Pasithea

The joy of heaven is proximity to God. At least for Christians. Hell is absence of God.

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So... They're fanboys? o_O

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Not really. Incomplete is a better word. The misery and suffering of being alive is the remoteness of God. Once you have your God back in you, then you are complete and want for nothing.

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But... As I commented to Paka, that doesn't seem very good either. Who wants to be a Stepford Wife version of yourself? For me, the highest highs come from accomplishing something difficult and overcoming negative factors on my own.

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Once you are in heaven you will have put all that behind you. You won't be a Stepford wife; you will be complete and content and happy forever with no bad side effects. You won't need to accomplish anything or overcome anything anymore.

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So you lay around doing nothing forever? How's that different from being dead in the way atheists see death?

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When you are dead, you are dead. In heaven you are eternally with God.

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I suppose I could see this as an instant of completeness lasting forever in a figurative way, like a sort of time dilation effect applied to the moment of death. This would, technically, make death the time of your life.

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Buddhists consider Heaven to be, like all states, transient.

What I've heard from a religious Christian, however, is a belief that God literally goes in and rewires the soul such that it's no longer recognizably bound by human understanding of pain, boredom and happiness; such that it can have joy or pain for all eternity.

I think I like the Buddhist take on it a lot more.

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So in the christian version, you're no longer you. You're some hollowed out Stepford Wife version of yourself? CrEEPY!

Think about that. You no longer get angry about racism. You no longer feel sad for people who are suffering. You no longer feel a twinge of pain for a pet that you lost. You're no longer confused by a math problem and never have the joy of figuring it out. For me at least, my greatest joys are accomplishments. Finishing an animation or a piece of art that I feel really proud of. If it were easy, it wouldn't be as meaningful. Heaven really doesn't seem very appealing to me.

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You are using human problems and values to describe heaven, which doesn't work. Heaven is a different place, with different rules. Things here don't map to there.

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I understand transcendence. I wrote an essay about the singularity a while back and how it wouldn't map to anything we could understand. Cited some examples like hearing every packet of data on the internet all at once as a symphony or transformed into a light show. If you're a god, regardless of the scope of your universe, the experiences are limitless and dazzling and nothing anyone on a physical plane could really comprehend.

Therein lies the rub. How do we know it's 'good'? The next plane is so radically different from this one, there's nothing to compare it to. Most people also fear loss of their individualism or self and those things would surely have to be shed to transcend. I'm skeptical that most christians are really ready to make that kind of sacrifice, even if by becoming part of god, they could play out every version of their life across all possible times and dimensions. Really, I just don't think the majority of christians have really thought about what happens after at all.

The other problem, of course is that eating from the tree of knowledge was man's original sin. Why would God make their mortal life difficult because they'd tasted godhood only to give them godhood when they died, when in theory, godhood was the one thing he told man they couldn't have?

If you see yourself as part of a larger world, you and I are already part of this whole god identity. My thread is exploring a somewhat cynical and philosophical lifetime while you're clipping through a spleeny existence. Of course, other God-particles are exploring what it's like to be a godless serial killer, which is paradoxically completely acceptable in the grander transcended scheme of things. concepts like good and evil really only exist on our plane of existence. They're meaningless to a god.

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I'll just fixate on one little bit of what you said.

How do we know it's 'good'?

The answer is faith. The whole God thing falls apart if faith is removed.

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More often than not 'faith' seems to be a codeword for 'incurious'. Contemplating the vastness of what transcendence actually is really fascinating and 'faith' is just an off switch. Worse than that, it lets people feel like they're suffering now for some reward in the future. In my view, suffering now could _BE_ the reward. Twisted as it is, it's a fascinating thought to contemplate.

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To be fair, we're all incurious about some things most of the time. There are assumptions we simply work with – gravity, human thought, states of matter, mathematics, animals, whatever – and we remain curious only in brief moments or, if we are specialists in a fiend, intensely curious about that field and safely uninterested in others, just to keep ourselves from spiralling off into a zillion different directions while never accomplishing anything. I guess some are just more incurious than others.

Of course, that reminds me of a quote regarding gods. "We're all atheists; I simply believe in one less god than most." It's all in the framing of it!

