I wonder why so many people gravitate toward the idea of
an eternal heaven? Think about that: eternity.
I have only lived twenty years (in terms of revolutions around the sun) and
there’s little chance I’ll survive to be even one hundred years old. Try to
fathom existing for what we consider to be one thousand years. How about one
million years? One trillion years? One googolplex
of years (10^(10^100))?? It is claimed that Heaven as depicted by Christianity
is not bounded by space and time like that of our universe, but I would say
there must still be some concept of
time. Or I would hope so, since things
such as movement, communication, and thought depend on the progression of time.
Regardless of the pace of time in Heaven, it is never-ending, and that only
scares me.
What could you possibly occupy yourself in doing for an
infinite amount of time? Obviously, it’s not likely that the culture of God in
Heaven represents the culture of man on Earth. Or maybe it does, if it’s a
democracy. Though, it seems more like a monarchy, where everyone is there to
worship the Almighty Lord and bask in His glory. The main anticipation and hope
devout Christians have is to be with the Holy Trinity in the afterlife. They
wish to stand in the presence of their Creator’s benevolence, omniscience, and
love. They want to personally meet Yahweh and Jesus Christ. All of their
questions will be answered, their guilt and sins will be absolved, and there
will be no more suffering. For them, that is enough. Nothing else matters
because they simply trust in the Lord that His Heaven will be worth spending an
eternity in. It doesn’t matter what has brought them happiness within the realm
of Earth; the joys of Heaven will surely outweigh everything that our feeble
human minds can physically comprehend.
First, I’ll go back to the desire to meet Yahweh and
Jesus Christ personally. Assuming God the Father is a single embodiment, since
we were created ‘in His image’ and He sits at His throne, I would not expect
to be having many personal conversations with Him in a population that is
probably billions. Most Americans have not had a personal conversation with
Barack Obama out of a population of only 314 million. And I mean to
differentiate the being of God the Father from the Holy Spirit, which is
claimed to exist everywhere. Assuming some progression of time in Heaven, God
the Father and Jesus Christ could not be in more than one place at one time,
even if He is omnipotent. Could you look around and see God the Father talking with
many of your friends at the same time? Furthermore, imagine being in the same
room with both Yahweh and Jesus. Would they have one collective mind or two
separate minds? They are part of the ‘three in one, one in three’, so could you
address them individually? That would require not only multiple minds, but also
multiple characters. It may sound like a minor contradiction, but is it really?
Obviously, I don’t hold the Christian paradigm of
finding meaning in life by personally worshiping a claimed Creator. I find more
meaning in what I can perceive and whom I can interact with, so I focus more on
what the cultural life of Heaven would be like and how I would spend my
infinite time. Assuming our neurological memories stored in our physical brain could
somehow transcend to the spiritual realm of a Heaven, I would expect to miss a
lot of aspects of our imperfect life here in the physical realm. (Your memory
would have to be transferred to even remember your faith and relationship with
God.) I would certainly hope that I remember the life I led on Earth. Believing
that there is a better life waiting for me ‘on the other side’ only trivializes
the precious time that I have while spinning on this conglomerate of stardust. That is why I
have instead taken advantage of what I can perceive in our space-time reality.
Eternal
bliss. Think about what brings you happiness and joy here in
the culture of Earth, whether that includes sports, music, math, science,
technology, writing, business, pop culture, skydiving, origami, etc. Even our
favorite things here on Earth become dull relatively quickly. Some analogous
trials would be, for the next entire week, to try to continuously listen to
your favorite song/playlist, eat your favorite food for every meal, or (in
regard to pleasure) imagine undergoing an orgasm for the entire week.
Obviously, you would eventually go insane in any continuous state of bliss. We need
contrast in our lives in order to appreciate our pleasures, which would not be
the case in a realm of perfection.
Perfection.
