Views on Heaven, is it real or a fantasy?

[Cheshire Cat]

This is both and interesting and compelling article from CNN about "beliefs".  What do you think of these experiences and life after physical death?  I am posting the link as the article is lengthy.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/19/proofs-of-heaven-popular-but-not-with-the-church/

[ben says]

There is no such thing as heaven. The idea is laughable at best, delusional and insane at worst.

[Cheshire Cat]

Ben, just curious, did you read the entire article?  I would add to your comments that judgements of insanity are based upon perception.  For instance some may think it is "insane" to be a registered "Republican" or "Democrat"!  lol  The level of insanity depends upon perceptions and beliefs of individuals, nothing more, nothing less.

[Timkin]

  It is difficult to fathom that we only have this paradox we are in now, and that there is nothing once we cease to exist here.

Personally, I believe there has to be some transformation beyond this life.  But is it exactly as we have been taught throughout our lives? 

I think it is certain that each of us will find out.

[Demosthenes]

I think the idea that our consciousness transcends the mortal coil is a romantic idea. I would LOVE to think that our consciousness is more than a series of chemical reactions causing electrical impulses.

There is enough that is still unknown about the brain and body that I am more than willing to believe in more, which is why I am not a straight athiest, but I simply dont think any of the religions are close to being accurate. Im personally at a point where I am more inclined to believe in alien intervention of  the creation of the species than an omnipotent being who cares if I cheat on my wife, who wins the superbowl, or where a hurricane hits.

Thats not to say I dont believe in a moral compass or compassion, but I dont believe in the need for a higher reason to be a good person.

[KuroiKetsunoHana]

He started collecting stories of people who had been pronounced clinically dead but were later revived.

mr. Moody seems to be suffering from acute confirmation bias.

Alexander says his neocortex was “offline” and his brain “wasn’t working at all” during his coma. Yet he says he reasoned, experienced emotions, embarked on a journey â€" and saw heaven.

memory's a tricky beast.  it can easily build a scene for you and tell you it happened at a time when it couldn't have.

Colton is now 13 and says he still remembers meeting Jesus in heaven.

i can't wait for this kid to grow up and admit that he and his father fabricated the whole story for a quick buck.

overall, this seems to be a bunch ov people whose malfunctioning brains told them exactly what they wanted to hear.

edit for clarity:  i'm not calling anyöne crazy here--i mean brains quite literally malfunctioning due to lack ov oxygen and all those other fun little side effects ov a body on its way out the door.

[Cheshire Cat]

He started collecting stories of people who had been pronounced clinically dead but were later revived.

mr. Moody seems to be suffering from acute confirmation bias.

Alexander says his neocortex was “offline” and his brain “wasn’t working at all” during his coma. Yet he says he reasoned, experienced emotions, embarked on a journey â€" and saw heaven.

memory's a tricky beast.  it can easily build a scene for you and tell you it happened at a time when it couldn't have.

Colton is now 13 and says he still remembers meeting Jesus in heaven.

i can't wait for this kid to grow up and admit that he and his father fabricated the whole story for a quick buck.

overall, this seems to be a bunch ov people whose malfunctioning brains told them exactly what they wanted to hear.

How is it that you know those who had these experiences had malfunctioning brains?  I think that is a personal view is it not?    The first situation describes the experiences of a Medical Doctor.  Modern Western Medicine is a scientific discipline.  The doctor was declared dead by other doctors trained in scientific method.  Modern technological devices showed that during the extended period of this mans death there was no function what-so-ever in any part of his brain. You state that memory is a tricky beast (I agree) but how can memories be formed by a dead brain? How could his conscience form new memories when by all scientific accounts he was "unconscious" until he was revived?  Knowing the science of the body and brain, this doctor concluded after an extensive period of examining his own clinical death and revival that what he experienced while brain dead cannot be explained by science.  This is a man educated in scientific method and medicine.  To conclude that his brain is malfunctioning is at the very least unprovable and by all indications unlikely. 

[Cheshire Cat]

I think the idea that our consciousness transcends the mortal coil is a romantic idea. I would LOVE to think that our consciousness is more than a series of chemical reactions causing electrical impulses.

