…and this is a 
Religion has a real problem with incentives. As long as they're all in an invisible afterlife, it's hard to take them seriously.
The religion I grew up in was rather vague about the consequences — there was a Hell which was not discussed in polite company, and Heaven was a place brought up at funerals as an answer to where the dead had gone, nothing more. I didn't think much about it until I was in my early teens, when a crazy lady forced me to…and mainly, she made me realize she was a crazy lady.
My brother and I were walking down James Hill in Kent when a woman started yelling and hallooing at us, waving her arms frantically. We stopped — we were young and trusting and living in a small town, nowadays I'd probably start running while pulling out a cell phone and calling the police — and like good polite boys we wondered what we could do to help her. She pulled out a Bible and told us how happy she was to see us and so glad to be able to bring us the Good Word and had we been saved? And do we love Jesus? She had a kind of manic cackle and a demented grin on her face, and at this point, despite our innocent Tom Sawyeresque upbringing, I was beginning to wonder if she was going to pull out an obsidian knife and sacrifice us, laughing and smiling the whole time.
She really warmed to her subject when she began to talk about the Lake of Fire, though. "When you go to Hell, you are thrown in the Lake of Fire [big smile — I noted she had very nice dentures] and your skin will be burned off and your lungs will be seared by the fumes. Do you know what brimstone is? [smile] It's a sulfurous rock so hot it melts and smokes and it will be poured down your throat [rapturous smile] and you will be trapped there forever writhing in agony and you can never get out, no matter how much you scream and scream and scream and your Mommy and Daddy won't be able to save you, ever [sad smile]. But I can save you now! All you have to do is swear your love for your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen, right here, and you'll be spared the torments of the damned! Hee, hee!"
And then she told us to kneel down in the gravel by the side of the road and put our hands on her Bible, which we did, because at this point I was afraid if I didn't our Mommy and Daddy would find our little corpses with our throats slit and a mad woman dancing in our blood. Then she recited some lengthy vow with lots of Jesus in it, looked at us expectently with another mad-eyed grin, and we mumble-whispered "yes, ma'am" and she let us go, throats uncut, hearts still in our chests, heads still attached to our necks, while she capered off triumphantly, having secured two more souls for her lord and master. She thought.
But, as you can know now, all she actually managed to do was make me aware that people who believe in Heaven and Hell are freakin' nutbag insane.
This is a real problem for religion. Oh, sure, it works just fine as a motivating mechanism when all it is is a simply presented choice between pain and bliss (hint: most people can choose bliss without even breaking a sweat), but if you really think about it, the whole concept doesn't hold up under inspection at all, and the effectiveness of the metaphysical carrot and stick only works if nobody tries to think it through. It's not just that there is zero evidence for any claims of an afterlife, but that they are logically untenable.
Hell. Let's start with the ol' bugaboo, a bad place of eternal suffering. Most of the naive portrayals of Hell are weirdly material: if I'm dead, I'm bodiless, so what's all this nonsense about pain and body parts on fire? And really, I don't think my mind, or anyone's mind, could hold up for more than a few moments under the kind of intense agony they propose before consciousness is lost, insanity ensues, and a complete disintegration of self and personality is accomplished, so simmering a twitching husk in a pool of lava for eternity seems rather pointless. Unless, of course, God is some kind of mindless psychopath who likes pointless torture.
Other visions of Hell are a bit more sophisticated — it's a place of psychological torture, unending despair and futility, where you feel regret and sorrow for all time, or suffer because you are deprived of the presence of God. That's a bit more plausible for a disembodied self, I suppose, but still…throw a mob of people in a Slough of Despond for a long, long time, and at some point someone is going to get together with someone else and form a Glee Club, and there will be singing in Hell. And then a rugby match will break out, and there will be cheering and betting, and thespians will be pestering Shakespeare for some new plays, and before you know it, culture will emerge and it won't be Hell so much anymore. Dante's glum ghosts never seemed particularly likely to me.
But all right, let's assume God has figured out ways to permanently suppress the human spirit among all those deceased spirits, and actually has contrived a truly painful Hell, one that I can not imagine but that he can, being God and all. Now we've got the problem that the loving God we're all supposed to worship is an imaginative, creative death camp commandant, one who also maintains a luxury spa on the side. In that case, let's just scratch "loving" and "worship" from his description.
Furthermore, there's another twist. Most of the people who believe in this paingod also believe in a final judgment — that is, there's a point before which you've got an opportunity to make the right choice and get in God's good graces, and after which…sorry, you're just done. You've abandoned all hope of salvation and will suffer forever, with no possibility of forgiveness. Does that make sense? No. I can understand punishment as a motivator — maybe angels whose harps fall out of tune get slapped with an hour in the Lake of Fire so they don't do it again — but what's the point of punishment without reprieve, without opportunity for reform? Your soul gets the first brief 70 years of its existence to decide whether Mormonism or Islam or Lutheranism (ELCA) or Lutheranism (Wisconsin synod) or Lutheranism (Missouri synod) or Catholicism are true, and if you make the wrong guess, the next billions and billions and billions of years are spent in utter abject misery? That's insane.
The whole concept of Hell is so demented and irrational, that many religious people have abandoned it. There are quite a few Christians who sensibly reject it and simply say that because their God is a loving God, everyone gets to go to Heaven. Of course, now they're stuck with the concept of Heaven.
Heaven. The funny thing is, for all my inability to imagine a viable vision of Hell, what probably comes closest is most people's version of Heaven. Who would want to even visit Puritan Heaven, with all its smug and judgmental inhabitants praising God non-stop with pursed lips suspicious eyes? What woman would want to live in Mormon heaven, and what man could dwell there for long without developing a smidgen of guilt?
Heaven has all the problems of Hell. Just as this personality, this self, this me would not persist if it were immersed in the Lake of Fire, making immortality rather irrelevant, so too would I cease to exist if scoured in the all-consuming love of an omnipresent deity. What kind of PZ Myers could exist when stripped of doubt and disbelief and irreverence and impudence? An angelic PZ is a contradiction in terms — it would be the death of the me that counts. I am disbarred by my nature from any form of Heaven.
A paradise is also inhuman (I know, one can get around this by arguing that after death you can't be human anymore, by definition; but then that requires throwing away the idea of life after death, which is what most people find appealing). Think about what defines you now: it's how you think, your personality, your desires and how you achieve them — by what you strive for. Finish one project, and what do you do (after a little celebration, of course)? You look for something else to strive for, a new goal to keep you interested and occupied. But now you're in heaven. All wishes are fulfilled, all desires achieved, we're done with everything we've ever dreamed of, making Heaven a kind of retirement home where everyone is waiting to die. Waiting forever.
You can't ask a human being to shed all of their aspirations without expecting them to seek new ones, and no, membership in the Choir Celestial isn't going to be for everyone, nor is doing the finest job in the universe buffing God's toenails. Given eternity to plan, you just know everyone is eventually going to get around to plotting the Big Coup, and then it's back to Hell again, which we've already said is an untenable concept.
Of course, there is another version of Heaven that rips away all those troubling desires that define our humanity. Heaven is pure bliss, pure joy, pure worshipful existence in the presence of the deity; you won't miss those trifling hopes because they will be blown away by unadulterated rapturous ecstasy fired straight into your soul by Jesus himself, for a high that will never ever end.
This is the crack cocaine vision of an afterlife.
I confess, it does have some appeal.
It is, again, a kind of death of the self, a commitment to an end of your existence as you know it for a mindless non-existence, but at least it's winking out cheerfully. It's rather like being given a choice on your deathbed: you can 1) have an overdose of painkillers with a tincture of ecstasy and aphrodisiacs while having aorta-rupturing sex, or you can 2) go out gasping and choking and clawing for a few more minutes of strained life, fighting for every second. I'd tend to favor choice #2 myself, but I can sympathize with those who would rather pick door #1. Either way, though, it's an end of who you are.
There are some religions that embrace this sublime vision of an ultimate end that does not include the mundane humanity of its believers — the Buddhist afterlife does seem to be a kind of selfless oblivion — but that does not include the Abrahamic religions. They've still got the cartoonish anthropocentric version of an afterlife, where you've got a body with limbs and tongues and penises and vaginas, and you get to indulge in the senses within certain confining rules. You get to meet Grandma and Grandpa again, and they aren't all subsumed in the godhead — they're there to give you hugs and a plate of cookies. And that's just silly. I can't believe a word of it.
I especially cannot believe any of it in the absence of any reasonable evidence. It's really nothing but people making stuff up based entirely on what they wish were true.
I'm not a popular fellow at funerals, you might guess. It's not that I'm a disruptive shouter — funerals are places for grief and consolation, not anger — but I'm not going to deliver a eulogy unless it's something like, "The deceased is dead and gone forever, now get on with your lives and accomplish as much as they did. Oh, and by the way, that smug jerk in the funny collar over there is lying to you if he says anything different."
That is the godless view of death. It's an end, not a transition. It deserves all the sorrow the living bring to it, and the absurd attempts of the believers to soften it with lies are a contemptible disservice to the life that is over. Don't be shy about saying it, either; the life that is lost is far more important and the death far more tragic than any fantastic superstition conjured up by some pious twit can obliterate.
Although, come to think of it, funerals are fitting places for sacrilege. You're all invited to mine, someday, and please do have a laugh over that rotting meat at the front of the room. I'll be gone, I won't mind…but please be nice to the family, even if they're right up there razzing god with you.
Comments
Posted by: Galactus35
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June 6, 2010 12:29 PM
I think an eternity of anything would be hell.
Posted by: Zeno
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June 6, 2010 12:32 PM
My devoutly Catholic mom used to find it amusing to yell "Blow it up!" when we would drive past a Protestant church. She'd do this even with our Methodist friends in the car. I guess religion makes you a terrorist.
Posted by: Lynna, OM
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June 6, 2010 12:33 PM
Nice post, PZ. I'll have to save this one.
Your ellipsis code is not appearing correctly.
The idea of a heaven where ripe fruit never falls but just hangs ever-perfect on the bough ... well, it sounds like hell.
Posted by: Aquaria
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June 6, 2010 12:34 PM
When I die, the family can do what they want with saying goodbye. I won't care, and I couldn't control it anyway.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkZ6bud_2OWnH4ya1KYZ-QpvDKkqP4LTac
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June 6, 2010 12:35 PM
Here's one I love to posit w/the fundies: So, why do I need to accept Jesus? "Because we are sinful." Well, why are we sinful? "Because God gave us free will and we choose evil." But, if free will makes this life sinful and imperfect, and heaven is perfect and without sin, does that mean there's no free will in heaven? **crickets**
Or does that mean somehow in heaven free will and perfection co-exist? And if so, why didn't he just give us that state on earth to begin with? since he loves us so much? **more crickets***
Have a nice day.
Posted by: Lynna, OM
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June 6, 2010 12:36 PM
When my father died, we had a memorial camping trip. This worked out so well, that we did the same thing when my mother died. Going out as a family and doing something together that my parents enjoyed was a great way to both remember and honor them.
Posted by: Steven Dunlap
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June 6, 2010 12:38 PM
Roger Ebert made an similar observation in his review of the movie The Lovely Bones : if heaven is such a wonderful place, why is murder a crime? (He does not actually write those exact words, but follow the link to read another well written critique of the whole idea of a heaven - not better or worse than PZ's, but worth reading too).
Posted by: Sid Schwab
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June 6, 2010 12:39 PM
I wrote about this, too, in the better of my blogs.
To do right in life, because it's right, and not for fear of eternal punishment or expectation of heavenly reward, it seems to me, represents far higher ethics than those of the religious. Referencing the best blog around, I wrote this, too, on my other blog.
Posted by: eeanm
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June 6, 2010 12:39 PM
I have heard of another version of Christian heaven. Everyone is in a blissful sleep until judgment day, when everyone wakes up, gets judged. The Christians creates a Kingdom of Heaven. Which would look and work a lot like Earth. I think it depends which book of the Bible you read.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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June 6, 2010 12:42 PM
I've never grasped the goddist concept of Heaven.
The Christian Heaven is an eternal glee club where folks pluck harps and sing hymns of praise to a megalomaniac. I'd be bored within the first minute.
The Islamic Heaven is an eternal orgy. That would have enticed me when I was 16 and overflowing with hormones but at age 62 I'd be bored within the first hour.
The Norse Valhalla is an eternal brawl and steak house. I stopped fighting when I was in 3rd grade and got beaten up by a 2nd grader (she was smaller than me). I prefer pasta and wine to steak and mead.
None of the other Heavens seem particularly enticing either. Where is the opportunity for intellectual discourse, for scientific research (eternity means one can have some really long term experiments), for satisfying curiosity? Most Heavens seem made up by adolescent dimwits whose idea of a good time is standing around and asking each other: "Whadda you wanna do?" "I dunno, whadda you wanna do?"
Posted by: sbrickner.myopenid.com
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June 6, 2010 12:42 PM
Let's not forget the "eternity" aspect of it.
Even if Heaven is pretty much just like here, but with all the stuff we don't like taken away, and we can do anything we want (childhood summer vacation all year round, with no rainy days), just how many times can you do "the most fun thing ever" until it becomes tedious? Then you move on to the next most fun thing ever, until you can't stand that, either. Then the next, and the next, until you've done *everything* and it's all just tedious.
And you still have an eternity to go. Now what? Do them over in a different order? How about when you've done them all over in every possible order?
More eternity awaits.
Shudder.
Posted by: MJS
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June 6, 2010 12:45 PM
This an old advertising technique: put your product in a "problem/solution" equation. In this instance, the "problem" is eternal damnation and suffering, the "solution" is whatever your church or belief system has to remedy the problem. It seems fitting in a capitalist society that matters of the spirit are reduced to an infantile "wishing not to be harmed" paradigm.
