We and others will continue to say it until you come up with a better response than “GodMagic!!”.
I know others (like C.S. Lewis) have tried to explain in detail why people wouldn’t get bored or become different people in Heaven but ultimately the answer comes down to Heaven’s supernatural nature and God’s supernatural abilities. What other answer would there feasibly be given that as mortal humans of limited understanding we can’t hope to fully comprehend life in a supernatural realm beyond our imagination? It’s like asking how God could create the universe out of nothing or intangible souls that last eternally and retain their personalities and refusing to accept his all powerful nature as an answer. What “better response” is there?
For your answer to be acceptable at all, let alone “better”, one has to already believe all the premises you put forth without question.
Do you see the problem yet?
I’m not religious at all, but I am happy to speak abstractly / philospophically about an afterlife. And I think the OP is basically right.
The “boredom” criticism is a weak argument for two reasons. Firstly, it’s not hard for me to imagine a reality that is much more exciting than the one we live in, and my imagination has been soured by being stuck on terra firma in a human body for decades. Who knows the set of experiences and knowledge that a sentient being could hypothetically go through, and how long it would take to experience them all? Perhaps the set of unique and compelling experiences is infinite?
Secondly, with human brains as we know them, our memory is finite, so we can start enjoying the same experiences eventually. Now, obviously, one of the key features of most afterlives is that your consciousness goes beyond the limits of a human brain. But why would we assume those limits are infinite?
Frankly, all bets are off in an afterlife scenario. e.g. Who’s to say the experience of time is anything like how we experience time here on earth in meat bodies?
Regarding personal continuity, I don’t even see why that is necessarily a problem. So I may change over time, so what?
A final point I would say, is that there is a distinction between eternal and indefinite. If you take “live forever” to mean “live until you decide you’re done” then a lot of the objections fade away immediately.
Once again, I am not positing an afterlife, I’m just playing along 
But what is “excitement”, and can it be achieved without uncertainty? I, too, can envision a more exciting world…but I have trouble associating such a world with what is promised by many religionists. Again I liken it to paying a game where uncertainty creates excitement vs. playing “God Mode” where everything is handed to you on a silver platter and the possibility of losing isn’t possible. The journey is gone.
Agreed. I am just speaking in the abstract.
And I am no expert on theology…I don’t know if the way that heaven is depicted in pop culture is very precisely fleshed out in the Bible, Quran etc.
Actually, now that I think about it, doesn’t the Quran say you get some nookie in the afterlife? I mean…that would also get boring eventually too, but at least alludes to more happening that wearing white and smiling at your deceased family.
There’s a concept called aevum that basically means someone in Heaven experiences eternity in a different, more amicable way than someone on Earth does which is another counter argument against the “An eternity doing fun things would get boring” criticism.
That’s exactly what a circular argument is. You’re just making a bigger, more flowery circle. Here is the essence of your argument:
Critic: You would get bored from an eternity in heaven.
Cmyers: No you wouldn’t, because the way I define heaven, it’s a place where you wouldn’t get bored.
2: I didn’t go into extreme detail in the OP but for the purpose of the discussion by Heaven I mean an eternal afterlife as commonly imagined and criticized by the public where it’s perfection and endless bliss, happiness, fulfillment, creativity, novelty, love etc.
You have confirmed my point. You can say heaven is anything you want because nobody can prove you’re wrong. You’re whole argument is unfalsifiable.
3: Not true. I’ve seen the “Heaven would be bad because you’d get bored and would become a different person” argument seriously posited countless times online in the past and recently. It’s a real thing that atheists, skeptics and others say.
I’m not saying you haven’t seen it. I’m saying you haven’t shown it to us. This is an eclectic message board, not a theological discussion group where you can reasonably expect everyone to know what’s been posted on this topic in random places online. Just show us even one cite of a credible player in this field whose argument you are trying to refute.
You should read the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn. It comprehensively analyzes every aspect of the Christian Heaven and the New Earth (which is an earthly paradise that begins after Jesus returns) complete with Bible verses and doctrine. Besides that the pop culture idea of Heaven (the Christian one at least) as a place where people sit on clouds and play harps or worship God forever like slaves is completely inaccurate. I don’t subscribe to any organized religion but in the Bible and Koran Heaven (and the New Earth in Christianity’s case) is described in superlatively great terms and features people doing many of the same things they did on Earth like eating, socializing, building, loving, learning, exploring etc but much better and much more fulfilling. In Islam’s case angels even give people ideas as to new activities they can engage in if need be. You can find plenty of detailed and well sourced articles on the subject with a simple Google search as I have in the past.