There is enough that is still unknown about the brain and body that I am more than willing to believe in more, which is why I am not a straight athiest, but I simply dont think any of the religions are close to being accurate. Im personally at a point where I am more inclined to believe in alien intervention of  the creation of the species than an omnipotent being who cares if I cheat on my wife, who wins the superbowl, or where a hurricane hits.

Thats not to say I dont believe in a moral compass or compassion, but I dont believe in the need for a higher reason to be a good person.

Demo, I find no flaw in your thinking and agree that human beings should have no need for a higher reasoning to be good and moral people.  In my experience one does not have to believe in a "higher being" in order to have an understanding that what is our conscience may indeed not be restricted to physical form.  I find that many who hold to the idea that conscience is restricted to brain function and the physical structure of the brain generally have ideas regarding spirituality in the human experience that are based in part on what they have experienced according to the beliefs proposed by a particular religious discipline or disciplines.  Has your life experience ever included ritual or spiritual experiences of indigenous and isolated people, many of whom live outside of technology?  Has nothing in your life ever happened that was at all inexplicable and yet powerfully moving in your life?

I ask not to grill you on your beliefs but rather in an effort to understand what is in the hearts and minds of folks when it comes to a declaration of atheism.  Again, I don't have a judgement against anyone's personal beliefs as long as they don't impose them on others be they believers or non-believers 

[Cheshire Cat]

There is no such thing as heaven. The idea is laughable at best, delusional and insane at worst.

Interesting comment.  I wonder if you wouldnt mind elaborating?

And really I have two questions that Im interested in hearing your point of view on:
1.  What is your definition of Heaven?  And I don't think there is a right or wrong answer, but many people are talking about very different things when they reference 'heaven'.  I just wonder what you are talking about.

2.  Do you have the same opinion on the idea of an after or additional life/existence?  A place that your consciousness functions in besides the body and brain?

Stephen, compelling questions.  I would particularly like to hear the opinions of other posters on your second question. 

[Cheshire Cat]

  It is difficult to fathom that we only have this paradox we are in now, and that there is nothing once we cease to exist here.

Personally, I believe there has to be some transformation beyond this life.  But is it exactly as we have been taught throughout our lives? 

I think it is certain that each of us will find out.

I agree Timkin, there is indeed some transformation beyond this life. 

[ben says]

There is no such thing as heaven. The idea is laughable at best, delusional and insane at worst.

Interesting comment.  I wonder if you wouldnt mind elaborating?

And really I have two questions that Im interested in hearing your point of view on:
1.  What is your definition of Heaven?  And I don't think there is a right or wrong answer, but many people are talking about very different things when they reference 'heaven'.  I just wonder what you are talking about.

2.  Do you have the same opinion on the idea of an after or additional life/existence?  A place that your consciousness functions in besides the body and brain?

Elaboration:

If we take the definition of heaven seriously (according to OED: a place regarded in various religions as the abode of God (or the gods) and the angels, and of the good after death, often traditionally depicted as being above the sky), then, I think we need to call Bellevue and see if they have any extra beds.

Believing that god has an abode, or that god bears some physical relationship to planet earth (he's above!), is an insane idea. (OED: in a state of mind that prevents normal perception.) Do I really need to elaborate?

Furthermore, the rationale of a heaven is wrong, morally speaking. Here we go: if you kiss ass and do what you're told (because the Bible/Tora/Quran says you should), you'll get a shot of going to heaven. If you don't, you're set for eternal damnation somewhere near the earth's core w/ the devil and all the bad people you once knew. Small thinking if you ask me. The idea rewards ass kissing and complete obedience and casts off people with a free mind. One could have a completely clear moral compass and still miss the ship. Stupid.

[ben says]

Wouldn't post something this long unless I thought it was worth reading. My thoughts entirely. Oh, and some great history too!

Heaven: A fool's paradise by Johann Hari from http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/heaven-a-fools-paradise-1949399.html

John Lennon urged us: "Imagine there's no heaven/It's easy if you try/No hell below us/Above us only sky." Yet the religious aren't turning to Lennonism any faster than Leninism. Today, according to a new book by Lisa Miller, Newsweek's religion correspondent, 81 per cent of Americans and 51 per cent of Brits say they believe in heaven â€" an increase of 10 per cent since a decade ago. Of those, 71 per cent say it is "an actual place". Indeed, 43 per cent believe their pets â€" cats, rats, and snakes â€" are headed into the hereafter with them to be stroked for eternity. So why can't humans get over the Pearly Gates?
In reality, the heaven you think you're headed to â€" a reunion with your relatives in the light â€" is a very recent invention, only a little older than Goldman Sachs. Most of the believers in heaven across history would find it unrecognisable. Miller's book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, teases out the strange history of heaven â€" and shows it's not what you think.

Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I'll show you what's lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Koran lived in thirst â€" so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where "the first would be last, and the last would be first" â€" so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today's Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang. Emily Dickinson wrote: " 'Heaven' â€" is what I cannot Reach!/The Apple on the Tree/Provided it do hopeless â€" hang/That â€" 'Heaven' is â€" to Me!"

We know precisely when this story of projecting our lack into the sky began: 165BC, patented by the ancient Jews. Until then, heaven â€" shamayim â€" was the home of God and his angels. Occasionally God descended from it to give orders and indulge in a little light smiting, but there was a strict no-dead-people door policy. Humans didn't get in, and they didn't expect to. The best you could hope for was for your bones to be buried with your people in a shared tomb and for your story to carry on through your descendants. It was a realistic, humanistic approach to death. You go, but your people live on.

So how did the idea of heaven â€" as a perfect place where God lives and where you end up if you live right â€" rupture this reality? The different components had been floating around "in the atmosphere of Jerusalem, looking for a home", as Miller puts it, for a while. The Greeks believed there was an eternal soul that ascended when you die. The Zoroastrians believed you would be judged in the end-time for your actions on earth. The Jews believed in an almighty Yahweh.

But it took a big bloody bang to fuse them. In the run up to heaven's invention, the Jews were engaged in a long civil war over whether to open up to the Greeks and their commerce or to remain sealed away, insular and pure. With no winner in sight, King Antiochus got fed up. He invaded and tried to wipe out the Jewish religion entirely, replacing it with worship of Zeus. The Jews saw all that was most sacred to them shattered: they were ordered to sacrifice swine before a statue of Zeus that now dominated their Temple. The Jews who refused were hacked down in the streets.

Many young men fled into the hills of Palestine to stage a guerrilla assault â€" now remembered as the Hanukkah story. The old Jewish tale about how you continue after you die was itself dying: your bones couldn't be gathered by your ancestors anymore with so many Jews scattered and on the run. So suddenly death took on a new terror. Was this it? Were all these lives ending forever, for nothing? One of the young fighters â€" known to history only as Daniel â€" announced that the martyred Jews would receive a great reward. "Many of those who sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt," he wrote and launched us on the road to the best-selling 1990s trash 90 Minutes in Heaven. Daniel's idea was wildly successful. Within a century, most Jews believed in heaven, and the idea has never died.

But while the key components of heaven were in place, it was not the kumbaya holiday camp it has become today. It was a place where you and God and the angels sat â€" but Jesus warned "there is no marriage in heaven". You didn't join your relatives. It was you and God and eternal prayer. It was paradise, but not as we know it.

Even some atheists regard heaven as one of the least-harmful religious ideas: a soothing blanket to press onto the brow of the bereaved. But its primary function for centuries was as a tool of control and intimidation. The Vatican, for example, declared it had a monopoly on St Peter's VIP list â€" and only those who obeyed their every command and paid them vast sums for Get-Out-of-Hell-Free cards would get them and their children onto it. The afterlife was a means of tyrannising people in this life. This use of heaven as a bludgeon long outlasted the Protestant Reformation. Miller points out that in Puritan New England, heaven was not primarily a comfort but rather "a way to impose discipline in this life."

It continues. Look at Margaret Toscano, a sixth-generation Mormon who was a fanatical follower of Joseph Smith in her youth. Then she studied feminism at university. She came back to her community and argued that women ought to be allowed to become priests. The Mormon authorities â€" the people who denied black people had souls until 1976 â€" ordered her to recant, and said if she didn't, she wouldn't go to heaven with the rest of her family. She refused. Now her devastated sisters believe they won't see her in the afterlife.