Heaven and Hell are the polar extremes of our fears and desires, dream-like in construction, ephemeral and illogical. When we think in terms of opposites such a situation arises, but it's just an abstraction.
"Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies."
— Joseph Campbell (Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor)
++++
Posted by: Steven Dunlap
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June 6, 2010 12:47 PM
Who was it who said "Heaven for the weather and Hell for the company?"
Posted by: Steven Dunlap
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June 6, 2010 12:50 PM
Given that I am descended from nearly all of these arbitrary categories of persons and the joke is ultimately a harmless riff on ethnic stereotypes, I'll share this one:
Heaven is where
The Chefs are French
The Car Mechanics are German
The Lovers are Italian
The Police are English
And it's all organized by the Swiss
Hell is where
The Chefs are English
The Car Mechanics are French
The Police are German
The Lovers are Swiss
And it's all organized by the Italians.
Posted by: vbalbert
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June 6, 2010 12:53 PM
This exists here on Earth right now (although without the God part) and unfortunately I'm one of the many people who live it. It's called clinical depression and I have a particularly severe form of it. If there is a loving god, why torture people with this (or any other physical or psychological) disease?. Unless I'm already dead and this is hell. But I have no recollection of anything for which I might be punished.
Apparently the Mormons have an answer to this: my spirit was created before I was born and apparently I did something bad (nobody can tell me what and I don't remember what it was) that invited this punishment to be put upon me. But what good is punishment without knowledge of the transgression?
Yep, it's pretty nutty and I'm glad I don't have to listen to that pious BS anymore.
Posted by: Daddy Hogwash
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June 6, 2010 12:55 PM
Who said, "Life is a brief glimpse of time between two eternities". That pretty much sums it up.
Posted by: Daddy Hogwash
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June 6, 2010 1:02 PM
I like the heaven in 'Field of Dreams'.
"Is this heaven?"
"No. It's Iowa."
Posted by: frisbeetarian
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June 6, 2010 1:04 PM
Just finished watching 'The Invention of Lying' where Ricky Gervais makes the mistake of trying to explain the 'The Invisible Man in the Sky', once you start it becomes a crazy circle of insanity.
I think death is a transition but for the living. When my dog died, I had to transition to living without my best friend which was difficult at times. What a boring place heaven would be without any need to strive to make things better or to help others or to make art or conversation and of course, since we would be perfect, no free will.
Posted by: paul fauvet
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June 6, 2010 1:06 PM
What do you do for all eternity in Heaven?
According to some of the best known Church fathers, the entertainment on offer is watching the torments of the damned.
Here's Tertullian:
"At that greatest of all spectacles, that last and eternal judgment how shall I admire, how
laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the
lowest abyss of darkness…"
And here's Thomas Aquinas:
"That the saints may enjoy their beatitude more thoroughly, and give more abundant thanks for it to God, a perfect sight of the punishment of the
damned is granted them."
In other words, being in Heaven is like watching a snuff movie for ever.
Yet when I ask my religious friends if there will be beer and sex in Heaven, they look at me as if I've gone insane.
Posted by: Mattir-ritated
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June 6, 2010 1:07 PM
Actually Judaism spends virtually no time or energy focusing on either heaven or hell, viewing the "after death" portion of existence as unknowable. Significant strains of Jewish thought posit either that human beings do not have souls that survive death or that if there are souls they aren't a unitary entity and thus get divided and recombined into other souls.
There are plenty of weird things about Judaism, just not this particular weirdness - that belongs pretty much to the Christians and Muslims.
Posted by: Jon A
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June 6, 2010 1:07 PM
Hell is where;
The chefs are English...
I'd refuse to go to a heaven without Sophie Dahl and Nigella Lawson.
Posted by: GaryU
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June 6, 2010 1:08 PM
"Cake or death?" That's a pretty easy question. Anyone could answer that.Posted by: Zeno
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June 6, 2010 1:10 PM
I believe there is beer in the Pastafarian heaven (right?), but the basis for that belief is insubstantial and, anyway, I don't like beer.
Posted by: irenedelse
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June 6, 2010 1:11 PM
PZ, thanks for this refreshing perspective. I recently buried a parent and had to organize and then go through a catholic ceremony, because the deceased person was deeply religious. My relative's faith didn't bother me: it was her feelings, her world-view, her choice in life to be a Catholic.
But having to listen to the platitudes spouted by the priest was an ordeal. No, "the departed go back to the Eternal Father" doesn't make the loss less painful! Neither is "with the Lord as my Shepherd, I'll want for nothing, he cures all that ails me" (cruel irony, as that person died after several years of crippling bad health and while struggling with severe financial problems). As for "If I don't have faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I have nothing", it's just plain rude to all non-Christians! And there were plenty of them in the audience, including Muslims as well as atheists.
So, yeah, psalms and prayers were balm to the ears of my departed relative, even if they did little more than make her feel better for a while. But being preached to while we were saying good bye to her for all eternity? That was... Bizarre. And tasteless.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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June 6, 2010 1:14 PM
You're probably thinking of Mark Twain's comment: "Heaven for climate, Hell for society."
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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June 6, 2010 1:14 PM
I've argued before that Heaven has been overrun by the inhabitants of Hell, but this seems like a good opportunity for a recap:
1. Heaven can be threatened by outside forces, otherwise there'd be no need for the heavenly host, with those angels and their flaming swords. You have no need for cops or soldiers unless you have or anticipate having an enemy.
2. Hell is full of the most ambitious megalomaniacs in history. Every Alexander, every Genghis Khan, every Napoleon, every Hitler is there. And none of them want to be. Hell is the ultimate yearning for lebensraum.
3. As PZ points out, Hell's punishments are eternal, and thus serve as no deterrent whatsoever. Stole a few bucks from the collection plate and died before confessing? Eternity in hell. Had gay sex? Eternity in Hell. Killed someone? Eternity in Hell. Organised your fellow damned and tried to overthrow Heaven? Eternity in Hell—but what's the harm in trying again tomorrow? You're already in Hell.
4. Both Heaven and Hell are eternal. Infinite. They've been going on forever. So if there's even the smallest chance that an invasion by Hell might succeed, then it already has.
Poor Abrahamists. I can't imagine their disappointment when they die and learn the loving god they'd prayed to all their lives has been a head on a pike for the last 30,000 years.
Posted by: blf
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June 6, 2010 1:18 PM
Maybe not clear? I thought it was Mark Twain, but Generalissimo Google™ finds people who think it was Albert Einstein, Anon., and so on.
Posted by: irenedelse
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June 6, 2010 1:19 PM
@ Brownian, OM (#26):
That's... an awesome premise for a fantasy story! I'd pay to read that. Or see the movie.
Posted by: Dave A
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June 6, 2010 1:20 PM
I always tell my fundie friends that I don't want to go to a place that has no bars or strip clubs. Most attend church infrequently for a 30-40 minute service. How are they going to handle an eternity. Maybe there's delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinal there. That might make the trip worthwhile.
Posted by: Alverant
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June 6, 2010 1:21 PM
In Piers Anthony's series Incarnations of Immortality, God and Devil (along with others) are offices held by former mortals. In the 6th book "Love of Evil" the current lord of Evil, Satan, starts wondering what his duties are. Is he to punish evil, encourage it on Earth, tempt people to sin, etc. He wants to find out why the rules for what's a sin are inherently unfair like how a baby born out of wedlock already has a mark against it. (Oh, I should mention that this Satan is a professional and when some souls were mistakingly sent to Hell during the Black Death, he made a fake Heaven for them.) So he crosses the Void to Heaven to ask God what's going on.
In the book Heaven is a BORING place. There's a circle of Heaven for True Lovers but since there's no sex in Heaven all they can do is stare at each other. Same sort of thing for the are for holy warriors and debaters; no conflict so no conflict resolution. It's SO boring one of the souls asks to go back down to Hell's mock Heaven because his friends are there. Satan does get to meet God, but God is so enraptured by his own awesomeness that he doesn't do his duties. The crack cocaine afterlife.
Larry Niven and someone else wrote two books, "Inferno" and "Escape from Hell" which are sequels of sort to Dante's Inferno. The protagonist tries to figure out what Hell is for and concludes it's an insane asylum for the theologically crazy. (He's eventually told to leave Hell by Satan for helping to set off a nuclear explosion in the frozen circle of Hell for traitors.)
Why does the afterlife have such appeal? No one knows exactly what's there (if anything) yet people are willing to kill or die (and in some cases both) to get there. Yet given the vague descriptions in the major versions of the hereafter, one would think they would become boring eventually or their self-awareness would be obliterated from joy/suffering. Sometimes I wonder if the Buddhists have the better idea.
If there is an afterlife, I hope it's NOT perfect. I hope there would be chances to challenge and improve yourself if you so want. (Or you could spend a couple of decades playing MMORPGs if you so choose.) It should be like retirement with a fat bank account.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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June 6, 2010 1:23 PM
When I was a young child, I envisioned heaven as an eternal guided tour through the universe, unconstrained by time and distance. One could check out planets, galaxies, and nebulae as much as one wished. See what killed the dinosaurs. Feed trilobites.
That would be my heaven. And I'll admit to looking down on people whose idea of heaven is 'seeing Gran again' as terminally dull and without imagination.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
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June 6, 2010 1:26 PM
Since it is obvious that the human body cannot exist more than a few seconds in the conventional Hell and that the human spirit cannot exist for any longer in the conventional Heaven, there is only one conclusion:
God eats souls.
Whether you go to Hell (and are grilled to a turn) or to Heaven (and are suffused into a boredom beyond tears), God is gonna eat your soul. I hear he is a notoriously slow chewer and likes to wallow his food about in his mouth and even spits the cud into his hand sometimes just to see what it looks like. (He also inspects his turds to find bits that weren't fully chewed.)
The frightening truth becomes obvious:
THE BIBLE!!! IT'S A COOOOOKBOOOOOK!!!!
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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June 6, 2010 1:31 PM
@irenedelse #24:
As I was writing that I was thinking I really should expand it into a short story at the very least. Glad to know at least one person would enjoy the premise!
Posted by: Squiddhartha
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June 6, 2010 1:34 PM
Laurie Anderson: "Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much, better."
Posted by: Bethistopheles
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June 6, 2010 1:34 PM
Crudely Wrot@#32:
I think you mean kook book.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
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June 6, 2010 1:35 PM
Heaven: harps
Hell: saxophones, electric guitars, drums, hollow logs...
Posted by: Classical Cipher
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June 6, 2010 1:39 PM
Brownian, I would enjoy both your short story and your heaven... As someone who can sometimes cry with frustration at the impossibility of long-distance space travel (does that make me crazy? ...prolly), I really, really wish that your heaven existed.
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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June 6, 2010 1:42 PM
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my mom after an old family friend died a couple of years ago.
(For background, my parents raised us in a secular household. However, once my sisters and I all moved out, my mom got heavily into woo-ish thinking and the very sanitized American version of "Buddhism.")
Before the funeral, I mentioned how sad I was and how much I already missed Dee. Mom (instead of being comforting, which is what I wanted) said something along the lines of, "Well, of course death is difficult for people like you. It must be depressing to think all we do it rot. I pity you."
Instead of responding, I hung up on her. I never expected to hear my mom call me an "uppity atheist" and our relationship is still strained.
Sigh. It's not just crazy xians that are the problem. This type of shit is everywhere.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
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June 6, 2010 1:43 PM
@35: Yes. It's possible that I did mean "kook book."
(I hadn't thought about that until you brought it up, but, yes, you may be onto something.) =)
Posted by: Eamon Knight
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June 6, 2010 1:45 PM
Random musings:
On my browser, PZ's ellipses are rendering as "[ampersand]Hellips". Which given the subject matter of the post, is first confusing, then amusing.
Re: getting bored by the afterlife. It depends: just how many things are there in the Universe to experience, and to learn about? How long would it take to thoroughly enjoy all that to the point of satiation, but not quite boredom? That's how long a properly-designed afterlife should last. I'll confess to being slightly bummed out by the fact that that time-span is undoubtedly considerably longer than the ~35 years I likely have left. Better make the most of it....
Funerals: I've been responsible for arranging exactly two memorials (for my Dad and my Mom). They were agnostics who belonged to a UU Fellowship, and by that time I was an atheist, so there was no religious issue; all I needed was the venue, and a UU chaplain to MC. I spoke about their lives, and about the legacy they each left behind them, and sprinkled in some brief readings from sources like Santayana. No god-talk, no "gone to another place".
Only one loose end to tie up: I haven't figured out anything appropriate to do with their ashes. It hardly seems to matter: the ashes aren't "them" in any important sense; my parents' only meaningful existence is in the memories of we who loved them, and in the family memorabilia and other artefacts. Making something on my Dad's old table-saw is an act of remembrance more significant to me than laying flowers on any grave-site.
Posted by: ecr111
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June 6, 2010 1:47 PM
@vbalbert,
Clinical depression is an awful thing. I hope things improve for you soon.
You bring up a good point...what did any of us do wrong if we are being punished? If you're accused of a crime, you need to told what it is and what your rights are. If God doesn't do that, he really is acting like a petty third world dictator. Why does God sound so much like Kim Jong Il? Both are egomaniacs who demand worship from their followers. Any dissent is met with torture. Both act as judge, jury, and executioner with no regard to legal rights.
Perhaps the similarity is because we are social animals who like to maintain social hierarchies. Of course the creator of the universe would be an alpha male, who else would be that ambitious? Such is the lack of imagination among bronze age people.
