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Goodbye Jesus

Death Of Personality In Heaven?


megasamurai

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I always wonder how free will works in heaven. According to most Christians, sin nature is removed and people become sinless. Satan was able to sin in heaven but humans could not. If people become sinless as soon as they enter heaven, wouldn't this mean that Hitler and Stalin would become the nicest people in the world if they went there? Hell is often justified by the statement that bad people would do bad things if allowed into heaven. If Christians' sin nature is removed upon going to heaven why not non-Christians?

 

Also, if there is free will in heaven, how can one not be unhappy for billions upon billions of years? Eventually, we humans experience it. When I was a little Christian, I was just as scared of heaven as I was of hell. I was told that there would be no video games or technology in heaven. This scared me, but not as much as the fact that I wouldn't be bothered by that because I will be programmed to always feel happy. If the me in heaven was happy with living without technology, that me wouldn't not be the real me. I was told that the people in heaven become like Jesus after they die. Some take it as far that our personality becomes EXACTLY like Jesus and our old personality dies. Heaven seems like the death of personality punishment from Babylon 5. Did anyone else notice the horrific implications of many teachings about heaven?

 

 

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I always imagined heaven as a spiritual state, and eternity not as a span of time going on endlessly in a linear fashion, but rather as something beyond and outside of time. The death of the ego is seen as desirable in many religions, and is indeed a goal in some of them. Having experienced something similar to it, I'm not so sure it would be all that terrible.

 

I never understood the people who interpreted heaven as being an actual place, but that's literalism for you.

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Almost every Christian believes in a literal heaven. I personally find the idea of assimilating uncomfortable. I want to be me. I want to enjoy my favorite foods and listen to my favorite artists on the radio and watch my favorite TV shows. I want my favorite color to be mine, not Jesus'.

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Anything "Earthly" would seem kinda mundane in a Divine realm, so it kinda makes sense that such things do not exist, or are even sought after, in such a place. IronHorse, a devout Christian who hangs around in the Lion's Den, is looking forward to drinking beer (and if I recall correctly, fly fishing) in Heaven, so apparently some Christians do believe Heaven is a place where you can walk around doing whatever you like. Some seem to imagine what their perfect life on Earth would be like, with the addition of God's blessing and eternal life.

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Christians argue that Evil and Suffering exist because "god" wants us to have Free Will. So unless there is Evil and Suffering in Heaven, there can be no Free Will. Can anyone in Heaven even have a "bad" thought? It's not possible.

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But what about Satan? Why could he sin in heaven, but humans can't?

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If there is a Christian Heaven, then those who are allowed to go there already have no personality.

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But what about Satan? Why could he sin in heaven, but humans can't?

 

Continuity error. It's work of fiction, after all :)

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Without free will in heaven, I think it may beg the question of why would God not just create our souls directly in heaven?  What's the point of placing souls in human form on earth temporarily, under what appears to be an illusion of free will, if these same souls would exist in heaven for an eternity without free will? 

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Without free will in heaven, I think it may beg the question of why would God not just create our souls directly in heaven?  What's the point of placing souls in human form on earth temporarily, under what appears to be an illusion of free will, if these same souls would exist in heaven for an eternity without free will?

 

Agreed. What's the purpose of an intermediary temporal state? Once eternity is achieved, anything temporal will seem meaningless.

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Without free will in heaven, I think it may beg the question of why would God not just create our souls directly in heaven?  What's the point of placing souls in human form on earth temporarily, under what appears to be an illusion of free will, if these same souls would exist in heaven for an eternity without free will? 

 

 

Heaven

If Heaven exists, the problem of evil is strengthened. If God can allow people to have a worthwhile existence in Heaven in the future (where no evil exists), there is no obvious reason why evil exists now. As Mackie asked: [10]

Why could [God] not have made men such that they always freely choose the good? Even if man is believed to have free will, God could have created humans such that they would always freely choose the good. This he did not do and is therefore ultimately responsible and blameworthy for any evil act which humans perform. For at least some theists, this difficulty is made even more acute by some of their further beliefs: I mean those who envisage a happier or more perfect state of affairs than now exists, whether they look forward to the kingdom of God on earth, or confine their optimism to the expectation of heaven. In either case they are explicitly recognizing the possibility of a state of affairs in which created beings always freely choose the good. If such a state of affairs is coherent enough to be the object of a reasonable hope or faith, it is hard to explain why it does not obtain already.

If heaven exists, a better world is clearly possible. God could have just created a group of people in Heaven and simply omit creating Earth and Hell.

Problem of Evil

 

Does the Wizard allow Free Will in Oz? Heaven is no more real.

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I never could get my mind around the concept of heaven.  The concept of "eternity" just never made sense to me as a person (teenager when I thought of this a lot) who had a definite beginning and was facing an ultimate definite end.  I could only relate to people and animals and plants that had specific lifespans.  Even rocks eventually crumble away.  Even the earth will eventually be engulfed by the sun.  Nothing in our world or experience is "forever," and that idea just didn't make sense to me.

