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The concept of heaven

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Janissy
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28 Oct 2010, 3:21 pm

boosterjones wrote:
[Everyone will have their minds altered so that they will not be ABLE to have the desire to do wrong.

However do not think that everyone will be some kind of slave without any will of their own, you will still have free will, all that would happen is you simply would not WANT to do wrong!

.


A Clockwork Orange (both as book and as movie) examined the impossibility of free will co-existing with having your mind altered so you don't want to do wrong. It's the best examination of the subject there is.

Back to the OP. I don't think the concept of heaven makes sense. Everything that makes us individuals (with an individual soul) would just unravel if subjected to eternal anything. We aren't divine. We can't maintain identity (even in just soul form) for eternity. I suppose if I'm wrong about that I'll find out. But I suspect that the "me" that feels like my soul will just dissipate when I die.



auntblabby
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29 Oct 2010, 12:27 am

i could not last another day if i knew for a fact that this diminished life was all there was. heaven HAS to exist for people like me, as payback for a life missing too many important pieces and warped in too many places. ever since i read "life after life" [dr. raymond moody] in 1975, [and "you cannot die" by dr. ian stevenson, a few years later] this has given me a path in life, a renewed purpose in living. otherwise i woulda chucked it long ago.

i have found that most humans simply cannot conceive of that which they cannot discern with their five senses. i guess it takes a kind of sixth sense to appreciate the heavenly concept.



MrDiamondMind
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29 Oct 2010, 12:42 am

Epilefftic wrote:
Wouldn't you go insane with boredom soon enough?

If it's truly Heaven, then you would obviously have to be immune to insanity and boredom.



Last edited by MrDiamondMind on 29 Oct 2010, 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

auntblabby
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29 Oct 2010, 12:43 am

MrDiamondMind wrote:
Epilefftic wrote:
Wouldn't you go insane with boredom soon enough?

If it's truly Heaven, then you would obviously have to be immune to insanity.


heaven could NEVER be boring, it is only the cold hard earth which is boring [when it is not being a holy terror]



ruveyn
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29 Oct 2010, 4:52 am

auntblabby wrote:
MrDiamondMind wrote:
Epilefftic wrote:
Wouldn't you go insane with boredom soon enough?

If it's truly Heaven, then you would obviously have to be immune to insanity.


heaven could NEVER be boring, it is only the cold hard earth which is boring [when it is not being a holy terror]


Only to a conscious and aware person. When we die, we become neither of these.

ruveyn



Last edited by ruveyn on 29 Oct 2010, 11:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

boosterjones
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29 Oct 2010, 7:19 am

auntblabby wrote:
i could not last another day if i knew for a fact that this diminished life was all there was. heaven HAS to exist for people like me, as payback for a life missing too many important pieces and warped in too many places. ever since i read "life after life" [dr. raymond moody] in 1975, [and "you cannot die" by dr. ian stevenson, a few years later] this has given me a path in life, a renewed purpose in living. otherwise i woulda chucked it long ago.

i have found that most humans simply cannot conceive of that which they cannot discern with their five senses. i guess it takes a kind of sixth sense to appreciate the heavenly concept.


That is a very good answer, as a very wise being once said.

Listen to this fellow!! !! !!



NobelCynic
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29 Oct 2010, 8:12 pm

Epilefftic wrote:
This thought came to me after a certain Twilight Zone episode

Rod Serling had an interesting concept of heaven and hell. I remember a Night Gallery segment where a guy dies and goes to Hell. He is a little worried in what he thinks is the waiting room where an older couple is showing him pictures of their kids or something and demands to see the devil. The devil appears (complete with horns and tail) and informs him that there is a room just like this up there, ending it with "one mans heaven is another mans hell.

My concept is that Boosterjones was close but not quite. It is not that people will be unable to do wrong, they will have no desire to. Jesus spoke of separating the sheep from the goats. The good people all go to one place and the bad people go to another place; and everybody calls the place they are in heaven and the other place hell.


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Sand
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29 Oct 2010, 9:47 pm

NobelCynic wrote:
Epilefftic wrote:
This thought came to me after a certain Twilight Zone episode

Rod Serling had an interesting concept of heaven and hell. I remember a Night Gallery segment where a guy dies and goes to Hell. He is a little worried in what he thinks is the waiting room where an older couple is showing him pictures of their kids or something and demands to see the devil. The devil appears (complete with horns and tail) and informs him that there is a room just like this up there, ending it with "one mans heaven is another mans hell.

My concept is that Boosterjones was close but not quite. It is not that people will be unable to do wrong, they will have no desire to. Jesus spoke of separating the sheep from the goats. The good people all go to one place and the bad people go to another place; and everybody calls the place they are in heaven and the other place hell.


There is something terribly naive in parsing people into "good" and "bad". Religions have a way of laying out a set of simplistic dogmatic conditions for judgment, some of which have minimum validity and many of which are amusingly insane and intensely stupid. Under extreme pressure we all have unpredictable reactions and behaviors and good and bad have little relevance.



auntblabby
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30 Oct 2010, 1:23 am

ruveyn wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
MrDiamondMind wrote:
Epilefftic wrote:
Wouldn't you go insane with boredom soon enough?

If it's truly Heaven, then you would obviously have to be immune to insanity.


heaven could NEVER be boring, it is only the cold hard earth which is boring [when it is not being a holy terror]


Only to a conscious and aware person. When we die, we become neither of these.

ruveyn


how do you know?



auntblabby
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30 Oct 2010, 1:29 am

NobelCynic wrote:
"one mans heaven is another mans hell." Jesus spoke of separating the sheep from the goats. The good people all go to one place and the bad people go to another place; and everybody calls the place they are in heaven and the other place hell.


that sounds very close to the truth. when dr. george ritchie visited the hereafter [described in his book "return from tomorrow"] he described transluscent separating walls which separated the different realms of heaven, with the more spiritual able to look "down" but the less spiritual unable to look "up" - IOW spirits could see their inferiors but not their betters. sorta like the curtain that separates first class from steerage. :lol: