What Does “Heaven” Look Like?

[Rhea]

This is a supposing discussion. I do not believe in Heaven. But people will sometimes ask, “do you believe in heaven?” Or “Don’t you want to go to Heaven?” So fo the purposes of those thought experiments, I take what they seem to say heaven will include and it forms a picture. No two of them agree on this, so it is simply a fictional supposition, not a cultural or religiously accurate recreation of a tradition.

What’s your picture?

 

[Rhea]

My picture is that it must be sort of a Virtual Realiity scheme. (In my younger years, before VR, I imagined they were trying to descibe a one person theater with infinite channels with AI guidance on programming for what you want to see)

Because they say it will be all happy and no sadness. And the only way I can make that work is if you are ALONE and your experience is fabricated.

I know too many couples that do not love each other equally and the heaven of one does not include the other, but the heaven of the other cannot lack the first. And I know too many people who have married a second time. Then there are people like my motherr whose heaven would include her children, but since all of us are atheists, none of us are there. But she thinks we are and that makes her happy.

So the VR theater just shows each person what makes them happy, and nothing they do affects anyone else and is therefore never wrong or harmful.

This is how I reconcile the basic descriptions of their heaven. It just doesn’t work if any of them interact with the others and still have free will. So it must be a giant cable TV network.

 

[Rhea]

Anyone else? When Christians talk to you about heaven what do their words make you picture?

There’s the people like Aquinas (edited - I had the wrong guy at first) and others, who describe their theater as one that includes being able to watch people suffering in hell - and loving it!. Eternal Schadenfreude.

 

[abaddon]

My imagery is based on what a "bible teacher" at a Christian school said. He said heaven has streets of gold, though pure gold so they're transparent . ("Pure" implied unstained by color to him, I guess). And huge mansions. So it's more a giant city than anything else. A glass-like city.

Input from other Christians, and movies I guess, leads to an image of those glass-like streets crowded with folk dressed in white and singing praises to a bright white light hovering overhead with a man-like figure hiding inside of it... nodding his head in approval of all the praising.

I've done nothing to retrofit the Christian enticement to heaven to make it fit with my own desires. The wish to escape the earth into another place is absent in me so there's nothing there except the silly shit that others have suggested.

 

[Politesse]

This world, repaired.

 

[Tharmas]

I am close friends with a Christian woman, of a very liberal variety, who has a very emotional relationship with her church and has a very big heart. Her idea of heaven, which she fervently wishes for, is to be reunited with all her dogs that she has lost and buried, so they can all sleep together every night in a big pile.

 

[aupmanyav]

This world, repaired.

That is a task bigger than creation. It will be easier to build anew.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I am close friends with a Christian woman, of a very liberal variety, who has a very emotional relationship with her church and has a very big heart. Her idea of heaven, which she fervently wishes for, is to be reunited with all her dogs that she has lost and buried, so they can all sleep together every night in a big pile.

She should watch the video clip of the Fruit Cake Lady discussing dog heaven!! (I think it starts with, "Are you out of your goddamn mind?")
Doesn't she know that once you're in heaven, you don't make the rounds looking up Dale Evans, Billy Graham, Tammy Faye Bakker and Loretta Young, let alone snuggling with pets? You devote your whole being to adoration of the triple godhead -- and you better hope they don't add more sections to the head. It's worship 24/7. This makes me wonder what happens to the dead believers with ADHD who get admitted to heaven based on orthodox belief. If their minds drift off the godhead to spinning their haloes like beanies or identifying shapes in cloud formations, can they get hauled before a board and evicted? (I imagine a board headed by Bob Jones Sr. and D. James Kennedy.)

 

[Rhea]

This makes me wonder what happens to the dead believers with ADHD who get admitted to heaven based on orthodox belief. If their minds drift off the godhead to spinning their haloes like beanies or identifying shapes in cloud formations, can they get hauled before a board and evicted? (I imagine a board headed by Bob Jones Sr. and D. James Kennedy.)

It’s a good question. Or do their “new bodies” get “fixed” so that they no longer enjoy cloud formations? I mean, I guess a lobotomized body is a “new” body.

 

[James Brown]

This world, repaired.

By the same architect/urban planner who built this world?

What can God repair in the next world that he can't do in this one?

 

[skepticalbip]

What Does “Heaven” Look Like?
...
What’s your picture?

I see heaven as a gigantic auditorium where the consciousness of all deceased are trapped. On the stage is the godhead to be adored and in front of him is an endless, eternal stream of evangelical preachers giving their speil. The religious consciousnesses in the auditorium are in an eternal state of ecstasy just as they were in the tent revivals during their lives. Those consciousnesses who are not religious, are experiencing the same endless, eternal stream of evangelical preachers - - a pure hell they know will never end and they can't escape.

