*Warning: May contain nuts, Christians and/or both

[skepticalbip]

As Jesus supposedly said, the gate to heaven is narrow and the gate to hell wide.

I think that's probably why Mark Twain said, "hell for the company, heaven for the climate". I really don't think that believers in an afterlife give a lot of thought as to how boring it would be. The following words from the hymn "Amazing Grace" pretty much sum it up for me.

"When we've been there 10,000 years
Bright shining as the sun
We've no less day to sing god's praise
Then when we first begun"

Not just for the bad grammar, but the thought of how awful a god would be that rewards people by sending them somewhere to praise him for all eternity. Talk about hell........

I have thought that if there were such a thing as heaven and hell why wouldn't they be the same place... a gigantic auditorium that all the souls have to sit in together. The program would be an eternal line of evangelical preachers that all the souls had to listen to. Those who 'love Jesus' would be in heavenly ecstasy listening to the preachers. Everyone else would be suffering the never ending agony of hell.

 

[Rhea]

I have thought that if there were such a thing as heaven and hell why wouldn't they be the same place... a gigantic auditorium that all the souls have to sit in together. The program would be an eternal line of evangelical preachers that all the souls had to listen to. Those who 'love Jesus' would be in heavenly ecstasy listening to the preachers. Everyone else would be suffering the never ending agony of hell.

That’s diabolically efficient.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I have thought that if there were such a thing as heaven and hell why wouldn't they be the same place...

There's a Night Gallery episode. John Astin as an aging hippie dies and ends up in a tiny room. Ther's music, but it's 'square.'
There's one guy to talk to, but ALL he wants to talk about is crop rotation.
Then a couple appears with eleventy thousand slides from their vacation in Tijuana. Which they narrate. "And this is the gentleman who MADE those tacos. And this is the knife he used to..."

The devil shows up and Astin's all "What the flaming fuck, dude?" Like where's the fire and brimstone?
"Well, this is hell. Your hell, anyway. Thing is, up in Heaven, there's a room EXACTLY like this. It's someone's Heaven..."

 

[southernhybrid]

I have thought that if there were such a thing as heaven and hell why wouldn't they be the same place...

There's a Night Gallery episode. John Astin as an aging hippie dies and ends up in a tiny room. Ther's music, but it's 'square.'
There's one guy to talk to, but ALL he wants to talk about is crop rotation.
Then a couple appears with eleventy thousand slides from their vacation in Tijuana. Which they narrate. "And this is the gentleman who MADE those tacos. And this is the knife he used to..."

The devil shows up and Astin's all "What the flaming fuck, dude?" Like where's the fire and brimstone?
"Well, this is hell. Your hell, anyway. Thing is, up in Heaven, there's a room EXACTLY like this. It's someone's Heaven..."

There was also a very old "Twilight Zone" episode that was similar. A biker dies in a crash and ends up in the afterlife with two old farmers. The farmers are happy, but extremely boring to be around. They have nothing in common and after a few hours, the biker seems tortured being with the two farmers. They are in the same place, heaven and hell depending on your perspective. Wasn't "Night Gallery" an off shoot of the "Twilight Zone", or am I thinking of a different show?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Wasn't "Night Gallery" an off shoot of the "Twilight Zone", or am I thinking of a different show?

Yeah, it was. Started off with Serling's intro next to a painting that highlighted something from the story. Or a painting IN the story.

The question of Heaven and Hell, who goes where, what's it like, cropped up often on both.

 

[Learner]

First off, "disciples and Christians lives ending tragically whilst professing their faith" is not a matter of theology; it's a matter of history or, in the main, pseudo-history.

Let me rephrase that and say scripture rather than theology, in case we lead off making arguments about definitions instead.

I suppose there may have been some xians who "died for their faith", but the vast majority of "martyr" stories are improbable at best, obviously fabricated at worst, invented from whole cloth by the church to discourage backsliding and to convince the few remaining pagans once xianity became the official, then the only permitted, religion in the Roman Empire.

Its really the case : You either believe or you don't. Dying for ones faith doesn't make a believer stop backsliding, but what it will probably do, is the opposite - change peoples minds not to take up the faith... having second thoughts, especially when they're not really sure.

But they never wrote down stories of the many who recanted, made sacrifice to the emperor, then sneaked back in the back door of the church ... or the ones who paid Imperial officials to turn a blind eye. We know they existed because of the Donatist Schism, where a faction in the Carthaginian church rejected priests and bishops who had cooperated with the Roman persecutors, but still remained in church office. The idea of xians, especially early xians as "heroic martyrs" doesn't fit the history.

The Romans wrote about their soldiers refusing to fight once they became Christians, even to suffer severly. Its not enough in writing to say all Christians do that, one would say, but that just it. Who is going to write about Christian being martyrs especially when their belief is a comfliction?

 

[Learner]

As Jesus supposedly said, the gate to heaven is narrow and the gate to hell wide.

