Heaven & Hell: Views on paradise and punishment

Alright, we've been having many discussions on religion lately, and there are two key words that get thrown around everywhere, Heaven & Hell.

Now, there are the classical ideas of what heaven and hell are:

Heaven - A beautiful place, gardens, gold streets, etc.

Hell - Fire, brimstone, weeping and gnashing of teeth, etc.


But lately, I've seen different ideas on what heaven and hell are. For one, I've seen hell described as not a "physical" place, but rather simple seperation from God.

So I want to see what other people's views on heaven and hell are. Is it a different plain of existance, a literal place, a state of mind?


My views

For starters, I think that both heaven, hell, and earth are in seperate but overlapping...somethings, plains, universes, whatever.

Hell: I think it's literal fire and brimstone, a place you could (if you so desired to) travel to in the alternate dimension. Think Mordor from Lord of the Rings. However, I think that travel would not be done in the way we think of it. You could "walk," but it'd just be a way for the mind to percieve things. And once you walked there, you could walk out again, no problem.

Heaven: One of two possibilities for me.

1) It's a place that's so perfect, so wonderful, that we would never want to leave. We could steal if we wanted to, but there'd be no need. You want to roll around in a pile of $100 bills, good, done. It's a place where everyone has whatever they want so that the don't do anything bad.

2) When we die, our souls are merged with everyone elses. We become one mind, individual but part of the whole. Others could access your memories and experience and vise versa. We could do anything , handle any problem. One persons strengths will compensate for another's weaknesses, and vise versa. For those who have seen Evangelion, it is Human Complementation at it's best.



I guess the point of making this thread is just a way to compare heaven and hell and form new ideas from it in a quest for knowledge.

Sharing of ideas I guess (primitive form of Human Complementation).




Don't leave me.
Don't ignore me.
Don't kill me!

 

heaven: for me it would be happy but not exuberant my house would be custimised to everything i wanted,it would be like a city all the normal shops,i would have all the time in the world to learn everything known to mankind and more.

i have always veiwed heaven a personal to ones self just like hell is.

hell:it would be a city just like heaven only you could never have what you want in fact you would get just the opisite of what you wanted,it would be eaternal torment.

nautrally it would be seperate plain of exsitance however it would retain the classical stuff of both sides.

 

Heaven: A place where I could do what I wanted, have what I wanted, and everyone else could do the same thing and we'd still get along and live in perfect peace.

Impossible? Not for an all-powerful god.

Hell: nonexistent.

People worry way too much about an afterlife. If you're going to do good here, you should do it because you want to--not because you're so concerned about where you go when you die.

 

Can one exist w/o the other?

 

Why not?

 

If one believes in balance then there cannot be one w/o the other. No light w/o dark. No good w/o evil.

 

Sure--but that doesn't mean there has to be two separate places in the afterlife. Especially when there's no proof that there even is an afterlife.

 

Why would that not apply to an afterlife?

If you believe in heaven as an eternal and rewarding home then you have to believe there is a flip side to the coin. Otherwise, the "reward" of heaven wouldn't amount to much. No?

 

A reward is something you earn. As I've said, I don't believe you should decide how you're going to live this life by what you're going to get in the hereafter.

I try to follow the Golden Rule and take care of the Earth and its creatures because I believe, deep inside, that it is the right thing for me to do. Not because I want to earn my way into heaven. That would be stupid. I don't know whether there is a heaven.

And if you want to say heaven has an opposite, I'd say it's this life.

 

A reward is something you earn. As I've said, I don't believe you should decide how you're going to live this life by what you're going to get in the hereafter.

You make it seem like hard labor!!

I try to follow the Golden Rule and take care of the Earth and its creatures because I believe, deep inside, that it is the right thing for me to do. Not because I want to earn my way into heaven. That would be stupid. I don't know whether there is a heaven.

Fair enough if you don't believe in heaven. It's just difficult for me to comprehend how somebody can describe what heaven might be like and at the same time say hell is nonexistent.

And if you want to say heaven has an opposite, I'd say it's this life.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

 

I'm not miserable, I just see it as opposite because this life is (let's face it) difficult, not to mention temporary.

As far as my making it sound like hard labor--you should check out the Christian thread. Those guys make it sound like no one with my personality has a chance.

 

As far as my making it sound like hard labor--you should check out the Christian thread. Those guys make it sound like no one with my personality has a chance.

Understand that is their belief. You have your beliefs and they have theirs. You're steadfast in your beliefs as they are in theirs.

 

My belief on the "after-life?" No "Heaven," no "Hell." When we die, we merely re-join the Divine Mind/The Holy Mystery/"God" (much as you described in your 2nd possibility regarding Heaven, Jansons_Funny_Twin). People who have lived pretty unequivocally "evil" lives (lets use Hitler as an example), simply dissipate into nothingness.... Hey -- that sounds Buddhist!!

 

I don't much care where Hitler or Osama Bin Laden are in an afterlife, so long as I'm not in the same place.

 

Sing me a song, you?re a singer
Do me a wrong, you?re a bringer of evil
The devil is never a maker
The less that you give, you?re a taker
So it?s on and on and on, it?s heaven and hell, oh well

The lover of life?s not a sinner
The ending is just a beginner
The closer you get to the meaning
The sooner you?ll know that you?re dreaming
So it?s on and on and on, oh it?s on and on and on
It goes on and on and on, heaven and hell
I can tell, fool, fool!