I also want to know why heaven and hell are eternal, but the universe is only 6000 years old. If religion doesn't have a problem with eternity, why are they so bothered by time scales longer than a couple thousand years.
Finally, I would like to point out that Dio was in Heaven and Hell, but now he is in neither.
Posted by: Insightful Ape
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June 6, 2010 1:54 PM
PZ, you need to read the Koran.
The Koranic description of hell is even more graphic and revolting than what you got from the street preacher. While the concept itself was borrowed from Christianity, the good prophet embellished it with a whole new set of ideas: running ulcers, burning flesh, boiling water, etc. Oh, and as your skin burns out, fresh skin will grow such that the cycle can be repeated, over and over.
Quite amazingly, one of the central claims of Islam about the Koran is its "aesthetic" value: according to the Islamic doctrine, Koran is the most astonishingly "beautiful" piece of literature, of all times, not just in Arabic, but in all human languages.
You really can't make this stuff up.
Posted by: mxh
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June 6, 2010 1:58 PM
@#30 Alverant
The problem is that the people who really, really aspire to go there don't really think much about it. There's little logic in religion and all you need is someone to tell you that Heaven is good and Hell is bad and you'll fight tooth and nail to get to the good one.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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June 6, 2010 1:58 PM
Not crazy; just a science-lovin' nerd like the rest of us!
Posted by: Iain Walker
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June 6, 2010 1:58 PM
Crudely Wrott (#32):
Ah, soul-building theodicies make so much more sense now ...
Posted by: Shala
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June 6, 2010 1:59 PM
I used to want to see my grandmother again. I don't know what to think of myself or the way I used to act.
There should be a tier list for afterlifes too. Valhalla would definitely be at the top.
Posted by: cosmas
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June 6, 2010 2:00 PM
Any deity worth her divine omniscient knowledge of human neurochemistry would spend very little resources & real estate on either Heaven or Hell. All God would have to do is turn on/off the appropriate neurotransmitters and endorphins to keep the human mind in perpetual holographic loop of pain, ecstasy, bliss or torment. Our mind seems well adept at powerful delusions & a wise Creator would avail herself of such characteristics instead of restricting her imagination to physical limitations of time & space.
Posted by: gravenimageadvice
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June 6, 2010 2:01 PM
I've always wondered how the saved were supposed to be happy for all eternity in the presence of god when their friends and relatives were writhing in hell.
If your Christianity is consistent, you'd have to praise god for heaving them into hell in the first place, since he can do no wrong.
Posted by: blf
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June 6, 2010 2:01 PM
Actually, “&Hellip;” (no s).
I assume that's the result of poopyhead doing something like: s/hell/Hell/g I also find it amusing.
Posted by: SaraJ
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June 6, 2010 2:02 PM
I was once involved with a man who was (and presumably still IS, I guess) a Southern Baptist. I wasn't quite a confirmed atheist at the time, but I was getting there. He and I used to get into arguments because he would sorrowfully inform me that when we both died, he'd be in heaven, and I would be in hell. He wanted me to convert so that we could spend eternity together (an idea which makes me nauseous now). I would ask him, if heaven is so wonderful, and god so loving, why would he separate us for eternity without any possibility of us reuniting in heaven to make my ex happy - I mean, wouldn't my ex miss me and be sad, therefore negating the silly story of eternal bliss in heaven? He said he wouldn't even remember me... which also didn't make sense to me, because then, why would he care? The whole idea of heaven and hell is just downright daft and goofy and weird.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
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June 6, 2010 2:02 PM
Eamon @40 muses about boredom in eternity. Me too. I suppose that the index of boredom would be in proportion the what is disallowed by the tin horn crime boss who runs the joint.
If the only rules are those imposed by physics and chemistry and the totality of human mentality survives death and can manipulate matter and energy in some familiar fashion then I just can't wait.
Since I assume that such a pipe dream is false, I am content to wait a natural end and to call it good. My children will keep me alive as they live their lives, and then my grandkids and their kids and, oh, it just never ends.
Posted by: Stephen_P
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June 6, 2010 2:04 PM
Indeed. I presume that it is in fact the subject matter of the post that is responsible for the subliminal screw-up (it's the capital H that's doing it.)
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
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June 6, 2010 2:05 PM
Purgatory: banjos, accordions, bagpipes
Posted by: AlisonS
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June 6, 2010 2:08 PM
There is always the epilogue to Saint Joan, by George Bernard Shaw, where the soldier who offered her water while she was being barbequed was granted a week out of hell each year. He doesn't like his week off as hell is much more interesting, what with all the popes, kings etc. residing there.
Posted by: frustum.myopenid.com
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June 6, 2010 2:11 PM
Back when I first learned about sperm and eggs when I was ten, I spent a long time pondering how I would have been different had a different sperm been the one that broke the barrier. It took a while to realize that simply I wouldn't have been. My siblings would have had a different sibling.
This is much the same case that PZ makes here; in this make believe situation where I'm in boiling oil 24/7 for eternity, I wouldn't be me. In an instant I'd simply be a suffering entity with no connection to who I was.
Meanwhile, I'm sure my parents would be up in heaven, in perfect bliss and chuckling while their son was tormented, praising God for his unending benevolence.
Posted by: trog69
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June 6, 2010 2:11 PM
I'm with Brownian and others; I'd like to learn until I was done. I'd like to be able to go where I want, instantly, mebbe as a photon. I'd be able to conduct experiments, deduce probabilities, and just learn for as long as I wish. Finally, I'd call up the big guy and ask for whatever answers I was unable to find out on my own, and have him put me down for the rest of eternity. No more conscious thought, just the final sleep.
Posted by: SEF
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June 6, 2010 2:12 PM
@ GaryU #22:
Not in the way you probably imagine. If the "cake" contains ingredients to which they are allergic and which will cause them to suffer greatly before possibly dying anyway, whereas the specific "death" on offer is a completely painless one, then the answer is the reverse of the normally expected one. The tricky part in answering the question is in establishing the exact natures of the proffered cake and death options.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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June 6, 2010 2:12 PM
Eamon Knight (#32):
Friend of mine who died a few years back ended up with his ashes (plus a load of grave goods) loaded onto a replica Viking Longship which was then ceremoniously torched on the beach at Whitby.
But then he was an Estonian Goth.
Posted by: Bronze Dog
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June 6, 2010 2:13 PM
I'm reminded of my grandmother's funeral. It's bad enough that funerals typically involve lies to dull the pain and delay the grieving process. It gets worse when the religious try to turn it into an Amway recruitment drive, instead of letting us remember what made the dearly departed so unique.
Posted by: ivo
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June 6, 2010 2:13 PM
Brownian #31:
Then you sir, to literally feel like heaven you need only start reading Stapledon's Star Maker(a good idea for anybody else too, I'd say).
And start writing that fantasy story, I'll want to read it too. If you need suggestions on how to handle an afterlife crowded with interacting historical characters resurrected from all eras, you might want to consult Philip Jose Farmers Riverworld series...
Posted by: emote_control
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June 6, 2010 2:14 PM
Some members of The Church of The SubGenius went to some kind of religious outdoor fair to preach the word of "Bob". They encountered a Christian who determined to save their souls. The Christian was trying to tell them that if they would only accept Jeezus they'd get to go to heaven.
When they declined the offer, the Christian said "but, don't you want to live forever?"
One of the SubGeniuses replied, "that sounds like hell to me!"
Posted by: SaintStephen
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June 6, 2010 2:15 PM
Both choices appear rather similar to me. Or maybe it's just the women I'm hanging out with.Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/7bP64dsCsNde3x.4t5pshK_WF4p8#86291
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June 6, 2010 2:17 PM
Brownian@26
There is always this alternative
salvation war
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/7bP64dsCsNde3x.4t5pshK_WF4p8#86291
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June 6, 2010 2:21 PM
Damn the link dosnt work but its to TV tropes(are you surprised)
Posted by: formosus
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June 6, 2010 2:23 PM
Even funnier than heaven or hell is the (now abandoned) idea of a finite time in purgatory before you can go into heaven. I think my Catholic parents still believe in that one. It's an absurd concept, if heaven really is eternal. No matter how much time you spend in purgatory, you have an infinitely longer time to spend in heaven. I doubt the creators of the heaven myths ever really sat down to consider the implications.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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June 6, 2010 2:28 PM
BTW, Johann Hari had a rather fine piece in the Independent a few weeks ago on much the same topic.
Posted by: Randomfactor
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June 6, 2010 2:33 PM
As someone who's fairly recently been widowed, I have decided the Christians *ALMOST* have heaven right when they say that in heaven we'll be with our loved ones again. The truth is almost as good--after death we won't be without them anymore.
As for me, if I'm wrong and there *IS* a heaven after death, I'm with Jorge Luis Borges: it's an infinite library. And Darwin's latest book is to be released next week...unfortunately, so is Jackie Suzann's...
Posted by: Cactus Wren
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June 6, 2010 2:35 PM
ecr111@41:
I had a fun time a while ago, discussing this with a dual-predestination Calvinist who quite seriously argued that what you (editorial "you") had done wrong to deserve eternal punishment was to be one of the ones God decided deserved eternal punishment. You need not -- in fact, you cannot -- do anything to merit either salvation or damnation. My interlocutor was perfectly straightforward about this: the fact that you did not seek salvation, while being given no opportunity to do so, while in fact being specifically denied any such opportunity, makes you DESERVE an eternity of shrieking torment.
(I did manage to quite neatly back this guy into a corner on one point. I asked him about the fate of people who do not share his beliefs, but still consider themselves to be "saved" -- he said that they may think they're bound for Heaven, but they're wrong. However, he had earlier argued that there was no such thing as free will: our every action, he said, our every whim and even our every faintest nuance of thought is directly controlled by God. If you decide to peel an orange or to feed the dog or to stop for gas on the road, it is not you doing it but God making you do it. So, I pointed out ... these people who are convinced they're going to Heaven and aren't? By your argument, it's God who's making them believe that, isn't it? Making them believe something He knows is not true. Leaving aside the sadism of a God who'd allow people to rest in the assurance of salvation all their lives only on Judgment Day to boom "Ha ha! Fooled you!" and drop them into the Pit ... what's the word for someone who makes people believe things that aren't true?)
Posted by: Legion
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June 6, 2010 2:35 PM
God's got a long and impressive track record of incompetence. First there was the creation of Lucifer. Seriously, how stupid was that?
Then there was the creation of Adam and Eve, who flipped god the bird, first chance they got. Whoops.
Finally there was the post-Eden clusterfuck of creation that led to God going all postal on the world with the great flood.
And lets not forget that he's pretty much already predicted that his creation is going to go rouge, yet again, resulting an end of days barbecue of the whole earth.
Really, with his track record, you'd think he'd just save us all some drama and just suck on shotgun barrel.
Why doesn't he?
Basically, God, is a clueless fuck-up who no doubt is intimately familiar with the phrase, "My bad." Despite his omnipotence, he can't seem to see what's coming and continuously gets blindsided by his own creations. he's the Gilligan of omnipotent beings.
What makes anyone think heaven will be any different? Our guess is that after a few billion years, somebody goes Neo on his ass and starts the cycle all over again.
Posted by: Legion
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June 6, 2010 2:37 PM
Umm, that should be "...Despite his omniscience..."
Posted by: DaveH
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June 6, 2010 2:37 PM
@#59:
My grandfather's funeral as well. He was religious in the believed in God, but never went to church, too busy working on the farm sense.
For his funeral, they got a priest who had NEVER EVEN MET HIM. The guy rambled on about "worshipping Jesus through a life of hard work", told a few stories from the Bible, etc. What really pissed me off though, was when he made an outright dig for all of us to come to his church on Sunday: "I try to keep my sermons brief, so come out on Sunday." His EXACT words.
I would have stormed out, except that it would have upset my grandmother. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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June 6, 2010 2:39 PM
It's not a bad thing in itself. I was thinking of a friend of mine (whom I really don't think less of, though I'm suspicious of her thought processes) whose entire theology revolves around getting to see her grandfather again.
But I understand the desire to be reunited with lost loved ones. Sorry for your loss, Randomfactor.
Around here it's customary to give a warning when linking to TVtropes. I'm not entirely sure of the reason, though I suspect that if most readers are like me, merely clicking on a TVtropes link means an instant but enjoyable loss of three hours. ;)
Posted by: Cerberus, unnatural product of en-OMnomnom-ification
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June 6, 2010 2:46 PM
Lynna @3
It was (well kinda).
The bad end in Greek Mythology, Tartarus, was indeed a state of endless psychological desire, where your mind had an unquenchable desire to finish a task that was fundamentally unfulfillable. One of the poor suffering souls indeed was standing in a small pond with unquenchable thirst and hunger with a ripe, never falling fruit just out of reach and a pond that always receded from his grasps.
Same problem as the other "bad ends" in that anything relating to a mind would quickly go mad and all that would be left would be a puppet running on impulses, but at least more creative than oh yeah, nerve endings totally work in Hell.
Overall, I think the idea of Heaven and Hell retain their potency in their vagueness so you can just sort of assume something earthly but somehow better or worse.
It is also a great marketing tool, one of the best in the world. I mean, the concept on its own is a great seller. Almost everyone likes the idea of immortality, of their consciousness going on, because thinking about yourself ending can be distressing. There are always things left unfinished, things to explore, to learn, to experience. Plus, most people don't want to say goodbye to a loved one or worse have their goodbyes so without finality (You said "see you next week" as your last words to them or the like).
