Eternity in Heaven

Great Debates
1

I was wondering if someone could explain to me what the concept of “eternal life” is actually supposed to mean? From every possible angle I try to look at it, I see nothing appealing.

Would I experience the passage of time? Would I get bored after a million years? How about a billion? Certainly there will no longer be any living humans, or a planet earth, after, say, 20 billion years. How about a hundred billion years after that, when the entire galaxy has faded to black after the last star burns out? How about a trillion years later, when every star in the entire universe has come and long since gone? How about a hundred trillion years after that, when 99% of my existance coincides with the universe being devoid of light and life? Would I be long since insane beyond hope? Would I be begging God to let me wink out of existance? How about a quadrillion years later? Would I be cursing God? After a nonillion years? A google? A googleplex? Honestly, the thought of being conscious for a mere thousand makes me nauseous. An eternity of awareness, regardless of how much love I’m basked in, would be pure hell.

Would I not experience the passage of time? This seems to be the more optimistic view. But without the passage of time, existance is but a mere flash…a single moment. What good is a single moment? You cannot have thought in a moment. No emotion. No experience of love. No experience. No resemblance to any kind of perception, thought, consciousness, or personality. For all of these concepts require time. In effect, a timeless eternity is indistinguishable from a moment of insight. Is a moment of insight as good as an eternity in hell is bad?

Or am I mistakenly assuming that what I consider “me” lives on…my thoughts, my personality, my emotions? Are these merely aspects of the mortal plane, to be shaken off in death? If so, how can I possibly identify with whatever it is that lives on? If nothing recoqnizable as “me” lives on, why should I care what happens to “it”?

Is an eternity of being self-aware desirable to anybody?

If the spirit does not retain your thoughts, dreams, personality, emotions, and desires – all of which require experiencing the passage of time – why would you care about it?

2

Ah, you’ve stumbled upon one of the many logical fallacies surrounding religious mythology.

For lack of a better phrase, it falls under the “web of lies” theory- you make up one thing, you must then make up three or four more things in order to explain the first thing. And so on.

We’re told our “reward” is Eternal Life in Heaven, apparently Basking in His Love.

So then, someone asks, how long is an “eternity”?

An Eternity, we’re told, is time without end. Forever, ad infinitum.

So, one then asks, what does one do for an ‘eternity’? That is, after all, by definition a very long time indeed.

Simple, we’re told, you join the Heavenly Choir. You bask in God’s Love.

That, one retorts, dosn’t sound like a lot of fun. It sounds like you do the same thing, over and over again, for millions of years.

Ah, comes the reply, but God is all-powerful. He has the ability to see to it you’re never bored. Being in Heaven is eternally blissful.

But, one asks stubbornly, even Divine beauty, godly majesty and infinite bliss can get tiring after a hundred thouand millennia.

No, we’re told, Heaven is that which you love most. Anything you did in life, you may partake of without end in Heaven.

You mean, one asks, we get all the strawberry cheesecake and Naked Hot Teen Sluts Making It With Barnyard Fowl we can possibly ask for?

Um, stutters the believer, one doubts God will provide pornography.

So, one asks, there’s limits to Divine bliss? I can’t, for example, find the shade of Marilyn Monroe and have hot, sweaty snugglebunnies behind a cloud somewhere?

No, we’re told sternly, there’s no fornication in Heaven.

But, one says, that’s the primary recreational pastime for three-quarters of humanity! The other quarter lost the ability in a tragic skateboard accident!

Nevertheless, it’s reiterated, that’s not allowed in heaven.

All right, one tacks, how about the Internet? Surely God has the Divine Bandwidth, and the latest Pentium 777 quantum chips that process your instructions ten minutes before you type them?

Oh no, we’re told, God would not allow the Saved to view and wallow in the mortal sphere. It is full of death and fear and evil.

But, one pleas, we must at least be able to visit still-living loved ones?

Oh no, it’s reiterated, that would cause undue pain to the saved, to see the living, the widows remarried, the children, grown and perhaps not living the life the fathers and mothers wished them to lead. To see homesteads torn down, to see favored pets die.

So, one asks dejectedly, we’re only allowed to do and see what’s in Heaven?

Yes! comes the statement. God’s infinite majesty and beauty!

Any, one asks, magazines, even?

Of course not, one’s told. That would be secular propaganda, and like the internet, full of lies, evil and pain for the saved.

So, one asks in growing horror, we sit around and watch God? For a million centuries?

Oh no, one’s told, God will provide everything you need!

Such as, one asks?

Music, for example. If you cannot play an instrument now, you’ll be able to play anything, perfectly, in Heaven.

