Mobiius

There really isn't any clear information about what to expect in either heaven or hell. I'm going to list different speculations about each for this discussion. Feel free to add your thoughts.

Here is the basic premise that we will base our discussion on:

Traditional Heaven.
1) From what we hear, you will spend eternity in heaven basking in the glory of god, and enjoying peace and love and unending happiness.

Traditional Hell.
1) In hell, you get to spend eternity in everlasting torment while you writhe in flames and get your skin peeled off by rabid vinegar dripping beavers.

Now, let's say that these descriptions are true.

In heaven, presumeably, you spend your time worshipping and praising god. What else would you do in heaven? If this is the case, then that means that any negative aspect of your self has been stripped away so that you are left with only the good or positive aspects of who you were. What this means is that you are no longer the same person you were. You are a completely new person with only good qualities now, destined to do nothing but praise god day in and day out. That being said, heaven will not seem to be glorious, or filled with love, or peaceful. It will just feel average or ordinary. Why would that be? It's because you no longer have any negative frame of reference to gauge this magnitude of peace to. Without a negative frame of reference in which to compare the heavenly joy and peace, then if feels just like every other day. Nothing special.

The exact same would have to be said about hell. If you go to hell, then again presumably you would be stripped of all positive aspects of your self and be left with only the negative. Think about that. If you weren't stripped of all positive aspects, then that means that god has left a person to suffer in torment who in spite of the evil deeds they may have done, are still capable of loving and caring for others. You would think this would weigh heavily on gods conscience.
If you were left with only negative aspects of your self then again you would have no positive frame of reference to gauge your torment by and it would feel like your average orindinary place to be. You would know no other way, only torment, thusly you would not be greatly affected by it.

Now, if you are not stripped of either aspect (negative or positive) upon entering heaven or hell, then that means that some souls in heaven still have an element of evil in them, and some souls in hell still have some good in them. If they have an element of evil in them while they are in heaven, then I would wager that heaven cannot be total peace, total love, and total joy. On the other hand, if those in hell have an element of good in them then hell cannot be total torment and the skin peeling, vinegar-dripping beaver must take a break every now and then.

So from this, we can draw two conclusions for each destination:

Heaven:
1) If you are stripped of all evil, then heaven won't feel that special.
2) If you are not stripped of all evil, then heaven isn't total peace and therefore won't be as great as some may think it will be.

Hell:
1) If you are stripped of all good, then hell won't feel that bad.
2) If you are not stripped of all good, then hell isn't constant torment and therefore won't be as bad as some may think it will be.

Your thoughts?

seebs

I disagree that negative aspects wouldn't suffer.

In fact, in many cases, it is the evil in people that suffers most. Pride, envy...

Mobiius

I think you may have missed a crucial point in the OP (or maybe I've misunderstood what you meant). If you were to go to hell, and have every aspect of goodness stripped from your soul so that only the negative remains, then you have nothing to guage your negative aspects by. You wouldn't know what joy is. It would be an intangible concept to you. If you could no longer experience any positive emotions, and all you know are negative ones, then perhaps the negative ones won't feel as bad as they may have, had you still been able to experience positive ones.

Does that make any sense or did I garble it up and confuse you? I think I've confused myself. :Cheeky:

seebs

Hmm. I don't think this model of hell makes any sense; I can't figure out how you could define an entity that way.

But it seems to me that you're conflating the capacity for happiness with the capacity to inspire happiness in others. It is quite possible to believe that money would make you happy without any desire to make other people happy.

Nero's Boot

I think both would become so monumentally boring, that you'd wish for oblivion, just to end the stagnation and sameness.

Think of Heaven: Endless joy, perfect bodies, perfect minds, and an eternity to play around in! At first blush, it looks great: Idyllic, even. You'd have eternity to puzzle out the mysteries of the cosmos, Heaven, and beyond. Every hobby ever invented could be studied; every sport mastered; every intellectually-stimulating discipline could be undertaken with such ferocity as to begger the imagination. But, eventually, after a million years, or maybe a billion, you've seen it all; you've done it all. There's nothing left to do. After a billion years of constant intellectual and physical growth, everything begins to blur together, becoming the same experience over and over and over. No matter what new joys God invents, no matter how delightsome the diversion, chances are you've done something exactly like it over the last billion years. Despair begins to set in, as you've nothing left to strive for.