And given the often unfair nature of the universe we inhabit where evil people often seem to enrich themselves quite nicely on mass suffering and good people have all sorts of horrible things happen to them for no reason other than random chance or they happened to be an attractive target at the time, well... The idea is tempting when one is stressed and doesn't examine it too closely. That there could be something out there keeping track of the injustice and setting it right behind the scenes.
And then Christianity perfected the pitch by making bliss as easy as "simply sign up for our website and you're cleared forever". You don't even have to be "good" anymore, constantly worrying if you're doing enough, doing the right somethings, etc... You can be as much of a jackass as you want as long as you pray to the right God? Brilliant marketing tool.
But like many sales pitches, the shine quickly comes off. Belief in a just afterlife lets people off the hook about making sure there is justice in the real actual life. And of course the just sign up, no goodness required just removes the big seller of an actual eternal justice in favor of something like a nightmarish version of the "Yacht Club".
And eternity quickly loses its shine when you try and make it static. People want to "live forever" because it feels like things have been left uncompleted. There are stories to enjoy, culture to create, causes to fight for, people to meet, evolution to witness.
In short, culture, and from that, by necessity cultural evolution. And at that point you start having problems. People disagreeing with changes owing to nostalgic remembrances of the past and eventually, evolution of the purpose of the area or the inhabitants. If the populations are kept static, then how do you stop someone gone evil over the changes or seeing people they don't personally believe "deserve" to be in Heaven? Threaten them with Hell? They've already booked their eternity ticket.
And what about the redemption of the "damned", people who prove their heroism after death? Who positively reform Hell? They're stuck there for all Eternity.
And that's before the problems with static relationships, where to draw the borderlines, the inherent duality that would have a difficult time sorting out the grayer cases and those who did absolutely nothing with their lives other than wait for death, and much much more.
Like PZ said, it's nice when it's vague and you can imagine something just like Earth, but better or worse somehow vaguely, but when you look closer, it just can't work. Just like every other utopian ideal thought experiment.
Posted by: mistereveready
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June 6, 2010 2:48 PM
So should I bring cake to the funeral? Maybe a mohamed cake and a big pack of jesus cookies. each cookie would have different flavors representing the various body parts, that way we all can laugh at the person who got the taint.
Posted by: Pareidolius
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June 6, 2010 2:49 PM
I was just thinking these very same thoughts about the incredibly stupid concepts of H&H after reading your recent post about the fundie "Hell Houses" at Halloween the other day. I wondered why we don't get together at Halloween (or better yet, at Christmas) to produce "Heaven House: A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens" (thank you David Byrne).
We could have totally neurotic, insane angels, their wing feathers nervously ripped out staggering about, whimpering about being trapped for eternity with aunt Edna who sucks her teeth constantly and tells the same stories about her brief, dull life with Uncle Axel and how she burned the Sunday roast that one Sunday when the pastor came over for supper and what do you think of that, over and over and over and over again.
The Heaven House crew could all act really nervous and scared that their sociopathic "father" was going to show up at random moments to stop them from even thinking about fucking or masturbating or having any fun at all in their sexless eternity.
There could be an endless loop of The King Family's Greatest Hits playing in the background. But some angels would have duct tape over their mouths (or great FX makeup showing no mouths at all). They'd be corrected for singing jazz or rock and roll. All the good music would be down in Hell (east Hell actually) and though they would try to jump ship and get down to the party, the archangels would nab them and subject them to "rehab" with endless bible readings and nonstop video loops of Davey and Goliath and Veggie Tales.
And with all of my people in Hell, just imagine the decor . . .
Come on Pharynguistas, I know you all have some great scenarios for Heaven House in you (I'm talkin' to you Josh OSG,OM). Let's scare the holy ghost out of some people!
Posted by: alewis14151
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June 6, 2010 2:53 PM
Heaven ... where nothing ever happens.
Posted by: Legion
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June 6, 2010 3:01 PM
Cerberus:
Not us. We rather like the idea of non-existence, compared to having to deal with that insane prick (god) for all eternity. The trick is to get through your bucket list while you're alive so that there's no regrets when you draw your last breath.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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June 6, 2010 3:04 PM
@alewis14151 #76:
That's catchy; you could almost write a song about that. ;)
Posted by: blf
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June 6, 2010 3:04 PM
Actually, lots of things happen in heaven: Escape attempts to reach hell, Attempts to bomb that choir or otherwise get them to STFU, Writing complaints to the ruling troika in green ink, A huge number of creative attempts to commit suicide (and an even larger number of debates about whether or not suicide is even possible and what it means in such a place), and An eternal quest for beer. All fail because the place has been so perfectly designed.
Posted by: Andy Groves
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June 6, 2010 3:08 PM
My colleague David Eagleman wrote a very successful book called "Sum" about the afterlife, or rather, forty different versions of it. I just did a quick search through the Pharyngula archives, and I was a bit surprised it hasn't come up here before. Anyway, here's a link to an NPR article about it, with one of my favorite stories from the book "Descent of Species", which talks about the disadvantages of choosing to be reincarnated as a horse...
Sum
Posted by: mikee
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June 6, 2010 3:15 PM
I consider being brought up catholic as an important part of my life - it is probably the biggest factor that resulted in me becoming an atheist. For example: the fire and brimstone preacher who told me I couldn't go to church with my presbyterian grandmother because they were going to hell, the catholic priests who preached about which political candidate to vote for,etc.
Amazing how being exposed to the hypocrisy, the arrogance and fear can have the opposite effect.
It also means I have the ammunition when christians start quoting scripture (though I'm getting a bit rusty).
I was one of those annoying kids who would ask questions by extrapolating what I was told.
"If someone has never heard of god, why can't they go to heaven?" Apparently limbo is as far as they are allowed.
If someone is born gay and have to deny their nature to get into heaven - why aren't they rewarded more that heterosexuals who don't have to deny their nature?"
I just I wish I had had the knowledge then to ask even more annoying questions. :-)
Posted by: trenchwars
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June 6, 2010 3:19 PM
Don't blame spirituality for the sins of religion. I was fortunate to be raised by true spiritual masters who taught me the difference.
"8 principles of spiritual literacy as inspired by the Hasidic masters" ... http://trenchwars.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/8-principles-of-spiritual-literacy-as-inspired-by-the-hasidic-masters/
PS -- In my world there is not Hell.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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June 6, 2010 3:23 PM
Ah, the battlecry of the faitheist.
What differentiates the faitheist's beliefs from those of the religious? Why theirs are true, of course:
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawk8nuEGr2AboPw3B5JlVHLruh87cSf2gi4
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June 6, 2010 3:25 PM
Don't pity ol' Tart too much. He received that punishment because he cooked and served his son to the gods for dinner.Separately, any Trekkies here remember "Death Wish," one of the Q episodes on Star Trek: Voyager? The Q is a race of omnipotent beings (they call themselves the Q Continuum, and all the individuals refer to one another as Q), the most famous one being played by John deLancie as a slightly flamboyant sort who had a crush on Captain Picard.
Anyway, one of the Q was found by Captain Janeway as he was trying to commit suicide. He explained that after living for eternity, he was bored, and wanted to die. He brought Janeway and her Vulcan science officer Tuvok to a representation of the Continuum — a desert road, with a few people standing next to a dry-goods store, a scarecrow, and a dog. Suicidal Q said " I traveled the road many times. Sat on the porch, played the games, been the dog, everything. I was even the scarecrow for a while." (Regular Q sniffed, "Oh, we've all done the scarecrow, big deal.") He explains that he has literally been everywhere and done it all, and wants to die because there is simply no more to do. The episode ends with Suicidal Q being allowed to commit suicide, as death is an antidote to the suffering which eternal life brings him. Actually a really good episode.
One wonders after a while how many folks would try to get out of heaven by "killing" themselves out of boredom.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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June 6, 2010 3:29 PM
Was this inspired by the lady on the Colbert Report the other day who decried how "immature" peoples' vision of heaven is, and how we need to seek a more "mature" one? Yeah, it sounded like BS to me too. The yearning for eternal anything seems intrinsically immature to me.
Posted by: mikee
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June 6, 2010 3:32 PM
For christians I would have thought hell would have been spending eternity with PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris?
Speaking of hell has anyone seen Rowan Atkinson's take on hell? Love the christian/jews comment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFGrQMD6Uqc
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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June 6, 2010 3:37 PM
Perhaps a little of that, and a little of the "Dear Abby says the afterlife is watching other people have sex" thread.
"Now you get up to your room young man, and finish your homework before bedtime. And no looking at porn; you'll spoil your heaven."
Posted by: Trillian
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June 6, 2010 3:40 PM
all I have to add is this...
Posted by: Legion
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June 6, 2010 3:41 PM
Brownian:
Posted by: ecr111
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June 6, 2010 3:41 PM
Maybe the Christians are right and you become one with God for all eternity---in the sense that he doesn't exist and neither do you. You both live only in the minds of the living.
Posted by: Trillian
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June 6, 2010 3:43 PM
all I have to add is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s81CF3RpCM
Posted by: Zeno
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June 6, 2010 3:47 PM
It is also, unfortunately, totally typical. As someone in the educational community, I have many friends and acquaintances who are teachers or professors or deans. As a group, we aren't very devout, although many of us cling to some vestiges of religion or pay lip service to it. That means most of our funerals are in churches, resulting in pews packed with people who aren't particularly religious -- or might even be outright nonbelievers (eek!). The pastors can barely stop salivating before launching into a come-to-Jesus sermon in front of a toothsome crop of ripe prospects. There are also fulsome descriptions of the intense devotional life of the dearly departed, who somehow became much more religious after dying. Pfffft!
All the holy rollers do is detract from what could have been a dignified memorial service. Better to stay out of the damned church entirely. The reception afterward in the community center is always much more worthwhile, especially if you avoid the eagerly hand-pumping prelate.
Posted by: scooterKPFT
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June 6, 2010 3:48 PM
PZ:
Welcome to my Sunday morning
Posted by: Pareidolius
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June 6, 2010 3:53 PM
Oh, you knew the true spiritual masters? Well, why didn't you say so? I think I can speak for pretty much everyone here when I humbly ask your forgiveness for our sciency upstartiness and humbly beg you to share your Totally-Tru Sooper-Seekrets of the Universe™ with us.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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June 6, 2010 3:55 PM
Hell is watching a two-minute movie trailer for a heavily recycled story about a boy who learns kung-fu from a janitor and seeing it called The Karate Kid when it has nothing to do with karate!
Posted by: isaac
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June 6, 2010 3:56 PM
PZ:
I've run into a lot of Xtians can go on at length and in great detail all about what hell is and what it's like.
But I haven't run into a single one yet that can tell me anything about heaven other than god lives there and it's where good people go when they die. I'd think that if that was the ultimate goal, the godbots would have put a lot more
energy into thinking about what they think lies ahead for them.
It seems like the stick gets more attention than the carrot with such people. Speaking for myself, I sure like to know something about my vacation spots before I go, especially for a permanent vacation. It looks to me that the bible
is a piss poor travel brochure, but somehow there sure are a lot of travel agents trying to make it their business to tell me where I ought to want to
go--even though they can't tell me much of anything about the resort.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 6, 2010 4:02 PM
This has always been the main reason I've considered the notion of heaven silly. The ideas of heaven and hell are so very prosaic, so human, so very boring. Most people have a disconnect when it comes to heaven though. I remember reading through several very long RR threads of the "What will you do in heaven?" and "What will your job be in heaven?" nature.
There were so many comments about "I'm going to swim with dolphins!" "I'm going to have a little horsefarm!" type of thing. Basically, for a lot of people, it's a grown up amusement park. They never stop to consider eternity though. If you stay you (albeit in perfect form, which is what a lot of people believe), the novelty is going to wear off.
Posted by: Wise Bass
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June 6, 2010 4:06 PM
The Buddhist one always struck me as kind of interesting in that regard. In a way, it teaches you to embrace oblivion, rather than fearing it like the Christians/Muslims do.
What weirds me out about Islamic Heaven is how specific and medieval it is, down to details like "72 dark-eyed virgins", "waited on by pretty boys", "green cloth", and the like.
It'd be like if an American religion said that everybody would get a 2-acre floored Manhatten apartment, a new Lexus that never had technical problems, and thirty blond mistresses if they made it to heaven.
To be fair to the Norse, Valhalla wasn't supposed to be eternal. It was just a resting place for dead warriors, until they got to go on and fight with the Gods against the Frost Giants in Ragnarok (where everybody but a single human mating pair dies).
As for me, I had a hard time taking Hell seriously ever since I was little, and particularly so after reading a funny newspaper column about the columnist jokingly ending up in Hell. Heaven was more problematic, but I managed to get over it.
My dad helped. I remember one time telling my atheist dad about some of the aspects of the lowest level of Mormon Heaven (the Telestial Kingdom), and he started asking me questions that made me realize how ridiculous the idea was. Questions like, "Are there trains in Heaven? Do they run on time? What about work?"
Posted by: Andrew Hall
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June 6, 2010 4:07 PM
I'm very familiar with Hell. It has uncomfortable pews, smelly sweaty people, and this guy on a cross.
http://laughinginpurgatory.blogspot.com/
Posted by: isaac
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June 6, 2010 4:10 PM
irenedelse:
Yeah, it's an awesome premise.
If you haven't already read it, you might also like the Lucifer series by Mike Carey. It picks up on some concepts and characters from Neil Gaiman's Sandman and goes bugfuck crazy. It's out in trade paperback form and I highly recommend it--it's a helluva ride.
Without saying too much else about it, Lucifer's not the bad guy.
And I hope Brownian develops his idea and turns it into something, It would be smoking.
