A Tour of Heaven

I loved the pictures. Especially the one of the mansion one would get when in the kingdom. What was even better was the description of the bricks used to pave roads:

“This solid gold bar, worth thousands of dollars, is a rather low quality example of the bricks used to pave the roads in the Kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, the gold in heaven is so pure you can see right through it, kind of like water, actually a little more like crystal, but way more awesome than that…”

Does the Bible describe the roads in heaven like this? Or did they just make it up?

I love the “worth thousands of dollars” part, as if money would have any meaning in heaven.

As a matter of fact, the gold in heaven is so pure you can see right through it, kind of like water

Uh, yeah. Chemistry fail.

Actually, I’m kinda bummed that the tour doesn’t include the aquarium of oysters capable of producing pearls large enough to fashion even regular-sized gates out of…

I was just thinking about heaven last night. It occurred to me that one of the last things that kept me clinging to religion was the whole idea of what happens after one dies. I wouldn’t accept the thought of “lights-out-thats-it,” and was actually appalled once years ago when a friend described it that way after the death of another friend.

And while I never looked forward to dying I always looked forward to seeing loved ones again in “heaven.” The thought that people were never gone forever was a pleasant one.

But I eventually realized that no matter how much I wished that were true it simply was not. None of it made any sense. The best I could do was remember the people who aren’t here anymore and I realized that that really wasn’t half bad.

There’s a Coldplay song from their most recent album that has a lyric: “Those who are dead are not dead they’re just living in my head.” And I kind of like that. I know it’s not literally true – no one “lives” in our hearts or minds. They made fade a little over time, but death can’t erase the memories that one holds. (That’s what lots of drinking and/or dementia are for, but I digress.)

I wanted to also mention that one thing that sort of helped me was something I read once (can’t remember who wrote it) to the effect of – being dead is like not being born, it just doesn’t matter. What does, however, is making the most of the extremely short time I’ve got right now.

And I’ve recently come to the conclusion that this heaven hurdle is the same one I don’t think my spouse would ever be able or willing to jump. It’s extremely difficult for some people to get past this, especially those who have lost loved ones, and I sympathize. (Or is it empathize?) When you’ve been promised your entire life that you’ll see those people again – well, it’s incredibly disheartening to even contemplate that it isn’t true.

After re-reading this I realize that it’s a little rambling and only on-topic in that it’s about heaven but I thought I’d post it anyway.

But you bring up a good point – why is god so behind when it comes to the internet? Where’s his website? Hell, why doesn’t god have his own domain extension? http://www.heaven.god?

oops, clicked on the path to destruction. Guess I won’t get to go after all.

@McBlog,

Revelation describes heaven as being a city made of gold and other jewels. IIRC, it does say streets made of gold but not see-through gold.

@Aubrey

I believe it’s in Matthew somewhere that it says men and women will not take husbands and wives in heaven. I always like to bring that up to Mormons when they talk about their eternal marriages, and posthumously marrying someone into their church. ;)

@Aubrey

Well, if it was a woman instead of a man in this situation, then she would be an adultress and would obviously go directly to hell upon dying (after being stoned to death, of course).

I’m not sure about men. Since women are just property in the bible, I’m pretty sure men can do whatever they want with them and still go to heaven.

I prefer Valhalla, thanks.

A whole day of joyous slaughter, followed by everyone coming back to life for the all night feasts and whoring sounds much more interesting than harp music and god adoring.

Definite Poe…

Oh wow. Earliest signatures in the guestbook from 2001. Could be fabricated, especially if this is a real Poe, but then again…

Also, at the part where they mentioned all the instruments? I wonder if they have a Dr. Seuss Bamboozlefone?

But! But! But! I call shenanigans!!! I saw NO mention of pizza in ANY form and I fail to believe that there can possibly be a Heaven without pizza. I mean… c’mon!!!

Ha! Seriously, though… that site is just contains a plethora of entertainment, in addition to the Heaven tour. Nice find! :-)

When I saw the slide that said something to the effect of “then I saw all these people bowing and realized that our whole purpose was to serve”, I could do nothing but laugh.

Laugh at what an egotistical being this “god” would be if he existed in the way this heavenly website suggests.

“Serve me for all eternity, and I’ll give you a mansion, and you can walk on streets of gold. But you have to serve me, and do what I say. Like the mafia.

But if you didn’t know about me, or believed in the “wrong” religion, or didn’t believe the lackluster “arguments” for my existence, especially for my specific nature, then you deserve to be tortured for eternity.”

If I had to amuse this cosmic gangster for the rest of time, I’m not sure I’d want to go there even if I did believe that the case for its existence had any merit.

If I had a heaven, do you know what I would be doing?

Sleeping. Gaining knowledge about the world. Eating. Watching nature. Having new experiences.

