If you think heaven is real, why are you still here?

[Wolf_Bloodbeard]

Probably not. But I see nothing significant in that observation. We humans are constantly professing ideals that we don't fully grasp or adhere to.

Also, we are not one-dimensional beings. We humans are capable of holding and believing in opposing ideals simultaneously. In fact, I would assert that the closer we humans get to the "truth of things", the more paradoical the view becomes.

In many cases, yes. We are very complicated creatures.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Yes, I am. And if I could live forever I would jump at the chance as I don't think there is anyway our conscience survives our brain's eventual demise.

Again, death is inevitable and life is already short. There's no reason to rush into it. Most religious people tend to think they're here in this world to fulfill a purpose. Also, just because someone believes in some ideal afterlife that doesn't mean that they hate this world and/or there's nothing good or worthwhile in it.

 

[Wolf_Bloodbeard]

What's an alternate possibility? Consoling oneself with the thankfulness of knowing the departed will never experience an infinite happiness?

You could try mourning the passing of your loved ones and celebrating their life instead of the wishful thinking encumbered in most religions.

 

[Wolf_Bloodbeard]

Again, death is inevitable and life is already short. There's no reason to rush into it. Most religious people tend to think they're here in this world to fulfill a purpose. Also, just because someone believes in some ideal afterlife that doesn't mean that they hate this world and/or there's nothing good or worthwhile in it.

I'm with you on this: We have this life, among fellow human beings and other life forms, try enjoying it while helping to make everyone else's life more enjoyable, too. Life is worth living.

 

[anna.]

You could try mourning the passing of your loved ones and celebrating their life instead of the wishful thinking encumbered in most religions.

Why "instead of?" Do you think people aren't capable of both "wishful thinking" and mourning their loss and celebrating their life? In actuality, that's what happening. Both.

 

[RestlessSoul]

My argument, as laid out in this question, is that those that profess to truly believe in heaven, yet do everything to avoid it for as long as possible, are not as convinced as they say they are.

It’s a weak argument, as it depends on the clearly erroneous assumption that fear and faith cannot co-exist.

 

[F1fan]

Doing things that shorten your life, without the intent to end your life, is not considered a form of slow suicide, otherwise sun bathing, or breathing, can be considered a form of slow suicide, so no. Interesting idea, though.

Well sunbathing isn't fatal. The sun gives us vitimin D. If a person ignores skin cancer, then that is what can be fatal, and perhaps what you meant.

And breathing? Do you have an alternative that isn't fatal?

The examples in my health psychology textbooks were more about people who had high fat diets and hearth disease, but with a diet change they could reverse some effects and live longer. Or smoked habitually and had lung diseases and by quiting they could allow their lungs to repair and extend their lives. Or who drank too much alcohol, who were obese and didn't exercise, or anything else that has negative effects on health but can be reversed with new habits. Most patients want to live longer and work with therapists to change their habits. What stunned me was the set of patients who did not want to make any changes and were resigned to an early death due to their bad habits.

This is one of the roles health psychologists play in helping patients examine why they aren't willing to make changes and live longer. Oddly there is an ethical line where the patients aren't pressured to change their attitudes, and if they really prefer to die from their medical problems then everyone is a bystander.

 

[F1fan]

The cognitive paradox is believing one thing, but acting as if the opposite is true.

There are truths that are absolute: It is absolutely true that you exist. You may be exactly how you are in every day life, or you may be a brain in a jar experiencing an interactive computer simulation, but there is something there to experience what is being experienced. I think, therefore I am, is the simple phrase that describes this absolute truth.

Most people are afraid of dying, and this is despite the strength of someone's faith; and that is my point. There have been people that didn't fear death as they honestly believed they were going to heaven. A lot of cults that end in mass suicide are prime examples of this.

Personally, if I even thought there was a chance that heaven existed I doubt I would fear death, and I'd do everything I could to shorten my life as much as possible to get to heaven as soon as I could.

And yeah, Jesus was afraid to die, despite being god in human form. That's why christianity makes no sense to me; because of this kind of stupidity.

Good points. Religions do promote the paradox of duality, that being both material and immaterial (spirit). The material is evil and the spirit is pure. This duality is used to manipulate the emotions of believers, and then vilify their reasoning. Just look how more conservative Christians and Muslims will advocate for faith (emotional judgment) and vilify reasoning. The appeal of heaven is emotional. No one comes to a rational conclusion that an afterlife exists in some way or another. In essence Christianity says: want immorality? Believe in Jesus. And then they beg for money.

 

[anna.]

Good points. Religions do promote the paradox of duality, that being both material and immaterial (spirit). The material is evil and the spirit is pure. This duality is used to manipulate the emotions of believers, and then vilify their reasoning. Just look how more conservative Christians and Muslims will advocate for faith (emotional judgment) and vilify reasoning. The appeal of heaven is emotional. No one comes to a rational conclusion that an afterlife exists in some way or another. In essence Christianity says: want immorality? Believe in Jesus. And then they beg for money.