Posted by: diwakark86
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June 6, 2010 4:13 PM
Orwell wrote about the heaven issue in this essay
Heaven is, in a sense, utopia and the most lazily conceived one in fiction. It deals with the problems of life(limited resources, division of labour etc.) by just disappearing them away.
Posted by: dudley9
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June 6, 2010 4:15 PM
Reminds me of this classic from the BSD Unix fortune database. Heaven is hotter than hell according to the bible:
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the
earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell
cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means
that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We
have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
-- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
Posted by: Alex the Wonderchemist
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June 6, 2010 4:15 PM
Fantastic post PZ.
The idea of heaven and hell are ones that have never sat comfortably with me. The notion of an all loving God who cares deeply for you personally who would simply abandon you to unimaginable suffering, simply for being how he made you is simply grotesque. In my mind it is equivalent to me denying my elderly grandmother her heating allowance in the winter. I love her, so I want to help her, not put her in positions of hardship until she passes some vague test to gain my approval. If God loved us (ignoring the setback of his non-existence), then he would not actively make any of us suffer, if he has the capability to prevent it.
And why is it that the idea of hell is so much more detailed than the image of heaven? Might it have something to do with the fact that it is easier (certainly cheaper) to scare people into submission than it is to bribe them? The only description of heaven that I'm aware of is the one in Revalations, described by Thunderf00t which in my view would get boring as hell (smirk) very quickly indeed.
Many Christians I know describe heaven as being eternal bliss, but surely that's open to individual interpretation? Is eternal bliss an eternity of having my Mum's superb sticky toffee pudding? Is it that feeling when you wake up on a saturday, realise it's a saturday, and know that you can spend a few more hours in bed? Is it the fun of watching my 10 week old kitten attack everything in sight? Is it a permanent feeling of orgasm...? (minus the mess, obviously) And where is the evidence for any of these assertions?
On a side note, all of my Christian friends have at least one heathen atheist as a friend (i.e. me :p). Surely then, as someone who has rejected God, I am destined for Hell, and my Christian friends, if they went to Heaven, would be spending an eternity knowing that I am being forever tortured?! How is it eternal bliss if a fair chunk of your family and friends are in unrelenting agony? If I were in their (totally imaginary) position, I would want to make sure that noone was burning forever, and would hassle God into releasing them from their eternal torture, which rather defeats the purpose of living a Christian life, if all that's needed is one person in heaven with a conscience, and the whole system gets overruled...?
I think about things too much.
Anyhoo, when I die, the only thing I care about is that I was as decent to as many people as I could have been in my lifetime, and that my organs get donated to those that desperately need them.
Posted by: stvs
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June 6, 2010 4:16 PM
Religion has a real problem with incentives. As long as they're all in an invisible afterlife, it's hard to take them seriously.
Not to the faithful. Here is Kevin Drum on The Shack, a best-seller explaining theodicy. "The Shack" is used for rape and murder of a little girl. Later Jesus takes the girl's father to "the Shack" and explains why Jesus allowed the rape and murder of his little girl:
Drum adds that the father is comforted because "God gives him a glimpse of Missy in heaven, and she's pretty happy there. So that helps too."
The Shack has sold nearly 10 million copies.
Posted by: Arabiflora
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June 6, 2010 4:20 PM
I had the privilege of delivering a eulogy for my dear departed aunt Doris a couple of years back. I'll offer the following and suggest that anyone so inclined can, if presented with the opportunity to remember a loved one in the pulpit, make use of the text or the sentiment:
"One final remark-- and it doesn’t feel quite right saying so here in the altar of such a beautiful church and our services, but with all due respect, I hope that the clergy and members will not object strongly.
I’m not a religious person, by upbringing, training, or practice.
That being said, I do believe in an afterlife.
I believe that the actions and effects of a person throughout a life leave a mark on this world that persists long after their physical existence has ended, and Doris’ afterlife, her mark on this world, will be long-lasting, indeed. She lives on in the cabins she and Norm built at the resort, and of course through Jon and Julie. For me she lives on even through the calls of loons on the lake. She touched so many lives, she made them ‘all better’, she did so much Good, and she made us all feel… Special. And the world, my life, our lives, were made so very much better because of hers."
Posted by: arensb
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June 6, 2010 4:24 PM
Quite coincidentally, I was recently thinking what I'd say if I were ever invited to give a eulogy. I figured it would center on a theme of "while the deceased may be gone, her actions continue to ripple through the world, in particular in the thoughts, minds, memories, and actions of those of us who were privileged enough to know her."
Oh, and another problem with the hell is that it inflicts infinite punishment for a finite crime. Already as a teenager I figured out that not even Stalin deserves to have flaming gasoline poured on him for ten trillion years.
The solution I worked out at the time was based on lim(i = 0 →∞) Σ 2-i = 2. That is, as time goes on, your punishment gets smaller and smaller, so that total suffering asymptotically converges on a finite quantity.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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June 6, 2010 4:29 PM
Don't blame spirituality for the sins of religion. I was fortunate to be raised by true spiritual masters who taught me the difference. - trenchwars
Smug little shit, aren't you?
Posted by: csreid
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June 6, 2010 4:31 PM
I'm reminded of this comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Now, I just wanted to say, too, that I think the argument that says that hell can't be painful because we are disembodied souls is very weak. If we actually do have some kind of soul, and that soul is "us" in the most true sense, then our souls would be experiencing the pain that our body feels (since our souls are us, and we experience physical pain). Then I think it follows that, in hell, we could just skip the physical middle-man and apply the pain and suffering directly to our souls.
Hopefully that made sense... I know what I'm trying to say, but I have trouble expressing myself over the internet.
Anyway, I'd say the rest is spot on. The idea of eternal punishment without possibility for reform was the cause of one of my earliest doubts in god.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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June 6, 2010 4:32 PM
Very nice, Arabiflora. I hope it was well received.
Posted by: Robert H
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June 6, 2010 4:33 PM
Ex-Emperor of Japan to Gudo, his Zen master...
Ex-Emperor: Gudo, what happens to the man of enlightenment and the man of illusion after death?
Gudo: How should I know, sir?
Ex-Emperor: Why, because you're a master!
Gudo: Yes sir, but no dead one!
Posted by: Sastra
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June 6, 2010 4:37 PM
Cerberus #73 wrote:
I have a devout Catholic friend who teaches Sunday school and, for some reason, she used to occasionally describe her lessons to me. At one point, the lesson was about Heaven. She said that she asked the kids to tell her what they thought the very best thing in heaven would be; then, no matter what wonderful thing they described, she would explain that "yes -- but it's even BETTER than THAT!"
I think she may have thought I would be impressed by how sophisticated she was being, by encouraging the kids to become vague. Or, perhaps she thought I would be touched or attracted by the idea of imagining nice things. When it comes to religion, people turn themselves willingly into small children, and then use that as a selling point.
Or they invent a new version of wisdom, and try to sell that.
It seems to me that the all the so-called maturity and sophistication in theological thinking pretty much amounts to committing oneself to being vague. The devil --Doubt -- is in the details. You can't afford to get specific. Not about God. Not about the afterlife. Not about what the hell your holy texts actually mean.
"I don't know!" they crow in triumph. "I just don't! It's a MYSTERY! I am embracing the mystery. It's all mysterious mystery. I hope I get a pony in heaven -- but I know it's even BETTER than THAT!"
trenchwars #82 wrote:
I read the link on the "8 principles of spiritual literacy" -- I am not impressed. It seems to consist of ways to brainwash and hypnotize yourself into feeling "spiritual," coupled with healthy doses of appeals to MYSTERY!!!
You do not know what you are talking about, and you do not care. If you start to care, you will lose your candle-lit "spirituality" in a blaze of clear daylight. What matters to you, is the way it makes and others feel, so that you behave nice to others and become peaceful: period. There's nothing else there.
It can be had without the elaborate self-deception.
Posted by: Knockgoats
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June 6, 2010 4:43 PM
My favourite appearance of hell and heaven in fiction is in Max Frisch's The Fire Raisers - a play which is mostly an allegory of the rise of the Nazis. The story is that a gang of fire-raisers are around: they insinuate themselves into a household, then burn the house down. The central character, Biedermann (everyman) is a guilty bourgeois. Two men come to his house, playing on his guilt with a story about a worker he dismissed, who has committed suicide; he takes them in as guests. They tell him they are fire raisers, but he refuses to believe this is more than a joke. He comes across them storing barrels in the attic, and when he asks what is in them, they reply "gunpowder"; he refuses to believe it. Eventually, he does voice his suspicions, whereupon they become "offended", demanding that he give them a box of matches as a sign of trust. He gives them the matches, and they burn the house down, killing him and his wife.
There is an epilogue set in hell, where the fire raisers turn out to be demons. News comes through that "Heaven is pardoning all those who kill in uniform". The Devil is so outraged that he declares that hell is on strike, thus saving Biedermann, and his wife.
Posted by: Eamon Knight
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June 6, 2010 4:47 PM
@53:Purgatory: banjos, accordions, bagpipes
OK, I'm already on the First Circle then. (Wait: is that listening or playing?)
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/O.jullMj0I2VvJaxMMVeNKSfOPf73voLSxJAe9PdlOWwi8Y-#258ec
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June 6, 2010 4:51 PM
One of favorite stories about "the afterlife" is "the Earth Sea" Series By Ursula K. LeGuin
really hard to describe. The first part was made into an awful sword and Sorcery movie with a blond hero.
but the afterlife a trap of some kind that we made . All told simply and not over wordy and spelled out but the implications are profound. I might even say it could be considered subversive great fun!
I have been to a couple of funerals this past year and I really do not know how to act or what to say except that I understand the pain and am there if any body wants to talk
The question of an after life implies that it is understood what life is which I am not so sure is true but does it not imply that there is a "before life" also
I am relatively sure that there will be life will go on after I die and similarly sure that I wont be there unless when I die it will be the end of the world
Posted by: a.human.ape
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June 6, 2010 4:52 PM
The heaven/hell fantasy is the only reason all religions haven't gone extinct yet. Worthless preachers who don't want to get a real job especially like the hell idea.
Unfortunately heaven is not just a harmless belief for gullible idiots. The wishful thinking called heaven made the 9/11 attacks and the daily suicide bombings possible. I think it also causes some people to give up trying to improve their lives, since all problems will be solved after they drop dead and fly to a supernatural paradise.
I wrote a little something about the heaven myth in my blog. Here it is:
By the way Christian morons, how does this heaven business work? If I understand your cowardly belief correctly, your soul (whatever that is) magically flies up to the clouds (or who knows where) and then magically transforms itself into your disgusting dead body, except that now you're alive again, living in some magical place infested with other Christian idiots like yourselves. Jeebus must be waving his magic wand like crazy to make this bullshit work. And your magical selves live forever in this fantasy land, for trillions and trillions of years. Long after the entire universe goes extinct, you're still alive playing with your harp, bored out of your fucking mind.
Posted by: stvs
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June 6, 2010 4:52 PM
Hitchens on heaven:
Posted by: Eamon Knight
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June 6, 2010 4:59 PM
@58Friend of mine who died a few years back ended up with his ashes (plus a load of grave goods) loaded onto a replica Viking Longship which was then ceremoniously torched on the beach at Whitby.
But then he was an Estonian Goth.
Whitby, Ontario or England (or....?)
Anyways, that doesn't really go "work" for my rather conventional English parents. However, my mother did once express (maybe jokingly) a desire to be buried on Ilkley Moor, though she didn't say whether we were supposed to sing that silly song while doing so. But I do have cousins back in Ye Olde Countrie who were very fond of my parents before they emigrated and had me, and I sometimes think that the best thing would be to take their ashes back, and we'd all do a scattering together on a windy day at Ilkley, or up in the Yorkshire Dales.
Posted by: Sastra
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June 6, 2010 5:06 PM
Eamon Knight #117 wrote:
My suggestion: plant a couple of trees (or rosebushes or whatever-their-favorite-perennials-were) and scatter the ashes on the roots before you pile on the dirt. That way, they "live on" in a living monument, one you wouldn't feel silly visiting. Practical and sentimental at once.
Posted by: cuco3
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June 6, 2010 5:18 PM
#32: Crudely Wrott wrote crudely
Of course! That makes so much sense. It's not "God the Father": it's "God the Farmer".
Posted by: hermetically sealed
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June 6, 2010 5:19 PM
"To believe in the reality of salvation you must first believe in the reality of the Fall: every religious act begins with the perception of hell—-the raw material of faith-—heaven comes only afterwards, a kind of corrective, a consolation; a luxury, a superfetation, an accident required by our bias in favor of symmetry and balance. Only the Devil is necessary." (E.M. Cioran)
Posted by: csreid
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June 6, 2010 5:22 PM
Oh, also - a timely Sunday Sacrilige? Hooray! Huzzah! [Insert joyful exclamation here]!
Posted by: Robert H
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June 6, 2010 5:33 PM
If this works, it's Iris DeMent and a live version of Let the Mystery Be. If not, and you're not familiar with her and or that particular song, check it out on YouTube. Seems she got pretty close to the mark...
Posted by: Jaycubed
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June 6, 2010 5:34 PM
When I first came across the now classic thermodynamics exam question:
Is Hell Endothermic or Exothermic?
Support your answer with proof.
http://www.pinetree.net/humor/thermodynamics.html
My immediate mental response was:
Hell is Exothermic. It produces Heat due to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
As Hell is is concept only existing in the minds of human beings (both Believers and non-Believers), it is a transient part of a complex electro-bio-chemical process occurring within the brains of those human beings. There is exothermy produced by both the processes themselves (metabolism) and by the inefficiency (waste heat) inherent within any physical process (entropy).
