# Eternity in Heaven **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 28, 2003, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395 "2003-07-28T07:45:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/21 "2003-07-28T23:22:22Z")
> [@](#): > > 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? Yes, there is. I figure there’s an awful lot to find out and learn about the universe and so on, and then quite a bit more to do. I doubt I’ll be bored anytime soon. But I’m LDS, and so have a somewhat different picture than the other Christians. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/22 "2003-07-29T00:31:30Z")
Let’s assume that there is a Heaven that we ascend to when we die, and that, compared to life on Earth, life in Heaven is wonderful. _Compared to life on Earth!_ A few hundred years later, after we’ve forgotten all about our life on Earth, will Heaven be just as wonderful, and if so compared to _what_? Just a few thousand years later, long after all knowledge has been given to you on a silver platter, I would think that any god would be hard pressed to come up with anything that could be considered wonderful compared to all our previous Heavenly experience has provided us. It seems as if a god that can do anything and everything perfectly ends up giving us one last gift-Perfect Boredom. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/23 "2003-07-29T01:01:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by TheLadyLion \* > Time is a human construct, with a beginning and an end to everything we time in our existence. Time is not a human construct any more than gravity is. Both were discovered, not constructed. ---
**Author:** ![dreamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@dreamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dreamer)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/24 "2003-07-29T14:35:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bryan Ekers \* > \*\*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. \*\* Hey at least we’re given the choice to decide our own fate. Looks like you’ve made yours. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/25 "2003-07-29T15:27:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dreamer \* > \*\*Hey at least we’re given the choice to decide our own fate. Looks like you’ve made yours. \*\* Heck, I’m only going by the choices that are apparantly available: [ul][li]Eternal bliss with God: I suppose my soul would have to be completely braindead or something to find this enjoyable for more than a few minutes, let along eternity.[/li][li]Eternal happiness, with or without God: well, if I could live out every possible fantasy in some kind of eternal dream-state, that should keep me occupied for a few thousand years. Sooner or later, though, my idea of “heaven” would become dark and sadistic as I started running out of halmess ideas to explore. Long before then, the hedonistic nature of my personal idea of paradise would go well beyond the bland bliss promised by the ascetics.[/li][li]Eternal agony, i.e. I’m shipped off to Hell: undesirable, for obvious reasons, but I expect I might eventually get used to it, like a hot-tub.[/li][li]Short-term versions of the above, ending in my soul being dissipated: well, maybe, but any limited version is as a microsecond compared to “eternity”. A few centuries of Eternal happiness (as described above) before a painless dispersal into oblivion sounds okay.[/li][li]Reincarnation: well, I won’t remember any details of this life, and since those details are what formed my personality, I can’t say the person, dog, cat, mouse or whatever that inherits my soul will be “me” in any reasonable sense. Good luck, mouse, but you’re on your own.[/li][li]Oblivion from the moment of death: the only one I consider likely and barring any evidence to the contrary, it’s the only one I’ll expect to experience.[/li][/ul] In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my finite time on Earth as much as possible and try to keep reasonably healthy and safe so I don’t have to leave too soon. Have I “chosen” how to spend the afterlife? I don’t think so. I don’t recognize any evidence that a choice is involved at all. ---
**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/26 "2003-07-29T20:22:08Z")
What about a couple of tiny wires into the pleasure center of your brain with a power supply that never runs down? Would you still be you? You’d never get bored (as I understand it), and if someone asked you if you’d rather be machining new parts for cars, you’d probably say “NO!” Personally, I’m a “when I die the universe stops” thinker, so I’m just playing, well, you know…🙂 Total hijack: what ever happened to pleasure center research, anyway? For a while it was in all the psych books and science fiction stories, but it seems that nobody mentions it any more. ---
