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Do Atheists believe in Heaven?

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Ramaraksha

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I ask this question because well, the general view is that Buddhism is an Atheist religion but Buddhists believe in Heaven & Hell
To me the notion is ridiculous - if you are not going to believe in an entity where there is no existence of any such, well there is no evidence of Heaven and Hell either
In fact the latter are more ridiculous than the concept of God
Billions of people sitting around doing nothing - in some sort of a Retirement Home?
And Hell is for punishing bad people - I keep asking - how does that help the victims?
If I were to go to a party and cause some material damage, we don't say I should be punished for it, but to set things right by repairing the damage, buying a replacement
Justice is about making the victim whole, vengeance is about punishing the criminal and Hell is vengeance, not justice
Justice is slow, non-violent whereas Vengeance is quick, very violent - btw Hollywood LOVES vengeance - the Kill Bill Movies for example
The only example of a movie that highlighted Justice was the old movie - The man who shot Liberty Valance
I don't know of anymore - anyone know of any?
.
I also came upon a post on you tube - someone claiming to be an Atheist but hopes to get to Heaven because well, he is a good person
So I wonder, are there Atheists who do not believe in God but hope there is an afterlife where the living is easy & comfortable?
 
You're crossing quite a lot of wires in terms of Buddhism. There are a great many variants of practice within the Buddhist world, and none of them are an orthodoxy of belief. Around the Buddhist thoughtworld there are atheists, theists, animists, some who belief in other realms and some who do not. Buddhism is at its heart a method of liberating the soul, but what that means to a given community or individual is free and apt to vary quite a lot.
 
Only heaven I believe in is a post-scarcity civilization. But are we going to achieve that as a species? Nope.
 
Oh and also, although people like to translate various terms as "heaven" and "hell", that does not mean that Buddhist and Protestant Christian conceptions of hell are philosophically identical. Your objection that hell is not restorative doesn't apply as obviously to Buddhist hell concepts like Naraka, which is a deeply unpleasant realm but not a permanent state; Naraka is the result of horrific karma but the vessel is free to die and be reborn once that karma has had its way with them. In this sense, more like the Roman Catholic understanding of Purgatory than Hell as such. Most Buddhists would object to this being described as punishment; the nature of karma is cause and effect, not the arbitrary whim of a deity, one moral action necessarily pushing on to the next for as long as the pattern lasts. Likewise, heavens, like the Mahayana saggas, are temporary states albeit remarkable and long lasting ones, which many Buddhist philosophers credit with being the ultimate source of stories about eternally lasting gods but not capable of actually producing such a being. Even gods, if they exist, tire of this world eventually. The "pure land" of Amitabha Buddhism is a bit more similar in that it is paradisical afterlife meant for those directly departing this life, created for our benefit by a somewhat godlike figure, but the goal is still to be liberated from it ultimately.
 
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Ramaraksha said:
I ask this question because well, the general view is that Buddhism is an Atheist religion but Buddhists believe in Heaven & Hell
To me the notion is ridiculous - if you are not going to believe in an entity where there is no existence of any such, well there is no evidence of Heaven and Hell either
In fact the latter are more ridiculous than the concept of God
Billions of people sitting around doing nothing - in some sort of a Retirement Home?
And Hell is for punishing bad people - I keep asking - how does that help the victims?
If I were to go to a party and cause some material damage, we don't say I should be punished for it, but to set things right by repairing the damage, buying a replacement
Justice is about making the victim whole, vengeance is about punishing the criminal and Hell is vengeance, not justice
Justice is slow, non-violent whereas Vengeance is quick, very violent - btw Hollywood LOVES vengeance - the Kill Bill Movies for example
The only example of a movie that highlighted Justice was the old movie - The man who shot Liberty Valance
I don't know of anymore - anyone know of any?
.
I also came upon a post on you tube - someone claiming to be an Atheist but hopes to get to Heaven because well, he is a good person
So I wonder, are there Atheists who do not believe in God but hope there is an afterlife where the living is easy & comfortable?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure I understand your seeming obsession, being opposed to the Heaven or Hell belief - insistently arguing strongly against it.

