# The film Groundhog Day proves Heaven isn't real **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 28, 2023, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733 "2023-07-28T15:03:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/101 "2023-07-31T23:27:56Z")
Only Christians get to do that, huh? ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/102 "2023-07-31T23:30:29Z")
I’m a Jewish atheist, I’m good times two. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/103 "2023-08-01T00:23:26Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > It’s a State of Being that must be so completely alien to the human mind that were it to exist it wouldn’t be a person anymore in any meaningful sense. Nah, you’d still be just like the human you were on Earth, just with the parts of your brain that make things boring or tiring turned off. Everything else works exactly the same, because that’s how God wants it to work. I’m not saying that’s how it really works (obviously not, because I’m an atheist) or that it’s an interesting concept/narrative. But it’s really easy to _imagine_, which is the point I was responding to. ---
**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:** [August 1, 2023, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/104 "2023-08-01T00:44:47Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > It’s a State of Being that must be so completely alien to the human mind that were it to exist it wouldn’t be a person anymore in any meaningful sense. Sure a photograph looks like you, but because it doesn’t need to eat, doesn’t need love, doesn’t age, it isn’t a person. Yes, this is the refusal to acknowledge I mentioned. This particular version takes the form of a True Scotsman—i.e., nothing you could possibly transform into could possibly be you, despite the fact that life itself is a process of continuous transformation. Therefore there can be only an unendurable eternity, since that’s the only True Scotsman. ---
**Author:** ![Cmyers1980](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyers1980/32/11814_2.png) [@Cmyers1980](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cmyers1980)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/105 "2023-08-01T02:17:31Z")
Randy Alcorn wrote a great book titled Heaven that comprehensively explains what Heaven (the current one and the future New Earth) is like according to the Bible and addresses all the various questions and misconceptions people have about it including the issue of boredom and the modern pop culture idea of Heaven as just sitting on clouds and playing harps forever. As I said before in a different thread it would be absolutely trivial for an all powerful God that created reality including the afterlife from nothing in addition to eternal souls to make it so that people in Heaven (or whatever you want to call it) never got bored and retained their personalities and what makes them “them” even as their minds and bodies are improved and time went on. If people got bored (for long at least) and miserable or became different people completely divorced from who they were on Earth it wouldn’t be perfect and naturally wouldn’t be Heaven. Mental continuity and individual identity are essential parts of personhood so I don’t see why they wouldn’t be retained indefinitely. Some may consider this a “cop out” but we shouldn’t expect a supernatural realm to be governed by the same rules that dictate our physical universe as long as it’s logically possible. It’s like saying a hypothetical wizard’s magic powers aren’t possible given our understanding of science. It’s magic so by definition it isn’t explainable using conventional means. Imagine an insect expressing incredulity at the idea of skyscrapers, algebra, quantum physics and supercomputers or someone asking if there would be enough room for everyone in Heaven. The answer to the usual questions is within the very premise itself even if we as mortal beings living in the real world can’t fully comprehend it. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/106 "2023-08-01T07:18:54Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I don’t expect anyone to be able to answer. After all, when heaven was conceived life for almost everyone was boring, save for feast days and when the local invaders would arrive to pillage. Sure, and life expectancy was such that _getting cut down in your prime_ was commonplace, so the idea that more life is better would also be commonplace, and certainly not many people were really thinking about what ‘forever’ really meant. But what we seem to be seeing in this thread is the argument that, if you say you _have_ thought about it, and you disagree, then you’re obviously either lying, or you haven’t actually thought about it as much as you believe you have. Such an argument is unassailable by logic or reason, because it summarily dismisses disagreement. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/107 "2023-08-01T07:39:44Z")
