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Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 6:27 pm
(This post was last modified: December 10, 2015 at 6:46 pm by Amine.)
I've noticed a lot of atheists say heaven would be boring. At its worst, it might be. If it entails sitting around on a cloud with a harp singing hymns for eternity, it would really be more of a hell. But that seems like the worst version of heaven anyone could talk about (and it comes off like sour grapes). What about the best?
At best, heaven would be good beyond everyone's wildest dreams. There are a myriad of ways it could play out, some of them explored in movies like What Dreams May Come and Vanilla Sky. What if we just stuck to the known and made some tweaks? Take this world, eliminate all poverty, violence, and disease (including aging). What's left? A place of near infinite room to explore and play. I doubt I'd ever get bored.
But there are further tweaks we can make, most importantly that of our own hedonic tone. Anyone reading this is probably in a relatively neutral mood, maybe slightly above or below. Things don't have to be that way. That happiness requires sadness to contrast it is folksy psychology, and wrong. Some people are clearly consistently happier or sadder than others. Those who have done heavy doses of a psychedelic or euphoriant drug may know the true heights of the brain's emotional capacity, and believe me, they make anything one has ever experienced while sober look like a 2-dimensional gray blob of dreariness. Life on this planet could be driven by gradients of intelligent bliss.
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.
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RE: Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 6:37 pm
(This post was last modified: December 10, 2015 at 6:37 pm by Napoléon.)
The main thing with heaven when people say it would suck is when they imply that because it's an 'eternity' it would eventually get boring.
Personally I don't subscribe to that, just because something would be eternal doesn't mean it would get boring. This problem is solved quite easily if you simply give people the ability to forget. Why would it not be possible for a heaven in which doing literally everything is enjoyable all of the time. Isn't that the whole point?
For me these exercises in thought are just pointless anyway as we are essentially debating "my imaginary world is better than your imaginary world". Silly. If it's imaginary it can be anything we fucking want it to be. It's us who came up with it after all.
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RE: Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 6:56 pm
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.
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RE: Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 7:04 pm
(December 10, 2015 at 6:56 pm)Cecelia Wrote: 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.
Not even once you got to heaven that's it you have no freewill of your own you are forced to be happy you can't be sad
and you have the same mentality as everyone else. Then also you have no personality of your own as well. Then you have hell
you keep your free will you can think you can question everything.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization join today.
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RE: Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 7:16 pm
It's still a fantasy delusion. Not wasting my time.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem.
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RE: Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 7:21 pm
I've always been told that heaven is getting whatever you want, and everyone is happy. Although we know how Yahweh thinks anyone who thinks and acts differently than he wants is evil, so most likely you'd be getting a spiritual lobotomy. You think what he wants you to think, and you act how he wants you to act. You can dress it up all you want, but in essence the only people the christian god wants around him are people who devote themselves fully to him. So it wuldn't be what I'd call fun, but I guess there wouldn't be enough of me left to complain after he got done with me.
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RE: Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 7:42 pm
An eternity of anything is another word for hell.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 8:14 pm
Heaven would be heavenly by definition. It may not be "good" but it would be by definition pleasurable.
The description of heaven is indeed boring, but the experience would supposedly be eternal bliss. Fuck knows how but anyway it's a fairy tale so who cares.
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RE: Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 8:49 pm
Imagine your most pleasurable, satisfying experiences. Now imagine doing nothing else, forever, with no way out.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Heaven would be good
December 10, 2015 at 8:54 pm
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.
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