On the contrary. The idea that the material is evil is a heresy. In the Catholic Church, faith and reason are the wings of the same bird.

Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998) | John Paul II

Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998)

www.vatican.va

 

[F1fan]

We console ourselves that our loved one is in a better place after they have died. Isn't that just a suggestion that we are all better off dead?

I think it depends. Watching my mom die slowly over months was worse as an experience than if she had been given a fatal dose of morphine, or some other drug. We put our beloved pets to death if they are suffering and there's no chance for extending their lives. To my mind death (which is inevitable) is better than holding onto a few more weeks where there is no quality or good exprience.

There is two sides to it. One of my Catholic cousins helped when my mom was home hospicing, and I had to be out of town for a weekend. She was so grateful to have that weekend with mom. Allowing a person to whither away allows loved ones a chance to say goodbye, but it is not how I want to go. When my grandmother was dying of bone cancer, which is excessively painful, she would not let go. The last time I saw her days before her death I walked in and could see she was in agony. When she noticed I was there she put on a brave face and pretended to be feeling OK and told me "Grandma will be up in a few days to make you lunch." Man I lost it. That was my last experience with her, and she was still thinking if me.

If I had my way and had a fatal disease, I would have a going away party and arrange for a Kavorkian end before I had to just die of "natural causes" in a painful way. If I'm drugged to a degree that I am not lucid how is it different than being allowed to drift off into oblivion?

 

[George-ananda]

Any and all answers are welcome.

Because I believe the universal intelligence created heaven and earth each for their purpose. The earth plane is one for learning spiritual lessons through the challenges of the physical plane and dealing woth other physical beings. I do not want to throw away the opportunity to gain those lessons that allow me to better experience the joys and beauty of the heavenly planes.

That said, I am not one for clinging to physical life once the body and health degrade to a state that suffering without quality of life is all that is to be expected.

 

[F1fan]

On the contrary. The idea that the material is evil is a heresy. In the Catholic Church, faith and reason are the wings of the same bird.

Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998) | John Paul II

Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998)

www.vatican.va

Catholicism as an instituion has been pretty moderate and has adjusted to reality over the millennia. And true they have used reason as a tool. But still the treatment and condemnation of Galileo for using his reason to sort out how the solar system works is an example of the actual rift between faith and reason.

I should have noted the more conservative Catholics like Rick Santorum and Mike pense who have anti-reason attitudes. Santorum is noted for his odd opposition to education. I remember his views when he was running for the republican nomination.

Rick Santorum suggests opposition to public schooling

Campaigning in Idaho on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum suggested that he is opposed to a public school system overseen by the government.

www.cbsnews.com

This is likely more of a Christian conservative thing than a mainstream religious thing. Creationism certainly condemns the use of reason, even if rather a covert condemnaton rather than overt. Creationists pretend to use their reasoning when it is the contrary.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I think it depends. Watching my mom die slowly over months was worse as an experience than if she had been given a fatal dose of morphine, or some other drug. We put our beloved pets to death if they are suffering and there's no chance for extending their lives. To my mind death (which is inevitable) is better than holding onto a few more weeks where there is no quality or good exprience.

There is two sides to it. One of my Catholic cousins helped when my mom was home hospicing, and I had to be out of town for a weekend. She was so grateful to have that weekend with mom. Allowing a person to whither away allows loved ones a chance to say goodbye, but it is not how I want to go. When my grandmother was dying of bone cancer, which is excessively painful, she would not let go. The last time I saw her days before her death I walked in and could see she was in agony. When she noticed I was there she put on a brave face and pretended to be feeling OK and told me "Grandma will be up in a few days to make you lunch." Man I lost it. That was my last experience with her, and she was still thinking if me.

If I had my way and had a fatal disease, I would have a going away party and arrange for a Kavorkian end before I had to just die of "natural causes" in a painful way. If I'm drugged to a degree that I am not lucid how is it different than being allowed to drift off into oblivion?

My dad’s been in a nursing home since last June. Completely bedridden, loads of medical complications including prostate cancer, but reasonably peaceful and content (God knows how. It’s not just the morphine). It’s the longest goodbye, and very hard on my mum, who’s not in great health herself. It’s hard to watch an old athlete fade away.

I’ve decided I will decline all offers to artificially prolong my life in old age, beyond diet and exercise. No daily battery of pills, statins etc. No pacemaker, no respirators, no inhalers. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go, and I hope I’ll be ready. No assisted dying either because I’m enough of a Catholic not to take that road. Our time on earth is precious but finite. As God or the universe has ordained it.

 

[anna.]

Catholicism as an instituion has been pretty moderate and has adjusted to reality over the millennia. And true they have used reason as a tool. But still the treatment and condemnation of Galileo for using his reason to sort out how the solar system works is an example of the actual rift between faith and reason.

