What is the point of Heaven?

brothern said:

I believe the Christian response to this is that we will be so blessed in Heaven, that we will no longer be concerned about the relationships with people we knew on Earth. We will only be rejoicing God's eternal presence.

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Well, some Christians, like C.S.Lewis get inventive and say that eventually everyone will be saved. There's no Hell, really - just Heaven and Purgatory.

A Sufi friend of mine sticks to the same notion, adding that time flows differently in Hell and in Heaven, different kinds of "eternity". (Mathematicians are weird to begin with; religious Muslim Tatar Australians among them.... :roll: )

brothern said:

... and I don't have trouble accepting the world or accepting that there is suffering in the world. I have no trouble with the acceptance. I have trouble with the suffering.

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The Sufis say that 95% of human suffering is self-caused, the rest is natural that we must experience for growth.

Amadeus said:

This is a different issue. I'm referring to the afterlife, where suffering is eternal and only those who follow a particular faith are allowed inside the Golden Gated Community.

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Well, neither all Catholics (I was one long time ago), nor all Orthodox Christians believe that following their particular faith is an absolute requirement.

clownboy said:

The Sufis say that 95% of human suffering is self-caused, the rest is natural that we must experience for growth.

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Interesting how that works out. Some people are born with horrific birth defects, suffer their entire lives, while the 'norms' experience it for personal growth. Nice plan, God.

Amadeus said:

Could someone please explain to me what the purpose of Heaven is? Much appreciated.

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It's designed to relieve us from the fear of death. Thus, heaven can be whatever you want it to be.

Amadeus said:

Interesting how that works out. Some people are born with horrific birth defects, suffer their entire lives, while the 'norms' experience it for personal growth. Nice plan, God.

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Yeah, even when I was (or tried to be) a good Catholic, I felt that before tossing up the first martini, I should have a serious conversation with God, some explaining quite necessary.

Amadeus said:

Interesting how that works out. Some people are born with horrific birth defects, suffer their entire lives, while the 'norms' experience it for personal growth. Nice plan, God.

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So, this is just an emo frustrated with God thread? ZZZZZZZZZZZ

calamity said:

It's designed to relieve us from the fear of death. Thus, heaven can be whatever you want it to be.

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My Heaven involves watching a half-drunk Christopher Hitchens verbally abusing God.

clownboy said:

So, this is just an emo frustrated with God thread? ZZZZZZZZZZZ

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No, it's a legitimate point. Care to take a crack at it?

Amadeus said:

My Heaven involves watching a half-drunk Christopher Hitchens verbally abusing God.

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And a lot of them were in heaven over Hitchens getting verbally abused. A very humiliating moment for Hitchens.




Of course, Mr Donohue wasn't half-drunk.

Amadeus said:

Could someone please explain to me what the purpose of Heaven is? Much appreciated.

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Scripture doesn't say. Evidently we are being created for some greater purpose, but what that is exactly isn't made clear.

Amadeus said:

No, it's a legitimate point. Care to take a crack at it?

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No, it's not a legitimate point. I offerred the information to enlighten, but the response clearly indicates you aren't going for understanding, or an answer to the thread question, but just to jab at things you don't wish to understand, merely oppose. If you cannot understand the role sufferring plays in enlightenment you have some more studying to do before you are capable of discussing this issue.

In considering our evolution on this planet, at no point does an afterlife become necessary or beneficial.

I think the myth persists because of:
- Fear of death
- Comfort of loved ones also still existing
- Reward for living a less rewarding actual life, or committing a righteous (or evil) act
- The justice that evil men who escaped consequences in this life will be judged and punished

Or it could simply be a primitive explanation of what happens to our consciousness (and our energy) after death. A different view on the second law of thermodynamics.

clownboy said:

Or it could simply be a primitive explanation of what happens to our consciousness (and our energy) after death. A different view on the second law of thermodynamics.

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"A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts." - Dr. Manhattan

What energy is this that you speak of? Is it quantifiable?

What happens to our brain during death or near death experiences is that your brain pumps out incredible psycodelic chemicals like DMT and serotonin which most people conflate with their preconceived notions. This effect can be induced chemically, through direct electric stimulus to the brain, or triggered by extreme gravity (G-LOC) like during fighter pilot or astronaut training. If interested I'd google "fighter pilots and NDE's"

Bezukhov said:

Its not just Heaven, its the whole Judeo/Christian/Islamic mythology that has my head spinning. Here we have this Infinite Being, who has no beginning sitting there for an eternity pulling his... errr twiddling his thumbs. Suddenly He decides to create intelligent beings. Something goes wrong, so He decides that after a while He will destroy all that created, send many to suffer an eternal torment, and the rest will spend the rest of eternity with Him twiddling their thumbs. The End.

Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that we were not told the whole story? After all, we only know what this God told us, and I am not convinced that He was being entirely honest with us. And one more thing. About this Satan. How do I know that he didn't have a legitimate reason to rebel? For all I know this God could have created all this for nefarious reasons, and maybe this Satan found out, and didn't agree.

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Who is to say this is the only world God has ever created. He may have done this thousands of times. I read the Bible and try my best to apply it. I love myself. I love God and Jesus Christ and I love my neighbor. I don't actually think Paradise will be sitting around twiddling our thumbs. We really don't know what it will be like exactly. The Bible gives us some hints but not all of the picture.

