Especially since science and technology have expanded our senses by almost unimaginable scales. (see detection of gravitational waves, the James Webb Telescope etc.)
I say it would be rather presumptuous to make any assumptions whatsoever about something for which no evidence exists, and to make life decisions based on those evidence-less presumptions…I don’t know what word would be suitable.
Personally I don’t think it’s presumptuous at all to presume that I can understand heaven. Having extra senses there would just mean extra senses; I don’t see how that would change anything meaningful unless one of those senses triggered an involuntary addictive reaction to something the deity is emitting - which is easily understood as a loss of choice. I don’t see anything difficult to understand about the fact that our brains and minds are the things that house our knowledge and understanding; any significant change to them would either be functionally inconsequential or would change us into a different person. There’s not a third option there. So really I don’t see what’s so hard to understand here. You can imagine that there’s some sort of ineffable complexity, but in my experience things like that tend not to be that complicated.
I think some of you are seriously underestimating just how funny Jesus is. Once you are around him, keeled over in laughter, you’ll get it. By the time he gives you a funny nickname, you won’t be able to imagine leaving.
And when you combine that with the fact that you can dunk a basketball if you want - with no knee pain - I mean, come one. Bored?
Psssh.
(Ok, yeah, after a trillion years, maybe, but I haven’t even mentioned the cheese platters yet.)
Pretty sure games of skill will get boring in seconds once everyone has infinite skill. And from what I’m hearing in this thread games of competition are right out - an activity which makes half the players sad, disappointed losers? Nope! Not allowed!
And if Jeshua’s nickname is any indication of the type of nicknames he prefers, I’ll pass. I’ve never been one to hang around the popular kids anyway - not that being one of a crowd of billions sounds like fun either. I druther stay home.
Aevum is why the heavenly bodies are changeless in nature, and move in their perfect circles. You know, medieval woo, easily refuted - say, by crashing a comet into a gas giant. Behold - aeviternity:
Or the pimples on the face of a god. Depending on your point of view.
I get it! Heaven is like T-ball for five-year-olds.
Well, either the Bible is true, which means God is a murdering monster. Or the Bible is a fib, which means God expects us to figure things out with no guide and no evidence.
Or does God say “pay no attention to the contradiction behind the curtain?” And force us to ignore it.
It’s better than that - if the bible is true, I’m pretty sure the destiny of those who go to heaven is to be eaten.
In the bible God accepts animal sacrifices, that’s a clear fact. And IIRC, it’s also made clear at a couple of points why he accepts them: it’s because he eats them. He accepts meat, not vegetables, and loves the savory smells and luscious flavors of the burned sacrifices. The animal sacrifices work because God loves a good barbecue - which makes perfect sense. Make God happy with some luscious nosh, and you earn his favor. Simple quid pro quo.
And then there’s the Jesus thing.
Allegedly, for some reason, the “sacrifice” of Jesus is supposed to have sated God’s hunger for vengeance against humanity. But what exactly happened there? A dude who was supposedly God’s son was tortured and killed in an agonizing way despite being completely innocent. Why on earth would that put God in a forgiving mood? There would have to be some mechanism. And it’s said that the animal sacrifices and the Jesus sacrifice are reminiscent of one another…does God somehow dine on the pain and suffering of the pure and innocent? Seems so! Based on what’s in the bible, anyway.
So yeah, God feasts on the pain of the innocent, and heaven is the gathering place for the most pure and good humans that humanity has to offer. One starts to get a hint as to why God made so many humans, billions of them - gotta keep the snack bar stocked, after all…
In Stephen King’s Revival it turns out that everyone who dies ends up being enslaved by monsters in a hellish afterlife where they’re fed to an even greater monster named Mother.
Some beings believe this, according to Mr. Dick.
Depending on what you mean by afterlife.
I have heard the argument that, upon death, you are incapable of change. According to this argument: Since an afterlife by definition would exist independently of the physical world, it stands to reason that it would exist “outside” of time. Change is something that can only happen within time. Therefore, it is argued that, at the moment of death, for the rest of eternity. you are incapable of moral change. This is why some Christians believe in an eternal hell/heaven, you are LITERALLY incapable of changing your mind.
Thus, because you cannot change: you are either satisfied with the eternal pleasure of heaven without the possibility of it becoming boring, or are in eternal pain without the possibility of that pain being levitated.
I can’t imagine any kind of logic that could allow for a punishment or reward system after death no matter how good or evil someone was. No one starts life with the same circumstances. I can’t imagine any kind of thoughts or consciousness that does not involve something physical. The only thing I can imagine is that maybe we put out some weak signal from our brain that travels through space for eternity.in the same way light does, The actual message within the thought would likely be useless but maybe they eventually land somewhere and affect something???
Although I don’t literally believe it, I link to think that we are brought onto a stage, akin to a place like Carnegie Hall, with an audience before us. There’s a chair you sit in, and you can’t actually make out faces in the audience, since a light shines down on you.
You are then exposed to all of the crying and anguish you caused in your life, as if being expressed by the audience all at once.
Once that’s over, you get to hear the audience erupt into all of the laughter and joy you created in your life.
And since this is all supernatural gobbledygook, you don’t just hear this stuff; you feel it.
And if your laughter outweighs your anguish, you lived a good life.
So do you feel that the various systems of reward and punishment that society has devised are also illogical?
According to this system, somebody like Bill Cosby, who brought laughter and joy to untold thousands of people, but crying and anguish to only a few dozen, has lived a good life.
A lot of the time, yes. Can you think of a misdeed that would call for eternal punishment?
Yes logical but not necessarily fair. There has to be consequences both good and bad.
Eh, it’s just a fanciful notion about trying to bring joy to the world. I don’t literally believe in any sort of afterlife or eternal judgment. You go back to where you came from, and you’ll be doing the same thing 200 years from now that you were doing 200 years ago.
I think of it like sleep. When you sleep, time can seem to go by in an instant. You aren’t bored during that (dreamless) time; you aren’t titillated either. The concept is meaningless when you aren’t conscious, and I suspect the same is true when you are dead.