For me believing in Heaven, gives me hope that one day
I will see again relatives and friends who have died. Especially
my grandparents who I still miss terribly even they have been for
gone over 20 years now.
My question is how do atheists get passed this obvious need
to see loved ones again who are now gone?
I know some “Christians” will asked what if they are not heaven?
Well if my grandparents are not heaven then it would not be heaven to me.
For me, at least, there’s no “obvious need”. For one thing, due to my relative youth, I haven’t lost anyone who was very close to me.
I can only speak for myself here, but – why is this need obvious? I miss my grandparents terribly, but I have grieved and moved on. I wish they were still with me, and in a way, they are. They live on in my heart. Am I sad they are gone? Sure, but that is more than outweighed by the happiness that they were ever here in the first place.
Not all belief is driven by what people want to be true.
People go away. Sometimes they never come back.
It sucks. I wish to hell it didn’t happen that way. But it does.
I’d like nothing more than to be out on the pond fishing with my grandfather one more time. But I don’t think it’ll happen. I’m not going to start believing in heaven or hell just because I want to see my friends and family who have died. Sure would be nice, and I’m not completely ruling it out as a possibility until I find out firsthand. I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am.
I want to see my dead loved ones again. I don’t have a need to.
I’m going to have to agree that this is not an “obvious need”. Sure, it would be a wonderful thing to be able to see my dead loved ones again, but that’s not going to happen.
To me, the concept of heaven seems like a type of crutch, a way to avoid really saying “goodbye”.
So if I were a Christian, and I decided it wouldn’t be heaven without everyone who had ever died being there, then would everyone go to heaven?
As others have said, you’re confusing need with desire. I wish I could see my mom again. I’d much prefer she never died to seeing her as a death ghost.
I’m cool with the cycle of life. Things live…things die. Many, many people go through life knowing this to be true. Life is a nice ride, but it eventually ends. That’s all.
Thanks for mentioning that.
Some long time ago I asked H4E what would be so bad if evolution turned out to be true. She replied that it would mean that God was not real, and that thought terrified her. It was made very clear to me at that time that so much of faith can be conjured up by wishful thinking. (Not for everyone, of course, but for an alarming number.)
What Kalhoun said.
Why would evolution being true eliminate God? I can as easily posit that evolution is the means by which God produces change. Or that God set up the physical universe with a set of physical rules that resulted in the macroscopic process of evolution, and in which He tinkers little, if at all. There are other possibilities , as well, in which God and Evolution are not incompatible concepts.
Well as another poster said I haven’t had anyone really close to me die so unfortunately my concern is a little more selfish. MY death and the end of my existence is what I’m worried about and is the main reason I held onto faith long after I couldn’t logically justify it anymore. Then I realized that believing just b/c you want it to be true was foolish.
It’s a real annoyance to me when someone comes along and tells me I should believe ‘just in case’ (I’m not accusing you of that it seems like you have a serious question and aren’t trying to convert anyone) I always thought if a god punished me for valid doubt but rewarded someone for insincere faith then he wasn’t worth worshiping anyway.
That’s going off topic a bit, but at the time of that thread, the same point was brought up. And it’s a good one. But take it at face value that H4E viewed the situation as an either/or matter, and thus rejected evolution due to wishful thinking.
I might want to see a loved one, but that doesn’t mean I can’t face the fact that someone who’s dead is, in the most literal senses, gone.
I might also point out that you just think you’ll see your loved ones when you die. That doesn’t mean you actually will.
The important thing isn’t missing the people you’ve lost. The important thing is to live your life in such a way, that the people you leave behind will miss you.
What makes you think you would remain “you” when you go to Heaven? With the same personality and everything.
Personally, if I were to die soon, I would want nothing more than to return and be with my family. Being away from Earth would be pretty hellish and I’d hate it. Not really my idea of “Heaven”.
And if I still had my own personality and my own wits about me in Heaven, you can be sure I’d be trying to find a way to get back to Earth. And I don’t think I’d be the only one, either.
So, has anyone who’s died but wanted to stay alive been able to return? Nope. There’s a pretty good clue to me that it’s all BS.
If (and that’s a big if) there was to be some form of afterlife I could be convinced of, it might be along the lines of a general “soul recycling” deal. You don’t get to keep any of your personality or sense of humor or anything like that. Your life force gets sort of absorbed and re-used. Certainly, you don’t get to go fishing with Granddad again.
Regarding the OP: If there is a heaven, what makes you think that theists go there and atheists don’t? Maybe it’s all a cruel hoax, and **only **atheists go to heaven.
The bottom line is: nobody knows, and life’s too short to worry about it.
Well, I can always go dig them up whenever I want to see them.
Honestly, you miss the point. I can’t see them ‘alive’ again because they’re not. That’s what being ‘dead’ means.
As there is no guarantee of any afterlife (or that I’ll experience it if there is one), I have to be content with my memories of those I’ve lost.
I read a short story based on this very premise once, but I can’t remember the title or author. Has anyone else ever heard of this?
Sherman, there are times when I really would love to have the comfort of unquestioning belief in an afterlife. Unfortunately, I can’t pretend that any of it makes sense to me. It’s definitely not easy when someone dies, knowing that you’ll never see them again, and it’s not pleasant to think that someday the universe will roll along without me in it, but such is the way of things 
Same again, there’s no “obvious need” to me. Wishes aren’t needs.
I would ask the opposite (to stir up, not to insult): Why do theists insist on remaining stuck in the denial phase of grieving?