That does not sound appealing to me whatsoever. Heaven would have to be a
communist/socialist society, where everyone has obtained this same state of
perfection. Yes, this would absolutely have to be the case if it were to be a
society lacking in emotions of jealousy/coveting, scorn, hatred, etc. That then
nullifies the thrills we thrive off
of from challenge and competition. That’s why we demand democracy/capitalism in
the United States of America. There
would be nothing to gain in Heaven. You would know everything there is to
know, be everything you want to be, and live in a perfect Paradise. The meaning
that I find in my life on Earth is based on the development of abilities, relationships,
and knowledge. In Heaven, there would be no aspirations to strive for, no sense
of pride from hard work, no sense of achievement for excelling within a career,
no sense of gratification for helping those in need, etc.
Above all, there
would be no appreciation for the temporary, especially for the people in your
life. Inarguably, with no threat of death, there is no value in life. Gatherings
of family/friends would no longer be special occasions. Furthermore, if everyone were to love each other unconditionally, there would be no value in friendship, compassion, forgiveness, or romance. On a social level, what
would you even have to talk about in an objectively perfect society? It would be
absent of our hot topics of drama/gossip, competitive sports, musical genres,
scientific discoveries, technology, politics, international affairs, etc. All
of these cultural subjects depend on uniqueness, individual ability, and imperfection. A perfect Heaven, to me,
could only be dull and uninteresting.
Even the worship of a loving Lord would likely get old after, say, what we
consider one million years. The continuous pleasure of basking in the glory of
God/the Holy Spirit without contrast would have to lead to numbness.
A
life of continuous leisure and bliss inevitably leads to a life
of boredom and numbness.
Everything and everyone lose their value,
purpose, and meaning the moment they become eternal.
Only
then could life be called meaningless.
I
fear Heaven just as much as I fear Hell. Though, in all fairness, I
fear Hell about as much as I fear dragons…
I would like to add that I do not discredit the idea of an afterlife in general. I do not discredit the possibility that there is some form of a spiritual realm. If anything, I would hope it to be a more neutral gathering that is somehow temporary. Honestly, though, I find any sort of an afterlife to be unlikely. My greatest fear is not death itself, but dying young, so I will continue to try to avoid that.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thoughts Chandler :). Just for the joys of philosophy I've got some thoughts for you... main idea is this: among more academically inclined circles, and actually in some various other cultures (i'm not trying to imply their views are better, just different) it seems to me that people tend to think of heaven as much more closely tied to earth--heaven come to earth, rather than people getting zapped to heaven or something like that. In this view, its like earth, but a strange earth--different in some way. If you think of "heaven" in this way it seems to be much more helpful (and much more appealing for those so inclined). [The view of heaven you've described seems very closely tied to a certain (very, very poor) reading of eschatology/biblical prophecy, characteristic of fundamentalist and evangelical circles, closely tied to Milton's imagination of hell. This is a very dominant view in many parts of America, but globally it actually represents a small minority. So I suppose I'm just speaking for the others, for the sake of discussion..]
ReplyDeleteFor example, it makes much more sense in relation to the questions you've raised (at the beginning) about time. If it is heaven come to earth, then of course it strongly resembles the time we have now. Even on the American view that there isn't space/time as we think of it, I don't think it actually follows from that that we cease to think in those categories.
What you might find really interesting, is that there's good arguments for the fact that time can't actually be real. Most popular is McTaggart's argument for the unreality for time (which you should totally check out if you've got time). The basic idea is that events can't go from past, present, to future because at one time they will have to be both past and present which is a logical contradiction, so time can't exist (there are scientific arguments for this sort of thing as well...but arguments from science are always less weighty, due to the nature of science as a discipline). So, if time doesn't even exist now, things get a little easier to imagine...
As for the Trinity stuff, there are many ways of thinking that differently, and its tied to the idea of "worship." There are a lot of people who speak of "life to the fullest" as bearing identity with "worship." Kierkegaard talks about God as not being the sort of being who demands time apart from the neighbor for himself. That seems to be a pretty reasonable way of thinking about things ("why else create..the whole world and everything in it?" is the general idea). The Trinity can make a lot more sense if you think it that way too, which is especially relevant because as you point out--this view of heaven common here really does trivialize life presently which is a really serious problem, since it gets used to justify lots of forms of oppression/imperialism (think of the justification for enslavement of various peoples as being for their own good, because then you could share the "good news" of heaven with them. This is similar to the way that racism gets constructed in the 1660's in order to justify ethnic slavery--rather than as a cause of ethnic slavery, some super interesting reading on that if you're interested). Not to mention the social inaction this enables among many evangelicals, this theology of heaven/hell is also very problematic for this reason (the logic seems to be "who the hell cares everything is ending and we're all getting raptured anyway?" or "just save souls, more important than bodies" which is also a failure).
