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What are the best and worst things about heaven?

Sgt. Pepper

All you need is love.
I'm not intending to be disrespectful, but am simply genuinely curious. Do you as a Wiccan believe that your magic spells actually change reality in any other way than simply altering your thoughts? For example, do you think you can cast a spell for prosperity and that will work and make you rich? I ask because you seem to have a respect for science, yet science has shown that spells do not work. So I'm wondering how you navigate this?

I just wanted to let you know that I've read your post and will answer your questions some time tomorrow. I just returned to my hotel after spending over 11 hours at the hospital today awaiting the birth of my first grandchild. My grandson was born a few minutes before 10:00 p.m. tonight. I'm very tired.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
I just returned to my hotel after spending over 11 hours at the hospital today awaiting the birth of my first grandchild. My grandson was born a few minutes before 10:00 p.m. tonight. I'm very tired.
Congrats. Sgt. Pepper. Here these things are done by women of the family. Of course, we are at call. I have two grown-ups and one stepping into teens.
 

viole

Ontological Naturalist
Premium Member
Lol

During my edgy militant atheist phase, I had pretty much the exact thoughts of yours - all the fun, cool people are in hell; all the most stale, boring insufferable idiots are in heaven so hell please.

I also consider it an awesome cute obscure test of character whenever someone gives their opinion on Mother Theresa.

Needless to say, you passed - Mother Theresa was horrid. The mainstream presumption that she was some kind of wonderful person really gets on my nerves and reflects just how disappointing humanity can be in terms of our capacity for critical thought in the place of herd/pack mentality. It's really demoralizing and tropes like "Mother Theresa" make it difficult for someone like me to be self-compassionate and authentic to myself. So I really appreciate people like you :kissingheart:
I totally concur.

People like Mother Teresa are totally overrated. I think Greta Thunberg is a bit like that, too, at least until we realized she is just a garden variety antisemite. They look small and sort of helpless, and that gives them some default extra points for no rational reason whatsoever. If a 20 years old model did exactly what she did, nobody would have probably noticed.

In fact, I think Mother Teresa did not love the poor. She loved poverty, which has historically been a pre-condition to actually take her, and people like her, seriously.

Ciao

- viole
 

flowerpower

Member
I totally concur.

People like Mother Teresa are totally overrated. I think Greta Thunberg is a bit like that, too, at least until we realized she is just a garden variety antisemite. They look small and sort of helpless, and that gives them some default extra points for no rational reason whatsoever. If a 20 years old model did exactly what she did, nobody would have probably noticed.

In fact, I think Mother Teresa did not love the poor. She loved poverty, which has historically been a pre-condition to actually take her, and people like her, seriously.

Ciao

- viole

Funny, I have the same or similar opinion of Greta too.

And props for the extra commentary about their appearances being the basis of their pull.

Sometimes appearances do have value though - it's like they both capitalized on the stereotypes applied to their ages - Theresa looking like an old, decrepit but otherwise sweet, old lady (almost like the perfect propaganda poster child for the Catholic Church - everyone seems to know at least one Catholic woman like that who that can't seem to bring themselves to ever say a bad word about) and Greta's angsty teenage hysteria was what hooked people internationally, despite how lacking in substance she was about an incredibly serious issue facing humanity (just like Theresa with poverty and the sick and dying). I guess the masses or the human condition involves the love to idolize and worship people - I do it sometimes (probably more than I care to admit to myself) - it's just that my idols are typically people who I know personally, fictional characters or people who don't have a whole lot of political baggage attached to them; I like to think that mitigates my participation in the stupidity lol.

It's hard to tell, though, whether the two of them were/are necessarily tasteless people or if it's the people who propped them up who are the aholes. Mother Theresa rather publicly came around to an extremely dramatic sense of doubt practically on her deathbed that enraged the Catholic Church and a lot of the major Catholic players in the 2000s where she admitted that she couldn't actually feel any real connection with god or the transcendent and that she possibly had been wrong about everything all along (she was probably just dying and going through a lot of heart wrenching stuff) - almost like a backwards deathbed redemption or exorcism for someone like her.

Greta's fame went straight to her head as soon as she hit the media. Personally, I think she's too young and immature to understand much about anything or anything about what she's doing and saying. Yes, I saw this recently and thought it was hilarious -


I haven't read into it far enough to have an opinion on whether she is, as you say, a garden variety anti-semite, but I'd have a tendency to believe so. What she's doing using her platform to speak out about something completely unrelated is really uncool. A lot of her followers aren't the brightest people in the world and could find some very lame-brained way to falsely equate climate change with that conflict - and, yes - it is as ridiculous as it sounds.
 

Muffled

Jesus in me
I agree, since I believe that the New Jerusalem is on Earth. It is the New Earth referred to in Revelation 21.

