(December 1, 2014 at 1:42 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(November 30, 2014 at 11:25 pm)Lek Wrote: Okay. Since we're critiquing God, tell me this. First of all, we are not allowed to kill babies and it would be a grievous sin for us to do so. Are those babies who were killed happy now or not? Would they have been happier to live longer lives on earth than they are now?
You're being simplistic, but I don't blame you; your religion conditions you not to think too closely about heaven.
Do people age in heaven? If yes, then the people who have been there longest are in some trouble. If not, then those babies are going to be forever locked in infant form, unable to comprehend anything, or learn, or grow. Doesn't sound like paradise to me.
But let's say you can halt and advance your aging at will in heaven; those babies would be thoroughly unrecognizable, psychologically, when they grow. Who we are as people is informed by our pasts and childhood; just growing up instantaneously wouldn't make them adults, it'd just make them children in adult bodies.
And if they grow up naturally there? Same problem. No human being in history has ever matured in an environment like heaven; the universal lessons we all learn growing up- about mortality, physical and mental harm, about not always getting what we want, about having to work for our happiness, about charity and caring for others, even about the structure of families, and so many others- are completely nonexistent in heaven. The very concepts don't come into play. Any child growing up in that environment would be utterly alien, dare I say stunted even. I'd remind you that the closest analogues to this scenario we get on Earth are spoiled brats, but even they have some concept of the applicability of these things.
God didn't just murder babies, or take them to heaven. He robbed them of their capacity to be human beings. Whether they would want to go back to Earth is irrelevant, because they would have no concept of what they're missing. And they missed out on a lot. The real question is, should they want to go back?
The late psychic Sylvia Browne said that everyone is 30 years old in Heaven. And, surely, she knew just as much about it as does Lek.
