Some interesting comments since I went offline, then. I'd like to thank our resident theist members for actually taking the trouble of responding to my idle musings; casting no nasturtiums, it's simply that in my experience these sort of questions from nonbelievers seem to attract attention from fellow atheists rather than the theists to whom they are primarily aimed (though of course all responses are welcome). I think it's mainly due to the possibilty, real or imagined, of the question being the setup to a trap that all-too often discourages theists from sharing their beliefs and opinions, possibly exposing them to ridicule. Anyway...
Re: Jeff. I see what you're saying there, that Heaven is forecast - prophesied, if you like, though these prophecies are not a patch on my own, as the record here will attest - anyway, it's said to be a future kingdom brought down here to Earth rather than some celestial post-mortem dwelling. Incidentally, I know of one person, and others here will know who I mean, who believes whole-heartedly that scripture points to the new kingdom as being a city on Mars. Regardless, this future city, wherever it's to be sited, isn't quite what I had in mind when I posed the original question. It may be naive of me but the traditional picture of Heaven is a place where the saved go after shuffling off this mortal coil. If this picture is wrong, or misguided, are we talking of a scenario in which the saved dead are held in a sort of stasis in the grave or wherever, until this new kingdom with room for 144,000 of them is established?
Either way, the description given for how those saved souls are to behave fits my suspicions rather well. If there is to be no sin etc, then surely that infringes upon the free will of the heavenly tenants, since they will be unable even to commit a sin even accidentally? Worse, they can only act in ways that accord with your god's "glory", worshipping it for all eternity, which as I stated upfront is a hell of a long time - a kind of infinity. A case in point can be lifted directly from your post. You say that "there will no longer be marriages, we will be more like you would imagine angels to be....completely content in our singleness". I was never content being single even before meeting up with my beloved Princess; I most certainly am not now after having her stolen from me. Obviously, there is little chance of my being considered for this new kingdom, since as an unbeliever I commit the one unforgivable sin. However, assuming for the moment that I do qualify for the housing list, I am to remain in this distressingly single state forever. Any version of me that has been reprogrammed so as accept this unhappy state is not going to be a me that anyone of my acquaintance is going to recognise, least of all me.
I'm interested too in how you expect businesses to work with all sin nullified. Aren't the overwhelming majority of businesses dependent on such 'sins' as greed, envy, lust perhaps? Even those ultra-rare businesses that might exist which operate on co-operative principles rely on a rigidly-defined system of demarcation, an us-and-them setup, which must inevitably lead to resentment of sorts between management and staff. I fear that such answers that may be offered for these matters are going to boil down at some point to 'godwillsit' or similar.
Re: John V - thank you for prefacing your reply with the honest "I don't know", though given what followed about the Universe being the size it is purely for our post-mortem benefit, I rather suspect that your pastor, good man though I'm sure he is, may not perhaps be the best source of information in this sort of area. I hesitate to throw words like "idiot" around; as I say, I know nothing of the man besides what you share here. On the other hand, I wonder if he realises the sheer scale of the Universe as we know it - and that's only the observable Universe, remember. Even if everyone who has ever lived and died here on Earth, including all those to come until the final days of our planet, were each granted a star system of their very own, I severely doubt that the human presence would extend much beyond just this galaxy.
As for the question of where are all the new things in this life, I'm sorry but that's quite startlingly parochial. Even if we go back just a century, the advances in such things as transport, comunications, medicine, media technology etc are simply and truly astonishing. Back a century before that, and even the discovery of things we take for granted today, such as electricity, would seem like magic if not for the enquiring minds that abounded round about that time. It has been said that reverse engineering the average flying saucer, supposedly being so highly advanced or conceptually alien, would tax even the most brillant minds of today in much the same way that a nuclear submarine would do for Leonardo da Vinci. That's the sort of scale we're talking about here. Where was the Iron Age internet, for instance?