Revelation 21
New International Version

A New Heaven and a New Earth

21 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

“The time foreordained unto the peoples and kindreds of the earth is now come. The promises of God, as recorded in the holy Scriptures, have all been fulfilled. Out of Zion hath gone forth the Law of God, and Jerusalem, and the hills and land thereof, are filled with the glory of His Revelation. Happy is the man that pondereth in his heart that which hath been revealed in the Books of God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. Meditate upon this, O ye beloved of God, and let your ears be attentive unto His Word, so that ye may, by His grace and mercy, drink your fill from the crystal waters of constancy, and become as steadfast and immovable as the mountain in His Cause.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 12-13
I believe that has not occurred yet.
 

viole

Ontological Naturalist
Premium Member
Funny, I have the same or similar opinion of Greta too.

And props for the extra commentary about their appearances being the basis of their pull.

Sometimes appearances do have value though - it's like they both capitalized on the stereotypes applied to their ages - Theresa looking like an old, decrepit but otherwise sweet, old lady (almost like the perfect propaganda poster child for the Catholic Church - everyone seems to know at least one Catholic woman like that who that can't seem to bring themselves to ever say a bad word about) and Greta's angsty teenage hysteria was what hooked people internationally, despite how lacking in substance she was about an incredibly serious issue facing humanity (just like Theresa with poverty and the sick and dying). I guess the masses or the human condition involves the love to idolize and worship people - I do it sometimes (probably more than I care to admit to myself) - it's just that my idols are typically people who I know personally, fictional characters or people who don't have a whole lot of political baggage attached to them; I like to think that mitigates my participation in the stupidity lol.

It's hard to tell, though, whether the two of them were/are necessarily tasteless people or if it's the people who propped them up who are the aholes. Mother Theresa rather publicly came around to an extremely dramatic sense of doubt practically on her deathbed that enraged the Catholic Church and a lot of the major Catholic players in the 2000s where she admitted that she couldn't actually feel any real connection with god or the transcendent and that she possibly had been wrong about everything all along (she was probably just dying and going through a lot of heart wrenching stuff) - almost like a backwards deathbed redemption or exorcism for someone like her.

Greta's fame went straight to her head as soon as she hit the media. Personally, I think she's too young and immature to understand much about anything or anything about what she's doing and saying. Yes, I saw this recently and thought it was hilarious -


I haven't read into it far enough to have an opinion on whether she is, as you say, a garden variety anti-semite, but I'd have a tendency to believe so. What she's doing using her platform to speak out about something completely unrelated is really uncool. A lot of her followers aren't the brightest people in the world and could find some very lame-brained way to falsely equate climate change with that conflict - and, yes - it is as ridiculous as it sounds.
That was outrageous. To abuse a rally for the climate, and the time of people who travelled there for the climate, to propagate hateful antisemitic propaganda, instead.

i think that‘s it with her. She will not be missed.

ciao

- viole
 
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danieldemol

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I believe everyone carries sin from their previous lives, so newborns are not innocent.
That would mean Jesus was not innocent and therefore was just another sinner dying on the cross as have so many others before him in my view.
 

Sgt. Pepper

All you need is love.
I'm not intending to be disrespectful, but am simply genuinely curious. Do you as a Wiccan believe that your magic spells actually change reality in any other way than simply altering your thoughts? For example, do you think you can cast a spell for prosperity and that will work and make you rich? I ask because you seem to have a respect for science, yet science has shown that spells do not work. So I'm wondering how you navigate this?

I apologize for my delay in responding to your post, IndigoChild5559. Thank you for your patience. I appreciate it. First and foremost, I don't attempt to cast any kind of spell because I'm not a witch. I have practiced divination, but not witchcraft. Second, I value science and believe that it is essential and beneficial for learning about the physical world. However, I also believe in supernatural phenomena for reasons that I've shared and discussed often on this forum (such as my previous post here, which includes additional posts to read). Needless to say, I've witnessed enough of this phenomenon during the last forty-four years of my life that there is no doubt in my mind that it is real. I've also had multiple eyewitnesses verify many of my first-hand experiences with it. Furthermore, two therapists and three psychologists have evaluated me in an effort to determine if there is a natural explanation for what I've been experiencing since I was six years old, but there is none. I've also undergone a psychiatric evaluation and a cranial CT scan in a more concentrated effort to find a natural explanation for what I experience, but yet again, there is none. Therefore, I'm confident that what I'm experiencing is real and that modern science has yet to conclusively explain it. And these are the reasons why I believe that there are supernatural phenomena that occur in the physical world that neither modern science nor sacred religious texts (such as the Bible or the Quran) or any religious dogma can rationally explain or logically refute.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Even it it could be proven that God exists, that would not mean that Adam and Eve were acts of creation by God.
Many other possibilities exist.
Even if it could be proven that God exists, that would not mean the the 19th Century uneducated Iranian was a avatara (manifestation) of Allah.
Many other possibilities exist in such a case. Scam, narcissism. We have many in India who are considered avataras of Gods (Shiva, Krishna, etc.) or saints.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
Even if it could be proven that God exists, that would not mean the the 19th Century uneducated Iranian was a avatara (manifestation) of Allah.
Many other possibilities exist in such a case.
That's true. Other possibilities exist, but the possibility that He was a Manifestation of God also exists.
 

Maninthemiddle

Active Member
I like the clothes they wear in Heaven, especially the shoes, fantastic.
There is also a Water fall 2kms South of the gates of Heaven, great temperature, Crystal clear clean water, beautiful.
 
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