 

My understanding of heaven in the church I grew up in was that if you believed in god/jesus, you'd get to spend eternity with them.  You would still somehow be "you" but without your sins and without pain or suffering or death.  I couldn't understand how I could still be "me" without the specific things that make me me, including my occasional pessimism, eye-rolling at others' stupidity, my own stupidity over certain things, etc.  If other believers were the only ones in heaven, who in my family would be there?  I grew up with agnostic parents and as far as I knew, maybe some of my grandparents.  As my as I love my family, I really can't imagine spending an eternity with them, but if they weren't there, that would be pretty dismal, too (even if we'd forget about them, as we were promised, which also didn't make sense).  There is no marriage in heaven, so why would there be parents?

 

When I was growing up, there were NO animals in heaven, only humans with souls. (This idea seems to have changed in different denominations over time.) 

 

The idea of an eternity of praising god, being perfectly good, never dying, never suffering or crying, never getting married or having children, no animals around, etc, is and was mind-boggling.  What are you supposed to DO for eternity without the things that help us pass the time here on earth?  Here, we go to school, we make and play with friends, we graduate, we get jobs and work hard, we experience hardship which helps us grow, we enjoy relationships with real people that have both good and bad qualities and we learn to deal with that, we love our pets and the animals we see in nature, we get married and have children, we experience incredible highs and lows, we age and deal with the physical and mental changes and the change in our life status with retirement.  An eternity of praising god and not having any human milestones (school, graduation, jobs, marriage, children, grandchildren, retirement) doesn't even make sense.

 

And no crying or suffering for eternity?  Ok, I could probably do without the severe suffering.  Children dying of starvation, loved ones being shot, refugees losing everything in wars -- those would be good things to never deal with.  But the ordinary challenges we face in life, the set-backs, the minor suffering of job loss and losing loved ones to death -- those are things that help us grow and teach us to value life and those we love and what we have.  An eternity in heaven with no suffering or tears sounds like a horrible, static place.

 

When I was young, I also never understood how our extremely brief life would be our one test for admittance to heaven.  Even if we lived to 120, what is that compared to eternity?  Absolutely nothing.  And what of stillborn babies (unless you're in one of those denominations that say that people under a certain age automatically go to heaven)?  But what of people who die as teenagers?  How much have you truly understood of life as a teenager for god to say that your 14-year-old sensibilities is mature enough to decide your eternal fate?

 

So, yes, I had a lot of questions about the concept of heaven from a very young age.  The more you think of the eternal xian heaven, the crazier and more nonsensical it gets!

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How can you have free will and still be unable to sin or feel unhappy? If I were still me, I would not want to be celibate for trillions of years. I would eventually get bored of singing praise songs. The Bible promises mansions and shiny stuff in heaven, but I don't care much for that. I know near death experiences mention supposedly cool things in heaven, such as growing wings and flying, but I'd prefer having long-term loving sexual relationships, my favorite TV shows, movies, and music, and the things of this Earth. Even if that stuff is supernatural and cool, I wouldn't like it. I'd be unhappy in heaven if I were still me. The only way I could be happy in heaven is if I were mindwiped, and the idea of a mindwipe horrified me as a teenager and kid. The fact that there is no afterlife is a comfort to me. I'd rather stay asleep forever than worship forever. Why is the carrot of heaven so shitty? I think avoiding hell is a bigger motivator for Christianity than heaven.

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 Why is the carrot of heaven so shitty? I think avoiding hell is a bigger motivator for Christianity than heaven.

 

Bingo. Spot on. Killed it.

 

Really, that's the sole reason we're even having this discussion today.

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If loved ones are in hell, wouldn't most people want to cry for them? If there is no suffering in hell, you can't feel compassion. You can't suffer when others are suffering. Also, if people in heaven are aware of loved one's suffering on earth, wouldn't that make people sad if not for a mindwipe? If you were the breadwinner in a family and your death caused your family to live in poverty and go hungry, that would normally make you sad, but you are not allowed to be sad in heaven. If we don't have compassion, how can we be good people in heaven? 

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The doctrine of heaven is much more difficult to define than the doctrine of hell, simply because it's almost impossible to imagine a perfect world, being imperfect beings. 

Hell, though, is much easier. You a dick in life? Murder people? Rape children? 

We can imagine torture and punishment easier because we ALL relate to pain easier than pleasure, I think. Pleasure is shifty. What gets one person off (and not just sexually) could be another persons nightmare. 

 

But yeah - I think most christians rather think of it as avoiding hell rather than getting into heaven. 

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How can there be a world where everyone is happy for millions of years without one second of pain unless everyone enjoys the same things (IE no unique personalities)? Some people might find heaven boring if they weren't mindwiped.

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How can there be a world where everyone is happy for millions of years without one second of pain unless everyone enjoys the same things (IE no unique personalities)? Some people might find heaven boring if they weren't mindwiped.