What I mean here is: you don't believe in the heaven or hell notion... yet the idea has some strong affect on you, as if to say that believers in 'heaven and hell' are affecting you in some serious personal way in the 'real world'. So what would that be I ask?..

..perhaps it's simply just the idea of Heaven and Hell that bothers you... merely just the thought of it, which has NO actual affect caused to you in the 'real world' since heaven to you is not real.

You just don't like the Heaven narrative then.
 
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Atheism is the absence of belief in gods.

Atheists can therefore believe in anything that is not a god, although (obviously) many don't believe in other religious constructs, along with not believing in gods.

Given that:

a) Heaven is not a god, so belief in it doesn't disqualify a person from being an atheist; and

b) There are hundreds of millions of atheists, with a wide diversity of cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs;

...it would be very surprising if there were not some atheists who believe in heaven.
 
bilby said:
Atheism is the absence of belief in gods.

Atheists can therefore believe in anything that is not a god, although (obviously) many don't believe in other religious constructs, along with not believing in gods.

Given that:

a) Heaven is not a god, so belief in it doesn't disqualify a person from being an atheist
Click to expand...
"Heaven" is a particularly well established religious destination. Be like asking if atheists believe in Mount Olympus or Valhalla.

An atheist can believe in an after-life, but "Heaven"... doubtful. At least in the lesser euphemistic sense of the word that the term has otherwise taken.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
bilby said:
Atheism is the absence of belief in gods.

Atheists can therefore believe in anything that is not a god, although (obviously) many don't believe in other religious constructs, along with not believing in gods.

Given that:

a) Heaven is not a god, so belief in it doesn't disqualify a person from being an atheist
Click to expand...
"Heaven" is a particularly well established religious destination. Be like asking if atheists believe in Mount Olympus or Valhalla.

An atheist can believe in an after-life, but "Heaven"... doubtful. At least in the lesser euphemistic sense of the word that the term has otherwise taken.
Click to expand...
True enough; But if you look at the opinions of hundreds of millions of people, you are bound to find some who believe contradictory things.

Atheists in general do not believe in heaven. But I would be very surprised if there were not a tiny minority who do.

Belief in the existence of a pleasant afterlife does not require, as a prerequisite, a belief in any gods.
 
A long stretch, there may be life after death if the universe is a simulation generated by a type 3 civilization, a video game, where once the participants 'die' they wake up in their fantastic immortal bodies, perhaps feeling that they've done slumming it, at least for a while....a tough place that planet earth simulation. 🙄
 
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Ramaraksha said:
I ask this question because well, the general view is that Buddhism is an Atheist religion but Buddhists believe in Heaven & Hell
To me the notion is ridiculous - if you are not going to believe in an entity where there is no existence of any such, well there is no evidence of Heaven and Hell either
In fact the latter are more ridiculous than the concept of God
Billions of people sitting around doing nothing - in some sort of a Retirement Home?
And Hell is for punishing bad people - I keep asking - how does that help the victims?
If I were to go to a party and cause some material damage, we don't say I should be punished for it, but to set things right by repairing the damage, buying a replacement
Justice is about making the victim whole, vengeance is about punishing the criminal and Hell is vengeance, not justice
Justice is slow, non-violent whereas Vengeance is quick, very violent - btw Hollywood LOVES vengeance - the Kill Bill Movies for example
The only example of a movie that highlighted Justice was the old movie - The man who shot Liberty Valance
I don't know of anymore - anyone know of any?
.
I also came upon a post on you tube - someone claiming to be an Atheist but hopes to get to Heaven because well, he is a good person
So I wonder, are there Atheists who do not believe in God but hope there is an afterlife where the living is easy & comfortable?
Click to expand...
If there is such a place, which I doubt, I imagine it is us or what we composed of creating future universes in something material like a common consciousness based on matter and energy
 
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