Michaelson

G'day people.

A couple of things first off. I'm pretty sure this would have been posted about before. If so, feel free just to head me toward any similar threads. Secondly, I actually happened upon this board without realising straight away the nature of it. I am an atheist, however I'm not nerely as stridently anti-religion as a lot of people here seem to be, and in asking this question I'm not looking to Christian-bash, I'm just curious.

Okay, so my question first off is, Is there any sort of agreed upon description of what Heaven is like. Other than that it's good times for all, of course?

Secondly, are the people in heaven happy all the time, or just generally happy or what? Is it really possible for people to be in a state of bliss at all times regarding all things? For instance, if I was a truly good person and loved my neighbor and all that, and happened to be murdered in a particularly gruesome fashion, wouldn't my friend's and family's grief have to concern me up in heaven? What if a relative went to Hell upon dying, could I really be happy with this knowledge?

A better example still, and probably where this thought was planted in my head, Christopher Hitchens, in his Letters To A Young Contrarian writes that So what's the go? Or is it a case of finding out upon arrival?

malookiemaloo

Personally I always liked Billy Graham's definition of heaven.

''Heaven is where Jesus is, and where Jesus is, is heaven for me.''


m

Magus55

Heaven isn't fully understood. We are told a little bit about it in the Bible, but Heaven itself is beyond human comprehension. There is no way to to explain what Heaven is like to a mortal.

Some things we are told is:
We will get perfect, incorruptible bodies ( implied also that we won't be bound by the laws of physics; we can be anywhere instantly, and walk through solid objects)
There will be no more death, sin, sorrow, sadness, pain, tears, hate, etc. in Heaven.
Heaven will be sat upon a new formed Earth, and will be known as New Jerusalem. The city is 1500 miles cubed with 12 golden gates for each of the 12 Jewish tribes. It will have golden streets and buildings, as well as precious gems that will reflect God's light.
Crystal clear waters and the river of life leading to God's throne.
God will give us the desires of the heart. ( non-sinful things we've always dreamed of).
We will all know each other and will be one family.
No marriage just like the angels.
And best of all, in God's prescence for all eternity.

The rest, we don't know and the mortal mind can't conceive.

Yes, people will always be happy, or at least at peace. I doubt we will be laughing non stop as though we are drugged, but there is no sadness or tears - so pure contentment, peace, and happiness. No cares or worries. Its a peace unknown to us on Earth.

There is no grief in Heaven. Those who make it to Heaven are pure and sinless. There is no hate or ill feelings towards others.
God said he will remove every tear from our eyes. How he deals with the pain of knowing loved ones are in Hell is unknown. Most likely it will be that we will have full knowledge of how God works and understand his Holiness and Righteousness. Anyone that ends up in Hell, we know rightfully belongs there and made the choice themselves. We will accept that they made the choice. Right now, we can't fully understand God's ways because sin separates us. In heaven, sin doesn't exist - so all our questions and doubts will be revealed and put to rest.

Yellum Notnef

Will there be electricty? Will there be radio,tv and video games? Will there be indoor plumbing or will there be no need for that since nobody goes to the bathroom anymore? Will we have clothes like we have now or will fasion go back 2000 years and have us all in robes and sandals?

Will there be sports? Will people have hobbies? No more sex (as Magus has pointed out) means no more babies so I guess people coming together to start families is not an option. Will there be schools for the 6 year old kids who will be stuck as 6 year old kids for all of eternity?

What will happen to the rest of the planet outside of Magus' golden gates?

Where is all that gold going to come from to pave the streets and build the buildings? And whats the point of building with gold anyway?

And if Heaven is nothing like right now,whats the point of this life? Why have us get used to one way of living for just a blink of an eye only to change everything and throw us into a new reality for all of eternity?

Paperstreet

Heaven wasn't really thought out to well. Eternity = boredom no matter how you cut it. If God turns off our boredom sense, then we could bounce a ball and laugh hysterically forever. What a great existence!

Pyrrho

The first thing to observe is that there is no universally agreed upon idea of what heaven is. Everything is supposed to be good, whatever that means. And, rather curiously, even though "heaven" is left vague, many arguments made by some Christians are inconsistent with us ever being in Heaven. For example, in connection with the Problem of Evil, it is often claimed that, because we have FREE WILL (whatever that means), we sometimes do bad things, and therefore God is not to be blamed (there are plenty of problems with this as an argument, as you can see in another thread; you may wish to look at my second post there). But if having FREE WILL entails that we will sometimes do evil, then we would sometimes do evil in Heaven if we were there. So Heaven would not be all good. And if having FREE WILL does not entail that we will do bad things, then it is no explanation for why there would be evil in this world.

