When I die, if I were given a choice between simply ceasing to exist or spending eternity in Heaven, it wouldn’t be a difficult decision.
I can’t think of anything that any Heaven I could imagine could provide that would combat the boredom of spending eternity there. Thats not millions, or billions, or trillions of years… but completely endless. A worse torture I could not devise…
Why do people want to spend their afterlife in this way?
I personally am frightened by the notion of not existing anymore, so I’d choose heaven. Plus it probably beats spending eternity in hell.
Of course, this is all from a non-demoninational agnostic.
The other night, my wife and I had dinner with our neighbours, with whom we get on like a house on fire - we arrived saying that we weren’t going to stay late as we had to be up early the next morning. 20 subjective seconds later it was almost midnight and we we all exclaiming “Where did the time go?” and “Time flies when you’re having fun!!” - I’m sure we’ve all had similar experiences…
The point is that this is how I expect we will experience heaven - having too much fun to notice the time passing… otherwise, as you say, it would hardly be heaven.
Grim
It’s so nice there; the weather is warm and the people friendly, the food is good and the architecture is quaint, yet very comfortable.
Oh, sorry, I thought you said Devon.
In which case, my answer is that there are other ways to define eternity than ‘an endless number of days’.
Heaven cannot be boring because boring isn’t good and heaven must be good.
Why? Because God said so, of course!
An eternity in Hevaven dancing with sex-less angels? Not for me, all the funny people are in hell. Of course I’ll suffer a lot but I don’t like abrupt changes 
Perhaps an easier way to look at it would be this:
If it was guaranteed that you would suffer no degenerative disorders through old age, at what age would you choose to die? would there ever come a day when you thought “nope, that’s it, I don’t want to exist tomorrow” - even if you had done everything that it is logically possible to do, visited every place to which it is possible to go, seen everything it is possible to see and so on, there’s always room for just one more hot fudge sundae or just one more look at the sunset; some experiences are not diminished by repetition.
Oh, YAWN. The old “eternity in heaven is boring” routine. This is, what, the 7,819th time someone has started a thread on this?
The Abrahamic concept of heaven, which is what I assume you’re talking about, is that it exists beyond the material plane. “Boredom” is a function of your physiological structure; it’s a condition that exists because your brain is wired a certain way. Life after death, however, would not be limited by your physiological structure. It can’t be, or else you’d be dead. In Heaven, you also would not get sick. Heck, you might not even have a body in Heaven; maybe it’s a purely spiritual plane. Heaven is not a tropical resort, it’s a totally difference plane of existence, and the rules and regulations of this plane don’t apply.
If Heaven as Christians/Jews/Muslims conceive it lies outside the known universe, the laws of this universe would not apply in Heaven, so there’s no reason you would get bored. A perfect Paradise would never become boring, not in a zillion years, not ever. That’s the whole point to Heaven; it’s perfection and joy beyond what’s physically possible in the material world.
Of course, if you don’t believe in Heaven, none of this matters, and you have nothing to worry about, so who cares? But if you do, and you believe in an omnipotent God, then you must also believe God is capable of making an afterlife in which you cannot become bored.
Here’s a six page thread
on this very subject.
With the entire universe (maybe more than one?) to explore and learn about, and lots of other nice people to get to know and spend time with, not to mention learning about the nature of God, you want me to seriously consider choosing oblivion? Heaven sounds much more interesting.
To some, heaven is not the mythical place described in the Bible (which I believe was just a means of relating its glory to the common man). To me, heaven is knowing God, being at one with the Universe, transcending the ordinary. I will not walk golden streets and dance with angels. All I hope for is that I do not dissolve into dust, but that my life is perpetuated somehow, wheither cosmically or through reincarnation on this earth or on another planet.
In “heaven,” you will not know eternity, because there is no such thing as "time.’ There is no time to pass, so there is no boredom to bear.
In essence, we can’t comprehend eternity because there is no such thing. Time is a man-made measure. If nothing ages, and nothing changes, and all is good, how can there be “time?”
Incidentally, I don’t think God is a bearded old white man in the sky either. I don’t know what he is, but I know that spiritual peace and harmony makes me feel closer to God. Maybe once I achieve complete harmony, I’ll be God, joining a bunch of others who have accomplished the same.