> [@Cmyers1980](#): > > If people got bored (for long at least) and miserable or became different people completely divorced from who they were on Earth it wouldn’t be perfect and naturally wouldn’t be Heaven. Mental continuity and individual identity are essential parts of personhood so I don’t see why they wouldn’t be retained indefinitely. Looking back, I remember things I did and thought when I was 4 years old (well, a few of them); I remember more of the things I did and thought when I was 20 years old, and still more from 30 and so on. Also looking back, I don’t feel like I am the exact same person I was back then - not specifically because of _improvement_ (sure, perpetual _increase_ of a value either has to hit a limit, or else it gets really weird), but rather, largely just because of _change._ If, without becoming actually immortal, my life was extended to (say) 500 years, I fully expect that the person at age 500 would not have a lot in common with the person age 20, except for the legal name and stuff and a perhaps vague sense of continuity, plus wilful retention of some favourites and such things that are retained by practice. _And that’s OK_ - absence of any abrupt changes means there is a sense of continuity from one day or year to the next, and so it’s possible for there to be an identity, it’s just that the identity is not a static or monolithic thing. Philosophically, it’s arguable whether that would mean that the individual really is living forever, or if it’s more like a series of different people inhabiting the shell of an identity. I don’t think it really matters - if you zoom out and take a couple of snapshots, sure, the old ship of Theseus is an entirely different ship from the new ship of Theseus, so you could say that the old one has been lost or destroyed and replaced by the new one, except that notion is only sustained by ignoring the continuum of change between the two snapshots. In that sense, you could say that _Groundhog Day_ _supports_ the argument for eternal life; At the start of the movie, Phil is a self-obsessed, uncreative, jaundiced, antisocial asshole of limited talent; at the end of the movie, he’s amongst other things, a musician, a charming entertainer and conversationalist, a philanthropist, a social figurehead and a sensitive lover; he is transformed - _but he’s still Phil._ ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/108 "2023-08-01T09:34:15Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Groundhog day does not _explicitly,_ in-story, prove that heaven isn’t (real/possible/tolerable/whatever), because in the story, just before the cycle is broken, Phil is completely at peace with the situation. > > Groundhog day doesn’t _implicitly_ (from the audience perspective) prove it either, because the scenario given is one in which nothing he does (except within his own mind) has any persistence longer than 18 hours. Groundhog day is hell (to the extent that it actually is) not because of the repetition, but because the ability to achieve even the most ordinary of objectives is thwarted by a daily wipe. > > It’s the difference between: > > 1. planting an acorn, watching it grow into an oak tree, felling the tree and making furniture from the timber and when the furniture wears out, sitting by the embers of a fire, telling stories and toasting marshmallows and thinking about where to plant another tree. > And > 2. Planting an acorn and coming back the next day to discover someone dug it up and smashed it. > > _Of course_ scenario 2 is horrible. Having your will thwarted generally is. > > This is quite apart from the question of whether repetition is inevitably boring, because groundhog day, although it contains repetition, is presenting other things too. “Time loop” stories such as Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, and Edge of Tomorrow present some interesting philosophical questions on achieving happiness in life. Why are characters typically miserable in the time loop story? Typically because what they thought was a temporary visit to someplace they may not have wanted to go to in the first place has now become their entire life and they are now trapped in it. In the character’s mind, there is something else the character would rather be doing somewhere else and the time loop reset is a constant reminder of its impossibility. That’s not really different from real life IMHO. As much as we like to think we have the capability to do anything or go anywhere, most people are trapped in their day to day circumstances. If you spend all your time preparing and working for some future that may not even happen, you can become disconnected from your actual life that’s right in front of you. Phil didn’t spend millennia reliving Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, PA before he became depressed and suicidal. He spent some time using the time loop to amuse himself with some high risk or hedonistic activities that he would never face consequences for. But that got boring pretty quickly. Mostly it was about Phil’s frustration about not being able to get back to his “real life” (such as it was as a cynical news reporter with no real relationships to speak of). It wasn’t until Phil embraced his situation and started getting to know the people and town around him on a real level that he started to achieve happiness. So in a way, it’s more about mindset. Planting an acorn and not knowing what will happen to it the next day. But also not waiting around to see if it grows before you decide to take up furniture making and whatnot. Often it is achieving that higher purpose that makes the time loop bearable, even advantageous. It becomes an opportunity to create a better version of yourself so you can win someone’s heart or stop an alien invasion. Now, infinity is a long time. So at some point you are going to have explored every possible scenario and million times. So I don’t really know what you do at that point. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/109 "2023-08-01T10:12:16Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > If you live forever, and some memories drift away, then maybe every few thousand years, you get to rewatch _Firefly_ all over again as if it’s the first time you’ve seen it. ``` Hugin and Munin fly each day over the spacious earth. I fear for Hugin, that he come not back, yet more anxious am I for Munin. ``` Losing memories would be a great concern for immortals. No physical structure could contain an infinite amount of memories, so every immortal would need to lose data. Eventually you would be meeting old friends, or your relatives, as if you had never known them. Immortal amnesia. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/110 "2023-08-01T10:22:17Z")