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I think if that disable switch is normal for people, there is probably something seriously wrong with me. I'm obsessively curious about almost everything all the time. Various things come to the forefront, of course, but my mind is always racing. It's a very frustrating, even maddening thing being trapped in this pathetic body which can barely do any multi-tasking at all and is so high maintenance with its needs for sleep, shelter, and food. If I could spend every second studying, I likely would. That's what I do with nearly all of my free time. Even when I walk places, I'm constantly studying the plants, animals, mushrooms, shapes and textures of things, composition and colors of the world around me. Every moment is precious and it drives me mad to waste any of them. :/

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yetanotherbob.livejournal.com

It's only wrong if it significantly hinders. But you've never had a time where it's 'Fuck it, I don't want to deal with this.' or 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!'? Anyways, my best guess is that it's something that's internally consistent just as long as it's a closed system. That is, there are some who don't care, and they don't care that they don't care. Their endgame is to bring about the end of the world, so that they can get a spiritual lobotomy. Thus their distrust of intelligence. Scary, innit?

Although it should be said, it's more that we're biased in a long-standing debate. What's better? What's truely good? A happy pig, or an unhappy socrates? You, I, and our friends side with Socrates, but others make the argument for the pig, since it's not suffering.

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That's what the dude said - Prester Scott actually, on LJ. I find it really hard to believe in as the action of a benevolent god, to be honest.

You no longer feel sad for people who are suffering

Which is something that always struck me as terrible about the concept of pairing Heaven with Hell. I mean, if there's something that utterly miserable, isn't the place of a good person actually in Hell trying to help people, rather than in Heaven chatting with Jean d'Arc and kicking back with a cold one? Unlike a living person, who has family to think about or who could be in mortal danger going to the third world to lend a hand, a soul permitted into Heaven can't be killed or permanently crippled by malaria or hepatitis or whatever, can it? So there's no reason a heavenly host of do-gooders should actually stay there rather than rushing off to - well, do things in line with their personality and why they're in Heaven in the first place.

The only reasons I can think this might work out ever is 1) some sort of celestial brainwashing like that mentioned above, 2) the knowledge that Hell like Heaven is transient, or 3) a faith-based belief system in which works don't matter so people considered "good" are perfectly content to let their fellows suffer and rot in a massive display of injustice.

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furrysaint.livejournal.com

This reminds me of something I came across several months ago, and I wish I had bookmarked it, because it just struck the 'WTF?!' chord in me...

This guy was answering questions about various Christian/Biblical things, and one of them was 'Will our pets be in heaven with us?'. The short answer from him was 'No.', but the long one creeped me out.

The more full answer was that no, they would not be, but you wouldn't miss them because you would be in the presence of God, and you would forget about your earthly existance. You would not worry about the people left behind, because praising/worshipping God would be the 'be all/end all' of your existance, and He--to quote a song--would be forever in your eyes.*

...Yeeeeeeeaaaaaahhhno.

I posted my thoughts on what happens after we die, and the one above...no. Just no. Belief like that would be stupid. (Easy joke, but notice I'm not going there.) There would be no *point* to believing or not. YOU, the mind, body and soul sitting there reading this, YOU would no longer exist no matter what. It would be something else because you would think NOTHING aside from 'AAAAH, PAIN!' or 'OOOOH, PRETTY!'.

*Bonus points for knowing what song I'm quoting.

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It just seems so... weird and clumsy, trying to mix a concept which is basic human desire with a more universal, a bigger concept of divinity.

I mean, the big reason I would want there to be a Heaven is so that good people who had their time cut short, or who spent their time here suffering, could actually get a fair break, right? And people are scared of boom, this is it, nothing. Nobody wants to have non-existence at the end of a lot of pain and suffering and screaming and injustice, and isn't it basically human to want some god or gods to show up and say you were an okay person? Fair enough.

Beyond that though... okay, so we're certain that Heaven is a place with no guard towers or crematoria or iron lungs or long hours underground inhaling coal dust or shell-wrecked trenches or whatever, that's great; but what else can we say about the place as a conception? Is it childhood fantasy land full of unicorns and root-beer-float fountains? Is it basically just like the world around us only now with more Tim Hortons or something? And if that's it, then what's the appeal for specifically a Christian Heaven, how is this innately more mature and nicer than - for instance - spending eternity playing senet, drinking the beer your family left for your ka, and watching your ushabti do your share of the work in the gods' fields?

Not only is the answer "you get to be in God's presence" or "you get oneness with God" a good answer because nobody knows, it's the only answer that doesn't sound faintly silly. But then... as a living human being, technically aren't we already in God's presence and technically one with God? That sort of thing?

The only way to make Heaven something more enlightened sounding than escapist fantasy is to basically define God as someone to whom humanity does not really matter much and who can reach in and remake you for no apparent reason. Much like the concept of Hell or the whole faith-over-works thing it just doesn't make the Christians' god out to sound particularly benevolent. Either that or you get back to the belief that one simply willingly discards a need to cling to ideas of self and so a life after death simply doesn't matter anyway - which sounds a lot less like some Heaven and much more like Nirvana.