That, one states, isn’t my idea of fun. Some may like it, I don’t.

But, one’s told sternly, in heaven anything you do you will find divinely enjoyable, even rapturous.

So, one retorts, in heaven our mind is no longer our own. We’re told to do something, and made to enjoy it?

Oh heavens no, it’s said, you keep your mind, but are given perfect knowledge.

But, one replies, if I don’t like playing music down here, why would I be made to enjoy playing in heaven?

Besides, one continues, if one is given “perfect knowledge”, what point then becomes of even conversation? One assumes one could locate the shade of Copernicus, or Twain, or John M. Browning and have a wonderful discourse on any manner of things. But with perfect knowledge, one knows all, knows everything. What point then, is conversation?

Um, it’s said, hesitantly, trust me, even conversation is blissfully wonderful in heaven.

Conversation, one says, is impossible when both sides already know everything, all details, and know what the other is going to say, or could say.

But, it’s interjected, God will, in his infinite power, make it interesting and fun!

Okay, one responds, in order to have a conversation, then God must either remove some or all of that “prefect knowledge”, or that knowledge was never there to begin with.

Further, one adds, what of the knowledge souls bring in later? Obviously the recently-deceased Barry White will know more of computers and compact discs than, say, Wyatt Earp, or Thomas Edison. If those two were given “perfect knowledge” when they passed over, did they then know of that technology?

Further still, comes the addition, that would presuppose that “perfect knowledge” includes future happenings as well, which was specifically contradicted by one being told one cannot know what happened to one’s family or future.

But, it’s begun…

Besides which, one interrupts, again, even conversations with all historical greats are finite, and eternity, by definition, is infinite. If time in any form passes in heaven, eventually all of humanity will die out when the sun turns into a red Dwarf and incinerates the earth, and thus new souls stop coming into heaven, and eventually all possible conversations have been held, all manner of jokes created, all possible combinations of musical notes and instruments played.

And yet, one continues, even after a hundred billion centuries, the yawning abyss of Eternity looms before the collected souls.

What, one says in closing, do they do then?

3

Beezer of a first post, Ellis! I’m sure you’ll get on here just fine.

Indeed, this “consciousness outside time” idea appears to me to be a little contrived, especially since time is still “going on” (ie. there is an axis on which events can be plotted) down here on little old Earth, or wherever Earth will have been after the last embers of fusion die in the last star in the universe.

I spent my first 14 billion years as disparate atoms, and wasn’t bored once. I think I’d still choose this non-conscious state over 14 billion years of conscious rapture.

4

‘an endless number of days’ is not the only way to define eternity.

5

Actually, I’m mostly put off by the idea of spending a very long time with the kinds of people that would get into Heaven, or at least those who claim to have the inside track on Heaven.

Buncha sanctimonious namby-pamby preachy bible-thumpers. Put me down for oblivion, please.

6

I, and hopefully Ellis, would be interested in input from the theists amongst us in this matter.

I believe Lib was of the opinion that this life constituted a temporary “ablation” from God, such that outside of this mortal coil we possessed a permanent existence as part of God. This would appear to present the conundrum of our own timeless existence as being merely an appendix to the entire question of God’s timelessness.

I am also minded of the story of the 2-D ants discovering the 3-D giants. We cannot conceive of “eternal life” because we live in a universe in which events can be distinguished upon an axis we call “time”.

7

You did notice, did you not, that you are being contradictory here. If God is all-powerful, He can prevent boredom.

Besides, how can an infinite God be boring after only finite time? After a hundred thousand millennia, you still have an infiinity of God to experience.

Of course, I think that after death, we no longer exist in time, so the idea of experiencing succession and duration in the same way we do now is, IMO, mistaken.

Interestingly, Christ spoke almost not at all about the nature of the afterlife. He mentions that we “neither marry, nor are given in marriage”, and that “My Father’s house has many mansions”. All the rest of it seems to be parable, or symbol.

It may not be possible to describe or understand the experience of the blessed dead.

Of course, if I am right, we will all find out, one way or other. If the atheists are right, none of us will ever know it.

Regards,
Shodan

8

What if I don’t WANT eternal life?

I had this question too. We had quite a discussion about it.

9

How do we know that the parts of our brains and psyche that allow us to become bored are functional in the afterlife? That they don’t rot in the grave with the rest of our physical brain?

Christians (to choose a single religion) are guranteed a continuing existence, and a desirable one, but beyond that the details are vague.

Jesus said that there’s no marriage in heaven (the LDS would argue with me here, but let me stick to the rest of Christendom), but that its inhabitants “live as the angels”. What does that mean? Well, a marriageless world is one without sex (at least as we understand it). And probably without even genitals. What would we use them for anyway? Do souls in heaven reproduce?

