What Is Heaven Like?

The universe must have some origin, unless we say it has always existed.

The choices that are presented are not things I've thought up, but the 'battle lines' of this whole rather dreary theist/atheist debate.

There are other possibilities - it was created by aliens, it is a simulation, it is a mind created illusion etc.

The sense of I in me, regret, ecstacy, transcendental love must all stem from somewhere.

Since you seem to be a non theistic type to judge from posts I've read, I was only curious as to where you think it comes from. The standard atheist position is that it all comes from matter, but you seem to reject that idea. So I was just wondering............

 

I don't know about the last one but really the other 2 possibilities could probably fall in line with the initial dichotomy. Aliens likely being part of the materialist framework, but of course that leads to a regress as to where did the aliens came from? I view Simulation Theory as essentially a theistic argument, basically a souped up version of Paley's Watchmaker argument, due to the Simulator needing a degree of complexity suggesting a designer.

 

Well for me there would be thick 10/10 latinas EVERYWHERE walkin around half naked. And lots of sports on tv. And lots of bomb ass food

 

Are you saying that love and electricity are abstract concepts? They are clearly not. Neither are they matter. How strange, they do not seem to fit into the two categories that we decided to cut the universe into. (hint hint)

It's funny because you are agreeing with me 100% it seems, you are just surprised that I think this way. You say that you understand that the cleaving is artificial. Stay with this Asmo. Think about it. Why should we hold in place a conceptual division we have made of reality when we know that it's not representative of reality, but just a tool we've used at one point? I'm interested in the Truth, not in preserving tools of rhetoric and philosophy. If you know that artificially cleaving the universe into two is not how the universe works, then the next step is to stop doing the cleaving . Seems simple right?

I am not aware that the standard atheist position is that it all comes from matter. I am actually not aware of any standard atheist position on this matter, because atheism has only to do with a-theism, while we are discussing the foundational constitution of reality.

Are you a material reductionist because you don't worship Zeus, and don't agree that the world is His Holy Lightning Bolt? Clearly this is an absurd position, and no more absurd than assuming that someone who doesn't believe in Yaweh must therefore conclude that Love = Atoms.

I will go a little into what I think. First, we know plainly from observation and experiment that we are surrounded by real phenomena which are not matter; for example, electromagnetic radiation, magnetism, gravity, spacetime, quantum fluctuations, etc. All these "things" in the universe are not matter.

So from the get go the premise of material monism is bankrupt.

At the other end of the extreme we have Psychic monism, which says that everything is "idea" basically; but isn't this just another way of saying "its all in our heads"? Isn't this just the neighbour of solipsism? It seems to me that it plainly is. You can choose this path if you want, but it ends abruptly without much to work with. You hit philosophical bedrock.

Maybe check this out for a much closer approximation to what I'm getting at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_monism

 

Good points, Schopenhaeur may be a specific example to support your case.

http://www.philosopher.eu/texts/schopenhauer-atheist-idealist-visionary/

I think BlackBillBlake had in mind a more contemporary definition of 'materialism' (although saying 'matter' may not have been the best choice of words) one which may essentially be interchangeable with 'physicalism' and would cover those "things" in the universe you mention.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/

 

Personally I think the debate is an exercise in language more than an inquiry into reality "out there". My brain is creating every qualia of reality I am experiencing. At the same time, my brain is part of reality, and can be influenced; other brains are part of my "external reality", and my "internal reality" (my brain) is part of YOUR "external reality"! They nest within each other in this infinite way, my inside being your outside, being inside me, etc

I think it's a lot more kaleidoscopic and fantastic than we know. I would have loved to give high doses of psychedelics to all these philosophers and convened together with them to see if anything had been shaken up about how we're approaching the problem.

Wittgenstein was a great example of someone who smelled something fishy going on here. "Of what we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence".

 

people free

 

in order for heaven to BE heaven, it would have to be what each of us separately and individually would want it to be.
otherwise it would be hell. whatever meaningless perfections it might have in which we personally find no gratification.

i find it easier to believe in some kind of a rest and relaxation vacation between lives, that each of us perceives according to our own perception. according to how we have each made ourselves to see things.
(and thus both heaven and hell, depending on the perciever)

easier still though, that as memories wink out, we are left with no awareness of existing, until, some other place, some other time, some randomly other populated world, circling some other sun,
an infant is born, to the people of that world, of the species of the people of that world, with the same complex of preferences and perceptions, which is then, once again, us.

i would love an immortality, without fear, hunger or fatigue, yet still capable of enjoying all things, in a place of endless diversity, and the ability to construct things by perceiving them, much as i do in a 3d computer program.
a mountainous forest that goes on forever in all directions, without ever having to double back on itself. the only way that would be different from being a god, is if you couldn't make people or other living things, and couldn't completely trash the place. only change little parts of it, your own size, at a time.

 

It is both. Unless one is inclined to believe, or even certain, that heaven is solely a fictional concept that holds no place in reality (other than as a wording/expression of things, like it is similar with the word 'perfection' or 'evil')

Me too. We don't actually know a lot with certainty about 'heaven' anyway, except if we assume it is an abstract concept that is subjective in exact meaning for everyone (seems to be). Same with 'God' or the creating force of the universe.

Which problem? If I take notice of certain philisophers from the past it seems not everyone needs psychedelics

 

I'm not sure I'd be comfortable giving psychedelics to Nietzsche.

 

Why? Nietzsche loved art and music, those things go amazingly well with psychedelics.

 

That's true. But later on he became mentally ill. I wouldn't have wanted to be the person who gave him the drug that pushed him over the edge.

 

the idea of heaven is the idea of wish fulfilment
i don't see any problem with that idea
just with all the other absolutes a lot of people seem to want to throw into the pot with it.

 

I'd like to image that it's a place not too different from earth, however there are not uncontrollable feelings. Not need to kill or hate and feel envious. All unfair encounters would be justified, the people you lost will finally be by your side. Just the fulfillment that is so hard to achieve here on earth will come so easily after death. That's what I image.

 

if it isn't for each person what they think it should be, then it really isn't all that much of a heaven.

 

Heaven couldn't conceivably be a "place" then could it? I can't imagine Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, etc. all residing in the same place while simultaneously having it be what they think it should be.

 

that is mostly correct. it is not likely a place in any physical sense. but not exactly for the reason you surmise. it may be experienced as you have made yourself to be. that is, if there is some kind of experiencing between physical lives. like gods, neither required nor prohibited. perhaps it is a vault, in which souls sleep, stored on floppy disks, waiting for new infant bodies to be born on random physical worlds, to again be downloaded and installed into. none of that is of course literal either, but an analogue, of one of the infinite possible concepts. as for every kind of person being there, experiencing it in their own way, some as the hells they have made of themselves, some as the heavens. but yes, 'there' not being a place as we think of places. possessing no coordinates in time nor space, but only and entirely in the frame of reference of non-physical spirit.

 

How can anyone rationalize someone being born doomed with an incurable disease or something? not a heaven or hell they made for themselves here...just the shittiest luck of the draw...unless it is from some other life somewhere else....is the only way to justify it......

and if humans' life are on some disc....I have to think so is every other creatures, too.

 

orgasm3

 

You making the smoke sound very attractive