Snakelord
You suggested that life in heaven would be composed on mental suffering for one's relatives.
I suggested that it is the common experience of everyone even in this life to navigate the shoreless ocean of mental suffering for their family members.
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Certainly, nobody contended otherwise.
In analogy form: My daughter is currently being tortured. There's also a super party happening down the road. In this instance I wouldn't go to the party, I'd opt to be with my daughter instead - regardless to me also being tortured.
In regards to the original question I am saying that I wouldn't so much try to avoid going to hell as I would rather go there if that's where my kids were.
Hopefully that's cleared that matter up.
If we replaced the words "hell" with "jail", would it change anything
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The point is that you will be forced to abandon your children.
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Why will I be forced to abandon my children? Don't say "because you'll be dead" because, in the typical theist view of things, one is still very much alive even when they're dead.
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Since you don't have the choice to not abandon your children regardless, its not clear why you need to bring it to this discussion.
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Sorry, it's not clear why I don't have a choice to not abandon my children. Kindly provide details. When I die am I dead or am I alive? You can say that my physical body is done with, but I don't think you'd argue that I am actually any more dead than I was 5 seconds earlier.
Explanation please.
Perhaps it might be better to think of it this way.
You weren't born with an (eternal) attachment to your children (or any of your other relatives for that matter).
Rather it developed (through being "allotted" by higher powers ... or chance ... as atheists tend to prefer)
If you die with an a large amount of unresolved attachment to your relatives (which is the common experience of 99.99% of the population) you meet all the necessary criteria to partake of another chapter of material life (with a few alterations according to how you acted in your previous life).
IOW its not so much that being attached to one's children grants one their audience in the next life.
Rather it is that being attached to one's children will grant one the opportunity (in principle) to have another set to rear in the next life.
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You didn't decide to be the particular parent of snakelord jnr, you decided to be a parent. If your child was switched in the maternity ward you would be none the wiser.
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Sorry, still don't get the point.
Your attachment was cultivated through a relationship.
Its not like there is some sort of innate biological connection that enables you to instinctually waltz into the maternity ward to pick up the "right" one.
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the whole issue of getting attached to one's child develops through the agency of being a parent ... if you take away the behavior patterns of being a parent - as is the case of death, which removes all bodily designations - you take away the attachment
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So in death, (the end of physical existence), you completely cease to be you as well? What I mean by this is your feelings, personality etc etc?
Its more the case that there is an essence to the self which adopts material layers of contamination. IOW you may be a parent of a particular child but you are not an eternal parent of a particular child (yet its the nature of material life to kind of shadow spiritual life, so you feel quite at home housing the material relationship in eternal values)
Such a claim sounds mighty odd to me. You're alive and love god. You die and instantly lose those feelings?
Unlike your experience with your child, one has an eternal relationship with god.
IOW its not the vehicle of love that causes the problems. Rather its the object of love.
(yes one can love one's children, but the moment you dress it up in eternal values is the moment you line yourself for all sorts of problems)
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Its interesting that you indicate a "sense of familial connection" as a suitable boat for carrying eternal values
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It's interesting that you seemingly indicate that once you're in your second life, you wont even be you any more - a shell without the feelings, the personality etc.
The problems with material life is that the shell is accepted as the all in all.
For a materialist, perhaps the highest duty is their familial obligation (namely the obligation of the shell).
That's why, as a theist, one finds a break down of two types of dharmas
- Sva dharma - dharma that pertains to the body (or shell)
- Sanatana dharma - dharma that pertains to the soul
If you remain who you are, (minus a physical form), I don't see what argument you're making. If you don't retain any of that, you'll have to go through the entire process of coming to love anything all over again. All that time spent learning about and gaining a love for a god is a waste of time and effort because - according to you - it'll all vanish the moment you're dead.
Material life is sometimes described as a dream, in the sense that we accept many different types of role, in which we fully invest our sense of "I".
When we wake up however, its not like we are overburdened with issues of separation for the children in our dream ... mainly because we realize that we operating out of a dream like sense of parenthood to begin with.
Anyway, I realize this is quite a lofty subject given where we are at the moment. But it comes to bear if you want to start discussing issues of familial obligation after the point of death.