I figure some sort of quasi mystery, or a transient state in which yeah, you do get a year to a century worth of utter bliss before returning to the next life, is the only answer that actually sounds good and comparatively selfless. It's probably dead wrong, mind, it's just the only thing that sounds nice.

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It's funny that americans would go with the whole 'one with god' and 'remade' concepts. Zombie movies and red panic sort of suggest that this would be one of the things they're most terrified of. The idea of a loss of individualism.

As for me, my view is far far more twisted than any religion but I have a little difficulty explaining it. If you ever watched Star Trek: TNG, there's one episode with Q where he explains that he interacts with humans because he's _bored_ He's been all the characters in Q world. The old man, the young girl, the dog, the puddle of water. He and all the other Q have been them all and played out a million different scenarios.

That's sort of my view in a way. Either there's no higher power or we're all effectively god-fragments all exploring what it means to be You, me, poison oak, or George Bush. (Which probably isn't much different from the poison oak) If God exists/is everything, then we're just exploring a particular set of paths. When we die, this path will ends but the data of what we are is preserved as part of what happened in the universe. In other words, God and universe are exactly the same thing. The universe has gained the experience of what it was like to be me, which is very very similar to but slightly different from what it was like to be any of a hundred million other humans. When I die, I'll just free up resources to run a new instance of existence. Maybe experience what it's like to be a rock or a goldfish or another human or possibly exist in another version of reality all together. Maybe I'll exist in a universe where I retain information from this thread or maybe I'll be totally blank. In either case, I won't be 'me' in the sense that I am now, but the universe will always retain what it was to be, even if I'm a minuscule fragment of data in the inconceivably large set that is all of everything.

The real trick is figuring out whether or not I can hack the constraints of the system I was written into. Surely that's an experience worth having. :)

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prickvixen.livejournal.com

Ooh, more Tim Hortons.

Yes, I do think this response is of the appropriate solemnity to the subject matter...

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valarltd.livejournal.com

I always understood part of the joy of heaven was being able to watch the wicked get theirs.

Gloating if you will.

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Yeah, but an eternal Hell? Isn't that a little extreme? I figure I'd start feeling sorry for (let's pick an utterly horrible example) Adolph Eichmann and want to go help him the first time I saw someone break all his ribs, let alone the 500th time.

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valarltd.livejournal.com

I don't claim to get it, despite years of fundamentalism.

These days, I'm looking forward to a short rest in the Summerlands and then another trip through here.

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perlandria.livejournal.com

The mormon version is like here, only bigger and more megalomania. The men become their own gods, ruling over thier own universes and thier own (plural) wives. Said wives have infinate sprogs, who will learn in mortal school how to be gods. Wash rinse repeat.
Which mean, if you follow it back, the mormon big G GOD has a Daddy God over HIM. and a Granpa God. And a great grand pappy god. and a great great opa god, etc.
But they avoided my questions about how it all began...

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Said wives have infinate sprogs
That's rather horrifying. I'm imagining it in a sort of Lovecraftian Giegeresque kind of way.

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I consider that one of the few redeeming features of the faith. *grin*

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yetanotherbob.livejournal.com

Ooo. Would this be the Church of Latter-Day Elder Gods?

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True faith means we're lucky.. we'll be the first to be devoured.

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yetanotherbob.livejournal.com

Heh. I can see door to door evangelism of this. And this opens up all sorts of opportunities. Door to door atheists. Or even door to door homosexuality. There's always been claims of an agenda of gays trying to convert hets. Why not make it real? Of course, that'd require dressing up as an indian, a construction worker, a cowboy or a cop...

Mandatory VG Cats link.

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Will the elder gods feast upon them or will their legions of spawn shed their human skins and feast upon their parents?

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prickvixen.livejournal.com

To go from what I've heard, Heaven is sitting around in your muumuu eating Mallomars for eternity, and Hell is being on fire. That's about the intellectual level I've been exposed to. But I don't think most people, religious or otherwise, truly grasp the concept of ascension, because such a process basically annihilates the self, and if they could cease to consider the primacy of their consciousness, it's possible they would also lack desires and longing and wouldn't need religion anyway. We are our needs and desires and aspirations and fears, and if you're in utter, constant bliss at the proximity of God, you have none of this; you are essentially destroyed as an individual.

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prickvixen.livejournal.com

But now that I think about it, if we were totally selfless beings-- if we had no sense of self whatsoever --we wouldn't seek God. We would want for nothing, because we would not be anyone. So the question is, if your self is annihilated by God's overwhelming presence, how would you even know you enjoyed God's proximity? Wouldn't you be indifferent, like a polyp growing on a rock, or someone riding out the world's biggest shot of heroin?

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