Hell is hot air rising from people's heads.
Posted by: mumonjmk
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June 6, 2010 5:46 PM
There are some religions that embrace this sublime vision of an ultimate end that does not include the mundane humanity of its believers — the Buddhist afterlife does seem to be a kind of selfless oblivion — but that does not include the Abrahamic religions.
Well, there's Buddhist versions of this and there's Buddhist versions of this. There's some nasty hell versions, and some which include your caricature of hell (with the people singing and stuff) and then there's the position that "it's totally irrelevant" as well as "there's probably no hell." All can be valid Buddhist positions on this. As you might now, there's no list of "I've got to believe X, Y, Z, and T and..." to actually be a Buddhist.
I'll probably try to put a post on my blog on this at some point...meanwhile, if you visit please click all the woo-ful advertisers; every click on them sends me money, and I'm usually quite critical of most of them... though I haven't got around to those ecky folks or the Silva folks yet. But if you see Ken Wilber, please pounce! He's anti-natural selection you know.
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes
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June 6, 2010 6:17 PM
I know something about what heaven is like.
I don't know about hell, but last saturday, I got a little taste.
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes
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June 6, 2010 6:18 PM
I know something about what heaven is like.
I don't know about hell, but last saturday, I got a little taste.
Posted by: NitricAcid
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June 6, 2010 6:20 PM
Jaycubed #123- As someone who has taught physical chemistry, I would like to point that your link is the chemical equivalent of the "Man waiting for God to rescue him from a flood" story. I automatically dock marks from any student who forwards it to me. The only correct answer would be "Hell is supposedly a place, not a process, and can be considered neither endothermic nor exothermic."
Posted by: Abdul Alhazred
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June 6, 2010 6:31 PM
@42:
On the other hand, the Muslim heaven features sexual intercourse.
It wouldn't be heaven without it. :)
Posted by: Doug Little
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June 6, 2010 6:54 PM
I hope when I go there isn't any of me actually at my funeral. I hope that all the useful bits are utilized for organ donations and the rest can be given to science. My last parting gift for the advancement of the human race.
How funny would it be if some raving religionist got a stone cold atheist's heart, Ha Ha Ha, my last dig at religion.
Posted by: Jaycubed
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June 6, 2010 6:57 PM
"As someone who has taught physical chemistry, I would like to point that your link is the chemical equivalent of the 'Man waiting for God to rescue him from a flood' story.I automatically dock marks from any student who forwards it to me. The only correct answer would be 'Hell is supposedly a place, not a process, and can be considered neither endothermic nor exothermic.' "
Posted by: NitricAcid
Hell is not a place, it exists only as a process within human brains. That is the whole point. Therefore it is both a proper consideration and conclusion.
I'm afraid your comment "I would like to point that your link is the chemical equivalent of the 'Man waiting for God to rescue him from a flood' story" is incoherent and doesn't really make any point to me.
P.S. I must question your integrity as a teacher. You "automatically dock marks" for something unconnected with the course work (forwarding a link). You claim to Know that "The only correct answer" is your answer. You sound like a lousy teacher.
Posted by: jcmartz.myopenid.com
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June 6, 2010 6:59 PM
Of course that does not stop people scaring kids into accepting Jesus as their saviour.
However, this is more soothing:
Posted by: isaac
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June 6, 2010 7:00 PM
Every one of these Sunday Sacrilege postings has been a home run. Except for maybe the Easter Sunday one (my personal favorite so far), every one is timely and relevant no matter what the day of the week.
PZ, I hope we can look forward to regular installments for a long, long time to come.
I also hope you will eventually put them together into some sort of collection, and maybe even have them published eventually.
Posted by: Doug Little
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June 6, 2010 7:03 PM
I've often thought that hell would be a much more interesting place purely from the souls that you would meet there.
Heaven on the other hand would be all baseball caps, jeans and joggers. Shit I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip
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June 6, 2010 7:10 PM
Rant all you want, PZ, but I know you're wrong because I've seen Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.
Posted by: Ormur
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June 6, 2010 7:23 PM
The kind of religion I grew up with didn't mention Hell. The priest never talked about it, when I asked people they said it probably didn't exists because god was so good. I thought a lot about it, whether those that weren't Christians could get in and how anything could be pleasant forever, I knew an eternity must be a very long time. I shrugged of endless heavenly bliss as something we just lacked the means to comprehend. Later I started thinking that hell must surely have been added to the bible during the nasty middle ages corrupting Christ's message.
When I'd got to that point I had read enough about cosmology and science to realise that there was no need for god as a prime mover, but I clung to the hope of an afterlife. It's really the last tenet of belief I abandoned before becoming a fully-fledged atheist in my late teens. It's not that I didn't realise that it was completely unsupported by facts and terribly silly, I was just very afraid of nothingness. I still am, I don't like the idea of my conciousness disappearing forever when I die but it's still the truth and there's no use being self-delusional about it.
Posted by: cogent46
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June 6, 2010 7:37 PM
Question to believers: What has my soul ever done for me?
Where was my soul when I was changing diapers in the middle of the night?
What's my soul doing when I have to get up for work on Monday mornings?
My soul has been a utterly useless. It can burn in Hell for all I care.
Posted by: Piscador
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June 6, 2010 7:46 PM
My favorite version of Heaven:
"Do you know what eternity is? There's this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there's this little bird flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak on the mountain. And then it flies back and after a thousand years it goes and does it all again. When the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, then you still won't have finished watching The Sound of Music. And you'll enjoy it. You won't have a choice. Heaven has no taste. And not one single sushi restaurant."
[heavily condensed version from 'Good Omens', by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett]
Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian
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June 6, 2010 7:54 PM
I've never understood the bit about seeing all your loved ones again in a physical heaven.
I wouldn't, for example, want to spend eternity with my grandfather who died after suffering for many years with senile dementia.
Where's the "bliss" in spending forever with someone who doesn't recognise you and thinks you're the mad woman down the road (I had long hair) who feeds the pigeons? I don't want to see him in that state, and I don't want to have him shouting at me to fuck off for ever and ever amen.
Just imagine a heaven stuffed to the brim with the sick, the senile, the cancer-eaten, the blown-to-pieces, the starved, and whatever else the majority of people were when they died.
Nor do I want to spend eternity with a brain damaged, day-old, deformed baby.
It all sounds like being stuck forever in a zombie movie.
If that's paradise, include me out.
Posted by: gregvalcourt
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June 6, 2010 7:58 PM
A few weeks ago a great aunt of mine died. I went to the catlick funeral. The priest went on and on about how she was a woman of faith, but their were no stories about her life. This woman lived for 80+ years and not one of her many accomplishments or any anecdotes about her life were mentioned.
Her life was reduced to a sell job by the priest. I was so angry I almost came to tears.
I think I'm going to stop attending funerals. I always go with the intention of remembering the persons life, but the service does not actually aid that.
Posted by: Joshua Zelinsky
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June 6, 2010 7:59 PM
There are some versions of Heaven which don't seem so bad. The Mormon notion that devout believers effectively becomes deities who get to go and make their own worlds is appealing. Another nice version of an afterlife that I've heard about involves ever-increasing intelligence, so you get to find out more and more about everything and ask deeper and deeper questions. As a mathematician, that second one is deeply appealing.
But yes, the vast majority of standard afterlives seem amazingly fucked up.
Posted by: cogent46
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June 6, 2010 8:22 PM
@gregvalcourt #138
Same kind of thing happened to me. The preacher basically turned the funeral service into a sales pitch for their religion. Barely a mention of our dead grandmother's life.
I don't think I'll be going to any more religious funeral services. I'd rather sit outside and remember...
Posted by: Moshe Reuveni
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June 6, 2010 8:27 PM
PZ, you can come and do my eulogy any time. My only problem would be me missing it.
Posted by: kjd1005
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June 6, 2010 8:38 PM
My father was kind of an insane overworked horse of a man.. fought in New Guinea with the combat engineers, was sick with malaria... got a degree in economics from Columbia College on the GI bill..
spent his life having kids and building JFK as a carpenter.. quit drinking and took lithium.
so anywho he told me two or three things.. one was "Never plead guilty.. make them prove it" .. alas that was after I had got in trouble..
Another was "If they ask you if you believe in god tell them that you believe in the god of Spinoza.."
and lastly, apro this thread... "There is no heaven or hell after death.. men create their own heaven or hell right in this life by their own actions. Many people are trapped in a hell of their own making and don't know how to get out"
so I think that is the appropriate view on this.
Kevin from NYC
Posted by: kjd1005
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June 6, 2010 8:40 PM
and of course every priest uses the eulogy to pimp for christ .. sad..
they made people say the "our father" over and over...
I hate that .. .. thing... full of lies.
Posted by: itsgood2bchildfree
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June 6, 2010 8:47 PM
I don't want to spend eternity with my family (i.e. "loved ones.") It's just an accident that I was born related to them, and it doesn't mean that just because I see a lot of them during Christmas, funerals, etc. that I want to spend eternity with them. The only relatives I get along with are the ones I would be friends even if we weren't related (e.g. have common interests, etc.) What a sadistic creator if I have to spend eternity with my grandmother! Other than being DNA-related, we had nothing in common and it'd be hell for me just for the way the old bat would nag me!
It has me thinking of the old gnostic ideas that God and the Devil are actually the reverse of what we think they are and that it was evil, tyrannical Yahweh who kicked good, free-thinking Lucifer out of heaven (and started a negative PR campaign convincing humanity that Lucifer is actually Satan, father of all lies) and into a just-created pit of hell for daring to oppose the unquestioned rule of heavenly Kim Jong-Il.
Posted by: Traveler
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June 6, 2010 9:00 PM
@28
You don't need to pay -- or read. It's a free podio novel: http://www.heavennovel.com
It does end up with the minions of Hell attacking Heaven. It turns out that angels with no free will are good at following orders, but are really bad at coming up with strategies and giving advice.
Posted by: KingUber
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June 6, 2010 9:02 PM
Back when I was Christian I always thought of Heaven as a place where you could do anything you wanted to do, and you would never get sick or feel (excessive) pain or be sad, but it would still be interesting and you could go on all sorts of adventures. Yeah, I was pretty naive.
Posted by: Nebula99
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June 6, 2010 9:03 PM
My hell is the Christian constant-praise-and-worship heaven. My Heaven is coming back as a ghost with free reign over all of time and space, at every scale, with the intelligence to make the most of it. I could spend billions of years exploring everything from the inner workings of atoms, to bird's-eye views of galaxies, to the insides of black holes and the first nanoseconds of the universe. And when I'd seen everything and known everything, I could cease to exist. I envision it as being like one of the entities from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
That does sound great, as long as there's a nice environment to apply your intelligence and curiosity to. Other nice afterlife concepts, if not quite as good, inclue this and, if you could watch the effects, this (though I think with the latter I'd still go nuts).Posted by: nixscripter
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June 6, 2010 9:29 PM
@145:
Somehow, that reminds me of Paradise Lost by John Milton. He makes it come out "right," but I found Satan's logic interesting, at least.
He also twists up the story of Adam and Eve quite dramatically, just enough to make any modern-day Xtian's head explode.
Posted by: puf-almighty
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June 6, 2010 9:53 PM
Yeah. It makes sense. And religion is a hell of a racket. Sorta like selling rapture insurance- you get paid for a product you'll never actually have to deliver. Except that religion does the marketing too.
It makes me sad though. I don't want to be wormfood. Like Marcus Aurelius said, "a brief sojourning in an alien land; and after repute, oblivion."
I'd miss my mind.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/Cs2wFZASrZWXUr046mGQzBdjUQZK1lqKa85Asw--#b6009
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June 6, 2010 9:57 PM
You're not dead until everyone who remembers you is dead.
Posted by: wall of separation
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June 6, 2010 9:59 PM
DR Myers you get better and better with each post. What you said about heaven is unbearable...I've often dreaded heaven being true especially going there and seeing all those believers smiling smugly at you and basically saying "I told you so" ...for eternity!
Now that's MY isea of hell...
Posted by: Amsterstorm
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June 6, 2010 10:15 PM
No you wouldn't. Nothingness, or oblivion, does not feel. :)
Posted by: moomin
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June 6, 2010 10:25 PM
I've only ever been to one funeral, it was my best friend's brother's, also a good friend. He died at the age of 20 after suffering all his life with autism, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and towards the end, liver disease. These afflictions might make a lesser person turn to religion for solace, but he was an atheist 'til the end; long Richard Dawkins quotes were used in the eulogy.
Iron Maiden was played while the coffin was carried in. Loudly. Win.
Posted by: Katie's mom
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June 6, 2010 10:35 PM
I was having a conversation with my lake of fire Christian co-worker and I asked her what heaven would be like for her if one of her children ended up not saved. She answered that in heaven God would wipe her memory so she wouldn't be tormented with the thought of her child burning forever. No thought for the fact that even if she couldn't remember it, her CHILD would be tortured forever. The thought that I share the planet with people who worship this monster frightens me.
Posted by: ganf17
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June 6, 2010 10:54 PM
Let's face it..Eternity sucks
Posted by: YetAnotherAtheist
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June 6, 2010 11:00 PM
Thanks to #26, I had the most awesome idea for a movie ever: where it is revealed that Satan has propagated the idea that heaven awaits us for all eternity and is perfectly fine, when in reality he and his minions took it over eons ago, and it serves as yet another hell. >:D
Posted by: Franklin Percival
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June 6, 2010 11:03 PM
Dear Saraj #50. I became a confirmed christian under the hand of the then Archbishop of Canterbury. Where and how can I become a confirmed atheist, such as thee?