I want to go to heaven because I want to be where the one who died for me is, plus I don’t want to go to the other place.
Heaven boring? But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath preprared for them that love him.
1 Corinthians 2:9
I many not know what exactly we’ll be doing in eternity, but I highly doubt I’ll be bored!
Why do I want to go to Heaven? Curiosity. Not curiosity just about Heaven or about God, but about everything. Whether there is life on other planets. Who killed Kennedy. Why Susan . . . you get the idea. I expect that Heaven is a world where the soul can connect truly and completely with the mind of God and with other souls so that there is perfect communication, empathy, knowledge, and understanding.
Most of what I have to say has already been said above, but I may a something a little unique to add. In the human condition, there are questions that we spend our life trying to answer. How did we get here? What is truth and what is not? What is the meaning of my existence? Where am I going?
In childhood, one is consumed with the wonder of the world. Everything is a miracle. Eventually that feeling dissipates and we move on to adolescence. If we were, as mature beings, able to move from universe to universe seeking wonders, I think eventually we would experience the feeling of ennui to which the originator of this thread is referring. The only place we will still find that Wonder as mature creatures is in God.
In adolescence, we move from being awed by the world to seeking for knowledge and truth, for a system of beliefs. Men build many cases for what they believe to be truth. The only way to really know truth is to learn it from God, who is Truth. We could read everything ever written by man and eventually reach the end, and become bored. The only way to never exhaust our search for knowledge and what is right is to search the infinite God.
In young adulthood, we become more concerned with meaning. If one is wise, one doesn’t try to find this by being ambitious, but by trying to find love in a relationship. Although this is arguably the highest earthly good, when it is successful, which is fairly rare, it still leaves one unfulfilled in regards to meaning. A relationship with another human is finite, in both duration and quality. One can have a successful love relationship and still feel that the Universe will someday end, and what difference will the relationship have made. All of one’s needs cannot be met by a creature who is in the same state, trying to find transcendent meaning. And the love between imperfect humans is always imperfect. There is an insatiable desire for something more. That desire is fulfilled in a relationship with God, who is Love. When Wonder and Truth mingle with God’s Love, it becomes Worship, which is our purpose in the Universe.
When one starts to reach old age, thoughts of death and the after life become prevalent. Again, in a Naturalistic Universe there is no solution to the problem. If death means ceasing to exist, all is really meaningless. If there is some existence beyond death, but there is no hope of being united with the Ultimate Reality, isn’t that a definition of Hell? Only a Supernatural God can offer any hope. Like the poster of this thread, I have been bothered by the thought of eternity, namely a positive eternity, since that was my expectation growing up Christian. Anyone who has (in this life) truly worshipped God and felt his tangible presence, though only in part, knows that fears of existing forever are false fears. If one enters that blessed state, it will never be an issue.
Luke 12:7
Ye are of more value than many sparrows.
Just how many? If you don’t go to Heaven you’ll never know. . .
But I’m defined by my physical body! If I’m not limited by it I’m not me.
If I was given a choice between an eternity in heaven or nothingness that had to be made right now I’d go with nothingness. The ideal of course would be a “live till you’re simply too bored to ever want to fuck or read a new book or listen to a new song ever again” proposition. That’s the ideal I think.
[hijack] What, another Lewis junkie? I’m starting to really regret not having picked Oyarsa or Tumnus or Reepicheep or something for my username.
Maybe I’ll change it. Anyway, welcome, Clive Staples.
MusicJunkie, you may be defined by your physical body, and yet not be bound by its current infirmities and weaknesses. One of my favorite authors points out that boredom is primarily caused by our weakness and our inability to enjoy things over and over. He says that while we grow bored and tired of, say, eating ice cream or hugging loved ones or having a good conversation, God never grows tired of good things, and as perfected, heavenly people we won’t either.
I’m personally looking forward to not getting tired of things.
I would imagine that in Heaven, there are so many things, one never has time to get bored. Constant mysteries and new and intriguing things everyday.
To weigh in a bit more seriously on this, presumably in the absense of the passage of time your experiences would cease to pile up, and you would never be experiencing something ‘again’.
Virgins and grapes.
Somebody hand me that bomb.