I thought so.
Maybe they would get punished oh so good. Maybe their heaven would be hell.
Another argument that was just given to me was that they would go to hell, as they don’t get to go to heaven…which of course should make them happy. 
Let’s get back to the whole “Poker in Heaven” issue, shall we?
if you don’t have currency, or needs for that matter, how the hell can you have meaningful Poker? You could just keep raising all the time, knowing that there is no money to be won or lost and that your existence would be just as good whether you’re a big loser or big winner. That ain’t poker. That ain’t fun.
And if you have a Heaven without Poker, well, that sure sounds like Hell to me.
Obligatory Twilight Zone reference.
“Who said anything about Heaven?”
"No more world. Just endless Heaven or, depending who won, endless Hell. Crowley didn’t know which was worse.
“Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.”
–Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Though to hear some religious folks describe it, I don’t think there’s much distinction between entering Heaven and having a frontal lobotomy…
I have it on reasonably good authority (some song I heard once) that heaven is a halfpipe.
Heaven is like a great big family reunion.
Except that it lasts forever.
The difference between Heaven and Hell is a matter of perspective.
Assuming its real to me it would probably be a place where your thoughts are more tied into reality than they are here. Similiar to this place but a place where you have alot more control over your surroundings.
No one here can speak with the authority of personal experience.
None, that I know of, have ever gone there and came back to report on the conditions there.
Assuming that we’re talking about the Christian God, the usual assumption is that God, and Heaven, are not subject to the limitations of the material universe. Something being “dull” is an inherent product of the laws of the universe and of you being a material being; when you think something is “dull,” that’s a specific pattern of synpases firing in your brain. There is no reason you have to experience this in Heaven, where the molecular design of your brain will no longer be a concern to you.
You’ve phrased it neatly, but you’re still probably not even one of the first 100 people on this board to start a thread saying Heaven must be really dull. The response (again, asusming we’re discussing the Christian God, and concept of Paradise) is that God is omnipotent, not subject to the laws of the universe that create the concept of “boredom,” and can with an infinitely small amount of effort make your soul (whatever that non-material concept is) as happy and excited as you can be for an infinite amount of time.
Some philosopher out there stated that man is better than God in some respects. We can experience courage, God never can. We can experience the thrill of betting in a casino, God can’t. Our falliability and vulnerability (and non-omnipotence/omniscience) allows us to experience some very great things.
On to the point… what’s heaven like? Is it a community where people live like they do today? Are all the houses alike? Are some houses bigger than others? Are there competitions or sports? Are some people better than others? I just don’t get how to imagine the perfect place. Is there really such a place where everyone there can live perfectly happy? How is this so without sacrificing free will or personal preference? I don’t know… I’ve heard plenty of descriptions of hell, but what’s heaven like?
Art
[/QUOTE]
On the last page of Our Dumb Century, The Onion quotes Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson as saying essentially it’s just like sitting through church, except it goes on forever.
Well, to this Australian cricket fan, that sounds like hell, especially if I’m about to face an Australian pace attack… Even against Bangladesh, it would be a matter of the utmost shame to me to line up for England.
I hear there’s a shortage of chairs.
Seriously, though, the fact that you’re all talking about heaven in terms of material objects (such as mansions and sapphire trees) just shows how limited the human mind is. Considering that God can do anything and create anything, why would he just make a better Earth? There are whole new areas of consciousness he could tap into, mental energies that can’t be exercised in reality. Personally I think anything even remotely resembling the current world would be hell. It’s like, the deity is some omnipotent being with limitless energy and imagination, and the best he can give me is a really nice house? Screw that, I want to travel to other dimensions.
I don’t believe in the afterlife, but if I did I’d want it to be a place of eternal knowledge and innovation, a kind of library/workshop in which one could experiment with the fabric of the universe, and find out the answers to all questions, kind of like having open access to God’s brain.
Crap, I knew I had heard it somewhere, I just couldn’t remember where, or the details. I tried. 
Thanks, that’s pretty much what I was trying to get at.
That’s the paradox I’m trying to get around! Well put.
Well, I know that’s true. I’m not interested in heaven, per se, but rather how it is even possible to describe heaven. If our life on earth is some sort of test in which our free will determines whether we “get in” or not, then it makes sense that we’d still inhabit these bodies and our minds somehow. If we’re given free will to make conscious decisions that will determine how we spend eternal afterlife only to be turned into mindless happy idiots then… well… what the hell was that all about? Why can’t we just skip straight to the mindless happy idiots part already?
From all the posts here, it seems the only POSSIBLE heaven is simply NON-EXISTENCE (perfect peace, no worries, yay!) OR simply some state of being that is beyond human comprehension. I have read no reasonable depiction of heaven in which we are much like we are now (a “better” earth I think someone put it). There just doesn’t seem to be a way that one place can exist as perfect relative to every person.
Thanks for the input everybody. If anyone has anything more to add please do!
Art
If you go all in “almost every hand before the flop” then stay away from my poker table in heaven. Hopefully I’ll not be playing with people who play like someone who just learned how to play poker yesterday.
[hijack]
A rabid chess geek dies and goes to heaven. He sees many of his deceased idols there. Once he is able to speak, he asks Capablanca to play a game.
The geek takes white and pushes the king pawn up two squares. Capablanca resigns.
“Why did you give up right away?” inquires the geek.
Capablanca replies, “Heaven is a place of perfection. As such, pawn to e4 always wins.”
[/hijack]
But all Aussies are going to burn in hell anyway, so the point is fairly moot… 
The point is that Heaven (like most pleasure - and beauty, to re-coin the old phrase) is subjective to the beholder. Jesus said “my father’s house has many rooms” - who knows, perhaps there are countless variations on the theme…
Grim
A few thoughts: Captain Stormfield’s Report from Heaven, by Mark Twain - excellent. Somehow, the new arrivals eventually come to realize that traditional pictures of heaven are, ah, flawed. Harps do not belong in the hands of the untrained.
My sister told me a cute (okay, kind of cheesy) story once - I don’t know where she got it from, but it’s still cute:
Comes the afterlife, everyone is sitting at an endless table filled with all delicacies anyone could desire, endless food and drink. Thing is, everyone has stiff arms, no elbows. (Presumably everyone is held in place at his or her seat, as well.)
Well, there are actually two scenarios that come from this. In the first, since no one can actually reach the food, everyone is starving to death - in the midst of plenty. That’s Hell.
In the second scenario, no one can reach the food for themselves, but everyone is feeding the person next to them. All are feasting and having a great ol’ party, with everyone simply caring for others and trusting the others to keep the noshes coming. That’s Heaven.
Cheesiness aside, I like the idea that Heaven is where we finally come to care for each other the way we really ought to, and that’s what makes it Heaven.
…and the God of the Christians (at least) is said to be the creator of SEX. If Heaven holds any improvements on sex - oh my.