Thread: The problem of heaven.

another problem, is that what one person may enjoy, another person may loathe. This could all be solved however if each person had their own individual heaven, that was perfect for them, where they couldn't think of anything to make it better. Or, just have the things that they don't like, be invisible to them if it is a shared heaven.

Besides, if everything was perfect all the time, we'd just get bored of it.

Originally Posted by Mark75

Besides, if everything was perfect all the time, we'd just get bored of it.

Unless of course boredom is a factor that exist only in living creatures. Then again so does pleasure and pain(maybe). My heavens going to have adventure/RPG with manical evil cartoonish villans I can twart every time. If I get fed up with winning I just have to be their friend right?

Actually, I was just making the statement ironically because it's an often heard response to the problem of evil.

Originally Posted by Mark75

Besides, if everything was perfect all the time, we'd just get bored of it.

Only if you're a human, when you're not a human boring could possibly be non existant. This is why things like this is hard to grasp for us, it makes no sense because we can't escape the boundarys of...human.


BTW heaven is not impossible, it's just your ego telling you this does not make sense because we don't exactly learn this kind of thing. It would make perfect sense that heaven exists if the person was raised on this stuff from birth. Are they wrong? what makes them wrong if you think they are? and how is your opinion right? because it seems logical? I'm indifferent about heaven if it exists or not, but i don't mean a place, i mean like the spiritualist terms of realms, and stuff since that seems to make sense to me with both how it works, and how those brain people talk about illusions, and realitys inside your head.

Really, there is no right or wrong answer because we don't even know the answer to begin with, and i'm wondering if we really can know the answer, or if we can but can a human brain grasp the answer? it will most likely spin your head backwards because we are used to this, not that.

My best theory is that heaven is actually nothingness. When you are nothing, you do not want for anything, and thus you are eternally content.

Could be, would suck to be nothingness. Gonna suck not being able to have roleplay sex in my head anymore. Not watch another Penguins game, never see my family again, never see girls, never be able to expierience anything. Nothingness seems logical for most theorys if you look at a human most likely because of ego (it will be like a light...it's turned on, then it's off, then it burns out and can't be used again), but nothings written in stone and
who knows what happens. But forever is a long ways from now as it's never ending, and if you think about it it also seems logical to be reborn. Why? you were born once, when once comes, twice is after, then tree times, etc. It can be billions of years from time of death to time of new born which will obviously be like not even a second has passed by because the whole "nothingness" part. If you've had surgery before and been put to sleep it feels as if not even a second has gone by when it's really been 2-10 hours.

nothingness seems pretty egoless to me.

That argument doesn't work.

1. You assume that you keep your brain when going to heaven. Probably not.

2. That "good" needs "bad" is not a philosophical concept but a (neuro)psychological one. Happiness could be understood as a certain state of the brain (simplified for the sake of argument). If you're happy all the time the intensity of that happiness decreases. This is a neurological mechanism. Even here on earth it's theoretically possible to circumvent that mechanism and to be consistently happy. In heaven, this would be peanuts. You'd just be an entity that can be happy despite not understanding unhappy.

Heaven is where you are pumped full of drugs constantly without dieing.

Originally Posted by lseadragon

So whether you add these or not, a heaven cannot be a place where nothing can be improved - because there is always something that could be made better.

Not so.

Although nothing could be improved, it doesn't mean it has to be perfect, just as close as is possible. Besides, in a finite universe there are a finite number of possible states, so one of them has to be the "best".

Turns out was wrong tells the truth about heaven.

In all seriousness I actually did enjoy touched by an angel when I was a little kid...I only saw like 2 episodes though...

In the problem of heaven in which you are conscious in, I present the problem of eternity. It's not a case of enjoying a second life, but an ongoing existence that has no end. Even with a perfect heaven, where everything is supposed to good and great... you are not going to be there for a limited time, you will be stuck there for an eternity. After 100 years of heaven, you may grow tired of it, but then you'll go through another 100 years of the same thing. Then that 100 years becomes a 1000, and then 10000, and then 100000. Even at the 1000000 mark, there will be no end in sight. Always stuck in a state of 'perfection' or close to perfection that one would have experienced and be forced to experience for an eternity. This then doesn't become heaven, more like Hell. Without an end, there is no meaning, no sense of achievement, no escape.

As with fading into nothingness, you lose consciousness, you cease being aware and simply slip into nothing. You wouldn't be aware of the eternity ahead, nor any pain or boredom. That would be more akin to heaven than anything else, but really is actually closer to the concept of Nirvana than anything else.

"Traditional" conceptualizations of "heaven" are trappings of the ego based mind. "Heaven" has little to do with places, things, or time.

Such is a state of Being, beyond duality

I don't think there has been the word heaven used for what you are describing dualist...someone else said nirvana, which is the closest concept to which you are speaking, except without reincarnation, unless you believe reincarnation is true.

Originally Posted by Sandform

I don't think there has been the word heaven used for what you are describing dualist...someone else said nirvana, which is the closest concept to which you are speaking, except without reincarnation, unless you believe reincarnation is true.

One has to cut through the conceptual trappings, as to understand what I see is beyond concepts.

In this view, re-incarnation is a given, though it is nothing like the average person thinks of when they set the word "reincarnation" in their mind.

Originally Posted by NonDualistic

One has to cut through the conceptual trappings, as to understand what I see is beyond concepts.

