What would be your idea of Heaven or Hell?

Inspired by the other thread in this forum.

For the purposes of this thread just take it as a fact that when we die we go to our reward or punishment (personally I don’t believe any sort of loving god could punish a finite being eternally no matter what sins they may have committed in their earthly life), what do you imagine this new state of existence would be like, what would you want it to be like?

Personally I would think of it as a state of existence where you are limited only by what you can imagine into existence, if you wanted to experience what its like to live life as the other gender or in another type of world entirely (ie: the Star Trek universe if thats what you’re interested in, personally I’m not, it’d be The Culture for me) then you could will that into being and temporarily wipe you’re current knowledge then integrate it back into your ‘higher’ existence when you’ve finished that life.

The problem with that concept is however if you willed an earthlike world into existence to experience physical life again what about the other apparently sentient beings that are created to provide the full experience for you? Do they only appear to be sentient and self-willed but aren’t really, doesn’t that open a whole other set of questions?

Perhaps the answer to that is that you could issue an ‘open-invite’ to any other ‘higher’ level people who wish to share your created universe with you. Following on from that idea would be the idea of self-fulfilling heavens and hells, your higher self naturally migrates and wishes to share experiences with people like yourself, so if you are normally kind, considerate and ‘good’ you end of sharing eternity with people of like mind, if you’re selfish, self-centered, cruel and ‘evil’ you end up spending eternity with people like you.

And if people don’t think anyone would want to live like that I give you a quote that I saved from another forum because I found it explained quite a few things for me:

“Hell I believe is a place where we can all give in to our darkest desires. We woudn’t have to worry about morals or laws or any of that garbage, we’d just run around doing whatever the hell we want. It would be complete anarchy put into practice, and I think I’d love every minute of it. It would be filled with the music of Ozzy and Slayer, and fundies would get beaten and killed on a regular basis. I want to go to hell, it’s way more fun than being in heaven strumming a damn harp and looking at angels that I can’t fuck.”

So some people at least would want that.

And on one last note if I was omnipotent and had to design some method for punishing ‘evil’ people I would have it work like this. The individual is forced to live the life of the person they have wronged, so if they have murdered someone they ‘replay’ the life of the murdered person…and for someone like Hitler that would be a lot of people. If we lay every death in the Second World War at his feet that’s approximately 60’000’000 people, given an average lifespan of 25 years, thats 1’500’000’000 years of punishment. A long long time but still only the first instant of eternity.

My personal vision of Hell is to be stuck on a cruise ship with a bunch of people who keep insisting that you have to join in the activities.

Hell: math class

Heaven: all you can eat Chinese buffet and a body that doesn’t gain weight. Oh and dinner conversation with Margo Fonteyn, Abe Lincoln, Edith Wharton and my husband.

A brief discussion about this with my brother and sister around the time our cat was dying led me to say something along the lines of:

Heaven: spending the rest of forever with all my friends and family.
Hell: the same!

Hell would be…absolutely nothing. No other people, nothing to do, no physical sensation at all, just me, by myself, in my head, for eternity. :eek:

Heaven would be an eternity spent with the ones I love most, doing things we like to do most, with the occasional interesting stranger thrown in to make it more engaging.

This is a small entry I wrote back in 2005 on exactly I think of heaven. I’ll post it here for your viewing (dis)pleasure. I’ve a longer, expanded version that I wrote, and I’ll post that if it is requested.

Now, the meat:

By no stretch of the imagination am I religous. Lets get that straight before we begin.

I was thinking about the concept of heaven the other day, and I have an observation. People are stupid. That wasn’t the realization, it just adds to it. It is often said, and with good reason, that you don’t appreciate what you have, until you loose it. It is very true, and applies to many things through life: relationships, personal beongings, freedom. By this reason, people might not be able to really appreciate the constant joy that a heaven would bring. Just think about every day being filled with nothing but joy.

Eventually you would get used to it, much like the cold. Once you are so cold, another 10 degree drop won’t make a difference. I think this is kind of the same way. This is where I had the observation of which I write. If people might become numb to the constant good-times, bad times are needed. Bad times are neccissary, if for nothing else than to bring hilight to the joyus situation at hand.