Why do we assume that our"bodies" and our “minds” would be exactly the same on heaven as they are in heaven? Why do we assume they would even exist?

A sould in heaven may seem deficient in many things that terrestrial humans measure thamselves by, and superior in other ways.

10

Start with, eternity is not perpetuity, but something quite different.

Second point is, all descriptions of heaven are merely metaphors, analogies that should properly not be stretched beyond what they’re intended to say. “Streets paved with gold” does not mean that they’re paved with a metal too soft to bear any physical pressure – it’s referring to a richness promised to a group who were predominantly poor. “Spending eternity singing God’s praises” is not a mandate – it’s the natural reaction (or maybe that ought to be “supernatural reaction”:)) to coming to know Him and the gratitude felt for His love. And so on.

Note the last three paragraphs of Shodan’s post. Ray Bolger’s Wizard of Oz character seems to be getting an awfully tough workout in religion threads lately, this one being no exception.

11

To be a little more specific, is there anyone here who believes that the “eternity” includes the time before birth as well as after death?

12

If this is true, then why is eternal life promoted as one of the greatest benefits of rightousness? How can God expect to attract believers if his biggest draw is unfathomable? Did he not take Marketting 101?

13

ya know- IF those who profess their desire for oblivion as opposed to Eternal Life in this thread will actually get their wish, seeing all these others getting an enjoyable Eternal Life right before they themselves are to be blinked out, I bet there’ll be a LOT of backtracking

14

Heck, bible literalists think 1,000 years is a long time. I can picture the Rapture coming, living with Jesus in paradise for 1000 years (ref: Revelation 20), then watching Satan rise and the merciful Jesus tossing the unworthy into the lake of fire for eternal ouchies, then the remainder wait around in a giant Borg-ish cube 12000 stadia (~1400 miles) across for universal heat death for another 50 or 60 billion years.

Joy.

15

-No, I hinted at a previous argument.

Essentially, you’re saying that either our minds in heaven don’t operate the same way they do down here on Earth (stimulus/response) or God imposes/forces a change on the way they think.

Down here, any person can get bored after some period of time, with even the most fascinating procedure or activity. This hapens over the course of mere minutes, or hours, or days.

If souls in Heaven don’t get bored, then they cannot be the same soul they were on earth. Call it a divine lobotomy, if you must- God or heaven imposes a change on you that may well be against your will and changes fundamentally the very basis of your being.

Personally, I’m an engineer and machinist. My greatest enjoyments and thrills are inventing things, developing things. Making parts from this object fit- and function with- that object. Cutting blocks of metal down to reveal the billet bracketry inside.

Will God provide me a Bridgeport milling machine? Will I have racks of alloys from which I can turn parts? Will I have a car, to which I can install the part when it’s done? Will I be able to drive that car, and better yet, show it- and the parts- to other souls? Will those souls get enjoyment from seeing the new and interesting pieces?

If the answer to any of those is “no”, then I cannot find “perfect bliss” in Heaven. To assume I’ll be happy singing in a choir or playing a harp means that I will no longer be “me” at a fundamental level. “I” will be a wholly different person- how can it be said I’ll be me?

Will the horticulturist be given seeds and soil? Was Einstein given a blackboard and chalk? Will Bill Gates be given a fast desktop PC? Will Einstein be jealous of Bill’s massive computing power?

-And what is it we’re experiencing? Is God showing us distant stars? Are we taken on guided tours of the planets surrounding Alpha Proxima? Are we taken on explorations of the inner workings of the gamma-ray photon?

Our minds, as they are, crave input. We like changes, new things. We don’t watch Casablanca over and over and over and over- the demand for new movies, new software, new books is constant, insatiable.

What is it God is showing us, or doing for us, or causing us to feel? What can God show us for a hundred billion centuries?

-But time must pass in some manner, in Heaven. If time does not pass- IE, you sense event A taking place before Event B- then that’s simply stasis, nonbeing. How is this different than oblivion?

If God is ‘entertaining’ us somehow, we must sense that entertainment as a sucessive series of events, otherwise it would be like seeing every scene of every movie all at once. Which is not only not entertaining, but means we would be fed all possible input instantly, and again, we’re talking an infinite expanse of millennia to fill.

When Ginghis Kahn died, was Abraham Lincoln already in Heaven? If not, then there must be a sense of time passage- new souls are added as time on earth passes, regardless of how slow or fast the time passes in heaven.