In this view, re-incarnation is a given, though it is nothing like the average person thinks of when they set the word "reincarnation" in their mind.

Exactly my point...you NonDualistic can't talk about heaven being different than what was said earlier because heaven means a specific thing, and you believe something counterheavenly, as you do counter reincarnative, your view and the view of others who use the word may have a piece in reference to eachother, but they are not the same thing.

Originally Posted by bluefinger

In the problem of heaven in which you are conscious in, I present the problem of eternity. It's not a case of enjoying a second life, but an ongoing existence that has no end. Even with a perfect heaven, where everything is supposed to good and great... you are not going to be there for a limited time, you will be stuck there for an eternity. After 100 years of heaven, you may grow tired of it, but then you'll go through another 100 years of the same thing. Then that 100 years becomes a 1000, and then 10000, and then 100000. Even at the 1000000 mark, there will be no end in sight. Always stuck in a state of 'perfection' or close to perfection that one would have experienced and be forced to experience for an eternity. This then doesn't become heaven, more like Hell. Without an end, there is no meaning, no sense of achievement, no escape.

As with fading into nothingness, you lose consciousness, you cease being aware and simply slip into nothing. You wouldn't be aware of the eternity ahead, nor any pain or boredom. That would be more akin to heaven than anything else, but really is actually closer to the concept of Nirvana than anything else.

There would be no time in heaven as time is man made. It will be timeless, so 100, 1000, 10000, 1000000 years in human time would be pretty fast to the timeless. You would not get bored because timeless is fast, look at a dream as it can seem to go on for days and days and it's as if time does not exist, heaven will be like that. A dream that seems to go on for days and days, you wont know what days are, nor weeks, nor months, nor years. you would be used to no time as you cease to be a human anymore where time is everything.
Time is a human thing, being bored is a human thing. No time? no bored.

No thoughts? No worries... =)

I don't think I'd get bored of heaven, who knows, there could be a shit load of fun stuff to do there, 100000000s of years of different fun things to master.

Originally Posted by LucidFlanders

There would be no time in heaven as time is man made. It will be timeless, so 100, 1000, 10000, 1000000 years in human time would be pretty fast to the timeless. You would not get bored because timeless is fast, look at a dream as it can seem to go on for days and days and it's as if time does not exist, heaven will be like that. A dream that seems to go on for days and days, you wont know what days are, nor weeks, nor months, nor years. you would be used to no time as you cease to be a human anymore where time is everything.
Time is a human thing, being bored is a human thing. No time? no bored.

Even if time is reckoned differently, it'll still be an endless existence. That is the problem with anything that requires a conscious, yet eternal existence. You say we cease to be human. First of all, how do you define human? If your mind remains intact, you remain human because your mind hasn't changed. Eternity means eternal, no matter how you reckon the passage of time. Even if time was really fast and continued onwards far beyond the death of this universe, you'd still continue to exist. As for the whole "but you'd be different once you're in heaven!", what, I'd be like a mindless zombie wandering aimlessly in a state of 'bliss'? What kind of existence is that in the first place?

Changing the reckoning of time does nothing to change the reality of what such an eternal existence means. The only way to circumvent the torture of eternity is to lose all sense of self and consciousness. This would implicate more of a Nirvana-style concept rather than heaven, but to me it is much more preferable than anything religion can offer.

EDIT: Also, no time is pretty much the same as eternal. No beginning, and no end. You might as well not exist in such a situation :/

I heard a man who made the point that in Heaven, all things are made new. There will be a constant influx of new people with new things to share and always be new things to see and experience. You don't just sit up on a cloud playing the harp for the rest of Eternity.

"They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint."

I have a feeling that there will be no pain in Heaven. Aside from physical pain, all reasons to harm someone else will be removed. People hurt others for various reasons - the need to get ahead, hunger, lack of money, boredom, etc. - but all of those needs that motivate people to harm someone else or themselves are taken away.

As for finer details, I don't know. That's just my general understanding. I've experienced pure, unadulterated joy here on earth and it's not hard for me to imagine being in that state for all eternity.

Dissatisfaction with eternal life, complete boredom? Where do these things come from? Certainly one is not able to experience 100 year without memories of the last 99. Who needs memories anyway?

If the world stays in the same state forever, how could you grow bored? That would change everything!

Originally Posted by RedfishBluefish

Dissatisfaction with eternal life, complete boredom? Where do these things come from? Certainly one is not able to experience 100 year without memories of the last 99. Who needs memories anyway?

If the world stays in the same state forever, how could you grow bored? That would change everything!

Again... mindless drone syndrome for eternal existence. Not an attractive proposition.

A blissful eternal state wouldn't really be blissful without something to distinguish/contrast with it. Otherwise, it'll simply be a normal, neutral state. Plus having to stay within a status quo for an eternity is not my idea of heaven. Even with all sorts of people coming and providing new conversation and all that, after let's say 1000 years, you would start to see similarities in people's lives and their stories. Eventually, there will come to a point where humanity has long ended and the universe would have faded away into a cold, dark place and no new people would enter heaven. Add the remaining infinite period of time after that, and it will become more of a drudgery than a heaven.

Also, without memories, you'd lose your sense of identity. So any loved ones in 'heaven' wouldn't remember you nor would you remember them. Without memories, you'd be nothing more than a broken record.

If I entered a blissful state right now, it would feel pretty damn blissful. Then if I froze the universe like that...