The concept of heaven

Post Reply New Topic

Respective theology aside, does the concept of an everlasting paradise make sense to you? The idea that you will have any wish granted on a whim forever, with no toil or torment. Did I mention forever? Wouldn't you go insane with boredom soon enough?

This thought came to me after a certain Twilight Zone episode; A Nice Place to Visit. A crook dies and in his "paradise" he is granted anything he asks. Money, food, drinks. He never loses at gambling, always winning.

But after a month he says: ""If I stay one more day, I'm going to go nuts! I don't belong in Heaven, see? I want to go to the other place".

And the funniest thing is the "angel" says: "Heaven, Mr. Valentine? Whatever gave you the idea that you were in Heaven? This is the other place!!"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkQhAVFxDFk&feature=related[/youtube]

Sounds like an interesting episode.

I can really recommend Mark Twain to you. In one of his books (forgot the title atm unfortunately, I'll come up with it later) he has an entire chapter about the ridiculousness of Heaven. Man hates going to church, sing, and pray during his life, but he looks forward to an eternity where he shall have nothing but that!

More of that, it's REALLY brilliant.

yup, the concept of heaven doesn't really make much sense.

i bet if there is one, there'll still be racism up there.
& littering....pretty soon heaven will be cluttered to capacity with garbage because in a perfect world, who wants to have to pick up after themselves ? no one
they say the buildings & streets are all made out of gold, but i bet it's more like just because God needed a material actually capable of shielding his metaphysical paradise from the lethal dose of radiation that comes with building your base of operations too close to celestial bodies.

Since a rational inspection of all religions exposes their total idiocy why should heaven fall out of that category?

I think heaven is logically and psychologically possible, but it is more likely a mindset than a place anyway. The idea is just to stimulate the "soul" correctly. And the real problem is that souls are ridiculous. However, I think it is possible to have pleasure and a sense of wonder without eternal orgasm.

Eternal orgasm is somewhat like continuous sneezing. Not something terribly attractive - at least to me.

Only if you consider it from a mortal perspective of synapses that wear and tear.

And with an eternal body it could go on forever. No thanks.

your example reminds me of the difference between unlimited money strictly for pleasure versus unlimited money just for paying unlimited bills. if you consider it that way, then an eternal quasi-orgasmic state would seem a lot less like eternal sneezing.
anyways, i never thought that heaven would be the same for everybody. i've long thought that some heavens would be religiously constructed, while others' heavens would be more akin to that depicted in the movie "made in heaven." i believe there are communal consensus heavens and idiosyncratic individual heavens, depending on what the departed spirit/s would need at any given time.
_____________________________________________________________________
just my 2-cents' worth, adjusted for inflation

That is a good point, the issue of evil in Heaven.

The fact is that it simply would not exist!

For a start as everyone will have all of their needs and wants met no one will want to go and take from others (if no other option was open to them) all one would have to do is ask God and He'll make sure that your needs are met!

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!

Try and think of evil as being a kind of illness, and I'm sure you see what I mean...

Lastly, one will not have to worry about litter bugs, God will (surely) have robots which will our 'slaves'.

No, but the concept of an everlasting existence certainly does.


What happened to "Respective theology aside"? The idea you have just mentioned comes from Santa Claus Theology.

You'll have to define "evil" because one could argue that good & evil don't exist at all.


Would they even be considered "needs & wants" at that point?



This is logically impossible. If someone is controlling your wants & needs, then you don't have free will. In fact, in this "heaven," would you even have wants and needs at all?


It's a shame that God's still working on the vaccine.




Why would there be litter in heaven in the first place?

Epilefftic posted: Respective theology aside, does the concept of an everlasting paradise make sense to you? The idea that you will have any wish granted on a whim forever, with no toil or torment. Did I mention forever? Wouldn't you go insane with boredom soon enough?

This thought came to me after a certain Twilight Zone episode; A Nice Place to Visit. A crook dies and in his "paradise" he is granted anything he asks. Money, food, drinks. He never loses at gambling, always winning.

But after a month he says: ""If I stay one more day, I'm going to go nuts! I don't belong in Heaven, see? I want to go to the other place".

And the funniest thing is the "angel" says: "Heaven, Mr. Valentine? Whatever gave you the idea that you were in Heaven? This is the other place!!"

---

Good stories use extreme contrasts:

Snow White vs the Wicked Queen, God vs the Guy With a Red Tail in Red Clothes Holding a Pitchfork (the Bible), the Wizard of Oz/Dorothy vs the Wicked Witch of the West.

http://www.pilgrimsprogressthemovie.com/ (Religious science fiction movie)(written using the literary technique of it all happened as a dream)

---

Light vs Darkness
North vs South (a Horseshoe Magnet)
Pure Water vs Polluted Water
A Heaven In The Sky Above Jerusalem, Israel (a heaven with gates of giant pearls and streets of gold) vs Heck In The Earth (molten lava from volcanoes)
Good vs Evil
Cops vs Robbers
Heaven (A City of Peace) vs Heck (A Den of Thieves/Barbarians)

http://www.justdisney.com/walt_disney/quotes/

---

The Bible: The Greatest Stories (Yarns) Ever Told

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greate ... _Ever_Told

---

My view today is that most non-profit ministers are really religious opera stage actors/actresses who decide to play their religious gigs for decades. Their primary motivation is money and an enjoyable career for life. They are like Shakespearean actors and actresses but choose to confine their acting to religious buildings called Temples, Churches, or Mosques.

Some people (actors and actresses) from Hollywood choose to live their entire lives living in tinseltown make-believe worlds (playing different movie roles).

Non-profit religious people do the same but many non-profit religious people will try to insist their way of looking at life is superior to the Hollywood actors/actresses.

Both non-profit religious leaders and for profit Hollywood actors/actresses choose to live in completely make-believe worlds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Ad ... Wonderland

http://www.sacred-texts.com/

http://www.bibles.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre

---

Does the concept of an everlasting paradise make sense?

Many fairytales end with something like: And they all lived happily ever after.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_tale

Fairytales with happy endings seem to outsell those with other kinds of endings.

This discussion reminds me of the Talking Heads song "Heaven": "Heaven, heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens." It's sort of like Jhonen Vasquez's concept as exemplified in JtHM-- everyone is granted unlimited power, but instead of using it, everyone just sits around for all eternity, perfectly content to never move or speak again (until Nny appears, of course).

Ultimately, I think a literal Christian "fluffy white clouds" heaven runs into problems, because the concept of ultimate unspoiled good upon which it is based is absolutely meaningless without something to offset it. "Good" is a concept which is part of an inseparable duality, with "bad" or "evil". One cannot exist without the other, because on its own, there is nothing relative to "good" to distinguish it as being "good". For that reason, if heaven were to exist, I believe the Hindu/Buddhist concepts of moksha/nirvana are more apt in describing it: a perfect state of peace in which the mind is liberated from suffering, and there are no more boundaries-- sort of like waking up from a long dream.