Regardless, all the books, DVDs, internet porn, whatever, that could ever be conceived can only be a distraction akin to scratching your nose, compared to the unending vastness of eternity. As I said, even if eternity lasts until the heat death of the Universe, there's only so many times one can read Harry Potter or watch Star Trek before going psychopathically insane from sheer boredom. In the case of the former, once would do it for me.
Thoughts?
Re: Jeff. I see what you're saying there, that Heaven is forecast - prophesied, if you like, though these prophecies are not a patch on my own, as the record here will attest - anyway, it's said to be a future kingdom brought down here to Earth rather than some celestial post-mortem dwelling. Incidentally, I know of one person, and others here will know who I mean, who believes whole-heartedly that scripture points to the new kingdom as being a city on Mars. Regardless, this future city, wherever it's to be sited, isn't quite what I had in mind when I posed the original question. It may be naive of me but the traditional picture of Heaven is a place where the saved go after shuffling off this mortal coil. If this picture is wrong, or misguided, are we talking of a scenario in which the saved dead are held in a sort of stasis in the grave or wherever, until this new kingdom with room for 144,000 of them is established?
Either way, the description given for how those saved souls are to behave fits my suspicions rather well. If there is to be no sin etc, then surely that infringes upon the free will of the heavenly tenants, since they will be unable even to commit a sin even accidentally? Worse, they can only act in ways that accord with your god's "glory", worshipping it for all eternity, which as I stated upfront is a hell of a long time - a kind of infinity. A case in point can be lifted directly from your post. You say that "there will no longer be marriages, we will be more like you would imagine angels to be....completely content in our singleness". I was never content being single even before meeting up with my beloved Princess; I most certainly am not now after having her stolen from me. Obviously, there is little chance of my being considered for this new kingdom, since as an unbeliever I commit the one unforgivable sin. However, assuming for the moment that I do qualify for the housing list, I am to remain in this distressingly single state forever. Any version of me that has been reprogrammed so as accept this unhappy state is not going to be a me that anyone of my acquaintance is going to recognise, least of all me.
I'm interested too in how you expect businesses to work with all sin nullified. Aren't the overwhelming majority of businesses dependent on such 'sins' as greed, envy, lust perhaps? Even those ultra-rare businesses that might exist which operate on co-operative principles rely on a rigidly-defined system of demarcation, an us-and-them setup, which must inevitably lead to resentment of sorts between management and staff. I fear that such answers that may be offered for these matters are going to boil down at some point to 'godwillsit' or similar.
Re: John V - thank you for prefacing your reply with the honest "I don't know", though given what followed about the Universe being the size it is purely for our post-mortem benefit, I rather suspect that your pastor, good man though I'm sure he is, may not perhaps be the best source of information in this sort of area. I hesitate to throw words like "idiot" around; as I say, I know nothing of the man besides what you share here. On the other hand, I wonder if he realises the sheer scale of the Universe as we know it - and that's only the observable Universe, remember. Even if everyone who has ever lived and died here on Earth, including all those to come until the final days of our planet, were each granted a star system of their very own, I severely doubt that the human presence would extend much beyond just this galaxy.
As for the question of where are all the new things in this life, I'm sorry but that's quite startlingly parochial. Even if we go back just a century, the advances in such things as transport, comunications, medicine, media technology etc are simply and truly astonishing. Back a century before that, and even the discovery of things we take for granted today, such as electricity, would seem like magic if not for the enquiring minds that abounded round about that time. It has been said that reverse engineering the average flying saucer, supposedly being so highly advanced or conceptually alien, would tax even the most brillant minds of today in much the same way that a nuclear submarine would do for Leonardo da Vinci. That's the sort of scale we're talking about here. Where was the Iron Age internet, for instance?
Regardless, all the books, DVDs, internet porn, whatever, that could ever be conceived can only be a distraction akin to scratching your nose, compared to the unending vastness of eternity. As I said, even if eternity lasts until the heat death of the Universe, there's only so many times one can read Harry Potter or watch Star Trek before going psychopathically insane from sheer boredom. In the case of the former, once would do it for me.
Thoughts?
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.'
