Heaven?

[pasithea]

You know. Just thinking about the whole religion thing some more and it occurred to me... All these people who are trying to get into heaven... What are they going to do when they get there? I've never heard a single religious person mention their post-heaven-arrival plans. You're going to be happy for all eternity? How, exactly? Eating from the tree of knowledge is a sin, so you probably won't get to catch up on your reading. Likewise, adultery, sloth, gluttony, etc... So.. How exactly are you going to be 'happy'?

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

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.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

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. :)

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Ooh, more Tim Hortons.

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