And guess what? A billion years is just a drop in the bucket to what's waiting. You could triple or even quadruple that time, and you've still lived less than a percent of a percent of a percent of eternity.

Take Hell, next. Yes, I'm sure suffering is intense there (assuming it even exists): But after a time, pain ceases to bother one, as it becomes so routine that nothing really stirs you anymore. You get used to the sensation of pain. You get so used to suffering, you don't even feel it anymore. Now, imagine you've been suffering every concieveable torture for a billion years: Congragulations, Hell can no longer torment you, because after that insane amount of time, you've simply become inured to all torment. It doesn't even faze you anymore. Like any sensation, over-indulgence blunts its effects, and a billion years of constant pain has rendered you so sterile of sensation that nothing can make you feel anymore. Hell has been defeated at last...by boredom.

There is a way to make Hell into true suffering for eternity, and Heaven into true paradise....but it would require such cruelty as to oblierate God's claims to love forever. Simply rewire a soul so that every sensation inflicted or recieved is like it's the first sensation. Pleasure always brings squeals of delight, and the hellfire always scalds just as hotly. But then, Heaven would become a den of sensualists, and Hell a place only a tyrant could ever invent.

--and we can't have that, with a loving God, now can we? NB

jonesg

HEaven and Hell are within, right here and now.
We put ourselves there by the choices and lives we lead,
not whether we obey men who wear their collars backward.
Anyone who hasn't been in their own lake of fire already has got some sinnin to do.

'In the end, if there is a judgement of sorts, it isn't a list of rights or wrongs, it must be weighed on a scale of how much love a person brings into the world.' Mother Theresa.

BlessNot

My thoughts are that you should have added a third choice to your question:

Myth.

I would pick the third.

Scottbushee

I think that this is not a good depiction of Heaven. I don't think there would be hobbys as such in Heaven. Doesn't the Bible say that we don't even spend eternity with our wives?

When we think about it, all hobbys, intellectual stimulation, etc, are only means to attaining an end, namely, Joy. Sometimes they seem the same, but they are not. They are just means to ends.
We've all experienced that sort of 'click' that happens when you finally accomplish something, or from meditating on some deep thought, or whatever. But it is that sense of peace and joy, not the actual doing of the action that we strive for. And even this joy is just a shadow of true Joy.

Aristotle:
If it is true that in the sphere of action there is an end which we wish for its own sake, and for the sake of which we wish everything else, and that we do not desire all things for the sake of something else, it is clear that this will be the good or the supreme good. Does it not follow then that the knowledge of this supreme good is of great importance for the conduct of life?

While nothing I've written here is intended as a proof of a supreme joy, or of Heaven, I must point out that it is not _analytically_ impossible for there to be a supreme joy that we do not get sick of. It is just hard to imagine a joy that goes on endlessly because it goes against our experiences.

Godless Dave

I think it's some of Ronnie James Dio's best work. It is by far the best of the post-Ozzy Black Sabbath, none of which can really be compared to the Ozzy era. Don't get me wrong; it sounds like Sabbath: Tony, Geezer, and Bill's distinctive styles are still there and they still work. The guitar solo in the title track is my favorite heavy metal solo. I still consider it Black Sabbath, but you just can't compare the two eras. There's Ozzy, and there's everyone else.

Javaman

I'm reading this as a question that you don't know the answer to (and I could be wrong). I might be making a tangential point here but the lack of knowledge about their own religion is one thing that bothers me about Christianity. Both the absence of clarity on some points (such as what is promised in the afterlife and the role of Satan) and, more to my point, the fact that many practicing Christians haven't read through and comprehended the document that is supposed to govern their eternal (eternal!) lives.

It is odd that unclear amalgam of writings and a spotty reading of them oftentimes leads to such fervor.