Posted by: fireweaver
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June 6, 2010 11:05 PM
@PZ
I had a similar experience to yours when I was younger as well.
My parents freaked out when I declared my atheism at age 14, so they had a pastor sit down with me and tell me about the horrors of hell.
I got three things out of his talk:
[1] The man had an hyper-active imagination,
[2] He was literally insane from fear of hell, and
[3] The idea that all religion was bullshit was permanently burned into my mind.
I do not even want to contemplate what the poor bastard's last moments of life must have been like.
Posted by: Franklin Percival
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June 6, 2010 11:15 PM
Plus also I have been very near to dying a few times over the last couple of years and have on each occasion welcomed the end of consciousness, though this may just have been an effect of hypoxia.
Posted by: llewelly
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June 6, 2010 11:16 PM
PZ:
Many parts of the bible are difficult explain if this is not assumed.
Posted by: azz_from_oz
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June 6, 2010 11:48 PM
See, this is why I stick around Pharyngula, for posts like this. Kudos PZ on a fantastic post!
Posted by: timrowledge, Ersatz Haderach
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June 7, 2010 12:03 AM
You forgot some of the more interesting aspects of that story - because the incumbent god was failing in his duty, the major Incarnations (hmm, I think Time, Death, Fate, War, Gaia, Satan) agreed to remove god from the post and replace him with someone they considered more capable of the job. In this case a woman.The central point appeared to be the conclusion that the entire purpose of the world and life was to gather 'soul stuff' from the void, incarnate it as people and test it in order to measure the balance of good and evil as part of some higher level conflict.
It's somewhat less stupid as an idea than most 'actual' theologies I know of
Posted by: RobertL
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June 7, 2010 12:07 AM
Iain Walker @58:
I've always said that I want a Viking burial at sea. With Wagner blasting on a huuuuge PA system.
Posted by: Usagichan
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June 7, 2010 12:18 AM
I was quite impressed with the heaven/ hell themes running through the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Philip Pullman - A senile "God" (probably the oldest creation of a long since vanished creator) usurped in power by ambitious underlings and an underworld no longer serving a purpose.
Posted by: Marella
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June 7, 2010 12:20 AM
I sort of vaguely thought that after you died you immediately knew everything there was to know, so there'd be nothing left to investigate or discover. Everything that makes life worth living is completely pointless in heaven.
When my kids asked me what it would be like after they died I said, "Remember what it was like before you were born? That's what it will be like after you're dead." Seemed to do the job.
So even heaven is built on delusion and lies? What as arsehole this god character is!
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/K2PNji0at.txAjzTShOlxwLuFcVVFwbnng--#bd813
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June 7, 2010 12:58 AM
I find 'When we've been there ten thousand years...We've no less days to sing his praise than when we've first begun.' rather horrifying.
The other dominant afterlife idea is reincarnation. I REALLY don't want to go thru childhood again.
Posted by: Cactus Wren
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June 7, 2010 1:07 AM
isaac@96:
Oh, there are one or two who know more about it. Johnny Hart, for instance, the creator of the comic strip "B.C.", said that he knew heaven was a place of perfect happiness, so he need not concern himself with his doubts about his mother's salvation -- she was a good person, but to his knowledge had never acceptedthelordjesuschristasherpersonalsavior -- because he was going there,. So if the knowledge that his beloved mother was suffering eternal torture might put the slightest fleck of imperfection on his heavenly bliss ... God would simply wipe out his memory of her.
And then there was the most Christian pastor who told Barbara G. Walker, when she was a little girl, that her beloved dog would certainly not be in heaven with her, was assuredly not waiting to greet her when she got there. He was not even in dog heaven, because there was no such place: dogs, lacking immortal souls, simply ceased to exist when they died, and she would simply have to pray to be reconciled to this "fact".
Posted by: monado
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June 7, 2010 1:29 AM
Dudley9, the proof that Heaven is hotter than Hell was one of Isaac Asimov's columns from about 1962. I suspect that it was original with him.
I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the "in Hell" collections of science fiction stories: War in Hell, Heroes in Hell, etc.
Posted by: TimKO,,.,,
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June 7, 2010 2:21 AM
Dante had a larger effect on popular imaginings of hell than did the bible. Ironically, in The Inferno, the pit of hell is ice, not fire. What would be frightening to a Mediterranean? Cold, not heat. (The protagonist escapes hell by entering Satan's mouth and crawling through his GI; his asshole leads to Earth.
----
Ironies about hell:
It's better not to know.
Normal Person - "If "I didn't know about God and sin would I go to hell?
Abrahamic Person - "Of course not, that wouldn't be fair and just. You have to know God and go to HIM."
NP - "Then why the fuck did you tell me?"
If God is omniscient and made us, then he creates some people even though he has the foreknowledge that they will be eternally tortured. Nice guy, eh?
Innocence means nothing to xtians because under xtian logic, it's better to live life as a child rapist who repents in old age and is born again than a life-long atheist humanitarian that goes to hell.
When things like evolution belief are later proven to be factual, but previously sent people to hell, does Jesus/Peter/etc. change his mind and have to bargain with Satan for that soul?
Does a person who goes to heaven still enjoy it there when he has the knowledge that family members and friends are simultaneously in hell?
Do unbaptized babies go to hell? What is the cut-off age for the "automatic innocent"?
Do the mentally retarded get a free pass? What if they're criminals? What's the mental cut-off?
Can a religion even be monotheistic if it offers a hell?
In several places, the bible says the dead have no consciousness. Is it still possible to suffer?
If hell is real, by definition does that makes Satan more powerful than the xtian God? If so, why doesn't Satan take heaven? (There's Catholic dogma that explains this but not in protestantism).
Matthew's author says hell is the gnashing of teeth. WTF?
And the old classic:
Which has the more interesting people, heavnen or hell?
Posted by: nejishiki
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June 7, 2010 3:05 AM
It has been known for several years that Heaven is hotter than Hell, or at least comparably hot.
Posted by: sasqwatch
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June 7, 2010 3:10 AM
Heaven, according to Wanda June (K. Vonnegut Jr.)
MUSIC indicates happiness, innocence, and weightlessness. Spotlight comes up on WANDA JUNE, a lisping eight-year-old in a starched party dress. She is as cute as Shirley Temple.
WANDA JUNE: Hello. I am Wanda June. Today was going to be my birthday, but I was hit by an ice-cream truck before I could have my party. I am dead now. I am in Heaven. That is why my parents did not pick up the cake at the bakery. I am not mad at the ice-cream truck driver, even though he was drunk when he hit me. It didn't hurt much. It wasn't even as bad as the sting of a bumblebee. I am really happy here! It's so much fun. I am glad the driver was drunk. If he hadn't been, I might not have got to Heaven for years and years and years. I would have had to go to high school first, and then beauty college. I would have had to get married and have babies and everything. Now I can just play and play and play. Any time I want any pink cotton candy I can have some. Everybody up here is happy-- the animals and the dead soldiers and people who went to the electric chair and everything. They're all glad for whatever sent them here. Nobody is mad. We're all too busy playing shuffleboard. So if you think of killing somebody, don't worry about it. Just go ahead and do it. Whoever you do it to should kiss you for doing it. The soldiers up here just love the shrapnel and the tanks and the bayonets and the dum dums that let them play shuffleboard all the time--and drink beer.
Spotlight begins to dim and carnival music on a steam calliope begins to intrude, until, at the end of the speech, WANDA JUNE is drowned out and the stage is black.
WANDA JUNE
We have merry-go-rounds that don't cost anything to ride on. We have Ferris wheels. We have Little League and girls' basketball. There's a drum and bugle corps anybody can join. For people who like golf, there is a par-three golf course and a driving range, with never any waiting. If you just want to sit and loaf, why that's all right, too. Gourmet specialties are cooked to your order and served at any time of night or day...
Posted by: ecpaulsen
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June 7, 2010 3:13 AM
I remember when my aunt described what heaven was to me as a small child: all of the rocks, and the trees, and the grass, and every living thing would sing the praises of god 24/7. I asked if there would be ice cream and pinball, she told me no. I asked if I would be able to read books or draw and she said I wouldn't have the time because I'd be singing all the time. I asked if my dog would be there but alas she told me that animals didn't go to heaven. No dogs. No cats. No birds. No fish. No bugs. Nothing.
I told her that it sounded horrible. All the while I was being taken to church I had panic attacks at night considering my eventual death and either ending up as gods automaton or satans pin cushion. Either outcome seemed nightmarish. My brain could never reconcile a "loving" god to either scenario - hence my atheism. Of course several years transpired between the above event and my emancipation from religion, several more years of guilt, shame, fear, and awful dreams.
I don't hate religion like I used to, but I am more inclined to see it as a malignant institution. They can keep their heaven.
Posted by: nejishiki
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June 7, 2010 3:15 AM
Damn, I see people posted that before me.
However, monado (#168), I've never been able to track the original calculation down to anything before the 1972 Applied Optics 'article.'
Posted by: latsot
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June 7, 2010 3:35 AM
I'm donating my body to science but I have to admit that this is partly to annoy my wife, who is a solicitor and the executor of my will, so will have to sort it all out. She was especially irked to learn that if science doesn't want my body, they'll just send it back and she'll be stuck with it.
Posted by: Rorschach
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June 7, 2010 3:45 AM
Reminds me : Cleese's Chapman eulogy
Posted by: Laurent Weppe
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June 7, 2010 4:46 AM
You know, you may have made a workable description of Hell here: a complete mind wipe: the personality of criminals, atheists, fans of Lara Fabian get utterly destroyed, replaced with a happy, satisfied, worshipping hollow new personality where the memory of the former self remain as a monument of the futility of one's will to defy God.
This would be like the final chapter of 1984 going on forever and ever and ever and ever... AND EVER...
Congratulation, you just gave me the most nightmarish description of the afterlife I've ever seen
Posted by: Birger Johansson
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June 7, 2010 5:23 AM
Damn! Ivo @ 60 beat me to mentioning Farmer's Riverworld series. But Farmer's early "Tierworld" series provides essentially a set of heavens and hells and synthetic worlds of every kind.
More SF afterlife solutions: a simulated cosmos in the manner of Matrix seems more tractable than a physical afterlife.
BTW, in regard to *uploading the minds of the dead into computers* Clifford D. Simak was the first to suggest it (The Werewolf Principle).
-if you wanted to talk with the departed, you just dialled their number on the phone, but they had no physical presence. Weird, but there is no physical law that would prevent such an option. Current SF (Hamilton, Neal Asher) features such uploading as routine.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/hairychris444#96384
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June 7, 2010 8:51 AM
- Terry Pratchett
Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD)
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June 7, 2010 9:44 AM
I remember that Hell was always a problem for me as a believer. Especially since the sky-daddy was supposed to be such a nice loving guy. I once asked my preacher how if God loves us so much and is willing to forgive anything if we just ask him, why is there an eternal Hell? His answer was just that "God is just" (or something to that effect, I don't remember the exact words anymore). I smiled and nodded and walked away, knowing that he hadn't answered my question really, but raised another. What kind of monster thinks infinite torture is just? That was just one of the many seeds of doubt that took over 10 years to fully bloom.
Posted by: mikerattlesnake
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June 7, 2010 9:49 AM
The problem with the christian version of heaven (the one they have such a hard time describing) is that christians don't do enough psychadelic drugs. If they did, they might be able to describe what detatchment from self, irrelevance of time, uncoupled bliss, etc. is like.
Unfortunately, they're mostly a bunch of uptight republicans, so they end up describing streets paved with gold, dead grandmothers, and a lot of other silliness (not that psychadelic experiences aren't a bit silly) that amounts to no more than a kid's most ambitious "dear santa" letter ever.
Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD)
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June 7, 2010 9:56 AM
On the subject of Heaven...
I always figured I'd get to do whatever I wanted with the afterlife, so my goal was to explore the universe, past and future. Watch a supernova, see a nebula collapse into a solar system. That sort of thing. I just pictured myself whizzing through the cosmos, absorbing knowledge. I never really thought about what would happen after I'd seen it all, or after the heat death of the universe. But then again, that's why I was still a believer - I hadn't really thought about any of it.
Posted by: Gus Snarp
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June 7, 2010 10:23 AM
Just had my Grandmother in law's funeral. Man it was weird. She was a Jehovah's witness, all her living relatives are Catholic, with the exception of my wife, myself, and one great grandson. The church turned out in decent numbers, and we let them do their thing, and it was so weird. I've been to Christian funerals of many denominations, but other than maybe the Salvation Army, this was the weirdest. Especially with the disconnect between her family, who did all the work and put everything together and dealt with all the details out of love and familial obligation, and all the church people who showed up, did their religious bit, ate our food, and left. The Jehovah's apparently believe (and the whole funeral was like a lecture in Jehovah's Witless death theology) that you go to sleep and there is nothing for a while, then there's the resurrection, which I think is something to do with the apocalypse, and which will apparently be here soon, even though it's been supposed to be soon for a long time. The bible readings about resurrection, including the whole Lazarus bit, sounded to me like Jehovah was raising himself a zombie army (well, Lazarus seems to have been a mummy). My wife turned and whispered to me: "Zombies?". Nice to be so in tune. No one from the family was asked to speak, which was probably a good thing. I might have said: "She died because she needed a blood transfusion, which your religion forbids because it can' tell the difference between a 2000 year old dietary restriction and a lifesaving modern medical technique." (this would not have been true, as it turns out the doctors decided the transfusion would just prolong the inevitable for a few days and it wasn't worth doing). Or I might have told the truth: "Given the option of remaining faithful to your silly superstitions and living, she chose to fight for her life and countermanded the no blood transfusion order on file for her when she thought a blood transfusion would save her life."
