I've always wondered about the eternal bliss part of heaven. It always seems very vague. So on earth you're not supposed to enjoy life's pleasures or joys "too much" because in heaven you can't enjoy it "too much", like what's the goal. Is it just dangle temptation in front of you as a test, so you don't go to hell. So does that mean you can be a sinner in heaven because you showed restraint on earth? Does that mean you get in because you proved that you are ok with living a pious life but now there is no temptation and no free will? Either way it sounds like physical torture in hell or mental torture in heaven, I'm a bit confused. I'm willing to listen, hell seems pretty specific but heaven is pretty vague.
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There's a reason that critical thinking and structured religion are incompatible.
What if you worship the god of critical thinking and pray by thinking critically?
In Judaism, Satan is basically a lawyer guy that Elohim hires to question him and call him on his bullshit. That may explain why Jewish people place a lot of importance on having a nice argument.
The ancient Greek philosphers were also very fond of critical thinking and they were religious. The Athenians revered Athena especially, the goddess of wisdom. So it was considered virtuous to spend your days in thought and debate.
Like, I get that your experience is with Christianity, which is not a very thought-heavy religion. But I find it difficult to believe that you've studied a representative sample of the world's religions. I think you're just repeating a trope you read online, that religious people are stupid, without thinking critically about it.
Because as soon as you start thinking critically you don't need gods.
"Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago. They were... more trouble than they were worth."
Maybe you can't even move or see anything but you are fed chemical bliss like heroin non stop.
Thanks, but could I please just go back to playing Portal 2?
HEV suit voice: morphine administered
In the book, "Metamorphosis of the Prime Intellect", an AI takes complete control of physicsl reality and provides an environment on command for everyone.
There are groups of people who tell the AI to permanently stimulate neurons to flood their brains with dopamine, and just become non responsive husks.
This is one of my favorite science fiction stories for the way it deals with the question of what it would really be like to live in a perfect world (the related story "A Casino Odyssey in Cyberspace" also has some interesting ideas on this front). But be warned that it contains some scenes of extremely graphic sex and violence, and the final chapter has some incredibly weird and pervy shit that just about ruins the whole thing (to the point that I think skipping it and ending in a cliffhanger is better.)
Another fantastic story in this vein is Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God," which takes place in a world like ours except for the fact that God is objectively real and angels regularly manifest on Earth. It's more about the psychological conflicts among people who want to have faith but can't for various reasons, but the way Heaven is portrayed and the effect it has on people is a pivotal part. And it has one of the biggest gut-punch sentences of any story I've ever read.
I always preferred the 'Friendship is Optimal' version. It's a my little pony fanfiction in which a video game based on the franchise featuring AI achieves the singularity and creates a sort of digital afterlife. Humans can be uploaded, but the process is destructive, resulting in their real body's death.
The afterlife created for them is uniquely calibrated to provide maximum contentment. Each space features a small number of other people (some real, some NPCs) following Dunbar's number to ensure our minds can care about them. The people chosen are calibrated to mesh well with your personality.
It features interesting things for us to do, with enough challenges to keep things fresh and engaging, but not so many as to overly frustrate us. Basically it turns our experience into that of an idyllic version of reality.
That's about as close a description of 'eternal bliss' as I can fathom except for the fact that by nature it's not 100% bliss all the time. It's just living in a world where you matter, can surround yourself with loved ones you gel with and can pursue your passions endlessly in ways that are personally rewarding to you. Even then I'm not sure how it'd actually keep working after a few thousand years or so.
Literaly it's all about God. You just spend forever praising him, and apparently don't care about anything else.
This is better than searing hot lava forever I suppose.
I dunno man, the lava seems pretty bad, but then again... being a worship zombie ... sounds like some kinda parasitic horror thing out of Rick and Morty.
No interest in spending eternity praising and worshiping a vengeful, spiteful, narcissistic god. Might be his idea of heaven, but it's not mine. Give me the void.
Also, the only account we have of Hell is the Bible, and I wouldn't call that an unbiased source. Why would the Devil torture his bois? It doesn't make any sense.
