Illusionist

Do you think Jesus and Mary are still floating through billions of lights years of space as they ascend "body and soul" into "heaven"?

Toto

I suspect you are being facetious. But this is in fact a major problem for traditional believers who know something about science. As we have explored the universe and the center of the earth, it seems that there is no place left for heaven or hell, unless you retreat to a spiritual dimension of some sort.

People like William Lane Craig take the Deepak Chopra route - mumble a few words about the fourth dimension of hyperspace and quantum effects, and hope that you don't think too closely about what that means.

Margaret Wertheim has written a book on the question of heavenly geography The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet.

badger3k

Well, we know the space-going Robot Jesus was beaten by Pirate Jesus (http://www.piratejesus.com/011.html#top), so the answer is moot. Go back for Clown Jesus, Pimp Jesus, and Cowboy Jesus.

I thought that Heaven was a cube floating in space and approaching us, at least according to the Weekly World News and their ilk, so maybe J & M made it there by now? Besides, who knows how fast they can travel outside of earth's atmosphere - maybe they can exceed light speed - a simple thing for a god, right?

TheBigKahoona

If you write God into any equation you have to accept the idea of him existing outside of the known universe. It's not to far of a stretch to put heaven in the same area.

Diogenes the Cynic

Why travel through space at all? If Heaven is outside the universe then ascending into the sky makes no more directional sense than burrowing into the ground. Heaven isn't up there, so where was he going. You can't get to a non-physical place by travelling through physical space. No matter how fast or how far you go, you will never leave the universe because it doesn't have a physical "boundary" of any sort that can be travelled through or even to.

John Shelby Spong used the ascension as one of his twelve challenges to Christianity and he argued (correctly, in my opinion) that it evidenced a naive perception of a three tiered universe and that therefore it could not have been a historical event. We know that for the same reason that we know that Atlas couldn't hold the sky on his shoulders or that the Elysian fields are not at the edge of the earth. It shows a basic misunderstanding of the physical universe. The sky is not solid, there is no "edge" of the earth and Heaven is not in the clouds.

Incidentally, whenever I've asked Christians where Jesus was going when he sailed off into the sky, they usually say that he just ascended until he was out of sight of the apostles and then he teleported to Heaven. When I ask why, they don't really have a good answer.

John A. Broussard

The important part is the actual ascending. That seems to happen frequently in myths. Religious figures ascend at the drop of a hat. Isn't there a footprint of the Buddha somewhere in Sri Lanka where he took off?

Where they go is irrelevant. It's the going up that counts.

Lunawalk

The gospel writers thought heaven was just above earth. Acts has Jesus already in heaven. If you ask christian today they would say it was an miracle since god can do anything.

Crucifiction

"Beam me up, Jehovah!"

Dean Anderson

Heaven is a Borg Cube

Lunawalk

revelations pictures the new Jerusalem having gates and walls. It's strange that the city would need walls and gates with no enemies So what are the wall for than