So, don't expect any kind of consistent, detailed explanation of it. After all, we can always ask why God did not simply choose to create Heaven, as well as beings appropriate to it (as if a perfect being had any use for anything beyond itself anyway), and forget about making the earth at all?

Really, Heaven is just the "carrot" part of the 'carrot and stick' approach to getting people to believe. It doesn’t have to make any more sense than anything else in Christianity. It is all part of the “mystery” of religion.

And, of course, it is useful for those in power to keep people 'in their place'. Those who don't get justice in this world, are told to obey for now, and they will be rewarded in heaven. The obedience now is quite explicitly stated:

The concept of Heaven is a tool of oppression. People are told that they will be rewarded in Heaven if they will just do what they are told now. If you are a tyrant, getting the people to really believe this kind of stuff is a great way to keep them down, and to keep yourself in power. Disobeying you would be disobeying God, and even if you don't catch them in their "crimes" yourself, God will get them anyway. It is no wonder that such ideas have been so vigorously promoted by leaders of countries.

orac

Many christians have argued that these are absolutely essential - without the possibility of suffering, they claim there is no possiblity of happiness.

It's nice to see you agree they're wrong.

So, why does God see fit to allow us to suffer when you've now admitted that it's not actually all that important?

Pure and sinless? Um, I'm sorry, but there's a serious problem here. There is a grand total of 0 perfect people on earth today. Not a single perfect person. Now while you may well argue that the world is full of forgiven people, these forgiven people are still imperfect, and have sinful desires. (Ok, this assumes your idea of sin is valid, but we're talking about what you believe so I can live with that for a few minutes.)

What happens to these desires? When we go to heaven will God turn us into robots with no free will, or will people freely become sinless?

Seriously, I want an answer to this. You have used "people simply must have free will" to justify God allowing terrible crimes to be committed by people, and now you seem to think people can be free from all sin. I want to know if you've decided free will is unimportant, or if people with free will can still be perfect and sinless.

On the off chance you believe people in heaven will be robots, can you explain why a few decades of free will is so important, compared to an eternity as a slave? Remember when doing so that you've already argued that suffering on earth is irrelevant because it's only for such a short time, so I expect you to be consistent and agree that only having free will while on alive on earth is equally irrelevant.

So you go to heaven after celebrating the sinnrs being condemned to hell for eternity? What, you're not looking forward to the presents you'll get when you celebrate sinners going to hell? I'm sure you must think that'll be a great party - it says so in the bible.

That still leaves a question, though: if you go to heaven but your children reject Jesus and go to hell, will you miss them? Will you truely be happy even though you know that your loved ones messed up their lives and will be paying the price for eternity?

Isn't it possible that you can realise that your loved ones deserve to be punished but still be very sad that they screwed up so badly?

I'm amused by this. You think parents can just casually say "oh well, my kid made a bad choice and is being tortured for eternity. It's their own fault, why should I care? I'm in heaven with Jesus, that's the only thing that will ever matter to me."

Still, as they say about christians - by their love shall ye know them.

The thing that really disturbs me though is that many christians claim to know exactly why it is right for God to condem sinnes to hell. They believe that power and strength equates to moral superiority. It's, apparantly, perfectly christian to believe that might makes right is the supreme moral law.

Do you have any alternative explanation for why finite sin deserves infinite punishment?

Goliath

malookiemaloo,

This definition makes no sense. Where is Jesus? You can't say that heaven is where Jesus is if the answer to where Jesus is is "Heaven." That's nothing more than a circular definition.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Paperstreet

Hypothetically lets say they did make the choice... your still going to feel bad that they are in hell. Oh well, my son chose to disobey God. He deserved his eternal damnation! Lets laugh at him!

Subconsciensly the reason a lot of people want to go to heaven is to get the ultimate revenge, or the ultimate I TOLD YA SO! WOOT, GO (insert religion)!!!

[sarcasm] I mean, who WOULND'T want to see those ass holes who wouldn't listen to you, suffer for all eternity. [/sarcasm]

winstonjen

Ewww. Talk about an obsessive stalker.