Barefoot Bree

Mageth and others HAVE been giving you sound, logical reasons why your version of heaven would still end up being boring; you are rejecting their logic. I reject yours. A "carnival/amusement park/orgy/video arcade all in one" (thanks, Sarpedon) of endless amusement thought up for me by some omnipotent being would still get boring.

In order for even "endless novelty" NOT to get boring, I would have to be fundamentally altered in some way when I get to heaven.

Besides, I should think that God himself would get bored after a while thinking up all that new stuff for all the billions of souls that are depending on him for their novelty. ("Oh, Devil, it's the 3 quadrillionth day of that little worm Bree's heavenly paradise, and I've got to go and think of some ELSE now so she won't get bored. Back to the drawing board.....")

luvluv

No, they haven't. They've been giving me emotional reasons as to why they think they would be bored even given an unlimited amount of new things to do. But there is no logical connection between being given an infinite amount of new, exciting things to do and boredom.

If you doubt that, try to consruct a syllogism demonstrating how boredom logically follows from an infinite amount of things to do in infinite time. Try constructing a sound argument that never running out of new things to do would at some point in time get boring.

The reasons that have been given are not purely logical in the sense that they don't follow from the attributes we know we are dealing with here. Logically and definitionally, all we know we are dealing with in the Christian version of Heaven is that 1) it will never end 2) it will be ruled over by a Being unlimited in a) knowledge, b) imagination, and c) resources.

If, given those facts, you could logically deduce inevitable boredom, then you'd have a purely logical argument for the inevitable boredom of heaven. But if you have to add some external, contingent attribute to Heaven (that it's an eternal church service, that you'd resent doing busy work) you're staking some ground on why some theology of what heaven is like or some anthropology on what humans, even humans in heaven, are like is true.

If you do that, you have to give us your reasons for suspecting that your view of heaven or man is true, and why some other view is false. Otherwise, you have to reject the idea that Heaven has to be boring. You could only say that if your view of Heaven and humanity are correct Heaven would be boring.

Point being, again, is that Heaven might be boring and it might not, but the duration of time we'll be there gives no one any grounded, purely logical (i.e. definitional) reasons for assuming that at some point Heaven will have to be boring, for everyone, inevitiably.

Stephen T-B

To be bored or interested requires intelligence.

If a soul is intelligent, it means we have two sources of intelligence while we live: the soul and the brain.
Why?
Why do we need brains if we've already got souls? Brains burn a lot of fuel and put a big burden on the rest of our bodies to keep them going. Souls apparently need nothing...because they are nothing.

luvluv

Christianity does not advocate the continued existence of a disembodied soul, but a bodily ressurection.

I'm astounded that people who are so vocal in their criticism of Christianity could be so radically uninformed about one of it's most central doctrines.

Mageth

You're trying to make a "logical" argument for why we won't be bored in heaven, but boredom has nothing to do with logic. It is "emotional".

Here's a bit of a "logical" argument for you, and one I believe I presented earlier. If the reason God has to dream up all of these new and (absurdly) ever-more-astounding things for us to do is to keep us from being bored (which seems to be the crux of your argument), then that implies that we will still have the capacity to be bored, if not so entertained. Given "billions of people", each with the capacity to be bored, and an infinite amount of time, people will get bored. Eventually, all of them. If it can happen, given an infinite amount of time it will happen.

Big, magic, imaginative God can continue to pull ever more amazing, novel "rabbits" out of his hat for eternity if he wants. But after you've seen God pull a few trillion novel rabbits out of his hat (supposedly, and absurdly, stretching "amazing" and our ever-increasing wonderment to infinity), the "wonderment" and "amazement" would be long gone. A lot sooner than that, in all likelihood. Knowing God can do and create anything takes the wonder out of how wonderful it would be to see God do any particular one thing. "Oh, look; the big guy just created another entirely novel universe. What is that; his trillionth this week? And look; in this one, the people are polka-dotted! How novel!"

Put plainly, watching God "work his stuff" an infinite number of times would be boring.

"God, I think I'm beginning to get bored."

"Oh, then watch me pull another rabbit out of my hat! That ought to entertain you!"

Knowing that God is going to spend eternity thinking up an infinite number of ultimately pointless things for me to do is boring. I'm bored already, and I haven't even gotten started yet.

Stephen T-B

Ah luvluv - the bodily resurrection!
"In this flesh shall I see God."
This was to be on the Day of Judgement, which Jesus taught would occur within the generation of the people to whom he spoke.
Got it a bit wrong, though, didn't he? 2,000 years later and we're still waiting.
And in the meantime, Christians' bodies have ended up in tiny bits all over the place - especially when they've been burned in a crematorium.
And how will these bodies be resurrected anyway? As they were when they died - crippled and diseased or in the prime of life?
How will you spend eternity - hobbling around on a zimmer frame, or bounding about like a 21-year old?

Sarpedon

You hear a lot less about the ressurection of the body from christians these days. I think its one of those formerlly essential beliefs that they are attempting to gradually hush up and forget about, because the idea that enough of the body remains around to ressurect is rather absurd. In the middle ages, theologians postulated the existence of a special bone in the body that is imperishable, that would form the basis of the resurrected body. It was quite entertaining. This was the reason the church was so dead-set against cremation. As usual, when people en masse decide to ignore an article of faith, the church quietly tries to pretend that article never existed.

And as I pointed out in my original post, there is no evidence of heaven, I'm glad you agree, but what you ignored was the notion of authority. My theologians are better than your theologians. If you reject authoritative figures, what do you have left, with no evidence? hope? wishful thinking? faith?

Mageth

I'll expound on this a bit.

luvluv is proposing a "logical" answer to the problem of boredom in heaven is that we can be given an infinite number of novel things to do. Leaving aside the absurdity of an "infinite amount of novelty" (and yes, luvluv, it is an absurd notion), the fact is that there are far more things to do in this brief life than any one person, or even all of us, could ever do. And yet, many, if not most, people still get bored. Yes, people even get bored with having to do so many "novel" things. Boredom is what drives some people to continuously look for novelty. And some of them even get bored with that.

There's no real "logic" as to why we get bored, nor is there any logical solution to our tendency to get bored. Except perhaps a lobotomy.

And proposing an infinite number of "novel" things for us to do in the afterlife is not a logical solution to the problem of boredom. It does not "logically" follow from having an infinite number of novel things to do that no one will get bored.

Autonemesis

Boredom is an emotion. The reasons why someone would think they'd be bored in any given situation have to be emotional reasons. I don't see how you have failed to understand that we're all talking about what we think our emotional state would be in Heaven. What do you think we're talking about?

Premise 1: I will eventually get bored if I exist forever.
Premise 2: In Heaven I will exist forever.
Conclusion: I will eventually get bored in Heaven.

I don't see how you can attack Premise 1, without telling us you know our emotional makeup better than we know ourselves. If you can't refute Premise 1, then you have only left Premise 2. Clearly, the conclusion must follow when P1 and P2 hold in this elementary syllogism.

Rational BAC

I still think that the atheists here are trying to conform a spiritual existence to our real life rational experience on earth.

I don't think it will work that way. Why should it?

Why do atheists continually try to live in that very tiny little box of perceived reality? You cannot rationally raise up even a tiny little corner of that box and look outside of it, can you?

It is your loss.