Death.. Then what?

[Jake]

Exactly! A religious persons goal isn't to impose their beliefs on you, it's to open your eyes to eternal life. Your arguing points for atheism that go both ways.

Maybe some people don't WANT eternal life. Myself included. Doing anything would get boring eventually, and by that point you'd pretty much want to die and have it end. I know I would, and I certainly wouldn't want to be happy forever if it meant tending to God's every whim... Plus, death can be happy, even if it does end everything. Like it was said earlier here, some people are in constant pain throughout their lives. They aren't selfish enough to commit suicide, so they have to grin and bear it until death.

Then when you get bored, remove yourself? And that is only assuming you can do "anything and everything" in Heaven. The way I see it, it is a place to be eternally happy, and I don't see how you could say you wouldn't want it over just disappearing, because you would "get bored" - because in honesty, if you live to be over 90 years old, thats a REALLY LONG time, and I'm sure throughout that life you would be bored at periods (especially after you are really old), but that isn't reason enough for you to go "Oh meh, I'm bored, I'd rather just disappear."

And it doesn't require tending to "God's every whim".

You don't seem to understand just how long an eternity is. 90 years is nothing compared to it. Try multiplying a googleplex by a googleplex googleplex times. That's a ridiculously long number, and STILL nothing compared to an eternity. I guarantee you you'd get bored. I actually don't think you can be removed from Heaven after death if you want to, and if you do, where would you go?

For one, you're missing the point I was making. Whether or not someone wants eternal life is negligent to my argument.

Secondly, saying you'd get bored of eternal life is assuming you still carry negative emotions. If you were always happy and always having a good time, you wouldn't think about things like boredom.

[Chaos]

Exactly! A religious persons goal isn't to impose their beliefs on you, it's to open your eyes to eternal life. Your arguing points for atheism that go both ways.

Maybe some people don't WANT eternal life. Myself included. Doing anything would get boring eventually, and by that point you'd pretty much want to die and have it end. I know I would, and I certainly wouldn't want to be happy forever if it meant tending to God's every whim... Plus, death can be happy, even if it does end everything. Like it was said earlier here, some people are in constant pain throughout their lives. They aren't selfish enough to commit suicide, so they have to grin and bear it until death.

Then when you get bored, remove yourself? And that is only assuming you can do "anything and everything" in Heaven. The way I see it, it is a place to be eternally happy, and I don't see how you could say you wouldn't want it over just disappearing, because you would "get bored" - because in honesty, if you live to be over 90 years old, thats a REALLY LONG time, and I'm sure throughout that life you would be bored at periods (especially after you are really old), but that isn't reason enough for you to go "Oh meh, I'm bored, I'd rather just disappear."

And it doesn't require tending to "God's every whim".

You don't seem to understand just how long an eternity is. 90 years is nothing compared to it. Try multiplying a googleplex by a googleplex googleplex times. That's a ridiculously long number, and STILL nothing compared to an eternity. I guarantee you you'd get bored. I actually don't think you can be removed from Heaven after death if you want to, and if you do, where would you go?

For one, you're missing the point I was making. Whether or not someone wants eternal life is negligent to my argument.

Secondly, saying you'd get bored of eternal life is assuming you still carry negative emotions. If you were always happy and always having a good time, you wouldn't think about things like boredom.

Without negative emotions, you wouldn't have positive ones, either.

[Jake]

Exactly! A religious persons goal isn't to impose their beliefs on you, it's to open your eyes to eternal life. Your arguing points for atheism that go both ways.

Maybe some people don't WANT eternal life. Myself included. Doing anything would get boring eventually, and by that point you'd pretty much want to die and have it end. I know I would, and I certainly wouldn't want to be happy forever if it meant tending to God's every whim... Plus, death can be happy, even if it does end everything. Like it was said earlier here, some people are in constant pain throughout their lives. They aren't selfish enough to commit suicide, so they have to grin and bear it until death.

Then when you get bored, remove yourself? And that is only assuming you can do "anything and everything" in Heaven. The way I see it, it is a place to be eternally happy, and I don't see how you could say you wouldn't want it over just disappearing, because you would "get bored" - because in honesty, if you live to be over 90 years old, thats a REALLY LONG time, and I'm sure throughout that life you would be bored at periods (especially after you are really old), but that isn't reason enough for you to go "Oh meh, I'm bored, I'd rather just disappear."

And it doesn't require tending to "God's every whim".

You don't seem to understand just how long an eternity is. 90 years is nothing compared to it. Try multiplying a googleplex by a googleplex googleplex times. That's a ridiculously long number, and STILL nothing compared to an eternity. I guarantee you you'd get bored. I actually don't think you can be removed from Heaven after death if you want to, and if you do, where would you go?