I think that's probably why Mark Twain said, "hell for the company, heaven for the climate". I really don't think that believers in an afterlife give a lot of thought as to how boring it would be. The following words from the hymn "Amazing Grace" pretty much sum it up for me.

"When we've been there 10,000 years
Bright shining as the sun
We've no less day to sing god's praise
Then when we first begun"

Not just for the bad grammar, but the thought of how awful a god would be that rewards people by sending them somewhere to praise him for all eternity. Talk about hell........

Each generation seems to get more and more bored very quickly imo. Attention span proportionate. Heaven is not ideal for everyone.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Heaven is not ideal for everyone.

Can it really be Heaven, then?
I mean, it's onevthing to say only certain people will get INTO an omniscient-designed paradise, but to claim only certain people can enjoy it?

 

[skepticalbip]

Heaven is not ideal for everyone.

Can it really be Heaven, then?
I mean, it's onevthing to say only certain people will get INTO an omniscient-designed paradise, but to claim only certain people can enjoy it?

Sounds like the ultimate irony... some Christian spends their life sacrificing, praying, depriving themselves of pleasures, proselytizing, etc. while imagining their heavenly reward. Then they actually get there and find it is a miserable place they hate but have to spend eternity there.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Heaven is not ideal for everyone.

Can it really be Heaven, then?
I mean, it's onevthing to say only certain people will get INTO an omniscient-designed paradise, but to claim only certain people can enjoy it?

Sounds like the ultimate irony... some Christian spends their life sacrificing, praying, depriving themselves of pleasures, proselytizing, etc. while imagining their heavenly reward. Then they actually get there and find it is a miserable place they hate but have to spend eternity there.

...and have to smile.
At least if we don't like Hell, we cannot get in any MORE trouble for bitching that isn't as portrayed in the brochure.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Yet another scifi story had a Christian slaving away at a boring job, with people he hated, doing work that did not fulfill. But he sneered inside, silently, because while fools were enjoying life down here, he was building up treasures in Heaven by all his self-denial. A boring little flat, money mostly tithed, no interests... but that was the best part, this life was a test.
He died.
Turns out his boss died the sa me day, so the angel who processed them was quite gleeful to find a siutuation for JUST LIKE the life they'd been living on Earth. An eternity stretched out, same job, same people, same life... Boss was excited. Christain, not so much...

 

[abaddon]

Each generation seems to get more and more bored very quickly imo. Attention span proportionate. Heaven is not ideal for everyone.

Aside from the "not for everyone" bit, also the "attention span" thing that has me wondering. What does it mean? That if you have an eternal attention span you can focus on just praising and praising and praising and never get bored with it?

Expanding on the idea that believers in the afterlife cannot have thought it through... Maybe it'd be better to not have a long attention span that's narrowly focused on praising God, so you can wander about and wonder at more interesting things than people and God. Is there complexity, does life evolve, do things change, does an intriguing amount of danger lurk here and there? Or is it all boringly safe? If nothing's "contingent", if everything's eternal in heaven, then how can it be interesting? After all it's newness that induces wonder. That's why Zen folk try to sustain a state called "don't know mind", because if the questions are answered then everything loses its wonder.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Each generation seems to get ...

What was that about each generation? I started thinking about something else and missed the rest.

 

[WAB]

Each generation seems to get ...

What was that about each generation? I started thinking about something else and missed the rest.

 

[Learner]

Heaven is not ideal for everyone.

Can it really be Heaven, then?
I mean, it's onevthing to say only certain people will get INTO an omniscient-designed paradise, but to claim only certain people can enjoy it?

I am sort of agreeing with the quote below:

but the thought of how awful a god would be that rewards people by sending them somewhere to praise him for all eternity. Talk about hell........

 

[Learner]

Heaven is not ideal for everyone.

Can it really be Heaven, then?
I mean, it's onevthing to say only certain people will get INTO an omniscient-designed paradise, but to claim only certain people can enjoy it?

Sounds like the ultimate irony... some Christian spends their life sacrificing, praying, depriving themselves of pleasures, proselytizing, etc. while imagining their heavenly reward. Then they actually get there and find it is a miserable place they hate but have to spend eternity there.

Sounds similar to the descriptions people make when miserable : its rainy again, cold, windy, being hungry, depressing, old, unattractive, feeling lonely, so unimportant even with the thousands of subscribers connected to their social media.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What if you're a really nice masochist who makes it into Heaven and you keep jumping off the ledge into Hell so that you can get tortured? Do demons have to go and drag him back up to the Pearly Gates and tell St Peter to keep his shit in his own yard or something?

 

[Learner]

I have no idea. I would have to check if there is a similar example in the scriptures - interesting nevertheless.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I have no idea. I would have to check if there is a similar example in the scriptures - interesting nevertheless.

Check the back. It sounds like the kind of situation they'd put in an appendix.

 

[Learner]

I'll leave that one open for someone who may know something similar, like some form of reincarnation or something.