[Had to break my comment up into 2 due to a 4,000 character limit..but it continues here..]
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think these sorts of real-world problems are the biggest reason to talk about this sort of thing, but if you're interested in the "Is afterlife boring?" etc sort of thing, you can look into the work of John Martin Fischer (http://www.andrewmbailey.com/jmf/Immortality.pdf) who does lots of work on that stuff (though I'm not convinced it's the most useful way to spend time..).
On the questions of perfection, Wesley has a much more interesting view of "perfection" that a lot of people seem to hold, where "perfection" is something attainable in this life, and has to do with the work that you do and keep doing even when you die (in other words, its basically the same but better, though its hard to pin down one coherent view for him (or really anyone for that matter)).
On the last statement "everything and everyone lose their value...the moment they become eternal," a lot of people defend the idea that the opposite is true. Kierkegaard thinks both are necessary in order for life to meaningful, he thinks that the self is a synthesis between the finite and the infinite, and that both are necessary and one must rest in this tension in order to be truly oneself. Based on the last philosophy conference I went to, this seemed to be a pretty popular idea. The reason for this is that it allows one to "escape" the nihilism/existential despair first made popular by Nietzsche. If you're interested in thinking about the meaningfulness of life more, Nietzsche's Will to Power is probably good (or very, very bad) to read (actually probably bad, and you probably shouldn't read it). Anyway, thanks for the thoughts.
I had totally replied to this the night of, but apparently it didn't save haha. Thanks for the deep response again, Jeff. Again, though, it’s really hard to tell whether you are agreeing with me or not haha.
ReplyDeleteI did try to connect Heaven to Earth with my thoughts on its culture. I wonder if Heaven would adopt the culture of Earth, assuming believers remember their life on Earth and I would think would want to take back up their hobbies, interests, etc. Is the minority view of Heaven that it is outside of space/time?
From my scientific background, I have not heard the claim that time does not exist, but only that our perception of time is an illusion. Relativity shows how past, present, and future could all already exist, and we are just passing through in our human experience. The concept of space-time, though, still exists to us in the progression of one direction. Because we move very slowly at the material level (compared to the speed of light), we have the benefit of experiencing time. For a visual explanation, watch Brian Greene’s ‘The Illusion of Time’.
I looked up McTaggart’s ‘Unreality of Time’ and I cannot agree with it. With the A-series, sure, any event will be past, present, and future according to different points in time. But at a singular point in time, it is only one of the three. I don’t see any contradiction with that.
I hope you didn’t mean to say science carries less weight than philosophy. Science is repeatable, objective, and falsifiable. Colleagues are constantly trying to disprove one another across all disciplines, so withstanding theories and facts become indisputable (top example being evolution).
Anyway, I don’t see how your discussion of the Trinity and worship relates to the differentiation between Yahweh and Jesus.
I agree with your reasoning that the view of heaven justifies oppression and “just save souls, more important than bodies”. Honestly, though, atheism justifies that even more in saying, “we are all going to decay into nonexistence anyway, so why does it matter what you do to others?” In my defense, I say that most people have the desire to be happy and successful, and that comes from gaining the respect and trust of others in friendship and love, but obviously that’s not always the case. It depends on one’s own personality, selfishness, and level of sympathy/empathy.
I’ll look into the other resources when I can. I am interested to hear how the opposite could be reasoned for the value of everyone/everything when eternal. To me, Nietzsche’s existential despair is necessary to appreciate what you have as being temporary. It’s also how we tend to feel nostalgic before even having lost something. Watch ‘Existential Bummer’ by Shots of Awe (Jason Silva) on YouTube. He talks about how people are not willing to accept this inevitable loss.
Time to get to sleep now haha. Thanks for taking the time to discuss.