For one, you're missing the point I was making. Whether or not someone wants eternal life is negligent to my argument.

Secondly, saying you'd get bored of eternal life is assuming you still carry negative emotions. If you were always happy and always having a good time, you wouldn't think about things like boredom.

Without negative emotions, you wouldn't have positive ones, either.

Why not?

[JoEL]

Exactly! A religious persons goal isn't to impose their beliefs on you, it's to open your eyes to eternal life. Your arguing points for atheism that go both ways.

Maybe some people don't WANT eternal life. Myself included. Doing anything would get boring eventually, and by that point you'd pretty much want to die and have it end. I know I would, and I certainly wouldn't want to be happy forever if it meant tending to God's every whim... Plus, death can be happy, even if it does end everything. Like it was said earlier here, some people are in constant pain throughout their lives. They aren't selfish enough to commit suicide, so they have to grin and bear it until death.

Then when you get bored, remove yourself? And that is only assuming you can do "anything and everything" in Heaven. The way I see it, it is a place to be eternally happy, and I don't see how you could say you wouldn't want it over just disappearing, because you would "get bored" - because in honesty, if you live to be over 90 years old, thats a REALLY LONG time, and I'm sure throughout that life you would be bored at periods (especially after you are really old), but that isn't reason enough for you to go "Oh meh, I'm bored, I'd rather just disappear."

And it doesn't require tending to "God's every whim".

You don't seem to understand just how long an eternity is. 90 years is nothing compared to it. Try multiplying a googleplex by a googleplex googleplex times. That's a ridiculously long number, and STILL nothing compared to an eternity. I guarantee you you'd get bored. I actually don't think you can be removed from Heaven after death if you want to, and if you do, where would you go?

For one, you're missing the point I was making. Whether or not someone wants eternal life is negligent to my argument.

Secondly, saying you'd get bored of eternal life is assuming you still carry negative emotions. If you were always happy and always having a good time, you wouldn't think about things like boredom.

Without negative emotions, you wouldn't have positive ones, either.

Why not?

Because in order to have positive emotions you need to have negative ones.

[Jake]

Exactly! A religious persons goal isn't to impose their beliefs on you, it's to open your eyes to eternal life. Your arguing points for atheism that go both ways.

Maybe some people don't WANT eternal life. Myself included. Doing anything would get boring eventually, and by that point you'd pretty much want to die and have it end. I know I would, and I certainly wouldn't want to be happy forever if it meant tending to God's every whim... Plus, death can be happy, even if it does end everything. Like it was said earlier here, some people are in constant pain throughout their lives. They aren't selfish enough to commit suicide, so they have to grin and bear it until death.

Then when you get bored, remove yourself? And that is only assuming you can do "anything and everything" in Heaven. The way I see it, it is a place to be eternally happy, and I don't see how you could say you wouldn't want it over just disappearing, because you would "get bored" - because in honesty, if you live to be over 90 years old, thats a REALLY LONG time, and I'm sure throughout that life you would be bored at periods (especially after you are really old), but that isn't reason enough for you to go "Oh meh, I'm bored, I'd rather just disappear."

And it doesn't require tending to "God's every whim".

You don't seem to understand just how long an eternity is. 90 years is nothing compared to it. Try multiplying a googleplex by a googleplex googleplex times. That's a ridiculously long number, and STILL nothing compared to an eternity. I guarantee you you'd get bored. I actually don't think you can be removed from Heaven after death if you want to, and if you do, where would you go?

For one, you're missing the point I was making. Whether or not someone wants eternal life is negligent to my argument.

Secondly, saying you'd get bored of eternal life is assuming you still carry negative emotions. If you were always happy and always having a good time, you wouldn't think about things like boredom.

Without negative emotions, you wouldn't have positive ones, either.

Why not?

Because in order to have positive emotions you need to have negative ones.

Doesn't answer my question. What's stopping God's limitless power from suspending emotions such as negativity? This is all based around the assumption that heaven and God are real, so the idea that you need negativity to have feelings of happiness isn't in the right context. If this were an argument that wasn't using the presupposition that God and heaven were real, I would agree with Chaos. Since this is not the case, I don't.

[Cactuscat222]

Exactly! A religious persons goal isn't to impose their beliefs on you, it's to open your eyes to eternal life. Your arguing points for atheism that go both ways.

Maybe some people don't WANT eternal life. Myself included. Doing anything would get boring eventually, and by that point you'd pretty much want to die and have it end. I know I would, and I certainly wouldn't want to be happy forever if it meant tending to God's every whim... Plus, death can be happy, even if it does end everything. Like it was said earlier here, some people are in constant pain throughout their lives. They aren't selfish enough to commit suicide, so they have to grin and bear it until death.

