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What Does “Heaven” Look Like?

 
 
 
Rhea said:
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If I was to imagine such a place it would be where all my questions are answered and there was no need to concern oneself with the basic needs of survival. If a God could provide those things then it would be worthy of my devotion. It's really the main thing I strive for in this life. Understanding myself and my desires and motivations would free me from past regrets and anxieties about the future. If free will has any meaning that would be the only way to truly achieve it. And if there are others there and I had nothing to protect I could forgive them too. Such is love, I guess. Because if everyone could be given that opportunity then no one, I believe, is beyond hope.

Merry Christmas.
 
If they piss off the Kingdom of Atlantis or the Empire of the Galaxy, it will look like a flat glassy plain with a little rain on it.

Eldarion Lathria
 
Treedbear said:
Rhea said:
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What’s your picture?
Click to expand...

If I was to imagine such a place it would be where all my questions are answered and there was no need to concern oneself with the basic needs of survival. If a God could provide those things then it would be worthy of my devotion. It's really the main thing I strive for in this life. Understanding myself and my desires and motivations would free me from past regrets and anxieties about the future. If free will has any meaning that would be the only way to truly achieve it. And if there are others there and I had nothing to protect I could forgive them too. Such is love, I guess. Because if everyone could be given that opportunity then no one, I believe, is beyond hope.

Merry Christmas.
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That sounds a bit like the "Pure Land" of Amida Buddhism.
 
Lots of eating and drinking (wine or your choice), between chorus's of Kumbaya, after every trillionth verse one grain of sand is removed from one beach; repeat until all grains of sand are gone...

Oh, I guess I'd have a embedded Valium drip as well, or a lobotomy...wouldn't want to claim to know which way she'd run it...
 
It's just people worshiping god for all eternity. Sounds pretty fucking boring.
 
Politesse said:
Treedbear said:
Rhea said:
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What’s your picture?
Click to expand...

If I was to imagine such a place it would be where all my questions are answered and there was no need to concern oneself with the basic needs of survival. If a God could provide those things then it would be worthy of my devotion. It's really the main thing I strive for in this life. Understanding myself and my desires and motivations would free me from past regrets and anxieties about the future. If free will has any meaning that would be the only way to truly achieve it. And if there are others there and I had nothing to protect I could forgive them too. Such is love, I guess. Because if everyone could be given that opportunity then no one, I believe, is beyond hope.

Merry Christmas.
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That sounds a bit like the "Pure Land" of Amida Buddhism.
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Thanks for that, Pure Land Buddhism. As I was writing the above the similarity with Buddhism did cross my mind. Amidism and the land of Sukhāvatī seems to cross classical Buddhism with the Christian concept of heaven as a place of blissfulness. To my mind the path one is on is all that it's ever about.
 
Thankfully, we know something about heaven's true appearance. Revelation says it is a city laid out in a perfect square, 375 miles to a side, bounded on all four sides by an immense jasper wall with three gates on each side. Streets of gold.
I believe -- and you need not agree with me -- that heaven is, in fact, the WalMart of all WalMarts. The "streets" of gold are in fact aisles. The gates are store entry points, not exits -- and, true to form, the laziest dead Christians get the greeter jobs at each gate.
You get a cart as you enter. Any family members that are already shopping join you with their carts. Your extended family group forms a shopping caravan and you simply drift happily up one aisle and down the next, listening to Christian rock on the store sound system. It never gets old, because even when you've shopped every last aisle, you can turn around and there will be new specials. Unfortunately, nearly every damn thing in heaven is made in China, but then, we're used to that, right? Even God can't turn around the trade deficit.
Heaven's WalMart never runs out of the five gallon jars of dill pickles. No need to hoard. When you finally get to checkout, the associates are 50-year-old women with alopecia that you remember vaguely from your old home town. They go through the motions of scanning all your items, at which point a greeter with a quiet manner and insinuating smile approaches and asks if you found everything and if, indeed, you wouldn't like to check your cart up front and get another cart. And you always do. Because you never really intended to leave WalMart, did you? It's your life's essence. Now it's your eternity.
 
Death is what makes life so wonderful. Without an end, you’re just trapped in a prison. I heard Jerry Falwell describe it as a place where you sang praises to Jesus all day. :sick-green:

I suppose I’d like to be able to travel time and space. I could enjoy exploring the cosmos and our history for a few billion years. But then what? I mean after about 200 trillion years what’s left to do?
 
SLD said:
I mean after about 200 trillion years what’s left to do?
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Well, in What Dreams May Come, you reincarnate. To live it all over again.
Which i think they did backwards. First they met bumping rowboats in a lake in Switzerland, and picniced in the Alps. Second time thru, they bumped toy boats in a pond and shared a sandwich. I've always had more fun with successive trips to a theme park, from familiarity, preparations, so i'd have had the more majestic scenery, and menu, in the second life....

Like, i met my wife in the chow line on a Navy ship. I would hope we recreate that as a banquet in the next life, because if the banquet was LAST time thru, what the fuck happened? Did our reservations get lost?
 
You know what would be cool in an eternal fantasy world, though, would be an alternative history simulator. It would be cool to be able to go back and view history, and then change some things and see what “would have” happened.

Although I suppose some people posit that this is what we’re living in. (And some toddler spirit got their hands on 2020)
 
skepticalbip said:
I always liked Twain's preferences, "Heaven for the climate and Hell for the company". Seeing the people who claim to be going to heaven, he seems to have a point.
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Indeed. I've had a variation of the conversation with an overzealous evangelical or two:

Overzealous Evangelical: "Wouldn't you rather go to heaven and not hell?"
Me: "Why, who's in heaven?"
OE: "People like me."
Me: "Who's in hell?"
OE: "People like you."
Me: "I think you need to work on your sales pitch. :D
 
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