Heaven and The Problem of Evil

[Esquilax]

I think that in a book filled with ambiguous ideas that are open to so much interpretation, heaven might be the most ambiguous of all. There really isn't much of a description of it in the Bible, just bits and pieces that don't really fit together well and don't give a very good picture of what to actually expect.

I find it interesting that there is probably more conjecture about hell than there is about heaven, particularly among Christians. It's as if hell is something that they can visualize well enough and fear, but heaven is too vague to really visualize and simply not appealing enough. This is probably where alternatives like eternal life on a paradise on earth come from, in that they sound more interesting than spending eternity in the astral plane, patting god on the back and telling him what a swell guy he is, over and over and over and...

Well, the more detail you put into a description of heaven, the higher the risk you run of creating an image of it that turns off some of the faithful; if you keep it vague so that they can just plug in their own idea of paradise, you can attract all manner of believers in without having to expend much effort at all.

Hell kinda works the opposite, since it's supposed to be a threat; it's a fine line to walk, but you'd want more detail there to scare the believers into staying, and the nonbelievers into converting. Also, since very few believers think they're actually going to hell, the risk you have with heaven isn't a factor, so you can sort of go nuts with your twisted revenge fantasies against the people who don't think like you, there.