Then when you get bored, remove yourself? And that is only assuming you can do "anything and everything" in Heaven. The way I see it, it is a place to be eternally happy, and I don't see how you could say you wouldn't want it over just disappearing, because you would "get bored" - because in honesty, if you live to be over 90 years old, thats a REALLY LONG time, and I'm sure throughout that life you would be bored at periods (especially after you are really old), but that isn't reason enough for you to go "Oh meh, I'm bored, I'd rather just disappear."

And it doesn't require tending to "God's every whim".

You don't seem to understand just how long an eternity is. 90 years is nothing compared to it. Try multiplying a googleplex by a googleplex googleplex times. That's a ridiculously long number, and STILL nothing compared to an eternity. I guarantee you you'd get bored. I actually don't think you can be removed from Heaven after death if you want to, and if you do, where would you go?

For one, you're missing the point I was making. Whether or not someone wants eternal life is negligent to my argument.

Secondly, saying you'd get bored of eternal life is assuming you still carry negative emotions. If you were always happy and always having a good time, you wouldn't think about things like boredom.

Without negative emotions, you wouldn't have positive ones, either.

Why not?

Because in order to have positive emotions you need to have negative ones.

That is not true at all. While that is a common argument "You must have Chaos to have Order", it is an argument of perception. Basically, in order to establish that the emotions you have are 'positive', you must then have a reference of ones that are 'negative'. Yeah, that is true, but only to perceive what is good and what is bad. You can still only have the good without the bad, you just wouldn't know otherwise.

[Chaos]

You pretty much explained my point perfectly, Cactus.  Thanks.  Without negative emotions, you can't have positive emotions.  In essence, you can NEVER be happy all the time.  Why?  Because if you're happy all the time, then you aren't happy.  You're normal.  It won't feel 'happy', it'll feel 'normal'.

Let me put this another way.  You just got your drivers license.  You can now drive.  You're all excited, etc, because of these new experience and new found freedom.  Driving is fun.  And you can drive whenever you want.  Eventually, because you can do it ALL the time, it quickly loses its charm, and just becomes...normal.

Or you get a new awesome video game.  You play it constantly.  I'm sure many of you know that feeling where it suddenly loses it's charm, and you just have to put it down for a while before you can enjoy it again?

Yeah, I think that's enough examples.

[ARTgames]

You pretty much explained my point perfectly, Cactus.  Thanks.  Without negative emotions, you can't have positive emotions.  In essence, you can NEVER be happy all the time.  Why?  Because if you're happy all the time, then you aren't happy.  You're normal.  It won't feel 'happy', it'll feel 'normal'.

Let me put this another way.  You just got your drivers license.  You can now drive.  You're all excited, etc, because of these new experience and new found freedom.  Driving is fun.  And you can drive whenever you want.  Eventually, because you can do it ALL the time, it quickly loses its charm, and just becomes...normal.

Or you get a new awesome video game.  You play it constantly.  I'm sure many of you know that feeling where it suddenly loses it's charm, and you just have to put it down for a while before you can enjoy it again?

Yeah, I think that's enough examples.

Here the problem. they call heaven perfect but what perfect means is up to the user in most parts. its like calling something big. well what is big and what is the context.

What im saying is that perfect for you is different. There could be negative emotions if there are emotions at all. or you keep your bad ones for earth for a referents. and it can be something as simple as loosing a game of something there. idk i can make up anything. i have not died yet.

Non of this really matters any was. the idea of heaven is something by its self and opinion.

[Jake]

You pretty much explained my point perfectly, Cactus.  Thanks.  Without negative emotions, you can't have positive emotions.  In essence, you can NEVER be happy all the time.  Why?  Because if you're happy all the time, then you aren't happy.  You're normal.  It won't feel 'happy', it'll feel 'normal'.

Would the person still have feelings of happiness but call them normal? Or would those feelings of happiness lose their charm and become normal because of a lack of negativity? I'm not entirely sure of the stance you take in this first sentence so I'm just wondering if you could clarify.

You pretty much explained my point perfectly, Cactus.  Thanks.  Without negative emotions, you can't have positive emotions.  In essence, you can NEVER be happy all the time.  Why?  Because if you're happy all the time, then you aren't happy.  You're normal.  It won't feel 'happy', it'll feel 'normal'.

Let me put this another way.  You just got your drivers license.  You can now drive.  You're all excited, etc, because of these new experience and new found freedom.  Driving is fun.  And you can drive whenever you want.  Eventually, because you can do it ALL the time, it quickly loses its charm, and just becomes...normal.

Or you get a new awesome video game.  You play it constantly.  I'm sure many of you know that feeling where it suddenly loses it's charm, and you just have to put it down for a while before you can enjoy it again?

Yeah, I think that's enough examples.

