Heaven

As I am currently a little short on time I would like to start with a brief discussion of a subject I find particularly sensitive and that is Heaven, which I hope will be a good starter for a friendly, heated debate.

From all warps of life, religious or otherwise, the concept of heaven persists despite being one of the weakest concepts spawned from religion. Personally I think the main reason it persists is that natural human need to believe that death is not the end and our loves ones somehow live on in another place, watching over us. I don't believe that it has persisted due to the weight of its concept as upon even a very basic examination large cracks are exposed.

For starters try to answer this fairly straight-forward question what is heaven? I suspect most people will envisage a place free of human suffering where you and everyone you have ever loved live in perferct bliss without worry or fear. This, however, is flawed as not only does sufferring help us recognise happiness but also imagine feeling happy forever? Surely in such a scenario after a while feeling happy will become the norm and we will then aim for feeling more happy. The problem here is that no matter how happy you are, you can always imagine being happier and this must be still true in heaven if we are to assume in heaven we remain esstentially human. This will ultimately lead us to wanting more from heaven, which is another way of saying we will be unhappy. In other words no matter how happy we are in heaven, after time we will require more happiness and this continual need from improvment will eventually result in unhappiness.

Okay given this maybe heaven is a place that just keeps given and your needs / wants are continually being satisfied. This view of heaven though is still flawed since we all have different desires and for them to be satisified means that heaven has to not only be all things to all people, which suggests it is not an actual physical place, but also the desires of some people are what others would class as unacceptable. I guess the answer to this is that such people would go to hell but surely having the desire to do something is different from actually carrying it out and it is very common for people to suppress their real desires - these people should still go to heaven but what about these desires? Are they still suppressed in heaven? Surely this would ultimately lead to that person feeling unhappy.

Worse still our desires change over time and our existence in heaven is meant to be infinite so what if at some point in the future we have an unacceptable desire, what happens then? And who decides what is acceptable or not? Again I predict that some people would suggest in heaven our only desires are spiritual and we will devote our days to praising our God. Not only does this sound like a very boring existence to me but this would mean for most of us that in heaven we will not exist as ourselves.

Another major problem I have with heaven is that if I had to watch the ones I love suffer at my lost, powerless to help or be with them, I would feel miserable. Imagine dying just before your child is born and you have to watch them grow up from heaven? How can this be a happy existence? The only way of resolving this is that in heaven we lose that part of us and exist in a completely different way to how we exist on earth, but this means we are no longer ourselves and we might as well be wholly dead for all intents and purposes. In other words it would not be our loved ones watching over us but rather the spiritual essence of them, and they no longer behave or live like humans.

Given all this if such a place existed I would rather be dead - or we may as well consider ourselves dead since we would no longer exist as who we are now in heaven. All this and I haven't really touched upon the physical side of heaven - are we physical beings in heaven?, is there gravity in heaven? and where does heaven exist? Clearly I do not believe in heaven - I am actually an atheist so do not believe in God either but heaven and God are really two separate concepts - but what do you think? I will post more of my thoughts on heaven shortly and to be honest I rushed this a little so may write some edits in the future. I just wanted this to be a starting point and hopefully I have raised some interesting questions for you to answer.

I will also respond to any feedback I get. So come on join in and flick the switch!