Worse still, the promise of heaven is used as an incentive for people to commit atrocities. I have seen this in practice: I've interviewed wannabe suicide bombers from London to Gaza to Syria, and they all launched into reveries about the orgy they will embark on in the clouds. Similarly, I was once sent â€" as my own personal purgatory â€" undercover on the Christian Coalition Solidarity tour of Israel. As we stood at Megido, the site described in the Book of Revelation as the launchpad for the apocalypse, they bragged that hundreds of thousands of Arabs would soon be slaughtered there while George Bush and his friends are raptured to heaven as a reward for leading the Arabs to their deaths. Heaven can be an inducement to horror.

Yet there is an unthinking "respect" automatically accorded to religious ideas that throttles our ability to think clearly about these questions. Miller's book â€" after being a useful exposition of these ideas â€" swiftly turns itself into a depressing illustration of this. She describes herself as a "professional sceptic", but she is, in fact, professionally credulous. Instead of trying to tease out what these fantasies of an afterlife reveal about her interviewees, she quizzes everyone about their heaven as if she is planning to write a Lonely Planet guide to the area, demanding more and more intricate details. She only just stops short of demanding to know what the carpeting will be like. But she never asks the most basic questions: where's your evidence? Where are you getting these ideas from? These questions are considered obvious when we are asking about any set of ideas, except when it comes to religion, when they are considered to be a slap in the face.

Of course there's plenty of proof that the idea of heaven can be comforting, or beautiful â€" but that doesn't make it true. The difference between wishful thinking and fact-seeking is something most six-year-olds can grasp, yet Miller â€" and, it seems, the heaven-believing majority â€" refuse it here. Yes, I would like to see my dead friends and relatives again. I also would like there to be world peace, a million dollars in my current account, and for Matt Damon to ask me to marry him. If I took my longing as proof they were going to happen, you'd think I was deranged.

"Rationalist questions are not helpful," announces one of her interviewees â€" a professor at Harvard, no less. This seems to be Miller's view too. She stresses that to believe in heaven you have to make "a leap of faith" â€" but in what other field in life do we abandon all need for evidence? Why do it in one so crucial to your whole sense of existence? And if you are going to "leap" beyond proof, why leap to the Christian heaven? Why not convince yourself you are going to live after death in Narnia, or Middle Earth, for which there is as much evidence? She doesn't explain: her arguments dissolve into a feel-good New Age drizzle.

True, Miller does cast a quick eye over the only "evidence" that believers in heaven offer â€" the testimonies of people who have had near-death experiences. According to the medical journal The Lancet, between 9 per cent and 18 per cent of people who have been near death report entering a tunnel, seeing a bright light, and so on. Dinesh D'Souza, in his preposterous book Life After Death, presents this as "proof" for heaven. But in fact there are clear scientific explanations. As the brain shuts down, it is the peripheral vision that goes first, giving the impression of a tunnel. The centre of your vision is what remains, giving the impression of a bright light. Indeed, as Miller concedes: "Virtually all the features of [a near-death experience] â€" the sense of moving through a tunnel, an 'out of body' feeling, spiritual awe, visual hallucinations, and intense memories â€" can be reproduced with a stiff dose of ketamine, a horse tranquilliser frequently used as a party drug." Is a stoner teenager in a K-hole in contact with God and on a day-trip to heaven? Should the religious be dropping horse dope on Sundays? But Miller soon runs scared from the sceptical implications of this, offering the false balance of finding one very odd scientist who says that these experiences could point beyond life â€" without any proof at all.

But even if you set aside the absence of even the tiniest thread of evidence, there is a great conceptual hole at the heart of heaven â€" one that has gnawed at even its fondest believers. After a while, wouldn't it be excruciatingly dull? When you live in the desert, a spring seems like paradise. But when you have had the spring for a thousand years, won't you be sick of it? Heaven is, in George Orwell's words, an attempt to "produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary". Take away the contrast, and heaven becomes hell.

And yet, and yet ... of course I understand why so many people want to believe in heaven, even now, even in the face of all the evidence, and all reason. It is a way â€" however futilely â€" of trying to escape the awful emptiness of death. As Philip Larkin put it: "Not to be here/Not to be anywhere/And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true". To die. To rot. To be nothing. We wouldn't be sane if we didn't seek a way to leap off this conveyor-belt heading towards a cliff.

