If we are to say that things like material possessions, your body, positions, and titles don't matter in the afterlife, how can we assume that things like "truth", "love" and "power" survive into the afterlife?
How do we know that being wise in this life translates into being wise in the afterlife? or something like courage?
For example, lets say that something like courage could be quantified on a scale of 1 to 1,000. Let's say that a fully "enlightened" person is at 1,000. Let's say that you start you life with a courage level of 200, and you make it one of your purpose(s) in life to raise your level of courage to level 300 prior to death because you assume that "Courage" is something you take into the afterlife. (or wisdom, or truth or whatever)
So now you're on your death bed, you're at level 300 of courage, you pass away. You go into the afterlife.
A second person doesn't follow that purpose. He starts at level 200 of courage as well. The second person just wants to be stinkin rich and to party all his life and get drunk and gamble and be a coward and then he finally dies in a car crash. He goes into the afterlife as well.
You both meet up and you say to him "Thank God I didn't waste my whole life on earthly possessions, I fulfilled a much more meaningful purpose and I actually got my courage level up to 300 so now I have much more courage than you... see my button on my shirt here? It says 'Courage 300'." The other person looks at his button and it says "Courage 200" on it. He looks around and sees none of his earthly possessions with him.... so he turns around and says "Dang! Hey God, can I get Courage 300 too?" and God turns to him and says "Sure man, no problem... heck, I'll give you 400 if you want..."
How do we know that doesn't happen either?
How do we know that ANY pursuit of "achieving something" is all just ego because we really take nothing into the afterlife?
We can try to label things as "worthy because we take them into the afterlife" and "unworthy because we lose them after we die" but how do we even know that we take anything into the afterlife?
What if the only purpose is what you can do to change Earth while you're here...once you go to the Afterlife everyone becomes exactly the same....level 1000 at everything...so the only thing that's "purposeful" is whatever we accomplished on earth before we left which the next generation of humans can benefit from.
And just to throw in one more wrench into it...how do we know that all of this and our idea of the afterlife is not just a lousy dream that disappears in the blink of an eye?
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