Is there free will in heaven?

[lucent]

I suggest you all convert to my religion. When you die you get sent to this 5 Star Hotel in the sky. You can get a massage from an asian hooker, order beer and hot wings or whatever. There is a never ending supply of pot when you open the drawer. Its on the beach, every woman is a virgin, every man is hung like a mule, every channel has something that will interest you, there are roller coasters, hot air balloon rides, horse stables, race cars, porn, pizza, boomerang throwing, face painting, kitty cats and bunny rabbits, everyone has superpowers, and every day is christmas.... without all that pesky, divisive, christ/judgement shit.

Or you can go to Judea Christian heaven where you will lose the part of you that made you you. The thrill of life will turn into the vapid disconnect from life and you'll be free to do whatever you want except actually live.

That's exactly the point I just made. You equate living with a constant stream of empty pleasures that are ultimately meaningless. You equate life to a thrill ride which needs to be constantly entertaining you for you to be happy. See, it's all about you.

---

I certainly don't ascribe anything to fate, because I don't believe in it. Don't tell me what I do.

This is why it's a paradox. If I'm to be reunited with my lost loved ones, I want them exactly as I remember them. I don't want them to have changed, I liked them before, including their faults. You want there to be millions of vacant, smiling drones, and I tell you I believe that's nauseating. I value my friends for who they are - real people with strengths and weaknesses. Luckily, we have no reason to believe your shitty lobotomised heaven exists.

So you want your friends to experience the same kind of unhappiness and dissatisfactions they had on Earth? You're not a very good friend if that's what you want for them.

If you think Heaven will be boring, you don't have any imagination. The creative power that made this Universe isn't going to be sitting there idle. You have no idea of the wonderous things God can do:

1 Corinthians 2:9

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—

This life is just a pale shadow of the the things to come.

[ElDinero]

They might be meaningless to you, but nonetheless they are part of what makes us who we are, and I refuse to be removed from them.

I submit that your religion is meaningless, that every minute you spend praying to God, worshipping God, making claims about God, are meaningless and a giant waste of time. But you regard them as what makes you who you are, I would imagine?

[lucent]

They might be meaningless to you, but nonetheless they are part of what makes us who we are, and I refuse to be removed from them.

What I know is that they can't make you happy. What they do is trick you into thinking that you need them to be who you are, but you didn't always need them. When you were young, and the world was brighter and feeling was effortless, you didn't need them. You grew into needing them, and put on those crutches, to help you get by.

I submit that your religion is meaningless, that every minute you spend praying to God, worshipping God, making claims about God, are meaningless and a giant waste of time. But you regard them as what makes you who you are, I would imagine?

If that were true, it's strange that I continue to experience qualitative improvements in every aspect of my life. I'm at peace, and happy. That alone is worth the price of admission, but that only stems from what is truly rewarding, which is to know the love of God. It's a personal relationship, and I experience the presence of God in my life at all times. God is as real to me as my own reflection in the mirror.

[ElDinero]

Such a fucking hypocrite. YOUR things, which I hold worthless, give you peace and happiness. MY things, which you hold worthless, are tricks.

Pull your head out of your arsehole, you patronising prick. I am at peace and am happy without your shitty God, or heaven. I do good things because I'm good, not for the promise of eternal reward, which is made up.

[IATIA]

All right, I got it. From reading all this sanctimonious bullshit from theists, I figure that there is no free will in heaven. You have to give it up to get there.

[lucent]

Such a fucking hypocrite. YOUR things, which I hold worthless, give you peace and happiness. MY things, which you hold worthless, are tricks.

Pull your head out of your arsehole, you patronising prick. I am at peace and am happy without your shitty God, or heaven. I do good things because I'm good, not for the promise of eternal reward, which is made up.

Well, ElDinero, you know a tree by its fruits, and this isn't the fruit of peace and happiness that you're sharing with me.