**Author:** ![Doc\_Nickel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5fc32e/32.png) [@Doc\_Nickel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doc_Nickel)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2003, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/27 "2003-07-29T23:28:43Z")
Even something like constant direct stimulation of a pleasure center will eventually grow tiresome. Like morphine addict- that very first-ever light blast produces amazing sensations (I’m told, I’ve never used it, don’t plan to.) But due to physiological and psychological changes caused by the drug itself, subsequent “hits” are not as… powerful, or interesting. Suffice to say they don’t produce the same effect. The addict tries other drugs, or heavier and heavier doses of the morphine, in an effort to recapture that first sensation. Another way- you are at equilibrium now. We hook up a small transformer and stimulate the production of endorphins in your brain, producing pleasure and euphoria. After several hours, perhaps as long as a day, even though the endorphins are still being produced, you no longer feel good or euphoric. You have simply reached a different state of equilibrium. If we raise the voltage, we can bring back some of that euphoria, which will be even shorter-lived. Raise it again for another short blast. Raise it again and your brain explodes. Sure, you won’t have to worry about physical neurochemisty as a disembodied shade in heaven, but the fact remains, that an elevated state of pleasure simply becomes a new “normal”. You adjust to it as you would a higher altitude, or a hot tub, or a cooler climate. In any case, I must ask: What, in the great scheme of things, is the point? I mean, the general concept of Christianity doesn’t typically assume reincarnation. Therefore when children are born, they either develop or are given a “soul”- for the puroses of this argument, we’ll make that assumption- which matures until the person dies. That soul is then put into some realm of unchanging, eternal bliss… But why? What purpose is there to having an infinite dimension of disembodied minds that don’t, apparently, do anything but worship he who brought them to the realm? Is God _that_ great a narcissist? He created all that we see in order to have several billion captive sycophants? The population of heaven is supposedly contantly increasing- what does God plan to do with all these minds? Is that it, they just spend eternity sitting around listening to the seraphim play harps? Again, we’re told the fabrication- Souls go to heaven. The fabrication, in order to be explained, requires more fabrication, speculation, guessing. No, there’s no sex. Yes, you get to talk to others, yes, amputees get their limbs back. Those guesses raise additional questions, which in turn can only be answered with opinion, hope and assumption. If amputees get their limbs back, what about those born without them? Will they be made whole? Will those born blind be allowed to see? How about the elderly- do they spend eternity with the appearance of aged frailty? Are they returned to youth? What about babies who died in childbirth- do they wander heaven as immature minds, unable to comprehend or interact? If they’re given knowledge, what knowledge do they gain? They have no personality, yet they’re issued one in heaven? Attempts at answering those questions leads only to further speculation and deception, as with any wholly irrational concept. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/28 "2003-07-30T00:38:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Doc Nickel \* > **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_.** Why must any experience be within the context you and I understand? Why must time pass in a linear fashion in all existences? Why couldn’t you exist in the same moment of bliss forever, outside of time? I’m not saying I can prove this is true, I am just asking how you can know that time is necessary to be, to experience something. ---
**Author:** ![X\_Slayer\_ALE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbe5ce/32.png) [@X\_Slayer\_ALE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/X_Slayer_ALE)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/29 "2003-07-30T01:15:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ellis Dee \* > \*\*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. > \*\* As with my kids, I find that anyone who says they are bored are really asking someone to entertain them. They just dont have the motivation to entertain themselves. No imagination. There is no pornography in heaven. Why? we wont have any bodies. We dont procreate anymore. The concept of orgasm would be meaningless. You can have rapture and ecstasy jts by being in the presense of God. Who doesnt want that for all eternity? Say God has this long line of souls waiting to be raptured and you get bored standing there. The exchange of experiences is pleasurable. Now that you dont have a small brain to limit your memory capacity, you can jack into another soul and share lives. Live their happiness, sorrow, epiphanies and joy. A lifetime of soap operas per soul. Not into melodrama? How about exploration. You can see this galaxy and then the universe, then go to archives and relive the birth of the galaxy. Take a look at what happened _before_ that. Setup a restaurant at the edge of the universe and watch it explode. Serve talking cows. Meet all the different lifeforms. I’m sure there is some department somewhere where you can play celestial soul-guardian. You may even be able to attach your soul to any lower lifeform. Live their lives out in real time. I dont think entry into heaven gives you celestial powers like creation or the power over life and death but I’m pretty sure you can make suggestions for the next lifeform on planet x somewhere. and in a few googleplex millenia when this universe officially goes into entropy, you can switch dimensions and do it all over again with a whole new set of physical laws and rules. This time you can play lucifer. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/30 "2003-07-30T01:21:52Z")
**X~Slayer(ALE)**, I gotta admit, that doesn’t sound half bad. What my point is, what if you don’t like yourself? What if you obsess about regret? I guess I can spend eternity running away from myself in the escapist pursuits you outlined. ---
**Author:** ![X\_Slayer\_ALE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbe5ce/32.png) [@X\_Slayer\_ALE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/X_Slayer_ALE)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/31 "2003-07-30T01:40:19Z")
well, how about a few mellenia in therapy? But the real simple thing is acceptance. Regret is an emotion of not being able to do something that you should have done. Guess what? in Heaven you can do that now. Regret not dating that hot babe in high school? Find her soul and share. You regret your whole life? come back as another person. Or better yet, improve yourself in heaven. You regret not standing up to all the bullies and bad guys in your life? Go visit them in hell. They hate that. They know you can be in the presense of God and they never will. They are the ones with an eternity or regret. Can you commit a sin in Heaven? of course you can. Your free will has not been taken away. You can still be punished for disobeying or defying God. But once you have been in Gods light, why would you want to take that away from yourself. Oh BTW. You want to cease to exist? you can do that. Ask God for a wake up call after half an eternity and God can bring you back. If you like it, you can do it again. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![antechinus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/fbc32d/32.png) [@antechinus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antechinus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/32 "2003-07-30T02:52:23Z")
Anticipation of an Eternal Life of bliss is what makes it worthwhile, not the actual experience of it. What is the difference between: 1. Expecting Eternal Life of bliss, dying and ceasing all consiousness, never to discover that you did not get to heaven, and 2. Expecting Eternal Life of bliss, dying and going to heaven Not alot. ---
**Author:** ![antechinus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/fbc32d/32.png) [@antechinus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antechinus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/33 "2003-07-30T02:58:43Z")
Anticipation of an Eternal Life of bliss is what makes it worthwhile, not the actual experience of it. What is the difference between: 1. Expecting Eternal Life of bliss, dying and ceasing all consiousness, never to discover that you did not get to heaven, and 2. Expecting Eternal Life of bliss, dying and going to heaven Not alot. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/34 "2003-07-30T05:00:07Z")
> [@](#): > > What my point is, what if you don’t like yourself? What if you obsess about regret? I think one reason that’s why we should be trying to be the best people we can. I’m going to be stuck with myself forever, so if I don’t like the way I am now, I should probably do something about that. This life is where we get to develop ourselves; it may not be as easy to change later on (not that it’s necessarily any too easy now, but this is the chance!). Regret without action is pretty pointless, but repentance, change, and resolution can make a difference. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/35 "2003-07-30T07:21:36Z")
I’m just a data-gathering drone, myself. When I can’t gather any more data, all of my life experiences, including my internal dialog will be downloaded into the Intelligence that created the Universe. 'Cause the Intelligence has no sensory pickups of Its own, see, and this is the only way it can find out what physical existence is like. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/36 "2003-07-30T07:37:50Z")
I heard something similar from a cosmologist (or was it astronomer? I honestly don’t know the difference) who said that human beings may simply be a manifestation of the universe trying to become self-aware; since we are, after all, stardust. Hey **genie** , here’s a thought: everything you’ve said about the afterlife implies a passage of time, regardless of whether or not it is linear. How can 100 years of existance possibly be relevant to 100 billion years of existance? ---