I don’t see why it need be a concern if it’s just the norm. If you see the relatives often or even once a decade, the memories are reinforced and supplemented with fresh ones. If you only see them once every 6 centuries, you probably forget the people, and that seems appropriate anyway. If they’re nice people, you get to experience the joy of meeting them afresh. If they are not nice people, it was well that you forgot them. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/111 "2023-08-01T10:28:52Z")
There are plenty of ways immortality could suck. If you are immortal amongst mortals, that’s going to get lonely. If you are immortal with perfect and infinite recall, that could get boring. If you’re immortal in a universe that isn’t, that might get uncomfortable. ---
**Author:** ![Cmyers1980](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyers1980/32/11814_2.png) [@Cmyers1980](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cmyers1980)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/112 "2023-08-01T10:37:17Z")
Assuming you’re immortal in the real world (not Heaven or any kind of supernatural realm) you would eventually end up trapped in a situation you couldn’t get out of assuming you have no other powers or once the Earth was destroyed floating in space. Neither are situations I’d want to be victim to. I’d rather live a normal life and hope there’s a positive afterlife when I die. The latter is the only kind of immortality I hope for. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/113 "2023-08-01T13:20:31Z")
If we were talking about heaven instead of Punxsutawney PA then one of the features should be a lack of boredom. OTOH one can easily become bored in Punxsutawney in one non-repeating afternoon. ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/114 "2023-08-01T14:14:02Z")
Bored people are boring. Phil figured out how not to be bored in Punxsutawney. I think that was the point of the film. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/115 "2023-08-01T14:57:10Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Now, infinity is a long time. So at some point you are going to have explored every possible scenario and million times. So I don’t really know what you do at that point. Go around again. The interval between doing everything once, and doing everything the next time is never going to be so quick that you’d need to be all "uhhhhh. _We only just **did** this_ " ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/116 "2023-08-01T16:18:42Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > > [@Voyager](#): > > > > I don’t expect anyone to be able to answer. After all, when heaven was conceived life for almost everyone was boring, save for feast days and when the local invaders would arrive to pillage. > > Sure, and life expectancy was such that _getting cut down in your prime_ was commonplace, so the idea that more life is better would also be commonplace, and certainly not many people were really thinking about what ‘forever’ really meant. > > But what we seem to be seeing in this thread is the argument that, if you say you _have_ thought about it, and you disagree, then you’re obviously either lying, or you haven’t actually thought about it as much as you believe you have. > Such an argument is unassailable by logic or reason, because it summarily dismisses disagreement. People who think they won’t get bored existing in an eternity have cited that they aren’t bored yet on this planet. You may imagine how ridiculous that sounds to me. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/117 "2023-08-01T16:34:29Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > “Time loop” stories such as Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, and Edge of Tomorrow presents some interesting philosophical questions on achieving happiness in life. Why are characters typically miserable in the time loop story? Typically because what they thought was a temporary visit to someplace they may not have wanted to go to in the first place has now become their entire life and they are now trapped in it. In the character’s mind, there is something else the character would rather be doing somewhere else and the time loop reset is a constant reminder of its impossibility. As Martin McDonagh put it: > Maybe that’s what hell is, the entire rest of eternity spent in fucking Bruges. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/118 "2023-08-01T16:40:38Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > People who think they won’t get bored existing in an eternity have cited that they aren’t bored yet on this planet. That’s an extremely reductive take on the counter-arguments you’ve received. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/119 "2023-08-01T16:46:35Z")
You’re calling those counter-arguments? Ok. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733/120 "2023-08-01T16:55:27Z")
In that they largely refute your OP, yes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-film-groundhog-day-proves-heaven-isnt-real/987733.md?page=7)