Maybe all those virgins are like Earl, the overweight, middle-aged postal worker who still lives with his Mom.
The Western presumption of noncarnality in Heaven seems to be linked to the view of the physical/fleshly as corrupt or impure, and only pure spirit being good. However that itself is noncanonical. Besides, in mainstream Christian belief, eventually the dead will be resurrected in the flesh, because the human is spirit, mind AND body. Whether that means that if (as a majority of mainstream Christianity believes) in the meantime you exist in a purely spiritual plane, you still will or will not experience something like sex is AFAIK not canonically determined (although I have a feeling many of the churches would lean towards “no”).
Y’know, the houris sound pretty hot until you get to that bit about their flesh being translucent all the way to the bones. It’s like they were coming up with every possible way in which they’d be the opposite of the human women you knew in the physical world, and did not know when to stop.
It seems pretty obvious to me that they are all robots.
72 days of raping virgins and then what, their not virgins anymore. Now you have 72 barefoot n pregnant bitchy females, hollering for pickles n ice cream.
Maybe it is hell.
I don’t get this either, Guessing maybe its some variation of idealizing pale skin taken to the extreme? Anyone want to comment on some reasoning for why this see through skin is described as an ideal?
Yup. We moderns in our tan-positive societies tend to forget how prized “alabaster fairness” used to be, at least in societies where natural skin tones ranged from very light to brown.
The subdermal peepshow favored in many western countries involved veins rather than bones, as in this 1837 novel The Poet’s Daughter:
This trope has by no means vanished from western literature nowadays, as you can verify by googling “delicate tracery of veins” or similar expressions.
In fact, having skin fair and translucent enough to show the veins underneath it was traditionally considered such a mark of beauty in the western world that for several centuries fashionable women used to lightly trace their veins on their skin with blue pencil or paint.
The notion of skin being translucent enough to actually show the bone marrow (although mind you, the Islamic texts speak of it showing “like lines in pearls and rubies”, i.e., as a shadowy indication through translucent flesh rather than full-on Visible Woman transparency) seems to be basically just a poetic amplification of that.
If all the virgins in heaven were laid end to end, there wouldn’t be any more.
Oy. :rolleyes: Hey, can I nominate myself for an SDMB Medal for Persistence in Upholding GQ Standards in the Face of Relentless Frivolity, or does somebody else have to put my name in? (She inquired modestly. :))
Now the transparent skin doesn’t sound so bad.
If it’s eternal beer you’re after, it’s Pastafarianism you want, with a paradise of beer volcanoes and stripper factories.
Actually there are beer volcanoes and stripper factories in the FSM’s hell too, but the beer is flat and the strippers have STIs.
It’d be nice if every religion had its own heaven, and after you die you could try them all out and pick your favorite to stay in.
It’s a trap!
Chuck Norris’ daughter lost her virginity. He got it back.
Thank you for sticking to the subject, I enjoyed reading the informative posts and skipping over the others.
(she replied informatively.)
It’s a scam. You have to pick your religion, and thus your heaven (you should be so lucky, or so virtuous), sight unseen. Then when you get there, it might very well turn out to be just swampland in Florida.
That’s mosquito heaven.
You mean every time I kill a skeeter, it goes to Florida?
Swat! Swat!
Swat! Swat! Swat!
Swat!
Swat!
Swat! Swat!
Swat!
Well, now…
I’d say, without giving up too much it’s possible to be a practising Christian / Buddhist and Hindu all at the same time. Buddhism and Hinduism are both flexible enough that they can incorporate you being a Christian without a major conflict, and yes there are various Hindu groups that accept those not burn as Hindus. Throw in the occasional ritual to some open minded folk religions and you’re then in with the religions used by almost 4 billion people.
Hedging your bets its more likely than not you’ll end up in one of the heavens you follow 