God must be bored

My mom read a book about a psychic who saw heaven in her dreams.
The evil are separated from the good. There is no hell where you are eternally torutured, forever living in fire. Besides, that's just an image that a book once said about a demon named satan, the fallen angel.
And till the end of time, you read. You gain knowledge. And perhaps you eventually have a second life, back to earth.
 
I just thought of another one this morning to oppose my original 'Heaven is Hell' theory;
Ok, let's say there actually is heaven, the kind all the religious people talk about where you get everything you want in a supernatural world of pure neverending happiness. Well, on second thought, that could work. If you get everything you want, then all you have to do is Want to not ever be bored, Want to live the life of a mortal and not remember your past, Want to sleep for 1000 years and wake up fully refreshed, Want to see life on other planets, Want to visit your dead friends, Want to create your own universe, and eventually, after billions of years, want to be God, and you could be, and you would be, wouldn't you?

please note I don't believe a word of that.
 
That would be tricky. Imagine all the kind of wierd stuff people would try out as soon as they discover how it works ... several of the things I would try out at first would have excluded me from heaven if I had tried them on earth ...

Incidentally you might want to read the last chapter of "The history of the World in 10 and 1/2 chapters" by Julian Barnes (the chapter that begins with "I dreamt that I woke up, it's the oldest dream of all and I just had it." IIRC it was the last one.)

"The mind is its own place and in it can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven" (Satan's speech, from John Milton, Paradise Lost)
 
Originally posted by habilis
I just thought of another one this morning to oppose my original 'Heaven is Hell' theory;
Ok, let's say there actually is heaven, the kind all the religious people talk about where you get everything you want in a supernatural world of pure neverending happiness. Well, on second thought, that could work. If you get everything you want, then all you have to do is Want to not ever be bored, Want to live the life of a mortal and not remember your past, Want to sleep for 1000 years and wake up fully refreshed, Want to see life on other planets, Want to visit your dead friends, Want to create your own universe, and eventually, after billions of years, want to be God, and you could be, and you would be, wouldn't you?

please note I don't believe a word of that.
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obviously u don't have a clue what heaven is all about. i can tell u one thing for sure: once ur in heaven, there's no need to want for anything.
 
Originally posted by wiz
obviously u don't have a clue what heaven is all about.
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And you do? of course I don't know what it's "all about", that's whole point here. Please don't keep your extended knowledge of heaven and the secrets of the universe a secret from us any longer, please enlighten us as to what it's "all about".
 
Wiz, please don't be so pretentious. Unless you've actually been there and back (and that would be a nice trick), you have no idea what heaven is either. Heaven is in the clouds, with a big gate through which people enter. Heaven is a neverending party/disco/wedding reception/etc. that you never have to leave. Heaven is being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want.

Same with hell: Hell is neverending fire. Hell is being tortured for eternity. Hell is being unable to do anything you want, no matter how badly.

The truth is, only those who are there know. Don't preach that "Heaven is this way" and "Hell is this way" because those are simply stories that somebody made up one day, and thought would be the perfect representation of heaven or hell. Habilis's theory sounds perfectly plausible, moreso than fluffy clouds, pearly gates, wings, and a harp (that all sounds rather hellish to me, actually).

But if you're so smart, then please enlighten us as to what heaven is all about.
 
keep in mind guys, your personal belief is just that, a belief, not a fact, that goes for religious faith and scientific theories, so lets try to keep this all civilized and open minded :)
 
But imagine how much fun He must be having now, watching all the life-forms in the universe slowly grow and change... :) I would hope it would be very entertaining.
 
Interesting but untill the invention of the jewish religion, most existing religions by that time (like 6000 y ago or more) tended to have mostly female gods.
 
They were probably horny. ;) :eek:

I have no doubts that our God is perceived as male because of the strong matriarchal structure of the religion back at the time. Even today, among the more religious Jewish circles (Orthodox, Hassidic, etc.), men and women have specific roles that they do not deviate from: men conduct services, read from Torah, women take care of the home, raise the children; they even separate the genders during services in religious shuls.

Interestingly, there is no hell in the Jewish religion. In my opinion, there is no heaven either, but I completely hope there is, because I can't imagine what not being alive would be like if there were nothing more. Reincarnation would be interesting.
 
Hmm, I'm pretty sure there wasn't a hell in the early christian bible, either, Arden. Added later to add incentive for people to not sin, I believe. Can't prove that, of course, but it's inline with other stuff that has been added/removed/changed in the Bible over the years.

Personally, I believe that the afterlife (heaven, if you want) is what you make of it. If you believe you'll go up to into the clouds, stand in front of some gate with St. Peter there, that's what'll happen. Or if you believe that death is it, there's no more...that's what will happen. Purely subjective.

