is, neither of these assumptions has any empirical evidence to back it up. I’ve actually come around to thinking of belief in the soul as a kind of natural human hubris. Does every living thing have a soul? What about the Neanderthals who were genetically very similar to us and whose DNA persists in modern humans? Do they get an afterlife? A plan of salvation? What about chimpanzees? Lorikeets? Crickets? Eucalyptus trees? Why are we so special? I don’t know that we are.
What if we are, in fact, finite creatures? As finite as a blade of grass that springs up one day and later becomes part of the soil again. Does it make us any less precious? Or does it make every other living thing just as precious as we are?
Kirkstall – that is a fascinating takeaway from the discussion. We may be finite creatures and will some day stop existing. My personal belief is that we wouldn’t stop existing at death, just because that’s such an arbitrary point for so many people, such as those who die young. Do we need to believe in eternal existence? Could humanity learn to accept a finite existence?
I really liked your last point: “Or does it make every other living thing just as precious as we are?” From what I recall of the temple movie, everything was created spiritually (and the movie showed drawings) before being created physically (and the movie showed footage of actual plants and animals). There’s room there to believe that everything has a spirit of some sort. That’s akin to animism. The definition of animism that I just googled is, “The modern definition of animism is the idea that all things—including people, animals, geographic features, natural phenomenon, and inanimate objects—possess a spirit that connects them to one another. Animism is an anthropological construct used to identify common threads of spirituality between different systems of beliefs.”
If we’re all created by God, then there is a common thread among all his creations. We should be more conscious of all life — trees do not exist simply to be cut down and sold; animals do not exist solely for humanity’s use. God gave us dominion, but that isn’t permission to exploit and to waste.
lastlemming – I didn’t phrase my idea about God in the Good Place’s afterlife very well. As you say, someone set up the Good Place and the Bad Place, so there is a God somewhere. What I meant was that God is offstage in the Good Place, and how to correctly worship him was never part of learning how to be a good person. The Good Place was all about teaching people how to treat each other. The moral lessons didn’t involve how to pray, what words God wants us to use, or how to build him a church/temple or conduct a worship service. No one was judged by how much or how little they worshipped a god of any religion during their lives.
I slipped into depression after the finale of Good Place, so it helps to hear why others liked it. I hadn’t realized how much I like the doctrine of eternal progression. It haunted the crap out if me to think that ultimately we might just succumb to the boredom of existence, with nothing left to bother living for, very much like the eternals in Jorge Luis Borges’s The Aleph. Up until then, I loved the Afterlife model implemented On.the show.