• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

What's Heaven like?

I 'did' Marlowe's 'Dr Faustus' some years back. It's all about heaven, hell, damnation & so on.

Here's what I learned

Heaven is the presence of God: Hell is the condition of being cast from God, eg as Satan was for his rebellion.
So the devils who tempt Faustus carry hell around with them constantly.

Satan is indeed subservient to God and seeks to entrap humans into damnation solely to make others suffer as he did- 'misery loves company'.

Humans are surrounded by the grace of God and have free will. They do not need to act sinfully to find themselves damned. Strong blasphemy will do the trick!



Marlowe was saying that if a thing is true, then it's true, and we needn't try to decide whether or not to believe it.

we'll know one day, or not.........
 
So, is all the burny stuff true, or what? If there's no burny stuff, then why should we care at all? If hell is just being without God, then my whole life has been 'hell'. Hell suddenly looks like quite a lot of fun. As long as they have Tchaikovsky in hell. Otherwise it would be even worse than they say...
 
Various Simpsons questions about the after- life

All quotations from "Bart Simpson's Guide to Life" by Matt Groening

Questions about the afterlife;

1. "Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?"

2. "Is it OK to laugh at people in hell when you're up in heaven?"

3. "If there's life on other planets, are there aliens in heaven too?"

4. "Is Neanderthal man in heaven?"

5. "Wouldn't eternal bliss get boring after awhile?"

Out of the mouth of oddly coloured babes...
 
Let's face it. Nobody interesting is in heaven, are they? Just all monks and nuns (not even the good porno sort). Wow. Party on.
 
Let's face it, Heaven & Hell are just reward and punishment, as used in every authority system in history.

In mediaeval times, sitting on a nice warm cloud in a clean robe with nowt to do all day but strum a harp would certainly seem like bliss to an overworked, half-starved peasant. Fire has always been used in torture so LOTS of fire makes for plenty of punishment, enough to keep most would-be free-thinking peasants in line.

Until quite recent times, anyone disagreeing with the current religious ideology was not only told they were destined for Hell- they were dispatched there with ceremony and suffering.

If hell is just being without God, then my whole life has been 'hell'
Click to expand...

This is a theologically flawed argument! Though of course we are not theologians so don't feel offended.

Protestant reasoning deals with this argument thusly:

Christ died for YOUR sins, so that you may, by your own free will, be saved and enter Heaven.

This act of Christ's enables all people to benefit from the love and grace of God. So you are in the presence of God without realising it and are unlikely to go to Hell. (Protestants demonstrate this certainty with public charity and sober behaviour- hence the extremely capitalism-friendly Protestant work ethic.)

With me so far?

It's like this:

A teenage lad decides he's had enough of living at home. He wants to smoke dope, sleep around, rev his motorbike, whatever. So he leaves and gets a flat. Immediately, the bills roll in, his washing isn't done, his druggy friends rip him off and he catches a dose.
The security and care he had at home are like God's grace, which is invisible or even resented. The chaos he finds without his home and family to support him is consquence of his attempt to live without God's love.

So the logical thing to do is to swallow his pride and go back home, promising to cut his hair and go to college and eventually get a good job with prospects. His reward will be financial success. In theological terms, he has re-entered the grace of God and accepts the salvation which is his right.

Prodigal Son, anyone?

The Catholic position is much more interesting. Catholics have to strive to be saved and can haggle right up to the last minute, or can go to Purgatory for a few millennia and so avoid Hell by the skin of their teeth.

Films such as 'Dogma' and 'Stigmata' are based on Catholic theology as it is much richer in possibilities than the Proddy sort.

I am a sociologist, by the way!
 
I'm not an anything-ologist. I just don't like people who try to bribe me, and religion is moral bribery. Hence, I do not do religion.
 
