I’ll counter that by saying it sounds to me like you’re bored already
Nope. The lies people tell themselves is just curious.
You think I’m lying?
You should make battleship armor - the irony is thick here.
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:
- 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 - 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.
You are not lying to me.
You can make the Projection Cannon.
Your argument is unfalsifiable.
I think that deserves a thread of it’s own. It’s a much deeper look at the subject. Groundhog’s was a great movie in it’s own right, but if it’s about heaven/hell/purgatory then it’s only a look at it from one narrow aspect.
I agree. However, I’ve been bored before and always found something to relieve my boredom. Your conclusions aren’t unreasonable at all, but I still think that eternity, at least eternity in purgatory or heaven, doesn’t have to be a horror to endure. Part of it is the attitude you take. In the movie that’s what changed things for Murray’s character, though you can’t assume there’s a way out, but just like life you make your way through what you have.
I’ll say that there’s at least a 90% chance that the Groundhog’s Day cycle would leave me bored beyond my ability to cope with it, but I hold out for it not being the only possibility.
Concur. I would say it’s fairly easy to define versions of eternal existence that would be intolerable, but I don’t think it’s very difficult to conceive versions where eternal existence would be indefinitely tolerable, even pleasant and fulfilling.
None of this is an argument for the existence of these things, only the logical possibility of them.
I too feel that heaven would become boring. It’s kind of depressing that the best possible option is non existence,
I might not know how to ask this question, but, in our universe, does anything stay the same/static forever, or is change inevitable?
Like, is there theoretically a hydrogen atom that came into existence right around the same time as the big bang, that is still floating around as the same unchanged hydrogen atom? If so, could it always be? If so, at what more complex point than an atom are things unable to stay static forever - like an organism?
Just curious. I think my bigger point is, if true, why would inventible change would be different in Heaven. Even if you could tolerate it (existing for such an long period of time), in our reality, nothing has been shown to exist forever.
I’m not sure if maybe fundamental particles last forever, but the get-out that most believers (of the Christian variety at least) would argue is ‘well, heaven is different, obviously’
And it’s not even like they would be making that up on the spot, in response to your question - the notion of the physical universe being a sort of corrupted version of the eternal one is already established in the belief system.
Again, not arguing that there’s any validity to it, just that they have an answer ready
I wrestled with this early as a teenager. My conclusion was that non-existing was just fine as an endpoint and impermanence was the source of meaning for everything around me.
But that’s just me, you do you.
I realize heaven is just a concept but I don’t know a lot of people who believe any part of them that goes there is human or mortal. I think a more commonly held belief is that we leave our mere mortal human bodies and brains behind and our spirits go onto to something more enlightened.
He did meet the devil though. And his name is…Ned.
And this is the failing of imagination of Christians. Forever is a LONG time. And then even more long time.
I had a crisis when I was a child, when I believed. I contemplated how long forever is, and it scared me. I understood, truly. I stared into the abyss, and the abyss never ended, I had an existential claustrophobic attack. I was doomed to go to heaven, and there was no escape! Not even death could free me from eternity’s trap. It really freaked me out!
You want freak-out? Read Absent From Thee Felicity Awhile, by SP Somtow. In the story, aliens come to our planet, and offer us immortality. The “payment”, as it were, is the entire existence of humanity alive has to repeat the same day over…and over…for a million years, so they can study us. And you have aware consciousness, but you are unable to do anything* except watch the same day over and over and over, doomed to repeat the same actions, the same conversations.
*you sort of can make changes, but it is really difficult, and the changes are the new normal that gets repeated from then on. “That, too, is being studied.”
Emphasis added—this is the part Sitnam refuses to acknowledge. He needn’t believe it, merely acknowledge the concept. But in doing so his thesis evaporates—i.e., heaven cannot be conceived as a state of being, it can only be human consciousness forced to endure an unendurable eternity.
Therefore we get continuous belaboring of the notion that eternity is a really long time. I know I’d hate to be stuck in this thread for eternity. 
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. But the answers to these questions impact on the answer to your question. I’d be much less likely to be bored over infinite time with infinite input of new ideas, art and literature from newcomers versus standing around strumming on a harp praising god.
I was aware of this possibility, I mentioned it above.
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.
Heaven must be so completely alien to normal mortal life that you shouldn’t try shoe horn it in to your preconceived notions.