The concept of heaven was fully developed during the dark ages - in which nearly all people were essentially totally ignorant slaves worked to death, average life span barely 20 years old and nearly all ophans, no medical care of any kind so death was horrible, torturous labor, often tortured, beaten, and overall life was horrific. As both a hope and control, those people were "educated" by the pictures in cathedrals to do exactly as they are told - for which they ONLY hope in life was upon death to be wonderfully rewarded for submissiveness - and tortured forever and ever and ever and ever in hell if not.

It all traces back to that.

GlenS said:

Who is to say this is the only world God has ever created. He may have done this thousands of times. I read the Bible and try my best to apply it. I love myself. I love God and Jesus Christ and I love my neighbor. I don't actually think Paradise will be sitting around twiddling our thumbs. We really don't know what it will be like exactly. The Bible gives us some hints but not all of the picture.

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The Bible also is the story of celestral beings, isn't it (ie "angels")

It seems obvious to me. Societies create religions to foster social control. Life is easier when a majority of the people live in harmony. In order to keep things in harmony religion uses a carrot and a stick. Heaven is the carrot. Hell is the stick.

clownboy said:

No, it's not a legitimate point. I offerred the information to enlighten, but the response clearly indicates you aren't going for understanding, or an answer to the thread question, but just to jab at things you don't wish to understand, merely oppose. If you cannot understand the role sufferring plays in enlightenment you have some more studying to do before you are capable of discussing this issue.

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I guess I'm just another dumb liberal who thinks that people deserve better than to be made examples for Christian education. Mother Teresa tried her best to walk this path -- certainly better than you --- and became mentally unhinged as a result. She never found Jesus/God, she just found internal and external suffering.

fmw said:

It seems obvious to me. Societies create religions to foster social control. Life is easier when a majority of the people live in harmony. In order to keep things in harmony religion uses a carrot and a stick. Heaven is the carrot. Hell is the stick.

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And with Secularism, enlightenment is the carrot, being branded as a theist is the stick.

Same dynamic.

My wife practices (greatly) Protestant Christianity as a reverence to her parents. Her own "spirituality" is quite different, and in that what is relevant to people is not relevant to her or I.

However, she is very knowledgeable of the Bible, including 12 years going thru a Christian school and some Christian college. A minister's only daughter. She attended and attends all classes, services and Sunday school - which she also teaches. This is her explanation of what the Bible says (for the most part, there are other suggestions...)

We are born into the circumstance of this life unfairly. Some people are born into wonderful circumstance. Wealth. Great parents. Positions of power. Handsome/beautiful. A good society... and other are born into degradation, starvation, deformities etc.

According to the Bible, this life is merely a brief testing period upon which a person can actually determine what circumstance and status the person is then born into in "eternity." The Bible specifically says a person will be rewarded for their acts of love / godliness / submission to God in heaven - ie all people who go to heaven are NOT of equal status at all. However, the status a person has was earned - or not - in this lifetime.

The Bible is clear that not all people go to heaven - and even clear that all people do not have an eternal future - often stating that belief is required to have eternal life - and without it you do not. However, some will argue the alternative is perpetual eternal torture (hell.)

Accordingly, a person can buy into the Christian religion, and by doing so - if a person truly does - that person (according to the Bible) is on the path to an eternity based upon that religion. If a person does not subscribe to the Christian religion, that person will not have a Christian eternity.

As far as what the Biblical says heaven is like? It doesn't really say in any detail.

As for eternity itself, she will declare that for many celestral or immortal beings, eternity is excuciatingly boring for hanything interesting, anything at all, is desperately desired and pursued. That is the reason that despite how extraordinarily bizarre, violent and limited plus extremely brief life is this reality and on this planet is - including such unthinkable things such as physical pain - she sees it as an incredible miracle/mystical thing entirely beyond her comprehension that she has her lifetime in this reality as a homo sapien. And while physical pain sometimes has caused her to wish to escape it, she frets greatly that probably means going back to eternity triviality in a dismally boring eternity - but at least she'll have the memories to think of.

Before you can answer this question you have to know the reason for death.

She also invites people to church - and every now and then this was someone who had NO clue what Christianity or any religion is and never had been in any church. I was such a person.

A woman she invited was too. That woman thought the people were nice and it was interesting, so kept coming. In an informal Bible study at someone's home she was invited to attend, the topic of heaven and hell came up. Each person told what they thought heaven - the "perfect place to be" would be like. That woman of a crude life as myself, said she would have unlimited amounts of money, would have everything and anything she wanted, would be perfectly young, beautiful and healthy forever, and the sex would be the most incredible sex anyone ever had as much as she wanted with anyone she wanted it with - and it would that way for all the children she'd have there too.

She was told that in heaven a person doesn't have money, people don't have sex and they don't have children.

She asked if there any choice other than heaven then, because it sounds awful. So she was told about hell - unthinkable, indescibeably being tortured forever.

She never returned after that. Can't imagine why.

Amadeus said:

I guess I'm just another dumb liberal who thinks that people deserve better than to be made examples for Christian education. Mother Teresa tried her best to walk this path -- certainly better than you --- and became mentally unhinged as a result. She never found Jesus/God, she just found internal and external suffering.

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And from your response you prove you're not interested in answers to the OP question but in critisizing what you don't understand.