The Good Place has a nice answer here: your mind fades into forgetfulness as every whim is accomplished without any challenge
Really the Bible doesn't say very much about hell.
Sometimes a character will be thrown into a pit of fire or similar but it's never claimed its for everyone.
Really all it says it's you'll be "without God". Generally, it seems like non-Christians just die but Christians get a second afterlife - unless of course they ate shellfish.
There is a lot in old religions, Christianity included, where the rewards were obviously written for the desires of the people at the time. It would be very different if heavenly rewards were written with today's mindset.
you’re not supposed to enjoy life’s pleasures or joys “too much”
That's a rather puritanical view. I would say the dangers of pleasure are similar to the dangers of heroin -- the problem is not enjoying it too much, but becoming single-minded in its pursuit.
As for sin in heaven, I guess you would not want to because all of your deepest needs are met without sin.
A common image of heaven is a bunch of saints playing harps. Nowadays this looks boring; imagine instead a giant jam session with everyone rocking out.
It's a bit of a mistake to assume that you would be your fully conscious, rational, Earthly self in the afterlife; with all your memories and such intact. Death is transformation. A better way to imagine it is as if you would have a really nice and long dream. You don't get bored of dreams.
Remember reading the web series “the salvation war”, (where god announces armageddon but turns out modern weaponry altered the scales somewhat). Turns out heaven was only heaven for Middle Ages peasants, a lack of hunger or illness, but you still have to farm and go to church etc. the army gets there and just thinks “wow what a shithole”.
I think I remember that series, isn't that the one where they use a bunker busting bomb to kill Satan in hell.
What a sentence. Hoorah.
Valhalla sounds lame if everyone is just fighting over and over every day with drones and ICBM's
I really hope that if there's an afterlife, it isn't anything like in the bible. It sounds like pure torture.
I would prefer the afterlife to be something like a super-advanced future civilization scanning people's minds from the past and putting them in a simulation modeled after how The Good Place was after they fixed it in the show.
i have bad news, bro. ur already in hell and youre not going anywhere.
But why? Every time people speak of afterlife, I have this question in my head. Why would any entity run an afterlife? What would be the point of it? Why would something capable of creating life and universe would bother creating 5 star hotel for humans? Why? For good behaviour? Why does it care? If the god created us, why would he reward his own creation for it working out? Doesn't he define life and therefore behaviour, making punishment for bad behaviour quite silly?
Narcicism.
It would be nice if you had some time to reflect and maybe explore from your current persona, followed by an eventual memory wipe so you can start over again. Otherwise I'd expect it to get pretty dull eventually.
I’m not sure if I hope it’s the same thing as you desire, but being in a God-induced haze of peace (like being benzo’d out or something) with nothing to do or look froward to sounds hellish. If you no longer have need of that, you’re stripped of “you”, and that sounds even worse.
I just want more time to finish my Steam backlog.
Bruh if I can’t smoke weed and play video games all day wtf is the point of heaven
If there is a frozen yogurt stand, you know this isn't the good place.

“Oh sure, but I’ve come to really like frozen yogurt, there’s something so human about taking something and ruining it a little so you can have more of it.”
Heaven is supposed to be all good if someone isn't enjoying their existence there then it's not heaven
But he already has a halo!
You get to heaven then some homicidal maniac comes in and ruins everyone's nice peaceful time with his Head Explodey powers.
Nny mentioned.
I love the Talking Heads song, Heaven, which just describes Heaven as the most boring place anyone could possibly be at cause everything being completely perfect all the time is boring and uninteresting.
It's hard to imagine
That nothing at all
Could be so exciting
Could be so much fun
Truck-kun, please take me to a nice isekai. Actually it doesn't have to be that nice, as long as it's not Redo of a Healer. Taylor Farms already had their way with me.
If there are afterlives (I don't think there are), I'd want mine to just be me and my girlfriend, talking about whatever interests us and just holding each other. I genuinely tear up at the thought. It'd be so perfect.