Here the problem. they call heaven perfect but what perfect means is up to the user in most parts. its like calling something big. well what is big and what is the context.

What im saying is that perfect for you is different. There could be negative emotions if there are emotions at all. or you keep your bad ones for earth for a referents. and it can be something as simple as loosing a game of something there. idk i can make up anything. i have not died yet.

Non of this really matters any was. the idea of heaven is something by its self and opinion.

Very true. For arguments sake I believe we were going with the Christian view of heaven. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Chaos]

Okay, let me put it this way.  In the context of drugs, you know what "tolerance" is, correct?  As you take a drug, your "tolerance" for the drug will go up, which means you'd need to take more of the drug just to achieve the same high you were at before.  This is somewhat analogous to the happiness thing.  If you're happy ALL the time, your 'tolerance', as it were, would move up to the position of where the happiness is, making the happiness not feel GOOD, but NORMAL.

Essentially, a little bit of both, but depending on how you look at it, the first one, as Cactus stated, would mostly just be a matter of perception and semantics.  I'm not talking about how you'd CLASSIFY it, I'm talking about how you'd FEEL it.

[Jake]

Okay, let me put it this way.  In the context of drugs, you know what "tolerance" is, correct?  As you take a drug, your "tolerance" for the drug will go up, which means you'd need to take more of the drug just to achieve the same high you were at before.  This is somewhat analogous to the happiness thing.  If you're happy ALL the time, your 'tolerance', as it were, would move up to the position of where the happiness is, making the happiness not feel GOOD, but NORMAL.

Essentially, a little bit of both, but depending on how you look at it, the first one, as Cactus stated, would mostly just be a matter of perception and semantics.  I'm not talking about how you'd CLASSIFY it, I'm talking about how you'd FEEL it.

Ok, got it. I thought you might be simply arguing the classification of the word in the first sentence, but wasn't sure. The rest of your post was resoundingly clear from the start.

Anyway, despite how completely legit this logic it is, who's to say it needs to be like this in heaven? If one believes in a God that claims one will be happy forever, the way in which it is accomplished does not matter. Matters of emotion and human nature might not be the same.

[Chaos]

who's to say it needs to be like this in heaven?

Jesus.  He said so.  I asked him about it over a cup of tea and he told me all about it.  He's a pretty cool guy.  Kicks ass at Guitar Hero, too.


Yeah, we're touching on "unknowable" and "A Wizard Did it" territory again.

[Jake]

who's to say it needs to be like this in heaven?

Jesus.  He said so.  I asked him about it over a cup of tea and he told me all about it.  He's a pretty cool guy.  Kicks ass at Guitar Hero, too.


Yeah, we're touching on "unknowable" and "A Wizard Did it" territory again.

All of religion is based around "A wizard named God did it". That's why I find it pointless to argue whether he can or cannot do it, because it always ends back at the root question... Is there actually a wizard in the first place?

And I highly doubt Jesus is good at guitar hero. Don't say things like that just to get on his list.

[Chaos]

No, really, he can do Through Fire and Flames on Expert.  It was pretty impressive.

[LeGuy]

Random Information That Might Be Helpful in This Topic
By LeGuy

I'm going to use a Greek myth to try to describe what I think heaven would be like.

If I remember correctly, Hera, Zeus's official wife, is jealous at one of Zeus's unofficial earthly wives - I forget her name, let's call her Jenny. (Zeus was quite an unfaithful husband.) So, she takes the form of some old lady and convinces Jenny that Zeus doesn't really love her due to the fact that he has never shown her his godly superform. (To this point, Zeus had just been taking the appearance of a regular human whilst visiting Jenny.) So Jenny, quite upset, visits Zeus and asks for a wish. Zeus swears to wish it. The wish, obviously, is to see his god form. Zeus becomes quite distraught, because no mortal can survive seeing Zeus in all his glory. But Jenny, a particularly stupid individual, still insists on seeing Zeus, and Zeus cannot break his oath. So, Zeus arranges his smallest cloud and least impressive lightning bolt, and shows Jenny his god form. Needless to say, Jenny burst into flames and died instantly.

The point I'm trying to make here is heaven wouldn't be some place similar to earth, except the roads are made out of gold and there are a bunch of jewels everywhere and everybody is happy. I think the Bible describes heaven as that to sort of give an earthly equivalent of how awesome it's going to be just being in God's presence. We all think about heaven, wondering if we'll be able to do the things we like on earth. Quite frankly, I don't even find the view of heaven all that tremendously appealing. Eternity is a mind-boggling amount of time, and sometimes it's a little unpleasant thinking that I'll be existing FOREVER. But assuming that God is an infinitely glorious being, just being in His presence for an eternity shouldn't be boring.