I don't dispute that you're capable of moral behavior, as everyone has a God given conscience which tells them right from wrong. But you go further here and say that you're a good person. The problem with that statement is that I know for a fact that like all human beings, myself included, you are a hypocrite who doesn't live up to even his own standard let alone Gods standard. You might be relatively good in comparison to a Hitler, but Gods standard of good is perfection, and the only person to ever live up that standard is His Son.

If I were to know all of the things you have ever done wrong in your life, including the secret things, or at least the things you think are a secret, would you still claim to me that you're a good person? I have no idea what you might say, but I don't have any illusions about my past. I haven't been a good person, I've been a terrible person, and the only thing good about me is something God put there. I thought I was good, or rather I thought my heart was good, but the problem with the theory is how true this verse is:

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

In this wicked world, it's easy to think you're good, because you might be more compassionate than average, and of course the world trains you to believe that we're all generally good, but the average is total depravity. To be a few notches above depravity isn't really saying much. Our civilization is founded on this pretense that people are mostly good, but in actuality they are mostly sinful. It is all teeming below the surface, although lately it has been bursting from its seams. The way of this world is utterly corrupt, and that is why people are so upset, because there is no justice. People are in bondage to the ways of death, and are being ground into dust. That's the reality, unfortunately, and that's why Jesus did what He did at calvary.

---

All right, I got it. From reading all this sanctimonious bullshit from theists, I figure that there is no free will in heaven. You have to give it up to get there.

If you read what I said carefully, you'll see that there is free will, however what is wicked and degenerate will be plucked out like it never existed. Heaven will be more evolved, you might say.

[ElDinero]

I'm done with you, you sanctimonious, self-loathing waste of space. It's people like you that make me wish there was a short 'post-life' moment where it gets revealed to you that everything you've believed your whole life has been a waste of time. It's a shame that there isn't, and that when you die, you'll be blissfully unaware that you're going the same place all of us are: The ground.

[lucent]

I'm done with you, you sanctimonious, self-loathing waste of space. It's people like you that make me wish there was a short 'post-life' moment where it gets revealed to you that everything you've believed your whole life has been a waste of time. It's a shame that there isn't, and that when you die, you'll be blissfully unaware that you're going the same place all of us are: The ground.

That's your faith, ElDinero. What I hope for you is that you come to know the truth, but that you come to know it before you die, and not after. God bless.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'll make you a deal, I'll waste away bored in your kiddie pool in the sky as long as you aren't there. Perhaps god can blind me so that I don't have to see you. Can he handle that?

Is it really that difficult for you to understand that the heaven you're describing does not sound like a paradise to the the people who are responding to you? Just how wise would god be if he didn't already know that? Just how powerful could he be if the only heaven he could create was your hellish version of which many posters here (myself included) want no part? Every time you post you make god sound less like god and more like the bigoted and petty voice in your own head. If I don't get to fuck in heaven, for example, perhaps god shouldn't have hard wired me to enjoy fucking. Maybe he should have never created a woman for Adam spiralling this whole thing out to begin with. He could have made Adam a Steve, but he didn't. He could have made us drones to begin with, but he didn't. Maybe that's because your god doesn't like drones. Now why would he surround himself with them for all eternity? He already had angels to handle this, and he was dissatisfied, remember? That you're speaking directly out of your ass with no evidence for god, heaven, or any of the rest is bad enough. To just push through everything and turn god into an empty version of your own prejudices and remorse about whatever happened in your life is ridiculous. You want to be a drone, I'm sure theres a room in heaven for that. Meanwhile, one would hope that god has a contigency plan for those that do not wish to do so. If hell is the only contingency then perhaps you should just abandon the "loving god" song and dance because I, and many of the posters here, are clearly capable of a deeper and more accepting love than your parody of the divine can manage.

[thesummerqueen]

The point Rhythm, I think we've established, is none of *US* will be there, to their minds.

---

Which is fine. The hotter the fire, the smaller the bikini I'm wearing. It'll be all right boys.