Muslim heaven:

In Islam, heaven consists of flowery gardens with fountains and rivers flowing beneath, jewels, fruit and beautiful attendants waiting on you.
Sounds like the kind of place that would be attractive to a desert weary, oasis-seeking, wife-collecting nomad to me.:blah:


For them will be Gardens of Eternity; beneath them rivers will flow; they will be adorned therein with bracelets of gold, and they will wear green garments of fine silk and heavy brocade: They will recline therein on raised thrones. How good the recompense! How beautiful a couch to recline on!
Qur'an 18:31

They will recline on Carpets, whose inner linings will be of rich brocade: the Fruit of the Gardens will be near (and easy of reach).
Qur'an 55:54

But those who believe and do deeds of righteousness, We shall soon admit to Gardens, with rivers flowing beneath,- their eternal home: Therein shall they have companions pure and holy: We shall admit them to shades, cool and ever deepening.
Quran 4:57
 
sounds like a very attractive motivation to do all sorts of things.
 
Dark Detective~ said:
Just had another look at Revelations (which I assume is the definitive source) and it throws up some interesting things. Firstly, it seems to confirm that the resurrection is physical. Secondly, it describes a large city (the New Jerusalem) descending from Heaven that shines like a precious jewel (insert UFO metaphor here) which is where mankind and God will live together.
Thirdly, this city is 12,000 stadia x 12,000 stadia x 12,000 stadia in size. Maybe someone could work out how many people would fit?
And finally, it doesn't describe what nightlife there is. Actually, there isn't any as night is banished, as is hunger, thirst, grief and all the other bad things.
Click to expand...

1 Stadion = 185m

12,000 Stadia = 1,850km

Therefore, the city covers 3,422,500 square kilometers (or my math sucks)
 
Thirdly, this city is 12,000 stadia x 12,000 stadia x 12,000 stadia in size. Maybe someone could work out how many people would fit?
Click to expand...

Borg cube?





Sorry :?
 
Inverurie Jones~ said:
I'm not an anything-ologist. I just don't like people who try to bribe me, and religion is moral bribery. Hence, I do not do religion.
Click to expand...

I agree with that
 
Dark Detective~ said:
The thing that therefore puzzles me is, why do people sign up to something if they don't know what it is?
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly. Personally I'm not a believer of heaven, hell, god etc etc and the bible is a story. Interesting ideas but not true. You live, you die. End of story. (In my opinion, before anyone gets all offended and shit).
 
ArthurASCII said:
1 Stadion = 185m

12,000 Stadia = 1,850km

Therefore, the city covers 3,422,500 square kilometers (or my math sucks)
Click to expand...
I think there is an error there, but I don't know what the actual definition of a Stadion is, I can't correct it. I just know that it's unlikely that 12000 * 185 = 1850 000
 
I quite like the muslim heaven, they knew what was good.

and they allow you to keep cats....

I remember some thoughtless person saying my mother was in heaven, and i thought no way, she was a keen animal lover and i had always been told that animals didnt get to go.

(heaven must be a very clean place)
 
Nobody knows. Nobody has the slightest valid idea. All the Christian has faith in is that God has indeed "prepared a place for us" and that it beats all heck out of the alternative.
 
As someone who is, if any afterlife exists (ho ho...see what I did), going to hell I take comfort in a friend's philosophy: At least you know that the person(s) you are chained up with will have interesting stories.

Of course, if hell is truly hellish, then they won't.....
 
There was an episode of the late Rod Serling's television horror and fantasy anthology NIGHT GALLERY which suggested that one person's Hell may be another person's Heaven.

The specific example used was a young rocker, killed in a motorcycle crash, who suddenly himself in a room with an endless supply of hot jazz and swing records.

"You may be interested to know," sez the Devil, "that they have EXACTLY this same room.... UP....THERE.

So it's possible that Mr. Duck's going to find his chain-mate's stories as boring as you know what,, while the other guy (who's obviously LIKED chains for a long time) will find Duck tales absolutely fascinating.
 
Indeed. However, my back up plan is that I hope to get a job in hell...
 
GadaffiDuck said:
However, my back up plan is that I hope to get a job in hell...
Click to expand...

I suspect that you may be over-qualified to be a coal shoveller or a bellows operator.

Remember, "The Devil pays his debts quickly but always in counterfeit money." (Old sermon.)
 
Yes, yes. Way over qualified. However, as Lucifer is an acquaintance, I am hoping for, at least, a juniour management posiiton.... :twisted:

Note: imagine, if all the good guy stuff is correct; we would have to be near people of various religious backgrounds (ahme) and do gooders. Gah.
 
Heaven - your already here. Hell - your already here.