As to hell, I don't really believe in a hell. I do believe in a sort of...hmm...limbo, I suppose would be the best way to describe it. The movie What Dreams May Come describes it pretty well - "[Hell] is your life gone wrong". It was put for suicides, but I believe it's for anyone that's done something they've felt is totally wrong. I don't believe, however, that one would be stuck there for eternity. I believe once one admits or accepts what they've done wrong, they'll move on, so to speak. There's a short story by Clive Barker that illustrates what I believe pretty well, too, though I can't remember the name of it. Basically, it's about a dream a guy keeps having, of a place. In this place there's a lot of places all mixed together. The guy doesn't see anyone there at first, but after a while, he figures out that all of these places are murder scenes, and stuck in them are the people that have committed the murder(s) there. At first glance he never noticed the people there, because they're pretty still most of the time. At one point, he does notice somebody moving. He sees a man leave one of the places there, and go racing out into the desert (err, there's a desert surrounding all of the jumbled-up places). The man drops some weapon (a knife, I think) as he's going, and suddenly he disappears in a flash of light...and the guy dreaming hears a baby's crying as he does. So, pretty much, the place is a kind of purgatory, where the murderers are trapped until they come to terms with what they've done, after where they're reborn to try again.

BTW, Arden, reincarnation is a religious belief where you keep being born over and over again until you don't sin at all (pretty much). I'm thinking you mean more of just being reborn over and over again, which isn't exactly what reincarnation is about. ;)
 
It seems that many people believe different things about death, and the after life. Personally, I believe that when we die, most of us will probably "see our lives flash before our eyes" one final time, and quickly sink into a dream-like world until all those neurons stop firing away. I think that at that moment, we will perceive eternity because as the neurons begin to die, they will be firing away that last "expereince" that we, in our mind, will experience. Will it be heaven? Of course it will. Will it be hell? It could be that too. Our journey to the after life will probably depend on our belief system and whether or not we believe we lived a good life. The reason I say that it will be dream-like is because of some recent reading of several postings on Slashdot that mention a Turing Machine, a machine that mimics reality. No such machine can exist because the calculations to mimic reality would be infinite, this is why our dreams are so "whacked-out and strange", the mind does the best that it can to mimic reality in a dream. I mention this because so many people are starting to introduce "beliefs, culture, the bible, education, environment, etc..." into the discussion.

Also, I think these books are relevant ot the discussion:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...3373789/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/103-2063648-5263837

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...3381166/sr=2-3/ref=sr_2_3/104-7777727-8324721

I started reading both, very VERY good books. This is not light reading folks, this is rather deep material. And the author does mention the after life in these books.
 
Originally posted by arden
Interestingly, there is no hell in the Jewish religion. In my opinion, there is no heaven either, but I completely hope there is, because I can't imagine what not being alive would be like if there were nothing more. Reincarnation would be interesting.
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Well, Christians market that you get an "eternal life". As life in too many things suck, i'd rather just get a nirvana or illumination and that's it.

Reincarnation. .. i thikn there are some mentions about it in the jewish literature (sacred) - and there used to be too in Bible. " Nowadays, there is little doubt that early Christians gave more credence to the concept of rebirth than was later the case. The main figure responsible for this change was no churchman but an ambitious, worldly and powerful figure Emperor Justinius. In the year 553, quite independently of the Pope, Justinius had the teachings of the church father Origen (185-253) banned by a synod." (here) << not probably the most lightnening viewpoint to this thing but the first i could find fast. There are a lot of more stuff out there, just google for bible, reincarnation and emperor. I think there's too much weird stuff in the life that can't be only conincidences.
 
Never needing the map in a city you are the first time in as you already know where everything is ... understanding /speaking languaes that you have never studied and that are not close to any of the languages you know (like greek or japanese if you only know latin languages and english).. and all such simple things as why some things (places, cities, nations, persons, objects etc) are familiar and others dgisturb without you being able to give a rational reason why. And some places that you always _dreamed_ of and once found in the real life .. all the fears. People living close to sea that are afraid of water and never learn to swim. I have a fear of tunnels and rooms underground (the underground is ok, never had problems there though) like cellars .. and crowds. In a middle of a lot of people (e.g. concerts) make me feel uncomfrotable - and i'm not sure i can accuse the 'disturbance caused by unknown people stepping on my personal space without my allowance' or if all those things come from somewhere far far in time. I can be in an open space 300 feet in the air and watch down and want to go higher but being in a place that is 8 feet or over under ground makes me nervous (sometimes even if the place is not underground like and is nice). Or why do I feel so familiar in the deserts of Arizona if i've lived in tropics, mediterranean (not desert) and the lame northern europe & uk? Or read a book of something thousands of years ago (ancient indians, egypt, mesopotamia etc) and know that what you are reading is not true, that you _know_ something was far different from what you read. Or know letters and words of an alphabet you haven't ever studied ... are those enough examples?
 
Originally posted by chemistry_geek
It seems that many people believe different things about death, and the after life. Personally, I believe that when we die, most of us will probably "see our lives flash before our eyes" one final time, and quickly sink into a dream-like world until all those neurons stop firing away. I think that at that moment, we will perceive eternity because as the neurons begin to die, they will be firing away that last "expereince" that we, in our mind, will experience.
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Yes, that sounds very much like what I've always thought death would be like unless you died suddenly and violently in a car accident, shotgun blast to the head, bullet through your cereberal cortex and hypothalamus, if that happened, there would be no gentle fading, and what happenes to those poor souls? I've wondered about that before.

All I can really say about death is, I'm afraid of dying, but not at all afraid of death, I know it will feel good.
 
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