Heaven would be good

[drfuzzy]

The problem with the promise of any glorious afterlife is that people tend to focus on that, instead of keeping their focus on this life.  People have given up family and friends and their own health, just for the promise of heaven.  People have followed the worst cult leaders of all time - and drank the koolaid - for the promise of heaven.  If this life is misery and you believe you'll wake up after death in paradise - well then, ONLY the threat of hell for committing suicide would make people not take their own lives.  Oh yes, it's an insidious, dangerous lie.
     And then there are the cringe-worthy platitudes people give each other at funerals . . .    

[Cyberman]

I've said before eventually you're going to do everything that everyone could think of doign more times than you can count. Eventually there isn't anyhing you're ever going to want to do, because you've done it all countless times. Unless your memory is being wiped periodically, any existence is going to be horrible if given enough time. That's the problem with immortality.

And any form of tampering with what constitutes basic humanity, just to make the eternal reward bearable, would be the single worst crime against a species in the Universe.

[Edwardo Piet]

Imagine your most pleasurable, satisfying experiences. Now imagine doing nothing else, forever, with no way out.

True but in heaven it wouldn't get boring it would be the same constant pleasure that never become mundane or frustrating: otherwise it would stop being heaven and stop being heavenly.

Sounds impossible and made up doesn't it? Yep, that's right: It is.

[Minimalist]

Christian Heaven would be horrible.  If you happen to get there, and someone you love and care about doesn't, Heaven would be hell either by virtue of not having free will, or by virtue of knowing that your loved one is suffering for eternity elsewhere.

The absolutely worst thing about a xtian heaven would be that it was full of fucking xtians.

[Homeless Nutter]

[...]
Seems like a good thing to remain open minded about. What's the point of trying to convince oneself heaven wouldn't be the greatest thing ever? We should dream like that. Not everything about religion is a bad idea, you know.

The idea, that life is going to be better after death is a bad idea. It devalues life and motivates desperate people to commit atrocities in order to fast-track their way there.

It might be nice if gnomes, or fairies existed and you could get them to do your bidding by leaving some milk and cookies for them, uttering a magic spell, or having one for a godmother. It's still not a good idea to believe that to be true.

[Cyberman]

Christian Heaven would be horrible.  If you happen to get there, and someone you love and care about doesn't, Heaven would be hell either by virtue of not having free will, or by virtue of knowing that your loved one is suffering for eternity elsewhere.

The absolutely worst thing about a xtian heaven would be that it was full of fucking xtians.

Worse, it would be full of the most sanctimonious, self-righteous, holier-than-thou xtians. Nobody else even comes close to the entry standards - which is actually a good thing.

[Amine]

Christian Heaven would be horrible.  If you happen to get there, and someone you love and care about doesn't, Heaven would be hell either by virtue of not having free will, or by virtue of knowing that your loved one is suffering for eternity elsewhere.

I agree about the loved one suffering elsewhere thing. But what if everyone got to go?

I don't believe in free will either way. But again, let's focus on the best possible outcome of what "heaven" could be. If you think that entails "free will" then what about some heaven that includes free will?

I've said before eventually you're going to do everything that everyone could think of doign more times than you can count. Eventually there isn't anyhing you're ever going to want to do, because you've done it all countless times. Unless your memory is being wiped periodically, any existence is going to be horrible if given enough time. That's the problem with immortality.

David Deutsch shows in his book The Beginning of Infinity that we could in principle go on learning new things and expanding forever. There will never be a day where everything is known.

Even if that weren't the case, I personally don't have much of a problem with meditative tranquility. I think it is projection to think about this in terms of who we are right now. We're 'in heaven' in this thought experiment. Things are different. Case in point, perhaps, wireheading. Send an electric current through the right area of the brain, and it doesn't matter what someone is doing, they will be ecstatic. Boredom can be made a physiological impossibility. Not that we would necessarily want that, but in principle it at least shows that experience can be brought under control.

The problem with the promise of any glorious afterlife is that people tend to focus on that, instead of keeping their focus on this life.  People have given up family and friends and their own health, just for the promise of heaven.  People have followed the worst cult leaders of all time - and drank the koolaid - for the promise of heaven.  If this life is misery and you believe you'll wake up after death in paradise - well then, ONLY the threat of hell for committing suicide would make people not take their own lives.  Oh yes, it's an insidious, dangerous lie.
     And then there are the cringe-worthy platitudes people give each other at funerals . . .    

I agree, I think the religious belief in heaven is terrible because it is false. But, 'a better world' actually is a possibility, and probably always will be. Who is to say that in 1000 years (maybe more / maybe less), whoever our descendants are won't be able to engineer paradise for themselves? To me that seems rather likely, provided that we aren't wiped out somehow.

And any form of tampering with what constitutes basic humanity, just to make the eternal reward bearable, would be the single worst crime against a species in the Universe.

Why? What is sacrosanct about humanity per se? I can't see how something could be a crime if no one is suffering.

[Vincent]

Even if Heaven were the greatest paradise imaginable, even if it were so great that the human mind cannot even conceive of its greatness, it would eventually become agony. 

I don't think the religious take time to contemplate just how long an eternity is, and how torturous it would be to be forced to live on for that amount of time. I think back to a book I read in high school called "Bless Me Ultima". The priest in the story tries to explain to the children how long an eternity is by telling them this: "Listen now… how long do you think it would take to move this mountain of sand all the way across the ocean, until you have the mountain over there and an empty space here? Ah, ah, ah… before you answer, let me tell you how you have to move that enormous mountain of sand.  A little bird, a sparrow, is going to move that mountain for you.  And the sparrow can only hold one little grain of sand in its beak.  It has to pick up only one little grain of sand, fly all the way across the wide ocean, put down the grain of sand, then fly all the way back for another grain of sand.  It takes the little bird weeks just to fly across the ocean, and each time it carries only one grain of sand.…when the little bird has moved that mountain of sand across the ocean that is only the first day of eternity."

I don't know about anyone else, but I cannot handle the idea of living- of existing - for that long, regardless of whether or not it is in eternal torment or eternal happiness. The first 1000 years might be bearable, the first 10,000 years an anguish, and the first 100,000 years total and absolute torture. You're pleading to die, begging for the sweet relief of nonexistence. Life is meant to be born and die. That is the natural order of things, and to violate that comes at a price. The human mind was not designed to endure more than 150 years, let alone 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 more (and the zeroes do not stop in eternity). What meaning can I make for my life if it never ends?

[Amine]

I think people are still projecting. The problem about who we are today is our lack of control over what we feel. I can't just choose not to be bored if I am at some lame event that seems to be taking forever. That lack of control, however, shouldn't be seen as absolute. Whether by magic (in religion) or technology, it's something that we should think of in this thought experiment as being under our control. By definition, heaven won't get boring. Whether it is meaningless is another question. I'm of the position that everything already is pretty much meaningless, so the idea of spending eternity blissfully doing nothing bothers me slightly less than for those who think human shibboleths are the only thing a person could possibly be happy about, and for a limited amount of time at that. Of course, we could program ourselves to enjoy them eternally, but isn't that equally meaningless? That said, I agree with David Deutsch that there will eternally be new discoveries to be made, and I don't actually think I would ever opt to blissfully do nothing forever.

[Alex K]

Imagine your most pleasurable, satisfying experiences. Now imagine doing nothing else, forever, with no way out.

Hmm, proving theorems about the topology of manifolds forever whilst listening to good music? Sounds reasonable to me