So yes, there is pain in seeing the truth about Heaven â€" but there is also a liberation in seeing beyond the childhood myths of our species. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in Babylon 4,000 years ago, the eponymous hero travels into the gardens of the gods in an attempt to discover the secret of eternal life. His guide tells him the secret â€" there is no secret. This is it. This is all we're going to get. This life. This time. Once. "Enjoy your life," the goddess Siduri tells him. "Love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace." It's Lennon's dream, four millennia ahead of schedule: above us, only sky. Gilgamesh returns to the world and lives more intensely and truly and deeply than before, knowing there is no celestial after-party and no forever. After all this time, can't we finally follow Gilgamesh to a world beyond heaven?

[Cheshire Cat]

Well Ben, I actually agree with your commentary in the first paragraph. 

Regarding the second paragraph, I would again point out that when you speak of perceptions and normality you are in some ways suggesting that there is a normal for perception.  There isn't one. 

As to your last paragraph two things stand out.  First you didn't read the whole article on the link.  If you had you would have known there is a great deal of commentary that states the view that many both within and outside of specific religious disciplines "do not" believe that one has to believe in a particular doctrine or God in order to get to heaven.  Recently, even the Pope declared that even atheists can go to heaven.  lol  I agree that it is absurd to think that a person who has lived well would be excluded from a heaven.  Further it is even more ridiculous to believe that a small child or a person who had no exposure to religious belief systems would be damned. 

So may I ask what sources or personal experiences you are basing your judgements upon as your comments seem to indicate your ideas are based in a single religious view regarding a heaven, earth or devil. 


Secondly is that your commentary is based on what you understand to be the collective thinking of all individuals who believe there is some sort of existence or consciousness after death.  There is much more in the way of belief systems that do not hinge on a heaven or hell afterlife. 

Goodness Ben, you type quickly.  lol Just saw you have put up another more lengthy post.  Going to read it now.  Would you mind responding to this post while I read the next?   Thanks.

[JayBird]

I believe there is something after this life.  To me, to not believe would take away any purpose of living now.  Just to be rewarded with nothingness, a black void?  I cannot even fathom what that next stage, and I am not sure I am supposed to comprehend that at this stage.

As for gods and churches and religions, I choose to use them to find hope in some things.  I use them to try understand why things happen beyond my realm of explanation.

I do not attend any organized worship or religious services, however a very good friend goes to a well known church downtown that seems to attract a lot of flack told me something that I liked: "I would rather believe in the story of the bible and find it to be false, than to not believe in it and find out that it is true".  Logic like that I cannot argue with.  I think everyone believes in something, be it a light bulb or sun or deity.  It helps us explain what we have yet to understand

[Cheshire Cat]

Wow Ben, that is a lengthy read. lol

I completely agree that the idea of a heaven has morphed and changed over time depending upon what people wanted or needed the concept of heaven to be in order to not only comfort themselves but also to put their minds around this wordly existence and what may follow it.  What a heaven may be again ties to personal perceptions (I keep using the word for a reason) of what is right, wrong, good or undesirable as it relates to human actions and experiences on earth.  Depending upon what those experiences are a person or group of persons may come up with a theology or concept that puts the answers to all questions about our human existence into a form that ends up with black or white conclusions be they heaven and earth or life and oblivion. The problem is the human experience is not an either or and changes dramatically from one person to another, one culture to another or one perception to another.  We do not live in a world of good or bad, black or while.  We live in the vast gray areas of experiences and those experiences can create within us a plethora of emotions.  It is the nature of human beings to question, investigate and try to understand the reason for our being.  If one chooses to think our existence is simply the result of an evolutionary process, what is the evolutionary reason behind the need to know our origins, our planet, our universe and the world both inside and outside of us?  If we are all just about atoms moving within a form and electric impulses within a brain, what is the reason for our deep need to understand our reality?  If it were just a function of living and dying, there is no biological or evolutionary need to know what we are and why we live.  Yet that is the driving question behind the views and thoughts of both believers and non believers.  In order to not believe you must first question "What is reality?"  You then use your own experiences, views, insights and perceptions of the world around you to answer the question.  Why would an organic creature need to know the answers to these questions in order to live and die?

(I will address other things further into the conversation but stop with this one query in order to make the discussion easier to follow)