Wait a minute…in “heaven”, you wouldn’t need to sleep or eat, because you’d never be tired or hungry. You wouldn’t need to know anything, because you would be next to the source of all knowledge. You wouldn’t need to learn about nature, because true satisfaction is supposedly not of this world.

Basically, all the things I would want in a heaven are here, in this life.

If “heaven” is merely the spiritual, and does not include the things which make this life worth living, then perhaps “heaven” would be almost as profound a torture as hell. If there is nothing to make life worth living, then why live? Then why exist?

If “heaven” removes all the things which make it pleasant to exist, why exist at all?

I think I would rather be annihilated then admitted to “heaven” if it did exist, as long as everything which makes life worth living is absent or unimportant.

Again, think about this:

All the pleasure in this world derives in part from finitude. Nature, humor, eating, weather, sex, sleep, knowledge.

Wouldn’t an infinite quantity of anything essentially amount to torture?

We exist in a certain way, in a finite way. That which goes against our essential nature can be nothing but torture for us. We must admit that we are physical beings, and not spiritual ones. Yet we would give a heaven physical attributes?

This just further goes to show how muddled the concept of “heaven” is. It’s almost as if people who really wanted something like this to exist came up with it, but only partially thought about the implications of their ideas.

The idea of “heaven” is just one more concept out of the growing scrap heap of religious concepts which just seems too ill-conceived to be divinely inspired and just flawed enough to be of human origin.

@ Aubrey

I think it was in Enemies of Reason that Richard Dawkins took on cold readers, the people who claim to get in touch with your lost loved ones. He said that rather than helping their customers grieve and find a way to cope with death, cold readers are doing them a disservice by polluting their memories of the person with completely fabricated messages from beyond. I think, ‘hearing’ from your dead loved ones is not a constructive way of coping with death; it fosters an unhealthy attitude towards the process, and never really allows you to let go.

Belief in an afterlife is exactly the same, in my eyes. It’s infantile wish-thinking that is ultimately poisons our understanding of life, and encourages us to avoid developing a healthy attitude towards death.

Just think of all the people who have killed or given their lives for religion. Or how about those Christ Scientist people who won’t receive medical treatment, or allow it for their children.
Sheesh.

“Belief in an afterlife is exactly the same, in my eyes. It’s infantile wish-thinking that is ultimately poisons our understanding of life, and encourages us to avoid developing a healthy attitude towards death.”

Agreed.

Fear masquerading as hope.

“… and encourages us to avoid developing a healthy attitude towards death.”

I’m still working towards that healthy attitude about death but admitting to myself that I no longer believed in god really helped.

@Telepromptor
Great points!

@Sock

“my version of heaven included my friend and I running through a field of dildos”

hmmmmmmmmm… To each his own! :)

Also, what’s a Poe?

@Matt
I missed the music! I must have had my volume down the first time. It makes it 100 times better.

Ahh.. that’s pretty funny.

@Sock

My memory of Greek Mythology is pretty hazy, but didn’t their idea of hell involve a state of limbo in which the “bad” person had to endure an environment of torture specific to them?

So, I don’t think your idea of heaven is too far off base. Still not sure about the dildos.

@Johnny:

If only it were so easy that you could just turn it all off when you were tired of it. On a side note…did you see the character Axis? Wow…sexually frustrated christian teens should love her.

@ Wintermute

Could you? I don’t know.

Would there be darkness? According to Revelations, isn’t it light all the time?

Wouldn’t it be hard to sleep that way? Or is it just metaphorical light? Or just metaphorical bricks of gold, or a metaphorical lake of fire? There is a point at which we cannot really tell between the metaphorical and the literal based on our current knowledge alone.

Even if you had all the pleasure you wanted, what would be the point in having it if it pleasure itself became unpleasurable?

It seems that the most logical definition of a heaven would involve a sort of “maximum utility” of pleasure. However, I cannot conceive of a definition of this that is not finite. And since heaven would be eternal, and not finite, I am not sure how it could avoid this problem.

Perhaps heaven could avoid this by being mildly pleasurable, some would say. But I see no level of pleasure that would not eventually exceed the maximum utility, which I would define as the level of pleasure experienced before it begins to be unpleasurable.

Besides, the Bible is very sketchy on what heaven would be like anyways, and there are many described about it which would be clearly unpleasurable for many people, and there are many pleasurable things necessarily excluded from it.

Of course everything I am saying is speculative, more or less designed to show the absurdity of the concept of heaven and the shallow level of thought behind the idea.

One of the reasons I speculated that there would be no sleeping or eating is because these things are necessary for an earthly existence, and they are clearly associated with our bodily survival. I thought it was a relevant question to ask if these bodily things would be part of the context of a possible spiritual realm.

Again, our lack of information hinders this discussion. My main point is to demonstrate how absurd and ill-conceived the whole idea of “heaven” really is.

@Wade:

I’ll admit it, I LOLed.