This isn’t a counter-argument at all unless you can tell us how “aevum” works beyond “it just happens and it is different!”.
In reference to the circular argument criticism many religions that have a benevolent afterlife (Christianity, Islam, Judaism etc) explicitly describe it as perfect and greater than your wildest imagination. The OP is made in reference to this idea and the criticisms that perfection would get boring or make you someone else which is something most people don’t want. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying a supernaturally perfect place run by an omnibenevolent deity for the explicit purpose of rewarding its inhabitants likely wouldn’t have the problems that ailed people while alive like boredom, hunger, exhaustion, sadness, disappointment and so on. Very few people would call a place with those things perfect or anything close to it.
Hunger and exhaustion are side effects of the physical bodies that we inhabit and could easily be bypassed by uploading our brains into the matrix or some less needy body or whatever. However sadness, disappointment, and (yes) boredom are actually part of our mind’s process for evaluating the experiences we’re having. If you are incapable if feeling sad, what does that actually mean? Sounds like a loss of capability of recognizing and assessing the situation you’re in. Being unable to feel disappointment means that you are incapable of anticipating future events too. And the inability to feel bored means that you’re not reacting to the experiences you’re having, such that you aren’t registering monotony.
I’m not kidding here - why to do so many descriptions of heaven sound like being stoned completely and permanently out of your mind?
Please provide evidence for this remarkable assertion. Note: citing the Christian Bible is not evidence.
I am Jewish, and although I am far from a scholar of Judaism, I am quite confident in stating that there are no mainstream Jewish teachings about anything approaching the Christian or Islamic concepts of heaven. Virtually all of Jewish practice is about leading a good life in this world, and making this world a better place, with no reference to an afterlife.
You are absolutely right about that. But the problem with your argument is that it’s literally nonsensical to say anything about heaven, since there’s no way to confirm or refute any statement whatsoever about heaven.
I can assert that what you believe to be heaven is actually a place of eternal torment, because the being you call God is actually evil, not good, and has been misleading humanity all this time. You can no more disprove my claim than you can prove that your concept of heaven is true.
Well, there is the argument that after 290-some-odd septuagintillion years of eternity, God became somewhat bored and decided to become you, and me, and a road somewhere in Russia and Betelgeuse and the rest of Orion and so on and so forth, and is finding it all, this experience of being Creation, rather entertaining.
Your own individual lot may be less pleasant overall, at least until you reconnect and re-realize you’re God doing all this stuff concurrently.
Sure, the “we’re entertainment” thesis can be used to explain various things. It’s one of many explanations that starts off with a definitive rejection of the claim that God is benevolent and carries on from there.
In reference to the nonsensical part I didn’t start this thread to prove, disprove or debate anything since you can’t really do that when it comes to the supernatural. I just wanted to hear people’s opinions on two specific criticisms of an eternal perfect afterlife and why I think they’re wrong and people have done exactly that.
I want to hear your opinion on this - do you actually think that in your expectation of heaven that it will be impossible to be sad? Because seriously, some of my favorite shows are my favorite shows because they can inspire emotion in my jaded old self. A show that can bring me to genuine tears, particularly on a rewatch? That’s awesomesauce. So in your notion of heaven we’d stare at such media with dull eyes and a bland smile and then shrug?
Are freaky mystico-religious experiences described in pop culture at all?
Sometime I heard that Madonna was interested in becoming an apprentice of the Kabbalah, so who knows…
ETA ok, there are obvious famous examples like Dante’s Paradiso. Seems to have influenced a lot of pop culture, e.g. Alan Moore’s “Promethea” comix had a whole chapter of wandering through heaven and hell IIRC
Do clothes go to heaven? Orelse we would all be nude, lots of sexual tension. My idea of heaven would be lots of sex and lots of beer and BBQ. I wonder if everyone else has the same wishes for heaven that i do.
On second thought, i guess the god would provide a modesty fig leaf for us to wear. He is a prude after all (ive heard).
Of all the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go any length for it–risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself. And what do you think he has done? He has left it out of his heaven! Prayer takes its place.
–Mark Twain, Notebook, 1906