It crossed my mind to wonder whether anybody had yet gone into heaven or hell at all - or even whether anybody (other than my relative) had even been presented with this choice between options before. I don’t appear to have been reincarnated before, after all, despite there being millions of years of life on earth preceding me, and there are no signs of life coming from the other sides of the doors (at least as far as my relative has noticed). One possible explanation for these facts would be that I’m pretty much the first person to be presented this choice at all!
I didn’t mention this, though, because I got the impression that this wasn’t supposed to be the case by the way it was presented. The relative isn’t a recent relative, so she’s been hanging around for a while; she presumably would be acting differently if she’d been waiting around playing minesweeper for the past several centuries before finally getting a customer.
Yeah, I think Ozzy even covered it.
I agree with that analysis, Chronos, as far as Heaven is described by the OP.
On the other hand, the OP’s description of Hell sounds nothing like the monotheistic depictions of hell that I’ve read/seen/heard/etc.
So it rather sounds to me like Annihilation or Hell are the best of the OP choices for me, with the latter being only slightly better.
Annihilation means I’ll just be gone. I’ve lived my life with no other expectation, doling out my occasional acts of benevolence and random acts of kindness and generally working to make a positive difference in some way. Like a good wilderness hiker, I try not to leave behind detritus or damage in my wake and I try to leave a place in better shape than it was when I first arrived. I like thinking I have a similar effect on the planet/mortal realm. But when the game is over, it’s over. Bye!
The OP describes Hell as being removed from the presence of the divine/Divine/Divinity. More importantly he conspicuously fails to describe Earth/the mortal realm in such terms and describes Heaven as quite the opposite. Quite frankly, the OP’s description of Hell sounds like paradise (not to be confused with Heaven) to me! I’m just plain fatigued – even disenchanted – by the presence and influence in this life of the divine. And not just The Divine or Christianity or even monotheism, to which I get exposed more than other religious formats merely as a byproduct of my chosen location on the planet. I agree wholeheartedly with Bono’s assessment (in somebody’s signature line) that the most horrendous acts are justified by [religious] belief. I am just thoroughly disgusted by the heinous acts humans commit against each other while justifying them as the will of a deity, a pantheon, and/or some kind of representative thereof. Yes, I realize religious institutions and their representatives have done a tremendous amount of remarkably good stuff throughout history# but I, for one, don’t feel the positive contributions outweigh the negative nor would those positives have gone missing from humanity’s development if those religious influences had been absent*. And while it’s easy and tempting to point to the monotheists with such criticism, I’m also terribly aware that the monotheists do not have a monopoly on inhumane behavior.
So if I could transition to a realm which is free from the influence of religion, yeah I’d like to check that out. If not, I’ll be happy to simply disappear in a puff of (il)logic.
–G!
Pol Anderson’s Time Patrol books do a wonderful job of illustrating this – and many interesting temporal paradoxes.
- It’s like a local minister who tries to praise me by saying, “I know you’re not a believer, but you’re always so helpful and kind to me; you must have some of Christ’s influence in your heart.” And while I accept the praise for its intended value, I always wonder later, “What? You can’t believe I’m a nice guy just because I like being a nice guy? You have to believe I am somehow coerced to be helpful, that my natural tendency is to be an asshole but for the grace of your invisible best friend?”
begbert2, I’m confused. On the one hand, you doubt God’s benevolence based on how the mortal realm is going. On the other hand, you object to God transforming peoples’ mentalities. But the mortal realm is the way it is because of peoples’ mentalities. How would you suggest that God fix things, without fixing the people?
And for what it’s worth, I probably will eventually choose Heaven. Eventually. But I still have plenty of questions, and all the time [del]in[/del] out of the world to ask them.