by Tenacious 28 Replies latest watchtower bible
There are some people that do in fact want to die. These people include the mentally unstable, emotionally imbalanced, and those suffering from ailments or diseases, just to name a few.
I've never met however, anyone, or heard of anyone, who is of sound mind, who just awoke one day and thought it would be an excellent day to die......naturally.
Your thoughts?
The self-preserving instinct sometimes also called "narcissism" - a belief that one's life must mean something to be livable and the incomprehension that one could ever cease to exist.
BTW, the fact humans have wants and needs does not mean those wants and needs are part of the order of things.
We want to survive. That's instinct.
We also have imaginations, the idea of living forever is a product of the social technology known as religion that helped alleviate fear of death.
If we were born without the idea of living forever to begin with that is programmed into by religion, we wouldn't be obsessed with it. No one knows what happens after the point we are dead and gone, probably nothing at all, but no one has the balls to live with "I don't know". they want to make up myths to help them sleep at night.
"An innate feeling to continue living indefinitely? "
No , not me. I could never grasp the notion of living forever. At least, I knew it in my head but in my heart it seemed unfathomable. The WTS used to have a line of reasoning that went , "an elephant lives 90 years (guess the sum) , a tree may live 1000 years, why should man die". That never made sense to me , it seemed perfectly natural to have a cycle of birth,life and death.
Today I have no wish to live too long. I have seen the sad, miserable lonely pain-wracked existence of the very old. That is not to say I want to die tomorrow when in reasonably good health. But I would hope to shuffle off this mortal coil before my quality of life gets bad.
Hell! no one is going to mourn me much......
There's a difference between not wanting to die (esp.violently) and having a desire to live forever and ever. I think we confuse our natural inclination to preserve our own life, with wanting to actually live eternally. Just because we are wired to stay keep ourselves alive doesn't mean we were meant to live forever. Wanting to live forever may just be human greed....more is better.
Animals strive to preserve their own lives even though they have no plans or hopes for the future and supposedly weren't meant to live forever . The difference between them and us in this regard is our level of consciousness. Even small children have no concept of future and past and they have no plans or hopes. It's only later, unlike animals, that their level of consciousness develops to that point.
JW's planted the idea in my mind that eternal life is possible and I should WANT it. Looking back, what I wanted most was NOT to be DESTROYED by God.
They said that it doesn't make sense that God would create humans just to have them grow old and die. Why does it make sense that God would create these intricately designed animals only to have them die of natural causes or be devoured by a predator? What would be the purpose in the new system to have animals cycling through all the time while the humans stayed forever? Wouldn't that cause us sadness to see animals we've grown attached to, die. Imagine having an elephant for 80 years and then having it get old and die.
If anyone lived beyond 100 years even in reasonable health, they might not think living forever was such a great thing. They might just think "enough already". It seems to me that in order for us to be happy living forever, we'd have to be in a more childlike state mentally. Perhaps that state of innocence that would enable us to tolerate living forever, is what Adam and Eve lost for us by eating the forbidden fruit ( if that tale is true).
All I know is so far everyone who has lived so far, has died. That's the way it is. No amount of wishful thinking or study of primitive writings is going to change that. It is what it is.....get used to it. It's quite freeing once you do.
To me it's like the flowers in spring. If they bloomed all year long, they wouldn't be that special. It's because they are here for a short time, that we value them. Having a limit to our lives might make it more precious to us.
Look at it from the other end in a reasoned manner.
Why would any sane person want to experience the loss of everything they love?
If we had been born into a society, a family, a culture which didn't advertise Eternal Life as a genuine alternative (i.e. religious delusion) would we feel different?
If you could live comfortably on a million dollars, why would anybody ever want to be a multi-millionaire or a Billionaire?
If you are at least average looking, why would you want to be drop-dead gorgeous?
And so on. . .
If our education happened to be science-based, we would realize early on in life that every species that has ever existed except for less than 1 percent, have gone extinct. We are just another species.
We have developed a "higher-consciousness" which has made us stive for apotheosis, self-aggrandisement, and a greedy hunger for more than nature has ever granted.
It is so easy to want more in a consumer society.
Why would a person cease to want to live is they are healthy and happy living ?
Without trying to sound like a JW lol ...
There must be a purpose to it all...
I have only been awake a few months but I lean towards some kind of re-incarnation ... It might sound silly to some but I now believe that when I die something within me will live on and I will meet those who I love now again in another life but will not realise - but I will be close to them again in some way
DBTT :)
According to the JWs, God created us with that desire. I believe it is pure evil to make humans to desperately crave everlasting life but then never satisfy that wanting.
I guess this brief rant qualifies as a sin against the Holy Spirit.
DY