 

I remember many years ago when I was in college, a woman working at a grocery store was asking me similar type questions when no one else was in the small store excepting us. Concerning heaven,  whether our personalities would remain the same,  whether there was food there, etc. I was already an atheist at that time but didn't want to tell her that because it didn't fit with her questions. I answered that to my knowledge one accordingly would reunite with beloved relatives, but hunger and anxiety would disappear and heaven would be "heavenly" for everyone. She seemed to be obviously a nice person, sweet, not bad looking, a sense of humor, etc. She asked, I believed seriously, whether I thought there would be sex in heaven . I said that based upon my knowledge of the bible that there probably would be no sex in heaven but one would not miss it. After that she said that she would miss it and said with a small, shy smile:  "I don't think I want to go there." She was about 15 years older than I was, was married, and don't believe she was coming on to me, but later thought of that possibility but not at the time. I probably wouldn't have done anything anyway Wendyeaves.gif, her being married, but still think of the incident from time to time smile.png

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It is all very simple.

 

To the extent that souls become infused with knowledge of universals, to that extent, they will become like each other. The more souls know only intelligibles, the more the content of their minds will become identical. Because all intelligibles are unitary;  A = A.

 

It is only the body that provides a principle of differentiation among souls.

 

But the body is composed of matter. And things composed of matter are by definition temporal.

 

Therefore there cannot be souls-in-matter in heaven. Because otherwise, heavenly beings will not be immortal.

 

So no matter, no differentiation among persons among the souls in heaven, the content of whose minds is only intelligibles - and God Himself, in whom all intelligibles find their unity. God is the One of neo-Platonism.

 

There is therefore "death" of personality in heaven. But that is not bad. All souls achieve their end when their individuation drops away and they merge into the great unity of Soul, as it grasps nothing but the pure intelliigibles that make up Mind.

 

No more Jerry Falwell. No more Billy Graham. No more Shadrach, Meshach and Abegnego.

 

All in heaven become identical, because the content of their minds becomes identical. They know nothing but the Trinity - which we can say is an image of Mind and beyond Mind, of the One.

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Even if I would be happy forever, I was still terrified of losing my individuality. The happy soul would not be me. I would be dead. In essence, Christianity and atheism believe that people stay dead after they die. Christians differ in that they believe that something kind of resembling you lives on after death. Is that what Jesus meant when he said that you have to be willing to give up your life to keep it? You have to become like Jesus and lose your individuality?

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Ficino, very interesting post. I agree with your assessment, it makes sense philosophically. It's probably the reason many "occult" philosophies puts emphasis on transcending the unity with the Godhead: in essence, becoming one's own diety.

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It is all very simple.

 

To the extent that souls become infused with knowledge of universals, to that extent, they will become like each other. The more souls know only intelligibles, the more the content of their minds will become identical. Because all intelligibles are unitary;  A = A.

 

It is only the body that provides a principle of differentiation among souls.

 

But the body is composed of matter. And things composed of matter are by definition temporal.

 

Therefore there cannot be souls-in-matter in heaven. Because otherwise, heavenly beings will not be immortal.

 

So no matter, no differentiation among persons among the souls in heaven, the content of whose minds is only intelligibles - and God Himself, in whom all intelligibles find their unity. God is the One of neo-Platonism.

 

There is therefore "death" of personality in heaven. But that is not bad. All souls achieve their end when their individuation drops away and they merge into the great unity of Soul, as it grasps nothing but the pure intelliigibles that make up Mind.

 

No more Jerry Falwell. No more Billy Graham. No more Shadrach, Meshach and Abegnego.

 

All in heaven become identical, because the content of their minds becomes identical. They know nothing but the Trinity - which we can say is an image of Mind and beyond Mind, of the One.

 

All could be beautiful in heaven, or not zDuivel2.gif   God could be a beautiful, all knowing being, or non-existent.  God, Christ, jesus.gif or el diablo/ Lucifer the enlightened one zDuivel7.gif,  could be just a cool  joke, an unintended one granted (written two millennium past), at least that's what I believe. Reading Genesis and Revelations, for instance, really can make me laugh smile.png -- of course less with each new reading of the same thing which would be my version of counting sheep.

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Heaven is confusing because everybody seems to believe in a slightly different heaven. Do two NDE's on heaven ever agree?

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Heaven is confusing because everybody seems to believe in a slightly different heaven. Do two NDE's on heaven ever agree?

 

As far as I can tell, everybody seems to believe in a slightly different version of EVERYTHING.

 

Does two NDE's on hell ever agree?

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Of course, almost every heaven has no sin or suffering, even if the person going to heaven struggled with sin. Still wondering how the "we have to use hell to quarantine filthy non-Christians" argument makes sense if the people in heaven are instantly purified. Wouldn't Stalin and Hitler become the nicest people in the world if they went to heaven because of this purification?

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