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Originally Posted by Number 6  That's a very primitive notion of an afterlife.
what differentiate us from the animals is our ability to transcend our physical body, to be aware that we are aware, and NOT our carnal desires - desires that are a byproduct of the need to survive (food and drink - to survive, sex - to procreate). These desires are not the end but a mean.
In paradise, you will not have to eat or drink to survive and certainly you don't need to procreate. |
Those are just some pretentious statements about the difference between animals and man, or the evolution of our desires. You've assumed that pleasure, derived from sex, eating and drinking, is some kind of evolutionary byproduct. Of course, evolution of man from man-ape is something Muslims do not accept, nor can either school of thought disprove the other. However, I won't need to uphold this point.
Furthermore you're philosophical by begging to explore the fundamental science behind pleasure or how the mind and soul function. Man is completely in the dark about such things, maybe science will one day answer a few things but I'm not going to speculate more. You cannot attack religion with another religion, including philosophical remarks.
You claim that from the point of view of the mind or soul there are different forms of pleasure and you've arbitrarily attached labels of pure and impure to them expecting me to accept them. You haven't explained
why drinking is an impure pleasure and whether you label it carnal or not doesn't mean anything. To elucidate, deriving pleasure from knowing about someone's misfortune thus laughing at that person isn't carnal, it's not pleasure of the flesh nor can you just claim it is a byproduct of survival nor is it something strikingly 'animalistic'. Yet it seems like one might class it as impure, it does not befit a good person in Paradise. So whether something is carnal or not is irrelevant, what matters is what God (if you believe in Him) has ordained.
Moving on, ironically, what you say about not having to eat, drink or procreate in Paradise is exactly what Islam teaches. There is hadith that state that one will be provided with an initial meal and drink which remove hunger and thirst for eternity. So if a Paradise-dweller didn't want to eat and drink or procreate that's his or her right, but most people are not going to be enticed by your idea of Paradise.
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One would think the deity will award you with PURER pleasures.
And why would you need to ENGAGE in something in order to feel pleasure, why can't the deity just give the pleasure and that's it. (maybe in the future we will be able to stimulate the brain to achieve greater desires without doing anything).
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As I mentioned before, the greatest pleasure in Paradise will be actually seeing Allah. Now if this manifests itself as a 'physical' pleasure, or a feeling of satisfaction in knowing, is irrelevant to me, God decides. Nevertheless, I expect this is one of your 'purer' forms of pleasure. It is a pity you cannot come up with a reason to think that pleasure through sight, or knowledge (by the way most people need to sense things to achieve knowledge of them), is inherently less pure than through other senses, unless you can explain to me exactly how the soul/mind functions. Instead you just make blanket statements. Some people may have had negative sexual experiences or problems, resulting in a hate of sex, but that doesn't make sex inherently evil.
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You clearly don't say that god engages in those activities, or do you? wouldn't you be closer to god if you, too, didn't engage in those?
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Muslims don't want, need or pretend to mimic to God who is unlike mankind therefore no speculation about Him is helpful either. Muslims accept His absolute superiority and worship of Him will continue in Paradise, one cannot get close to God in the sense you mean. Your fantasy of being in Paradise in order to try to be like God is arrogant, untenable and hypocritical. Most people accept that they're human, with 'primitive' desires and in a way it is a pleasure to not have to hate one's state, but your ego is clearly missing out on that one.