**Author:** ![Doc\_Nickel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5fc32e/32.png) [@Doc\_Nickel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doc_Nickel)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/37 "2003-07-30T11:13:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bob Cos \* > **Why must any experience be within the context you and I understand?** -Because that is how you and I understand things now. There _must_ be some commonality else heaven would be alien, unrecognizable. > [@](#): > > \*\*Why must time pass in a linear fashion in all existences? \*\* -To paraphrase, Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. We’re told we can experience things in heaven, speak with historical greats, perhaps even play chess with God himself. To do any of these things, some manner of time _must_ pass. Time is not a physical device, it’s simply our word for the linear progression of events. That progression may take on the appearance of changing in relation to some “standard”- flying near a singularity, for example, or travelling at superluminal speeds- but in all cases, Event B must _always_ come **after** Event A. Chess, for example, is impossible without a linear progression- how would you play it “all at once”? Books, conversations, movies, songs- all of these _require_ some manner of order- beginning, middle, end. > [@](#): > > **Why couldn’t you exist in the same moment of bliss forever, outside of time?** -Because that is stasis. To experience bliss- or anything else- conditions cannot be static. We were raised from birth to follow action, to recognize pattern. Our minds simply cannot easily accept unendingly unchanging conditions, no matter how blissful or euphoric. > [@](#): > > \*\*I’m not saying I can prove this is true, I am just asking how you can know that time is necessary to be, to experience something. \*\* -As noted, any event must have some sort of linear progression. _Romeo and Juliet_ loses some of it’s punch when one experiences five solioquies, an introduction, two confrontations and three deaths simultaneously. If one’s soul, the mind, is changed upon gaining heaven, to the point where it can experience semichaotic nonlinear events, where it enjoys and never tires of constant, unchanging euphoria, where it can blend directly with the minds of another, can it be said that truly is the same mind, the same personality, it was on earth? ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/38 "2003-07-30T16:53:01Z")
Well, **Ellis** , good question. As I have mentioned above, I’m Mormon, which gives me a very different picture of the afterlife than others have. It would take quite a while to discuss the beliefs I have, and the ramifications thereof. I don’t know a whole lot about the afterlife, but I do believe that it exists, that we are eternal beings, and that we will have the change to learn and grow more after this life. However, this life is our ‘probationary period.’ It’s where we have complete freedom to grow and develop ourselves, and what we become in this life will have a large say in what we become afterwards. I have to run, but you may be interested in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=195587&highlight=intelligences), in which some of this is discussed in more depth. ---
**Author:** ![Svt4Him](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7feea3/32.png) [@Svt4Him](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svt4Him)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2003, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395/39 "2003-07-30T17:14:51Z")
Here are my thoughts, and I was just reading about this a few days ago. We are transformed from the body we have to a new one, yet we are aware of who we were. The story of the rich man and Lazarus when he went to Abraham’s bosom shows that he desired water, he recognized Lazarus, he remembered his brothers, and he desired them to not go to the same place. But what we know of God is very small, and the Bible says we can’t even imagine what heaven will be like. But we can try, and some is extra-Biblical, some not. I believe we don’t stay in heaven forever, and there is a new earth created. In the garden of Eden, there was no death, and there will be no death after the new earth. We will work, as Adam did in the garden, but I believe it won’t be like work we do now, it will be work we enjoy doing. We will have a clear mind, we will be like (and I say like, not we will be) Jesus. Does that mean if I can’t die, I could go swimming under water for a few thousand years? I don’t know. The idea that we all stand around and sing isn’t terribly accurate, but there are angels that do. Now my thought on this is that we’ve never experienced anything that important here on earth, but when we see God in His glory, perhaps it won’t be so much work as a desire, which to me says God is more glorious than I can imagine. There will be those who are above us, as it’s a kingdom, but we won’t feel sorrow for having to work. But here is the churus of Mercy Me, I can only imagine. Surrounded by Your glory What will my heart feel? Will I dance for You Jesus? Or in awe of You be still? Will I stand in Your presence? Or to my knees will I fall? Will I sing hallelujah? Will I be able to speak at all? I can only imagine To believe we will have to stand and sing forever isn’t true. I think what we can imagine is only a shadow of what it will really be like. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eternity-in-heaven/191395.md?page=1)