ETA;
That is if there were such a thing as heaven and hell.

 

[Politesse]

This world, repaired.

That is a task bigger than creation. It will be easier to build anew.

Perhaps! But failure, the best teacher is. As the Biblical YWHW learned in the old stories when he tried to drown the world in flood and start over, simply starting from scratch is a recipe for making the exact same mistake over again.

 

[Politesse]

This world, repaired.

By the same architect/urban planner who built this world?

What can God repair in the next world that he can't do in this one?

I tend to agree. If he cannot mend the hurts of this world, He will not know how to prevent them in the next one. Healing is the more difficult but more meaningful task.

 

[Keith&Co.]

What Does “Heaven” Look Like?
...
What’s your picture?

I see heaven as a gigantic auditorium where the consciousness of all deceased are trapped. On the stage is the godhead to be adored and in front of him is an endless, eternal stream of evangelical preachers giving their speil. The religious consciousnesses in the auditorium are in an eternal state of ecstasy just as they were in the tent revivals during their lives. Those consciousnesses who are not religious, are experiencing the same endless, eternal stream of evangelical preachers - - a pure hell they know will never end and they can't escape.

ETA;
That is if there were such a thing as heaven and hell.

Like that Trump cabinet meeting where thery went around the table slobbering on his ego.... but, yo know, everyone. around and around and around and around....

 

[Politesse]

I see heaven as a gigantic auditorium where the consciousness of all deceased are trapped. On the stage is the godhead to be adored and in front of him is an endless, eternal stream of evangelical preachers giving their speil. The religious consciousnesses in the auditorium are in an eternal state of ecstasy just as they were in the tent revivals during their lives. Those consciousnesses who are not religious, are experiencing the same endless, eternal stream of evangelical preachers - - a pure hell they know will never end and they can't escape

This comes surprisingly close to the traditional Eastern Orthodox teachings on Hell, albeit with a different emphasis and too many evangelical preachers.

 

[Keith&Co.]

This world, repaired.

That is a task bigger than creation. It will be easier to build anew.

Perhaps! But failure, the best teacher is. As the Biblical YWHW learned in the old stories when he tried to drown the world in flood and start over, simply starting from scratch is a recipe for making the exact same mistake over again.

But he didn't start from scratch.
After the flood he specifically mentions that mankind is basically wicked. Maybe not by design, but the problem was the one thing he made SURE to import into Earth Revision 2.
Thst's not restarting from scratch, that's shooting yourself right in the foot.
So, failure may teach, but what you really need is an editor. "This part needs to come out, it ruins the entire plot."
"But i spent so much time on it!"
"I know! That's the point! You're kicking people out of the Garden, and what was happening in Siberia?"
"The Mammoths went extinct."
"And what happened while you were having a hard time with Cain and Abel?"
"The North American horse disappeared."
"See? I recommend removing that whole subplot."
"But thry're my favorite!"
"Then say goodby to yhe Tasmasnian tiger....."

 

[James Brown]

I look forward to other Christians commenting on the idea that God is figuring out how to fix the mess that he created by trial and error.

 

[Politesse]

I look forward to other Christians commenting on the idea that God is figuring out how to fix the mess that he created by trial and error.

It would explain a fair amount about the world, ne c'est pas?

 

[James Brown]

I look forward to other Christians commenting on the idea that God is figuring out how to fix the mess that he created by trial and error.

It would explain a fair amount about the world, ne c'est pas?

And by sheer coincidence, it's what the world would happen to look like if there was no God.

 

[Politesse]

I look forward to other Christians commenting on the idea that God is figuring out how to fix the mess that he created by trial and error.

It would explain a fair amount about the world, ne c'est pas?

And by sheer coincidence, it's what the world would happen to look like if there was no God.

An odd claim, in my opinion. How would one know either way, with a sample size of exactly one universe to draw comparisons from?

If you're claiming that one could reason one's way into atheism a posteriori, rather than just by attacking non-atheism and assuming atheism as the last cosmology standing, I for one would be interested in a thread on your hypothesis. I have heard very arguments for atheism over the years, and not for lack of asking. Usually people just get upset at me for asking, and insist that no such argument is necessary (which is true of course but for me unsatisfying). But if you are saying that something observable about the universe's nature somehow implies the absence of a creating entity, that seems like it would be an argument for atheism, not just against Christianity as usual.