(August 14, 2020 at 9:47 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:(August 13, 2020 at 10:09 pm)brewer Wrote: What if you're granted the happy kind of dementia or anterograde amnesia?
I refer to that as the 'heavenly lobotomy'. In heaven you won't give a shit about your loved ones roasting in hell because that would make you unhappy and you can't be unhappy in heaven. I've also heard it put that in heaven you will realize how richly deserved the roasting of your loved ones is and you won't be able to be sad about people getting just what they deserve.
I'm with you on this. Sound like heaven would either be a hell, or else a place of drugged-out apathy.
To be a bit more serious, I'm going to outline the view of heaven/hell that I had when I was a Christian.
It seems to me that most religions specify something that the adherent must either do (sacrifice, prayer, glorious death), or a state of mind that they must achieve (enlightenment) to enter into some good afterlife. Actions or state-of-mind in life dictate the state after death.
Christians demand a "belief in Jesus, that he has saved you from sin". This belief supposedly magically gives you back a connection to God - one that is needed to attain heaven. I began to doubt this magic, but instead, perhaps the belief itself is supposed to bring peace and love, and that itself is the "state of mind" necessary for heaven?
If true, Christianity itself has no hold over who gets to heaven. Anyone who can overcome hate and fear can get there. But, why is this "state of mind" important at all?
Religions sometimes declare the afterlife as a reward, but I saw no justice in some arbitrary judgment. Perhaps "state of mind" is important because of what I call the "theology of the frozen soul".
In this idea, there is no change in heaven. You are always in the state you were at death. You can't become better, or worse. You can't be "forgiven". You can't suddenly decide that your life choices were a mistake. You can't become good if you were bad, and you can't become bad if you were good. "Judgment" becomes a simply the reification of your state before death. A form of natural law.
I think Christians realized the problem with this, because no-one is particularly "good" in life. We are all selfish jerks when you strip away our socialized niceness. So, they invented the "magic get out of hell free card". But the problem with it is they create an arbitrary "in crowd", and replace the natural-law justice of the "frozen soul" with an elitist religious cult.
Still, heaven sounds like a bad place. Nothing ever happens, and no-one changes. If they could, people in hell would choose heaven, and people in heaven would rebel.
Yup, sounds like the "heavenly lobotomy" is the only way out