Posted by: wylann
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June 7, 2010 12:08 PM
I admit I only skimmed the thread, but this reminds a bit of Twain's Letters from the Earth.
Highly recommended reading for those who haven't.
Cheers.
Posted by: 10cities10years
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June 7, 2010 12:36 PM
It's interesting the way children are raised on the ideas of Heaven and Hell. I recall the fiery images of hell (as a little Christian, I remember trying to convert my non-Christian friends with those threats), and more importantly, the idea of Heaven being a place where everyone had a mansion and the streets were made of gold and essentially everyone was well-off. It wasn't so much the thought of being reunited with loved ones, it was all about Heaven as a 5-Star Eternal Hotel.
Then you get older and suddenly those images of H&H are 'childish' and the 'real' versions of eternity were revealed. Or not revealed, as they suddenly became way more vague, just meaningless ideas: Hell is a place where you are 'separated from God' and Heaven is a place where you are eternally 'in His presence' (which sounds atrocious; like being stuck at home with Dad all day every day).
Now that the idea of Hell is out of vogue with modern, educated Christians, I'm just wondering when Heaven will start being dismissed as 'just a metaphor for the peace you feel knowing Jesus'. Of course, if that were true, why are so many Christians miserable?
Sunday Sacrilege is becoming one of my favorite aspects of the blog, PZ. Well written and very thought provoking.
Posted by: ctgopks
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June 7, 2010 12:38 PM
I remember a cartoon with two frames, the first one with a man at the pearly gates. St. Peter says, "Welcome to heaven; here is your harp." The next frame has the man at the gates of hell, with Satan saying, "Welcome to hell; here's your accordian."
Posted by: badgersdaughter
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June 7, 2010 1:42 PM
"Sorry, you're going to have to haunt your place of death for a while. Here's your theremin."
Posted by: --E
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June 7, 2010 2:23 PM
so too would I cease to exist if scoured in the all-consuming love of an omnipresent deity. What kind of PZ Myers could exist when stripped of doubt and disbelief and irreverence and impudence? An angelic PZ is a contradiction in terms — it would be the death of the me that counts.
-->Well there's your problem. You're actually capable of looking at yourself and thinking about who you are, and evaluating that person.
Most people seem to me to wander through life eating, sleeping, having sex, going to work, and never once thinking about what the view is like from outside their own heads. They seem to imagine that the other 7 billion people on the planet are actors in the great drama of My Life, put there only to give the person someone to interact with.
It's why assholes can say that external, bogus forces (teh gays!) caused a natural disaster in a city, and the inhabitants of that city deserved it. Because those aren't real people, killed or injured or made homeless. They're puppets in the asshole's internal morality play.
An eternal heaven of hosannahs and bliss makes perfect sense if everyone else is just a simulacrum. Doubtless the folks who believe in that have a lingering expectation that they are somehow the exception, and will be able to walk around and enjoy the same things they enjoy now.
(My other theory is that they don't enjoy anything now, so the notion of eternal bliss is tempting in its novelty.)
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/IFR2b_p5o8kZ3YV1mrRajqve6Rsg#061e6
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June 7, 2010 4:04 PM
Great Post! Really, you should turn this into a pamphlet to hand to the Jehovah's Witnesses in exchange for theirs (which you would promptly recycle).
Posted by: webriggs
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June 7, 2010 7:56 PM
I agree with you that the entire edifice makes no sense at all. I can't imagine how people believe any of the things they do about religion. Total disconnect with the nature of reality. No capacity to think.
Heaven and hell are metaphors only, and they only exist here in our present lives. For me, heaven is being curled up in birthday suits with my totally awesome wife. No religious description of any fictitious heaven could ever compare to the bliss of that state. But that's a very personal heaven on earth. Y'all have to find your own heaven on earth.
Hell is dealing with simple-minded, uneducated, policy bound government bureaucrats. Nothing in the world is more torture than that. I'd rather wrestle a lion and die in the fight than to deal with a mindless fuckwit bureaucrat who can screw with my life.
Religion makes people completely fucking crazy. Can we ever get the human population free of this scourge?
Posted by: Knockgoats
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June 7, 2010 8:11 PM
Hell is dealing with simple-minded, uneducated, policy bound government bureaucrats. Nothing in the world is more torture than that. - webriggs
What a contemptible self-pitying cry-baby. How about being diagnosed with MND or Alzheimer's disease? Having to sell your body to feed your children? Being imprisoned for life for a crime you didn't commit? Or being, you know, actually tortured?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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June 7, 2010 8:23 PM
webriggs #189
Having spent much of my professional life as a bureaucrat, perhaps I can explain something about how the species functions.
Most bureaucrats are neither uneducated nor mindless. They are, however, as you say, policy bound. Once when I was a witness at a congressional committee hearing I was asked why my department was following a particular policy which the congresscritter deemed stupid. I explained we were required by law to adhere to the policy. I agreed the policy was suboptimal. But the bureaucracy had no choice. There was a law which required us to do something which was quite silly. I did not tell the congresscritter that he had voted for this particular law.
The penalty for non-compliance with the policy was "up to five years imprisonment or a fine of up to $250,000 or both." This sort of thing is quite common with those pesky little rules the bureaucrats follow and which annoy you. But guess what, given the choice between annoying you and going to jail then I'm going to annoy you. If you don't like the rules then whine to the legislature. They're the ones who make the rules.
Posted by: JHS
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June 7, 2010 11:43 PM
"It's really nothing but people making stuff up based entirely on what they wish were true."
This. is. religion. in a nutshell.
There really is nothing else. At its heart, theism is wishful (magical) thinking. It tickles me when people laugh and make light of atheists (see: PZ's more recent post about Urban Dictionary's definition of "atheist"). Really? YOU...are making fun...of US? Some sect 2000 years ago (less than a nanosecond in the grand, infinite scheme of the universe) that worshipped a man who may or may not have existed, whose book was culled from who knows how many sketchy, ignorant, medieval, magically thinking sources . . . THAT was the one and only answer? Seriously?
Religion would be no more than a fascinating sociological construct if it weren't so damned omnipresent and scary.
See if this sounds familiar. A theist -- Christian, Muslim, Jew, whatever -- says X (Jesus is lord, gays are icky and wrong, kill the infidel, whatever). Ask why. It all -- ALL -- boils down to "because someone told me so." You'll get all kinds of stuff along the lines of "I feel god in me"..."the spirit moved me"...."the bible/koran/... says so"...or, amusingly, "it's obvious god is everywhere." But, at some point early in their lives, these people were indoctrinated with this impulse to see "god" wherever there was something difficult, or sad, or that they didn't understand. And it becomes their touchstone. An excuse for not thinking for themselves. Theism boils everything down to tribal allegiances. Apologists go on and on about the history, the culture, even the numbers ("so many people believe X, there must be something to it!")...but the fact remains, it's nothing more than a rumor, writ large.
At the end of the day, there is nothing there but wishful thinking: heaven for the "good people" (which the person arguing of course considers him- or herself to be), hell for the "bad people" (the "other"...everyone who doesn't tow their line), and lots of other arbitrary, Iron Age dictums. Sure, there are sects who are "nice" and don't go in for the ugly....but as Dawkins says, basically, they're doing it wrong. They cling to the nice magical thinking while eschewing the ugly. All of them are simply projecting what they wish and fervently hope to be true onto the world. And that projection shapes governments, policies, our entire (thoroughly real) world.
To close out, a quote from Virginia Woolf, thorough skeptic and a personal hero:
"Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we--I mean all human beings--are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words, we are the music; we are the thing itself."
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 7, 2010 11:54 PM
webriggs:
Oh? Nothing in the world, the whole fucking world, is worse than a bout of dealing with a bureaucracy? You must have one fine fuckin' life, webriggs. I can think of several things which happened in my life which I'd happily trade for time tangling with bureaucrats and the things which happened to me, they were terrible, violent, nasty and fucked me up something fierce for a good portion of my life. And you know what? As bad as those things were, they don't come close to what a whole lot of people go through in their lives.
So, from my point of view, you've got a lot to be grateful for, webriggs, and you should stop being such an almighty assclown about it.
Posted by: Scott in Texas
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June 8, 2010 3:16 PM
Heaven: Men and women alike spending eternity with the ones we love while learning, growing, creating and becoming more and more like the all-powerful, all-knowing Father who created us. Gods in embryo, namely the human race, naturally have the potential to become Gods themselves, but only on God's terms. This is Eternal Life as taught by the Mormon Church, and I'm not quite sure what about this heavenly state of being would be so undesirable for women or so guilt-inspiring for men according to Mr. Meyers.
Hell (according to Mormons): Having your eternal progression limited because of disobedience to God's commandments, which is ultimately the definition of "damnation".
Pride generally keeps people from seeking God, who reveals himself to the meek, the humble and the penitent, and pride manifests itself most abundantly among the rich and the learned. I find the plight of proud educated people disturbingly ironic; what does all the learning in the world profit a man or woman if pride and vanity ultimately separate them from the source of all truth and happiness?
Posted by: Jaycubed
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June 8, 2010 7:55 PM
Dear Scott in Texas
It is Pride & Vanity that makes people believe they are buddies with the non-existent big Fairy (your God).
What does all the Belief/Faith in the world profit a man or woman if that Pride and Vanity ultimately separate them from the source of all truth and happiness (the physical reality we all must share)?
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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June 8, 2010 8:11 PM
Scott:
What is it with you theists, that Dr. Myers presents such a bloody problem? Or is that just your standard disrespect showing? His name is spelled out at the top of the page, left hand side.
I'm not surprised; theists do tend to embrace ignorance. They seem to find it a state of grace. Why anyone would be happy with a god who wished them to be stupid, I don't know. Seems like a bad deal to me. Now I'm nowhere near rich in money. I'm fortunate enough to be comfortable and happy. I am well educated and look to increase my knowledge every day. There is awe and joy in learning, in being able to appreciate reality. It's difficult to contemplate being happy as a slave to a delusion of a god who prefers me to be an empty headed slave with nothing more in my head than slavering devotion as I develop calluses on my knees and air pockets in my brain. Not my bag, ya know?
What does all the ignorance and subservience to an imaginary being profit a man or woman who forfeits all the wonders of the only life they will have, as once they are dead, they are gone. *poof* No more you, definitely no god.
By the way, if your pet delusion was real, there is no way I'd bow my head, let alone drop to my knees in front of such a psychopathic, sick, twisted fuck as El Shaddai. He's your psycho. Do us a favour and keep it to yourself. Thanks.
Posted by: Aquaria
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June 8, 2010 8:40 PM
Hell is dealing with simple-minded, uneducated, policy bound government bureaucrats. Nothing in the world is more torture than that.
Fuck off, douche nozzle.
It's the only response a moron like you deserves.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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June 9, 2010 12:09 AM
What a nice fairy-tale.
Why do the dead not visit the living, then?
I bet not even the most devout Mormon really believes the fairy-tale. If they did, they'd kill themselves. Murder wouldn't be a crime; it would just be a favor for an embryonic God. Suicide would just be like a teenager showing independence and leaving home.
But you all really know that death is permanent nonexistence; the utter destruction of all that it means to be alive, aware, conscious, human. And so you cling fiercely to life. Just like everyone else.
And you tell yourselves fairy-tales that you don't really believe.
And if you were told that your eternal destiny was to be a brood cow, you would welcome it?
How very... euphemistic.
So not to Mormon leaders, then.
And the other Mormons.
Much like the plight of all Mormons, then.
Posted by: Rayne Everlasting
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June 16, 2010 8:30 PM
Hey look. I love John Lennon's work. But I am also a devout Christian. Just because you ran into an instance of a psycho-path does not mean that religion and Christianity are a problem. I mean do people like John Paul II and Mother Teresa seem like scary psycho-paths to you? No. They deeply love mankind. As do I. At the end of the day there is only right and wrong. True and false. Hell is not forced on people. Hell is created by haters. Not Christians. You may ask "If God Loves us so much, why would He send people to Hell?" The answer is simple. God can not force His Love on people. That is what heaven is - experiencing God's love. Hell is not at all what you understand. Hell is simply the inability to feel God's rejected Love.
In CONCLUSION: John Lennon wanted peace on Earth. He wanted people to "Come Together" to create a world of love. If only he knew that that is the mission of Christ and His Church. If only he knew that what he really wanted, is Heaven. For if everyone followed Christ's words perfectly, there would be peace on Earth. God bless you all.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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July 8, 2010 2:34 AM
Perhaps.
Religion and Christianity are a problem for reasons other than how easily crazy people import the insane thinking embedded therein.
In some ways, they are scarier. It's easy to dismiss the insanity of a roving and ranting preacher, but when insanity and cruelty are spoken by smiling and friendly people, their followers -- like you -- listen and nod approvingly.
Well, inasmuch as they are dead, they do no such thing.
And when they were alive, they convinced naïve people like you that they "loved" mankind, while in fact doing no such thing.
They loved power and adoration.
Your double heresy is noted.
Because God is not a Christian?
Ah.
You might find reading "Hell is the Absence of God" to be of interest, since it takes that position as well.
John Lennon was not as ignorant of Christianity, and of Jesus, and of the Church, as you imply.
Since Jesus's words contradict themselves, you are obviously wrong.
Posted by: Recife
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August 27, 2011 8:34 AM
Religion is to bring peace to the individual, each one has its own, we respect each other.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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August 27, 2011 9:48 AM
Recife (#202):
If that's what religion is for, then we ought to demand our money back.
Can you say "Not fit for purpose"?