Do Atheists believe in Heaven?

[steve_bank]

Well, son of god and son of man as metaphor means aspects of human nature.

Learner

Have you considered an exorcism to cast us evil spirits from the forum?

Or I could send you an invite to the Seattle monthly atheist barbecue and orgy.

Bring your own toga and condoms, creams, oils, and ointments.

Be sure to shower and use mouthwash before arriving.

 

[Elixir]

Have you considered an exorcism to cast us evil spirits from the forum?

An e-exorcism? I believe there's an app for that.

 

[bilby]

What do dead souls do in heaven?

Well, they don't communicate with anyone who is still alive, which is pretty suspicious.

I mean, if I died, and went to heaven, I would very much want to let my widow know that I was there, that it was nice, and that she would join me soon (and to give her a clear set of rules to ensure that she does, when her time comes).

So, the fact that nobody ever hears from people who are in heaven tells me that in heaven you get no access to communicate with those you love who are still alive, which would make me sad. So either I would be sad in heaven; Or I would be rendered incapable of caring about my widow and other family (in which case, in what sense am I still "me"?); Or heaven simply doesn't exist.

If people are sad in heaven, then in what sense is it heaven?

The idea of perfect and eternal happiness after death, contradicts the observation that the dead do not communicate with the living. Ever.

 

[pood]

I suppose if I were in heaven and made the faux pas of shaking Jesus’s hand too vigorously — after all, he has a hole in it — I would wish to communicate to my living loved ones not to make the same mistake when they pass through the pearly gates.

 

[Jarhyn]

What do dead souls do in heaven? Spend all their time praising God like mindless marionettes?

Imagine you made a simulation, and that simulation contains humans, from earth.

Let's imagine that this is, while probably quite ridiculous, something you did because you wanted to create a "friend" rather than a "robot", and while you know how to create "robots", and even give them some qualities, that doesn't usually turn out quite the way you would like.

So instead of engineering your own robot friends, you engineer a simulation where you can find friends who just precipitate from the chaos, evolve, and so you can take your time finding good friends!

But alas... Humans are... Human.

How can you justify having a friend, or rather how friendly is it really in any case, to bring something into your world and ask it to now live forever with YOU as their friend and to leave behind their old friends and families forever? Especially if the creator doesn't really care to be all that close of friends with most people, either because they're angry about their own existence or about the fact that god is already seeming a bit like a dumbass, and that many people would take that as an excuse or reason to kill and usurp the god were they to be in a physical room containing a physical knife with which to effectively stab god in the back with it.

And you obviously can't place the trolls and the murderers and the rapists that people are still unfortunately attached to in the same place as everyone else any more than you can put them in the same environment wherein god's eminently killable ass is actually eminently killable because that's going to lead to problems.

So I imagine what you would have to do in heaven all day is to select from sleep, talk about "outside" or "the ongoing world" or even "various ongoing worlds" with people, learn the things you failed to learn before, troll people, get trolled, play combat games, maybe play around with some simpler universe simulations, or even play around and build your own.

But, every presentation of a supernatural heaven that I have ever seen seems to be kind of a compromise designed like a (posh) in-between holding cell as a stepping stone to either "more work to be done" or "oblivion".

 

[Learner]

their will. Nice try.

So um yeah,; what I would mean then is you got to want to be there, to get into heaven! That's the gist of it.

Evidence for the existence of heaven?

Right, none.

None?
The existence of the disciples witness and reported the existence of Jesus and what he taught about heaven.

Tell me with evidence, Jesus never existed and I may possibly change my mind.

Right, third-hand testimony about what some guy who may or may not have lived 2,000 years ago claiming that there is a place called heaven is evidence. Um, no.

Unsure he existed eh?

Also, I believe Jesus was reputed to say that the kingdom of heaven is within you, which does not sound like he was talking about an external place but a state of mind. Regardless, none of this comes close to being evidence of anything.

Wrong understanding, unfortunately. We can know this simply by the the many verses disputing this idea of yours, which emphasizes you can only enter the Kingdom of Heaven through Jesus himself.

Can you post a photo of heaven, or an email from someone who is there now?

Better than that - long long before email was invented, the bible was sent thousands of years ago from someone who's still there now.

So what I am willing to do is: I can post words of people telling the truth! We look at the psyche of those who make sworn witness statements that would know the fear to defy God if they were to 'bear false witness'.

We can read and accept witness statements, like Affidavits that require no photo graphs.

What do dead souls do in heaven? Spend all their time praising God like mindless marionettes?

Firstly, there are no dead souls in heaven, this is why you and unapologetic have no arguments against the bible when you can't get the scripture right. I don't need to make counter arguments in perspective of your paradigm versions of what you think the Christian doctrines mean.

You still haven't got a clue, as we see your post below.
Heaven isn't about selfish pleasures like your worldly mindset desires (you wouldn't get in if it were case anyway),

Those who would be spending all their time with God and praising him, and with the great warm love that holds them...they are there in contentment!

Boredom therefore don't exist when there's contentment.

Sounds boring as fuck to me.

There you go - that's all it takes, it's up to you! No one is forcing heaven upon you.