So, mabye in heaven there is a little of both thrown in. If this were the case, wouldn’t this be kind of like heaven? The world has so many great and beautiful things in it, but is full of rape, robery, and murder. Sure, we don’t live for ever. But there again, if we did, we could never come to appreciate life, because we would never loose anyone. So mabye there is something to reincarnation after all. Choosing when / if to come back and do it all again.

Make of it what you will, its just an observation. I say to live life enjoyably. Take pleasure where you can, and have a good time in general. Take some time out of your day once in a while, and give a loved one a call, and enjoy the convesation.

My idea of heaven would be the situation in the short story “This Person” by Miranda July.

As for hell, I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

Heaven? I don’t know.

Hell? Middle school. For eternity. Kill me now…oh wait a minute…aw shit…

I have no idea whether there is actually an afterlife or not, nor do I care. I’ve got this life, that’s enough to deal with.

My heaven would be a giant, real life ‘what-if’ machine.

"What if the South won the Civil War?’ Let’s watch that world unfold. What if So and So made a left? Let’s watch!

There are an infinite amount of possibilities to watch, and I don’t think I’d ever get bored.

Hell: The entire Universe looks like it was painted by Thomas Kinkade. :eek:

I’m not sure about heaven, except that it would be heavenly.

Hell is another matter. I had an English 1A prof who expected to be locked in a white gymnasium stacked to the ceiling with student compositions to be graded for eternity!. For me, I’m afraid it would be running church band monitors where every musician needs his own mix and it has to be the loudest.

Hell: eternal economics class. You have to spend the rest of time copying down graphs from the blackboard, listening to a demon drone on about producer surplus and deadweight loss.

Heaven: It’d be like that planet in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe where it’s always Sunday afternoon and there are lots of nice cafes.

Heaven: all the apple desserts I can eat

Hell: the same, except all of them have cinnamon in them.

Heaven: freedom.

Hell: trapped for eternity by myself.

Heaven: a warm, tropical beach with a limitless supply of fresh seafood, cold drinks, and attractive wimmins.

Hell: an eternity of driving on a rural highway at night, listening to Top 40 radio.

My idea of the afterlife is that there isn’t a separate Heaven and Hell. It’s one place of complete honesty with yourself and that you know exactly how you affected others while you were alive. So, if you were a good person that made other people happy, you realize how much people liked you and cared about you . And if you were an evil person, you would experience all the pain that you caused others and because of the honesty you wouldn’t be able to bullshit yourself about how you hurt people. I think knowing exactly how much pain you caused others would be hellish.

Hmmm. So…l’enfer…n’est pas l’autre!

I think I agree with you there for hell. It’s kind of a scary thought.
I like your version of heaven, though, it’s gotta include burritos and devil dogs. And access to all the entertainment (songs, films, books) I had on Earth.

As we say in the Church of the SubGenius, “The difference between Heaven and Hell is which end of the pitchfork you’re on.”

Heaven : A state of existence where you can enjoy all of your fantasies, with none of the downsides and never becoming bored. And where you can learn and see anything and anyone you choose.

Hell : Everything but your brain is destroyed, and it’s put in a jar. All of your sensory and emotional systems that are capable of pleasure are removed and replaced with expanded capacity for suffering. So that not only can you only feel suffering, but you are capable of suffering many, many times more than a normal human. Then you are tormented with the maximum amount of suffering your new brain can handle, with direct input into your brain to eliminate the middleman. You are also prevented from going insane from this. You live forever, with literally nothing other than suffering, and more of that than anyone has ever experienced. Inspired by this quote from here :

I’m so glad you posted before me. You saved me an ass load of typing.

Word for word; this is my opinion as well.

If you ask me; I’m in heaven right now. Even tho’ there is a serious threat I may lose my job sometime this year. And even tho’ I just recently found out my new found GF, who I thought was awesome in every way, is still fucking her ex!

I need my pain. It helps me grow and appreciate the good things that are in store for me in the future.

So basically if I could live here on planet Earth forever with out growing old that would be perfect for me.