I understand a sentence "Merge sort has a time complexity of O(N log(N)) in the worst case" because I learned it from other people (my lecturer, book authors), too. So, I don't see the point here.
Most English-speaking people—even for those who don't believe life after this material world—likely have some guess of a definition of "eternal life", which might or might not be similar to the definition in the biblical context. Some who consider "eternal life" as cryptic as "bhng lw" don't know the word either "eternal" or "life".
The meaning of any word in any sentence of any book can be disputed, of course.. until we realize that a definition of a word also consists of words any of which can be argued all over again. (Aside: I had wondered since I was first introduced a dictionary: How can we understand any word if its definition consists of words too? It would be an infinite recursion. Only recently I knew that the problem has a name: "The Grounding Problem" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem )
To answer your question, in this context, having an eternal life means going to heaven. The follow up questions would be "What's heaven? Where is it?". I or someone else can explain it to you, but if you, in your words, "never bothered to learn the context", no one can help you to understand. However great your lecturer explained some materials in the class, you wouldn't fully understand the materials if you didn't self-study in your time, would you?
Yes, you are right - if You apply enough deconstruction and reductionism all communication between humans breaks down. But I still believe that there is a profound difference between Your example and the "eternal life" bit.
I'm not sure if I can get my point clearly (because its still intuition and not nicely expressed thought), but still, I will try my best.
"Merge sort has a time complexity of O(N log(N)) in the worst case" at this point and time has exactly one meaning because it addresses exactly one simple (but not simplistic) abstract problem of comparative assessment of algorithms for ordering symbols that have enough relations defined to be comparable. And the logic that stands behind it can be quite easily followed straight to the roots (or rather axioms) without anyone being burned on metaphorical cross along the way. There is no schism here, no cults, event not too many people with different opinions (there are surly some with different axioms and some with different opinions about reducing sorting worthiness to one scalar value).
Meanwhile if You get out of Your bubble and start asking what does it exactly mean "eternal life" or event better, as You mentioned, "what's heaven?" You will get as many answers as You will find people (home exercise - go ask a modern Jew about heaven, or Yehova witness, or Mormon :)).
Most English-speaking people—even for those who don't believe life after this material world—likely have some guess of a definition of "eternal life", which might or might not be similar to the definition in the biblical context. Some who consider "eternal life" as cryptic as "bhng lw" don't know the word either "eternal" or "life".
The meaning of any word in any sentence of any book can be disputed, of course.. until we realize that a definition of a word also consists of words any of which can be argued all over again. (Aside: I had wondered since I was first introduced a dictionary: How can we understand any word if its definition consists of words too? It would be an infinite recursion. Only recently I knew that the problem has a name: "The Grounding Problem" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem )
To answer your question, in this context, having an eternal life means going to heaven. The follow up questions would be "What's heaven? Where is it?". I or someone else can explain it to you, but if you, in your words, "never bothered to learn the context", no one can help you to understand. However great your lecturer explained some materials in the class, you wouldn't fully understand the materials if you didn't self-study in your time, would you?