 

[steve_bank]

All of Christianity is based on a few lines in the gospels of an alleged return from the dead of Jesus.,and if you believe you get resurrected.

The basic messaging was to the people at the bottom. Bear your burdens and suffering, believer in Jesus, and go to an eternal glorious existence in heaven.

The RCC hold on power rests on getting people to believe the only way to heaven is through the RCC and its priests.

Without heaven there is no Christianity.

You do not need religion and an afterlife for hope and optimism. Logic and reason can lead to hope and an optimistic life.

I read about a Tibetan ritual. Monks dance on a pile of human bones to overcome fear of death.

 

[pood]

their will. Nice try.

So um yeah,; what I would mean then is you got to want to be there, to get into heaven! That's the gist of it.

Evidence for the existence of heaven?

Right, none.

None?
The existence of the disciples witness and reported the existence of Jesus and what he taught about heaven.

Tell me with evidence, Jesus never existed and I may possibly change my mind.

Right, third-hand testimony about what some guy who may or may not have lived 2,000 years ago claiming that there is a place called heaven is evidence. Um, no.

Unsure he existed eh?

Yes, I am. I think an itinerant Jewish preacher named Jesus probably did exist — that seems to be the scholarly consensus — but there isn’t a whit of evidence that said person performed miracles or rose from the dead. This is the problem you have — there are no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus, only hearsay set down on paper decades after he died. If Jesus really did the things attributed to him, it beggars belief that no one talked about these things and wrote about them at the time that he did them.

Also, I believe Jesus was reputed to say that the kingdom of heaven is within you, which does not sound like he was talking about an external place but a state of mind. Regardless, none of this comes close to being evidence of anything.

Wrong understanding, unfortunately. We can know this simply by the the many verses disputing this idea of yours, which emphasizes you can only enter the Kingdom of Heaven through Jesus himself.

Did he, or did he not, say the kingdom of heaven is within you? How do you know that when he said you can only enter the kingdom of heaven through himself, he did not mean that you can only live in heavenly peace by adhering to his message? Of course, here again the problem is that contradictory messages are attributed to Jesus, just as the Bible is riddled with contradictions. This is the exact opposite of what you would expect from a book supposedly divinely inspired.

Can you post a photo of heaven, or an email from someone who is there now?

Better than that - long long before email was invented, the bible was sent thousands of years ago from someone who's still there now.

Evidence?

So what I am willing to do is: I can post words of people telling the truth!

Again, there are no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus. You do realize this, I presume? So how do you know that people writing down hearsay accounts of what he supposedly said decades after his death were telling the truth, or even knew what the truth was?

We look at the psyche of those who make sworn witness statements that would know the fear to defy God if they were to 'bear false witness'.

We can read and accept witness statements, like Affidavits that require no photo graphs.

There were no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus’s life. Fearing an imaginary being is not evidence that the being exists,

What do dead souls do in heaven? Spend all their time praising God like mindless marionettes?

Firstly, there are no dead souls in heaven, this is why you and unapologetic have no arguments against the bible when you can't get the scripture right

If they are heaven, they are dead! According to your own logic, you can’t get to heaven until you die!

. I don't need to make counter arguments in perspective of your paradigm versions of what you think the Christian doctrines mean.

It appears that Christians themselves cannot agree on what Christian doctrines mean because there so many different sects and versions of Christianity. How do you explain that? But I don’t want counter arguments from you. I want evidence for your claims, You don’t have any. Hearsay accounts written decades after Jesus’s death do not constitute evidence of anything.

You still haven't got a clue, as we see your post below.
Heaven isn't about selfish pleasures like your worldly mindset desires (you wouldn't get in if it were case anyway),

How do you know what heaven is like? How do you know it even exists? The Bible saying so is not evidence, and it’s not even clear from the words attributed to Jesus whether he was referring to a literal or metaphorical heaven. Again, see: The kingdom of heaven is within you.

Those who would be spending all their time with God and praising him, and with the great warm love that holds them...they are there in contentment!

Boredom therefore don't exist when there's contentment.

Evidence that any of this is true?

Sounds boring as fuck to me.

There you go - that's all it takes, it's up to you! No one is forcing heaven upon you.

Evidence that heaven exists?

 

[steve_bank]

Back to the lengthy debates on an HJ.

I take the gospel Jesus to be at best a conflation of multiple persons and events certainly given the times. There were multiple cainents to the the Jewish messiah prophesy

To me the supernatural son of god gospel Jesus would have been a serious blasphemy to Jews of the day.

Jesus is a Greek demigod. Demigoddess with suerntu8ral powers or superhuman powers were common in Greek mythology.