This is true. But the history of Galileo and the Church is a bit more nuanced than that, and it was a story of its times, as is much of history.

I should have noted the more conservative Catholics like Rick Santorum and Mike pense who have anti-reason attitudes. Santorum is noted for his odd opposition to education. I remember his views when he was running for the republican nomination.

Rick Santorum suggests opposition to public schooling

Campaigning in Idaho on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum suggested that he is opposed to a public school system overseen by the government.

www.cbsnews.com

This is likely more of a Christian conservative thing than a mainstream religious thing. Creationism certainly condemns the use of reason, even if rather a covert condemnaton rather than overt. Creationists pretend to use their reasoning when it is the contrary.

If anything, this shows that the Church isn't monolithic (Pence left Catholicism for Evangelical Christianity, btw), and it wasn't in Galileo's day, either. There was a lot of politics involved in the Galileo affair and there's a lot of politics in conservative Christianity today, Catholic or not. I read a book about 10 years ago called Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat, which seemed to sense a Trump on the horizon in its examination of the politicization of religion in the United States such that the two had become irretrievably intertwined to the point they couldn't be separated. There was a sense of the void that would be filled by Trump and we just didn't know it yet.

 

[John D. Brey]

I think you all misunderstood my analogy. The box is your body, the palace is heaven, and the man is god. When your body fails you god has offered you a place in heaven, so why do everything to keep your body alive? That was the crux of the analogy.

In my experience, when we're young, we . . . particularly those of us who believe in God as mere youths . . . are much more willing to let the cardboard box get destroyed without fear. We are (in our early time in this veil of tears) not completely brainwashed by the nature of our time in this world.

My brother and I took life and death risks with a grain of salt up until our mid-twenties when the Sea of Lethe, and the voluptuous shape of post-adolescent women, started to make this transitional phase seem like it might not be so bad for a shortish stint. As time, years, decades, pass, we become so comfortable in this world, and so drunk drinking from the Sea of Lethe, that even those who once believed so strongly in heaven that it seemed perfectly sensible to be cruising around on the freeways doing 140 mph on a crotch-rocket (knowing the dangers), begin to slow down, and think of safety and protection for the cardboard box; they start to live their lives with more regard for the cardboard box, begin to become accustom to, sold into, the cheap pleasures, sex, family, entertainment, etc., that the flesh doth surely hold.

Those of us who retain strong faith in heaven, though we long for it daily, were told by the ruler of heaven that the time he gives us in this transitional phase should be used to prepare for our heavenly home; that when we leave the flesh, our eternal achievements will be set (that they're all established by how we think and live in the flesh), such that as St. Paul stated it, living is for Christ, dying is a great gain.

One doesn’t follow God in hope of happiness but because one senses—miserable flimsy little word for that beak in your bowels—a truth that renders ordinary contentment irrelevant.​

​

Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone, p. 7.​

Instead of contrasting the present as you see it with the future, should you not rather understand your present itself in light of this future, as a bridge within yourself of chastisement, of trial, of training, and, having thus grasped its significance, endure to the end this transitional stage while holding fast to God’s truth.​

​

Rabbi Hirsch, Horeb, Section 1, p. 32.​

​

Very quickly will there be an end of thee here; take heed therefore how it will be with thee in another world. To-day man is, and to-morrow he will be seen no more. And being removed out of sight, quickly also he is out of mind. O the dullness and hardness of man’s heart, which thinketh only of the present, and looketh not forward to the future. Thou oughtest in every deed and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert to die this day.​

​

Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, p. 21.​

John

 

[Muffled]

I believe I am here to serve God.

 

[Muffled]

I don’t quite live in a box, I live in what Americans call an apartment; and I am quite content to do so for now. I’m in no hurry to move to more salubrious premises.

There is no box in Heave. It is all illusion.

 

[Muffled]

In the Christian context, there's the Parable of the Talents.

Translating this to your analogy: you'll get a room in the palace right away if your cardboard box fails, but you'll get a fancier room - and get to do more interesting stuff - if the man with the palace thinks you did a good job managing your cardboard box.

I am not sure where you are developing that from. I believe I don't get that from the talents. As far as I can tell the only difference due to faithfulness is the grant of thrones.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I am not sure where you are developing that from. I believe I don't get that from the talents.

The parable is presented as being about the Kingdom of Heaven. When the one slave manages what's been entrusted to him well, this happens:

His master answered, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave! You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master.’

And the master later says this:

28 Therefore take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten.[ab] 29 For the one who has will be given more,[ac] and he will have more than enough. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

As far as I can tell the only difference due to faithfulness is the grant of thrones.

There are a number of passages that talk about "reward in Heaven" or similar phrases for various things. Presumably, someone who's dead would miss out on these opportunities.