That was my take. After all, your span on earth is roughly 100 yeas while eternity is, well, forever. Your grandma, spouse, and kids are no more memorable than that tree you passed a half mile into your hike the length of the Appalachian Trail.
This reminds me of an sf story (was it Asimov, perhaps)?
A scientist makes a pact with the devil that he will sell his soul in return for time to complete his researches.
On his deathbed, old Nick comes around saying, time to pay up.
Not so fast, says the scientist. I’ve hardly started. Now that I don’t have physical limitations any more, I think we’ll start with the interior of the Earth; there’s at least 300 years of interesting work there. Then there’s the rest of the solar system and the stars…
Don’t some religions put forth that everyone stays put until the horn sounds, then everyone rises up and goes to heaven?
All I know is I hate crowds!
There was some fictional work that had it so heaven was real, but heaven was so complex that if you even just comprehend 1% of what heaven was your head would literally explode. So a human who basically tricks an angel into showing him what heaven looked like immediately exploded.
Personally, I believe the correct answer is dust. Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return. I find this extremely comforting. I’m not an atheist.
I think that’s paradise by the dashboard lights…
The last page of the Onion’s special edition “Our Dumb Century” announced Jesus descending from Heaven, and taking the Faithful up with Him.
Jerry Falwell explained that Heaven was “just like sitting through church, except it goes on forever”.
I just saw Book of Mormon last week on Broadway. Apparently we all get our own planets.
Everybody gets to drive a BMW e10
I don’t think it was Asimov. Do you remember the name of the story?
If it don’t have a Grand Ole Oprey like they do in Tennessee, you can send me to Hell or New York City, it’d be about the same to me.
You may be right, it doesn’t really sound like Asimov. Or any of the other Grand Masters… probably one of the lesser lights of the Golden Age. Can’t bring the title to mind, unfortunately.
I asked almost the same question ten year ago:
He did write a lot about the Bible, though. Maybe he created that vignette to make a point.
I am atheist, and a former Christian (Eastern Orthodox). I will echo what dolphinboy said - Heaven is imaginary, so what it’s like depends on how people envision it, and different people have envisioned it in different ways.
Here is what I gathered about it from my Christian past. The New Testament doesn’t give us very specific information about what Heaven is like (as I recall, it gives more details about Hell, but perhaps I’m a bit rusty on my New Testament, which at one time I continuously re-read from cover to cover). Generally, it refers to “eternal life”, and there’s a few references to a couple of random things about it like a “third heaven” mentioned by St. Paul, or Jesus’ assertion that in Heaven, people do not marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels (i.e., chaste), but as I recall, nothing approaching a detailed explanation of what the place is like.
Standard Orthodox theology teaches that Heaven (or Paradise) is more of a state than a place, and that its essence lies in experiencing God and his grace close-up. The blessed are typically described as enjoying the presence of God and constantly giving him praise. Some sources suggest that Heaven and Hell are, in a funny way, kind of the same thing. According to this theory, while those who love God will experience his presence as a blessing, unrepentant sinners who don’t care for God will experience his presence and love like a burning fire, thus suffering by the very thing that will be giving the souls of the blessed saved ones bliss. Another Orthodox teaching is that the ultimate Paradise and Hell will come after the final judgment, when souls will be reunited with their resurrected bodies, and that what the souls of the dead experience until then is a mere foretaste of Heaven and Hell.
Same here. I came away from religion with the impression that Heaven as conceived by the Orthodox Church is really not a very interesting place. It’s not somewhere where all your wishes come true and you have a lot of fun and enjoyment of the type we have on Earth, but a place / state where the principal, if not sole benefit is being in God’s presence. A way to gauge your readiness for Heaven is how you respond to attending church. This has been described as “a miniature Heaven”. Basically, if you’re just going to mass to check off a box and don’t participate fully and actively in the service and feel bored there, including preparing for - and when appropriate taking - Holy Communion, you’re kind of wasting your time there and are probably not ready to experience Paradise. In my religious days, I was generally bored in church (as I’m sure lots of people are), found the 1 1/2-to 2-hour service burdensome, and was happy when it ended. I have heard something similar on a Youtube channel run by Brother Casey, a young American Catholic monk / friar in a video where he talks about the proper attitude for being in church, where he explicitly says something to the effect that if someone is bored in church, why would he want to go to Heaven? (I would ask Brother Casey about the elephant in the room: wouldn’t they want to go to Heaven so as not to end up in Hell? Is that factor not on your radar? So if someone fails to find going to church fulfilling, does that mean they will go to Hell and suffer eternally, even if they dutifully went to church while alive?)
This meme really hits the nail on the head - it’s a very succinct summary of why I’m glad there’s no evidence of a god and why it feels great to be unburdened of belief in “him”, as well as of belief in an afterlife.
One hell of a kitty there, btw.
I think this is very much a pop culture stereotype - and caricature - of Heaven, and is often used for comic effect. It’s likely not quite how early Christianity envisioned it; it basically conflates the souls of the departed with a stereotyped image of angels. As a kid, this kind of caricature confused me and, quite frankly, spooked me. Bird wings IMHO do not belong on humans or humanoids. At the age of about seven, I would see these old cartoons where a character would literally be killed and this would be signified by them ascending to Heaven with wings, a halo, and a harp (e.g. Tom in the 1944 Tom and Jerry short “Mouse Trouble”), or simply becoming a ghost (e.g. in the 1967 The Inspector short “Le Quiet Squad” - in this case 9 ghosts representing the shot cat’s 9 lives). Around that time, I had just recently come to terms with the depressing notion that everyone without exception was supposed to die one day, and this cartoonish representation of an afterlife - and its attempt to make death into something humorous - both confused me and unsettled me (life after death? WTF?) Even today, I feel much more uncomfortable when I run into a caricatural image of a cartoon character flying off to heaven with angel wings than when I see a photograph of an actual real-life dead body. Seriously.
Honestly, I’ve never really liked the idea of an afterlife. Even if it were to be one of bliss and completely preclude a Hell or whatever (and Hell is a very real Christian teaching and according to the so-called good news that the Gospels are claimed to be, a much easier place to end up in than Heaven), this whole idea of some kind of intangible soul being severed from one’s body and being sent away in incorporeal form to another realm where it will be separated from those that remain on Earth has never been an appealing concept to me. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re going to be dead, better be dead for real, completely and truly. Dead in both body and soul, no ifs or but about it. No disembodied consciousness surviving separate from the body or anything like that. The transient life we are given is the one we have, and I think it’s better to make the most of that life and live for that life than to try to find meaning in anticipation of a life after death.
I’ve read most if not all of his sf, and I don’t remember it. Plus the ending is a bit trite for one of his stories. Plus it kind of implies heaven exists, which he might do to make a point, but I don’t remember any examples of him doing this.
Not SF. This 1300 page beast…
I’ve read it.
Remember, when he was dying he took precautions so that no helpful Christians could claim he made a deathbed conversion.
And of course he was raised like I was. In my shul no one ever mentioned heaven. It exists, but it is not where you go when you die, at least not right away.