An excellent concise and accurate statement of the interactive dualism theory of mind

I can chime in if you need someone agnostic about any kind of survival to debate.

Heh sure.  

Though in this case I think metaphysics is a secondary concern to Survival, and we may have come as close as most of the people in this debate can to a consensus with the division between what is Experienced and the Experiencer.

The particulars of whether Experienced and Experiencer are one or two (or more) substances seems to be less important than the question of whether the Experiencer is immaterial, irreducible, and ultimately immortal for having those two qualities.

I suspect the number of people interested in metaphysics in the afterlife is actually less than the number interested in this world. For myself I doubt I'd spend much time philosophizing, at least in the early days of my immortality. Maybe a millennia or so later I might find it interesting again.

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”
 -CS Lewis

I suspect the number of people interested in metaphysics in the afterlife is actually less than the number interested in this world. For myself I doubt I'd spend much time philosophizing, at least in the early days of my immortality. Maybe a millennia or so later I might find it interesting again.

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

Exactly! I mean the ultimate metaphysics may seem just as remote in the afterlife as it does now.

Those who think of matter as the ultimate and only reality, can't picture a vibrant, exciting, complicated afterlife at all! They think all there will be left to discover will be which 'ism' wraps it all up. I would tell them to read books like Jurgen Ziewe's "Vistas of Infinity", not as fact (necessarily) but as what JZ conceives the afterlife to be.

I am pretty sure that if I survive death, I will not sit around adoring God, or suffer eternal torment!

David

Exactly! I mean the ultimate metaphysics may seem just as remote in the afterlife as it does now.

Those who think of matter as the ultimate and only reality, can't picture a vibrant, exciting, complicated afterlife at all! They think all there will be left to discover will be which 'ism' wraps it all up. I would tell them to read books like Jurgen Ziewe's "Vistas of Infinity", not as fact (necessarily) but as what JZ conceives the afterlife to be.

I am pretty sure that if I survive death, I will not sit around adoring God, or suffer eternal torment!

David

I do hope I end up in one of the more interesting afterlives, and not the mundane ones...including one where I recall people need to keep working in the afterlife to sustain their new existence.

Though that is better than ending up in one of the supposed Hells, though I am not sure how much stock I put into the idea of Hell...

I do hope I end up in one of the more interesting afterlives, and not the mundane ones...including one where I recall people need to keep working in the afterlife to sustain their new existence.

We need to think what the concept of Hell/Heaven actually implies. God would have to have designed us with lots of potential ways to go wrong - sex organs for starters - and then not just weed out the 'fallen' and euthanise them, but actually torture them for ever (or maybe for a very long time, if we want to be kind to this god).

Imagine someone studying Darwinian selection in the lab who would actually discard the non-selected creatures in this barbaric way).

David

We need to think what the concept of Hell/Heaven actually implies. God would have to have designed us with lots of potential ways to go wrong - sex organs for starters - and then not just weed out the 'fallen' and euthanise them, but actually torture them for ever (or maybe for a very long time, if we want to be kind to this god).

Imagine someone studying Darwinian selection in the lab who would actually discard the non-selected creatures in this barbaric way).

David

We don't know if God has directly made the Hells. We just know that they do show up in some afterlife accounts.

Of course, when we go through the vast literature across geography & history, we find a lot of different accounts. Some - like those pushing Pureland Buddhism - seem fabricated in part or very much a product of cultural conditioning.

Others may be genuine accounts of such places, perhaps created for the same reasons that people make abusive prison systems in our world.

We don't know if God has directly made the Hells.

Well under the biblical hypothesis, He is responsible for the whole lot!

David

Well under the biblical hypothesis, He is responsible for the whole lot!

David

Ah I was less focused on "theodicy" (How can there be Evil if God is Good/Omnipotent/etc?) and more on the varied NDE accounts.

I actually can't recall if any mediumship communication discussed Hells, will have to go back and check. I do recall an apparition that claimed to have escaped Hell, but can't remember the exact details.

I do hope I end up in one of the more interesting afterlives, and not the mundane ones...including one where I recall people need to keep working in the afterlife to sustain their new existence.

The thing to remember is that there are a lot of accounts of people changing levels as they improve or deteriorate. I don't think that anyone is stuck at one level in JZ's scount of reality.

Remember, I tend to assume that JZ is reporting on something he sees clearly, but he makes essentially no effort to prove that his account is true.

David

The thing to remember is that there are a lot of accounts of people changing levels as they improve or deteriorate. I don't think that anyone is stuck at one level in JZ's scount of reality.

Remember, I tend to assume that JZ is reporting on something he sees clearly, but he makes essentially no effort to prove that his account is true.

David

Stafford Betty, who @nbtruthman mentioned in the original post of this thread, has written something similar based on mediumship communications.

Just got the book but will post some quotes later, along with The Afterlife Unveiled which I already had but have not read through extensively!

Ah I was less focused on "theodicy" (How can there be Evil if God is Good/Omnipotent/etc?) and more on the varied NDE accounts.

I actually can't recall if any mediumship communication discussed Hells, will have to go back and check. I do recall an apparition that claimed to have escaped Hell, but can't remember the exact details.

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-emanuel-swedenborg-s-heaven-and-hell-with-jonathan-rose

I hope this jogs your memory.  There is no accounting of the Hells like Swedenborg's memorable relations.  heck he wrote a title as "Heaven and Hell".

 Swedenborg's Vision of Hell

That is, God doesn't punish one with hell. Instead, hell is “chosen” by individuals who are incapable of or unwilling to think selflessly– it is made up of people who deem themselves, their needs, their wants, as superior and superseding.