Well if it seems to be real, it?s illusion
For every moment of truth, there?s confusion in life
Love can be seen as the answer, but nobody bleeds for the dancer
And it?s on and on, on and on and on....

They say that life?s a carousel
Spinning fast, you?ve got to ride it well
The world is full of kings and queens
Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams
It?s heaven and hell, oh well
And they?ll tell you black is really white
The moon is just the sun at night
And when you walk in golden halls
You get to keep the gold that falls
It?s heaven and hell, oh no!
Fool, fool!
You?ve got to bleed for the dancer!
Fool, fool!
Look for the answer!
Fool, fool, fool!

 

Is that your view on Heaven & Hell? What is that from?

 

It's a post-Ozzy Black Sabbath song.

 

That's not true. One can believe in balance but not believe in one or the other when it comes to Heaven and Hell.

For example, I believe in Heaven but not in Hell.

And I'm not an oddity. Jews don't believe in Hell. Heaven, yes. Hell, no.

 

Even though I'm a Christian, I'm fond of the Muslims' depiction of heaven and hell (and no, not because of the 72 virgins).

 

Jews don't believe in Hell. Heaven, yes. Hell, no.

So, according to the Jewish beliefs, what happens to people like Hitler?

 

I don't believe in either heaven or hell. I don't think that my identity will continue to exist after death, though I do think there is a universal awareness that will continue.

However, if when the time comes I discover that my personality, my self, is still around after I kick the bucket, I still wouldn't want to go to either heaven or hell.

I think first I'd go inhabit a tree for a while, feel its long, slow, green growth. Then I'd go sit in a fly's mind, find out what it's like to see from a hundred different points of view all at once. Then I'd shrink myself waaaaaaay down, try and figure out what makes a gluon glu and a muon mu. Then I'd shoot myself to the moon and feel the tidal forces as the moon and I orbited the earth. Maybe I'd dive into the center of a supernova to experience the explosion; then drift into a nearby nebula to watch new stars being born. After a thousand, two thousand years or so, I'd go back to Earth and see what human beings had made of themselves. If I do still exist after death, I'd like to stick around long enough to find out what happens when this universe is destroyed and the next one is created.

Now, failing all that, when I get to heaven (if heaven exists) the first thing I'd ask God is where the library is!

 

anakin_girl, if I may comment on an earlier definition you gave...

Heaven: A place where I could do what I wanted, have what I wanted, and everyone else could do the same thing and we'd still get along and live in perfect peace.

Impossible? Not for an all-powerful god.

What if what you wanted was control? Control over the lives of others? Is it possible that you would get what you want and everyone else still be happy? Doubtful.

The reason I focus on control is that I believe that the worst, most diabolical sin is pride -- the desire to essentially be God, particularly to be one's own god without any interference from above, but also to be the god of others in manipulating them like so many toys.

Heaven is, I believe, being fully aware of the presence of the Almighty. The experience may be joyful for those who are living within His grace, but for all people it will most certainly be humbling.

I don't believe that a just God would force a rebel into His presence; such an act is an insult to free will. But if He did, a man whose soul has been polluted with pride would hardly call the humbling experience heavenly.

 

Bubba: I don't want to control other people's lives. I do, however, know a lot of regular churchgoers who do, who try to legislate their version of morality onto the rest of us. Not speaking of you, but there are plenty out there.

But no, I wouldn't consider a "humbling experience" heavenly. Nothing good about being humiliated.

My version of heaven is being able to live in peace as I want to live.

As far as "free will"--the way people have talked, but here and in the other two Christianity threads, you'd think God wanted us to have free will more than he wanted anything else.

 

I think there's a difference between "humbling" and "humiliating." For instance, one can be humbled by nature without being humiliated by it.

A few years back, I visited a port in Alaska where tremendously tall mountains surrounded the waters on every side. The waters were filled with life, both fish and sea otter, and in the skies ahead flew an eagle or two.

I was humbled by that experience -- by the size and the beauty of what I had seen. And that is just a mere a shadow of being in God's presence.


...which leads to a rather obvious question. If your idea of Heaven is "being able to live in peace as I want to live," where's God? Where does God fit into that picture? Is there no room for what He wants?


As far as "free will"--the way people have talked, but here and in the other two Christianity threads, you'd think God wanted us to have free will more than he wanted anything else.

That's about right, actually.

There is a dignity to free will that cannot be found in any other attribute. It seems more dignifying that God created us free (even though we freely fell) than if God had merely created us as automata -- mindless robots doing precisely what we programmed to do. Where's the dignity in that?

Further, free will allows us to be not just God's creations, but individual persons -- and thus allows for genuine relationships among ourselves and between us and our Heavenly Father.

Finally, true love is impossible without free will. If God wanted to create something that was capable of love, that same creation must also be free and be capable of hate. I believe it is the only way.

So the question is, is it worth creating free creatures so that some may learn to love and become adopted sons and daughters of God if others willfully rebel and spend an eternity separated from Him?

God seems to think so.

 

Why would God not want people to live in peace?

Also, and this is another problem I've had with my discussions with various Christians here, why is the automatic conclusion that what God wants is not what I want? Am I such a loser that God and I are never going to want the same thing?

I understand about the lack of free will making us slaves, however, I think it's cruel to give us free will, along with raging hormones and desires, then impossible demands that he knows we can't follow--and then to say we can't get into heaven without following them or being sorry when we can't.

I know what you mean about the Alaskan mountains--I had the same experience on a recent trip to Seattle to see my more subtle West Coast half.

Where is God? He's there, and allowing us to have a huge party. I hope, anyway.