Depending on how you behaved in your past life, depicts your status, and happiness here!

For where you can from, try past life regression!

ok i just made it all up, but i dont want to subscribe to eternal boredom (which is what it will become, yawn), the fact we have to work for what we get stops if being so dull.

Well its a threory. for better ones read some good science fiction novels! :)
 
A question that was raised by Bart simpson when hell was explained to him as having maggots for your sheets etc etc, was simply,
"wouldnt you get used to it?"
 
RealPaZZa said:
....eternal boredom (which is what it will become, yawn)
Click to expand...

But if there's a entire Universe to play with, and possibly Universes, PLURAL, that's going to take a LONG time.

In short, picturing the Hereafter (or indeed the Thereafter) as an eternity of boredom probably illustrates nothing more than our own human limitations.

If nothing else, the Mind which created the Universe(s) ought to be able to come up with some really neat "bored" games. <g>
 
yetifeet1975 said:
Bart simpson [asked]....
"wouldnt you get used to it?"
Click to expand...

When I was three years old I thought that playing with blocks was the most fascinating thing in all the world.

Eventually it became boring. So playing with blocks was replaced by NEW fascinations.

Today I find Fortean and Paranormal studies a LOT more fascinating than I found playing with blocks at age three.

Yet to slightly paraphrase St. Paul I still "see through a glass darkly."

I see the Afterlife as an eternity of mental expansion and I don't see how that can become boring.
 
Long article:

Heaven: A fool's paradise
Why do the majority of Britons still believe in life after death? Heaven isn't a wonderful place filled with light – it is a pernicious construct with a short and bloody history, writes Johann Hari
Wednesday, 21 April 2010

John Lennon urged us: "Imagine there's no heaven/It's easy if you try/No hell below us/Above us only sky." Yet the religious aren't turning to Lennonism any faster than Leninism. Today, according to a new book by Lisa Miller, Newsweek's religion correspondent, 81 per cent of Americans and 51 per cent of Brits say they believe in heaven – an increase of 10 per cent since a decade ago. Of those, 71 per cent say it is "an actual place". Indeed, 43 per cent believe their pets – cats, rats, and snakes – are headed into the hereafter with them to be stroked for eternity. So why can't humans get over the Pearly Gates?

In reality, the heaven you think you're headed to – a reunion with your relatives in the light – is a very recent invention, only a little older than Goldman Sachs. Most of the believers in heaven across history would find it unrecognisable. Miller's book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, teases out the strange history of heaven – and shows it's not what you think.

Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I'll show you what's lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Koran lived in thirst – so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where "the first would be last, and the last would be first" – so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today's Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang. Emily Dickinson wrote: " 'Heaven' – is what I cannot Reach!/The Apple on the Tree/Provided it do hopeless – hang/That – 'Heaven' is – to Me!"

We know precisely when this story of projecting our lack into the sky began: 165BC, patented by the ancient Jews. Until then, heaven – shamayim – was the home of God and his angels. Occasionally God descended from it to give orders and indulge in a little light smiting, but there was a strict no-dead-people door policy. Humans didn't get in, and they didn't expect to. The best you could hope for was for your bones to be buried with your people in a shared tomb and for your story to carry on through your descendants. It was a realistic, humanistic approach to death. You go, but your people live on.

So how did the idea of heaven – as a perfect place where God lives and where you end up if you live right – rupture this reality? The different components had been floating around "in the atmosphere of Jerusalem, looking for a home", as Miller puts it, for a while. The Greeks believed there was an eternal soul that ascended when you die. The Zoroastrians believed you would be judged in the end-time for your actions on earth. The Jews believed in an almighty Yahweh.

But it took a big bloody bang to fuse them. In the run up to heaven's invention, the Jews were engaged in a long civil war over whether to open up to the Greeks and their commerce or to remain sealed away, insular and pure. With no winner in sight, King Antiochus got fed up. He invaded and tried to wipe out the Jewish religion entirely, replacing it with worship of Zeus. The Jews saw all that was most sacred to them shattered: they were ordered to sacrifice swine before a statue of Zeus that now dominated their Temple. The Jews who refused were hacked down in the streets.

etc...

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co ... 49399.html
 
Im re reading Cammile Flammarions `Lumen`

(which is all about Relativity)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top