If souls are not allowed to interact- IE, Kahn does not meet later souls, he has not met Einstein or Edison- then that takes away yet another method of entertainment for the poor souls. They are wholly dependent on God to entertain them.

How does Einstein work out math with someone who knows all and can calculate any equation? Will Kasparov have to play Chess with God?

-Yet we are assured it is a place we want to be. It is a place we should strive for, even at the cost of time, effort and pride here on Earth.

A place paradoxial, where earthly pleasures and pastimes either cannot take place or will not be allowed.

Yet, we are promised, it is a wonderful place.

-Getting back to my very first point. The concept of heaven is a fabrication, a metaphorical carrot on a stick, as it were. A fabrication that opens a can of troublesome worms that requires ever more extensive fabrication and deception to explain. A fabrication that any two people, even of the same faith, will interpret differently, may even interpret in contradictory ways.

Yet, we’re assured, it’s a wonderful place.

16

-And if, as is far more likely, cognition simply stops when neurochemistry in the brain can no longer support synaptic interaction- my “dry, sterile” way of saying your brain dies, you’ll simply cease to exist. You’ll never know you died, just as you never tend to know the exact moment you fall asleep.

17

-Then what is “Eternity”? ‘Eternity’ is a measurement of time- forever, infinite.

Time must pass in heaven, at some rate. If time does not pass, the souls cannot experience God. Time NOT passing is stasis, unchanging- the mind cannot experience stasis, it must have some form of linearly progressive input in order to experience anything.

Sure, the soul may not age, the environment may not change, but the mind, the very foundation of what people think is the soul operates in a linear fashion. It was trained to do so through decades of earthly life.

If that mind, in Heaven, changes at a fundamental level to be able to experience the paradox of unchanging, nonlinear nonpassage of nontime, then how can it be said to be the same mind?

18

Sorry Diogenes, I didn’t mean to duplicate a thread. You’re right, that was an interesting read.

That’s really the core of my question. I don’t want to spend an eternity experiencing (super)reality through what I consider to be “me”. But if what lives on is fundamentally different than what my understanding of “me” is, then I feel absolutely no connection to it. So I don’t understand why I should care.

It’s almost as if the promise is that some other entity will enjoy this eternal bliss. I should live my life in a certain way so someone else I never met can reap the reward? That’s a tough sell.

Mangetout, could you be more specific? Any example I (as a mortal being) could relate to, possibly?

SentientMeat, you are correct in that I’m looking for the theists reasoning behind the concept, because I honestly don’t understand it. I figured there had to be a “correct” answer, and I think you gave it. Here’s the problem, though. If my eternal life exists as merely an extension of God, without self-awareness, then what’s the point? Who wants to be God?

Wait a minute. Is that the answer? If you are saved, then you become God? Do people really want that lonely existance?

19

Gee, I can think of things to do with my genitals that don’t involve reproduction. Can’t you?

Seriously, though, this time thing in the hereafter is one of those things I doubt we will ever truly understand here and now. I remember as a child trying to imagine that there was no beginning and no end to God. I almost blew a circuit with that one. I believe few people have the capacity to actually grasp the concept of the infinite, which is a central aspect to the Christian notion of the hereafter. Time is a human construct, with a beginning and an end to everything we time in our existence. “Forever” doesn’t have those restrictions, so we get bogged down in wondering if we’ll be bored after awhile in the hereafter.

And who really knows what we’ll really experience in the hereafter, if there is one. The Bible and some other religious works offer some ideas. But again, these books are written by humans. Even if they were divinely inspired, how do you explain pefect happiness and contentment (or on the other hand, complete pain and suffering, ala Hades) to the everyday Joe? Simple… you try to put in terms he will understand and think is glorious (e.g., the streets being paved in gold and fronted with pearly gates). And we get to have that forever!

Now, I am a Christian, and I do believe in an afterlife. But I try not to get bogged down in trying to explain or define that. Nor do I try to tell anyone else what their belief or reality should be. To me it’s more important to pay attention to what I’m doing right now while I’m still here in this life. This is the time I have been given and it’s my responsibility to do something worthwhile while I’m here, enjoy the good stuff and get through the tough stuff. The afterlife will take care of itself in its own time.

20

As a person of faith this question has always troubled me. When I was young I believed in the whole dying and being with Angels and God. And being able to play chess with Einstein…etc…As I have grown older tho I have questioned what exactly happens when we die and I have come up this:

When we die our soul continues on.

Or

When we die we cease to exist and our consciousness is snuffed out.

Thats it. To me speculation beyond that is pointless. As finite humans we cannot possibly conceive of a infinite existence? Would time cease to mean anything, or does it just cease to exist?