The Greek gods lived on Mount Olympus, a mountain in Greece where they had a palace above the clouds. While their main residence was Olympus, individual gods also had specific abodes or sacred sites, such as the sea for Poseidon, Athens for Athena, and Delos for Apoll

Mount Olympus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Mount Olympus (/oʊˈlɪmpəs, əˈlɪm-/,[5] Greek: Όλυμπος, romanized: Ólympos, IPA: [ˈoli(m)bos]) is an extensive massif near the Thermaic Gulf of the Aegean Sea, located on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, between the regional units of Larissa and Pieria, about 80 km (50 mi) southwest from Thessaloniki.[6] Mount Olympus has 52 peaks and deep gorges.[7] The highest peak, Mytikas (Μύτικας Mýtikas), meaning "nose", rises to 2,917.727 metres (9,572.60 ft) and is the highest peak in Greece,[1][8][9] and one of the highest peaks in Europe in terms of topographic prominence.[10]

In Greek mythology, Olympus is the home of the Greek gods, on Mytikas peak. The mountain has exceptional biodiversity and rich flora.[11] It has been a National Park, the first in Greece, since 1938. It is also a World Biosphere Reserve.[8]

Olympus remains the most popular hiking summit in Greece, as well as one of the most popular in Europe. Organized mountain refuges and various mountaineering and climbing routes are available. The usual starting point is the town of Litochoro which lies in the eastern foothills of the mountain, some 100 km (62 mi) from Thessaloniki.

Heaven above to Christians. They look up when imploring god. If lightning coming from above struck your barn it was a sign from god above.

The gospels would have been written to appeal to non Jews in the greater Hellenistic world. Gods, demigods, and supernatural powers.

With a resurrection spin and going to heaven to live with god and son.

 

[pood]

I think the Greek influence on the Jesus myth is pretty compelling,

 

[pood]

See: resurrection myth of Dionysus.

Wonder why Learner does not worship Dionysus and Zeus and ascend to the top of Mount Olympus when he dies?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Yes, I am. I think an itinerant Jewish preacher named Jesus probably did exist — that seems to be the scholarly consensus — but there isn’t a whit of evidence that said person performed miracles or rose from the dead. This is the problem you have — there are no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus, only hearsay set down on paper decades after he died. If Jesus really did the things attributed to him, it beggars belief that no one talked about these things and wrote about them at the time that he did them.

I agree that none of these things are believable, but what about the gospels of Jesus using some psychic powers to murder some children when he was a kid? Seems more consistent with Yahweh...

 

[lostone]

Based on Learner's level of what constitutes evidence, why should we not accept Joseph Smith and Mormonism? It's much more recent.

 

[pood]

I am afraid of the boogeyman. Therefore, the boogeyman exists. Also some secondhand stuff about the boogeyman was written some time or other so that is evidence that the boogeyman is real.

 

[pood]

I will say that some of the sayings attributed to Jesus, his metaphors and parables, are pretty powerful, and the part of his message that seems to succor the weak and poor can be pretty compelling if read in the right way. So there is that. None of it of course is evidence for miracles or resurrection or heaven, but may help explain the spread of Christianity after his death.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Based on Learner's level of what constitutes evidence, why should we not accept Joseph Smith and Mormonism? It's much more recent.

Well, if we were to only utilize the blowjob* criterion to deduce which Christian denomination's mythology is best, Mormonism would be a 10 out of 10. They believe in 3 afterlife kingdoms: celestial (heaven), terrestrial (earth), and telestial (hell). Earth is kind of the Goldie Locks afterlife kingdom with respect to the blowjob criterion:
Celestial (heaven) -- no blowjobs
Telestial (hell) -- not the kind of blowjobs you want at all!
Terrestrial (earth) -- you have a chance** to get the blowjobs you want

* Blowjobs are a metaphor.
** The poster assumes no liability for any claims made in this thread.

 

[Elixir]

Do Atheists believe in Heaven?​

The real ones do.
Fake atheists pretend to believe in heaven, hell, angels, devils, miracles and salvitic stuff, but they don’t.
REAL atheists actually believe every last bit of that superstitious crap, and if you ask them they’ll deny all of it

What a stupid ass thread.

 

[steve_bank]

I only have an overview of mythology, but the Greek influence seems obvious

As to the parables and metaphors in the gospels. I don't think they are profound or new.

Ho about Aesop's Fables? Confucius. I used to have a book on Tibetan and a book on Indian traditional stories.

Jesus is pretty simple.

 

[pood]

Some parables of Jesus

The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:

Perhaps Learner could explain what Jesus meant by “them.” And what does he mean by “you”? Here he seems to be saying that the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given to the disciples, but then why did the disciples ask him why he spoke in parables? If they already knew the secrets of the kingdom of heaven they would have no reason to ask why he spoke in parables.

 

[Jarhyn]

Some parables of Jesus

The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:

Perhaps Learner could explain what Jesus meant by “them.” And what does he mean by “you”? Here he seems to be saying that the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given to the disciples, but then why did the disciples ask him why he spoke in parables? If they already knew the secrets of the kingdom of heaven they would have no reason to ask why he spoke in parables.

To me, this speaks to the concept of an Occult Blind? I'm not sure I agree with it.

The idea is that those smart enough to understand will understand and benefit more; those who have whatever quality to see through the secret will benefit and those who do not will not.

In some respects it feels scummy and scammy, like how the belief in Fatalism benefits more compatibilist-acting Fatalists or actual compatibilists. Those who "have" in this situation observably will benefit and have more and those who do not "have it" will lose even what little they did have.