Did you notice that the social and governmental hierarchy in heaven is the same as all the ASSumptions we make on earth?

Rank, position, power, government, some people “lording it” (get it?) over others, and authority are human inventions. Some people rule over other people. Needing laws and government is an admission that people are not only way IMperfect, but harm each other, and need to be forced by some authority to live other than their morally bankrupt selves could manage alone.

Heaven, instead of being filled with perfect beings, has the same rank and position and government structures, and hierarchies, all the way to the top.

People created it in their own ugly image!

Even “Lord” is an English title. Perhaps God would prefer to be called “President” now. If I were God, I certainly would NOT need the title or a government office position!

Whats the point of having a mansion if you cant have wicked parties???

Also wtf is up with all this servants gnod must have all the time, am I sensing a tad of low self esteem here? Feeling lonly and maybe a little insecure big guy.. there, there.. you’ll be fine, after all your perfekt, right? Right gnod?

@ Wade
these aren’t palm trees but Cannabis plants which can explain a lot about this site.

I have been reading on your site for a couple of weeks now. There are a lot of interesting ideas out there. It has been very entertaining. Thanks for letting me read along.

So what do you folks think happens after you die?

@ wintermute

but what about the soul part of you?

@wintermute

not sure I can adequately… but in my simple mind.. there is a material part of me that I can touch… ie the body and there is an immaterial part that I am conscious of.. whatever that part is is what I would describe as the soul.. one definition I have heard is mind, will and emotion.. it’s the part of me that makes me, me! It seems to me that it is more than just brainwaves.. and it doesn’t seem probable that it doesn’t exist.. maybe ceasing to exist could make sense…

@wintermute

that is quite a lengthy article.. I will have to review off the clock lest my employer destroy body and soul (however one defines it).. thanks for the info

note I changed my identifier to the howitzer.. didn’t know how these things posted

@ The Howitzer

If will and emotions are outside of the brain, then why do people who have intensive brain trauma or brain surgery tend to lose most or all aspects of their “personality”?

If these things originate in the brain, then it makes sense that they would not work when the brain is damaged. If these things do not entirely originate in the brain, then it would make sense if they still worked even if the brain was damaged.

However, experience shows this not to be the case so far, which I why I think the “soul” as a concept, is largely implausible.

Besides, if these things do originate with our brains, what happens when we die and our brain deteriorates? How do we re-gain all of that information in another existence?

For a number of reasons, I do not believe that humans have a “soul”, at least in the way that most religious people would define the term.

@ The Howitzer

How do you know that there is an immaterial part?

That is what I just asked you. The evidence so far suggests that all the things which you earlier claimed as part of the “soul” actually reside in the brain. You have not addressed this.

I don’t believe that there is an immaterial part of the human. I see no evidence for its existence.

You may as well ask me if peanut butter has blonde hair, because I cannot answer your question as to the state of the immaterial part of human beings after death if I do not believe that human beings have an immaterial part.

What do you think happens when you die? What do you think will happen when I die?

@Howitzer

In my opinion, when we die, we revert to the form that we had before we were born. A thought.

Before you were born, your parents thought about you. After you die, those you’ve influenced in your life think of you.

However, there’s no self awareness pre or post life. There’s no Heaven or Hell, no next life. Nothing at all like that. All we have is this wonderful, amazing, beautiful, funny, terrifying, long, short, and one-time-only life. Make the best of it, it’s all you’ve got. :)

The faint of heart should look away, it’s pretty disgusting!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD2Hyiitpys

My favorite part so far is when the fatty says that too many Christian adults (read: members of “dead” churches) are “fat and lazy.”

Plus…

“God, FIX THE WORLD!!!” cause God can do anything (even though throughout the history of humanity “he” hasn’t).

They “speak in tongues” even though the bible says that if NO ONE IS AROUND TO INTERPRET THE TONGUES IT IS FROM THE DEVIL!!!!!”

The WORST kind of indoctrination!!!!!

@Sock

thanks for those thoughts.. this is a crazy one because nobody really knows what happens but something happens

afterlife, non-existance, re-existance… something… I am just interested in what people are thinking

@wintermute

sure, “apart from” sounds better..

could you expand on your comment. “The simple answer is that your sense that there’s a distinction between your physical body and your “mind” is an illusion”

what does that mean?

thanks

@metro

so how would you describe the stream of consciousness that is apart from the physical body (not sure how to describe what I am referring to, sorry).. if not a soul then what? maybe a better question is what do you call that?

You know, Heaven was a very pleasant place…but they cleverly neglect to mention in the sales literature that you have to pay for all of your beverages.

After my wife and I got back from our visit we were shocked to find a charge of $INFINITY.00 on our credit card statement!

The devil truly is in the details. D’OH!

However I am concerned about Homer I think he needs to go to the doctirs before his eyes fall out! ,