Dude nothing is more frustrating than having to retype something like this!! Thanks for taking the time to do it.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, on McTaggart's time: the appeal to moments is a natural move to make (like you say), but McTaggart has thought of this. He responds to this objection in his essay even. Since I'm too tired to summarize for you, here's the summary of the response to your objection from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"One response to this argument that McTaggart anticipates involves claiming that it's not true of any time, t, that t is both future and past. Rather, the objection goes, we must say that t was future at some moment of past time and will be past at some moment of future time. But this objection fails, according to McTaggart, because the additional times that are invoked in order to explain t's possession of the incompatible A properties must themselves possess all of the same A properties (as must any further times invoked on account of these additional times, and so on ad infinitum). Thus, according to McTaggart, we never resolve the original contradiction inherent in the A series, but, instead, merely generate an infinite regress of more and more contradictions."
If you read through the rest of that article it might help you keep thinking through the argument, lots of people opt for presentism in light of the argument, but presentism is the view that only what is present exists (not entirely helpful if you believe in history).
Heheh :) science...It would be very nice if science worked this way, however this view of science has been entirely abandoned by those who study the nature of science, and science supervenes entirely on philosophy for its foundation as a means of any sort of knowledge (so yes, this would be to say that 'science carries less weight than philosophy' but put more precisely it is really saying 'philosophy must bear the entire weight of science'). The common view of science you mention sounds very nice with all its certainty and whatnot, but its false. It started with British empiricism, and died with logical positivism (the logical positivists even personally abandoned the project before they died). I am surprised that you have not read Kuhn, I had assumed this would be mandatory reading for anyone scientifically interested (although Neil Degrasse Tyson seems not to have read it and he has his own TV show...). I will send it to you via facebook, it is probably the #1 must read book for anyone who wishes to understand science. It is also what made popular the language of 'paradigm' as we use it. I took a course in the philosophy of science last year, but I don't have currently have ebook versions of the rest of the books. If you remain interested in it after Kuhn I can find you more to read (or if you're interested in the history of the philosophy of science, which just asks the questions "What is science?" "What does it tell us?" "Does what it tells us count as count as knowledge?" and that sort of thing).
As for Trinity stuff--I am getting tired, we can talk more about it later if you're still interested :)
You're right about the ethical difficulties of atheism, but at least its more honest than the dualist view hahahah. I think it'd be fun to argue that distinguishing body/soul like that actually assumes atheism insofar as lived life is concerned (treatment of bodies, earth, and that sort of thing), though reflectively it pretends to be theism....which makes it even more difficult to get to the real ethical issues.
Cool video, totally seems to fit with a Kierkegaardian understanding of us as being a relation between the eternal and the temporal. That desire for never letting go seems to be a good way of understanding some eternal quality, while still embodying a bittersweetness towards the temporality of it all. Existential, fun, I like it.
Sleep indeed, goodness...
Yeah it took a lot of willpower to retype it haha.
ReplyDeleteIt's very hard for me to comprehend Stanford's argument. I guess because, yes, I assume the claim of presentism. I think it's reasonable to say that events/moments occur at a particular time, and that particular time is past or future relative to other particular times. Did you mean to say history still exists along with the present? Even if that’s the case, we are still flowing through some progression of time in the material world, where events occur at particular times. That’s the best I got haha.
(I replied to the science discussion in the facebook message).
Yes, I think the ethical dilemma of atheism is honest. I agree that would be fun to argue the distinguishing between body and soul. Because you mean to say atheists put more value on physical life, right? Especially humanists (like me) and naturalists (maybe me).
Yeah I love the Shots of Awe channel. I’ve seen all of its videos. I think you’d enjoy most of them!
Well, in presentism all that exists is what is present. In this sense, it doesn't *really* make sense to talk about history since it does not exist. This one of the problems presentism faces. There is no transition between moments either because it turns out that questions like "when does the present moment become past?" can't be resolved without the same contradiction McTaggart points out. Anyway, it quickly turns into a very technical debate, but it ends up being relevant to other things sometimes. Maybe something fun to look into more in the future? Or maybe not.
ReplyDeleteWell, I think I mean that, at least you are aware there is a problem. As opposed to the idea that we're all just immortal souls anyway, so we can just pretend that what we do to bodies doesn't *really* matter. Or something like that..what do I know? It's been too long since I wrote it lol