What is heaven supposed to be like?

I think there are several possibilities but I don't think any of them involve getting a refund on your collection plate donations.

Quote: FrGamble

Evenbob once again you're not making any sense. How could anyone invent something that they could have no way of understanding? If life is extremely hard throughout our history even till today, where would the conception of perfection ever enter our minds? We have no experience of it, no understanding of it, it would be like coming up with a new color no one had ever seen, impossible. You can't invent something that is totally foreign to you.

Bob always makes perfect sense to me. He eloquently describes what many people feel, yet are too timid to vocalize for fear of being ostracized by the group. I agree with him on nearly everything but his harsh views on Breaking Bad.

Anyway FrGamble, I have an answer to your belief no one could ever invent heaven. In man's early history, back when we were living in tribes comprised of groups of extended families of maybe 100 people, only the fastest, strongest men went on the hunt to bring back meat for the tribe. Frequently dangerous, not all men would return alive. The wisest leaders would placate the men's fears with promises of a greater life should they die today in the hunt. After all, they need meat to live, and can't have an individual back out from fear. As the centuries went on, and tribes grew to cities, the holy men realized they could grow richer by promising more glamorous things in the afterlife, and take in tribute from those same folks who foolishly believed them. The good holymen would return much of that money in forms beneficial to the people (like better irrigation systems or homeless shelters today) but the greedy holy men enriched themselves and built temples and tombs for themselves. And bigger and bigger hats. Either way, it only works if the theocracy instills fear and false rewards in the minds of the sheeple who donate. Those promises can never be proven. They're selling hope without any tangible thing to back it up, and making money doing it.

Before you say "The Bible backs it up", why would I ever want to follow such a vengeful god who killed all his own children in a flood? Babies even! Cultures have had many gods before Jesus showed up. Why don't we follow Zeus anymore? Or Ra? People just make it up as they go along! They always have. Look at Scientology fer cryin' out loud, a nutcase religion if ever there was one, yet it's sensible to the dopes who follow it today. If an alien came to earth right now, he'd view all the world's religions as equal nonsense. Because they are.

Quote: zippyboy

If an alien came to earth right now, he'd view all the world's religions as equal nonsense. Because they are.

Or come with his own true religion. Where humans are eaten as communion wafers.

Quote: rxwine

Or come with his own true religion. Where humans are eaten as communion wafers.

I don't think any of the many human-eating aliens in SF ever used religion as a reason. Alien religions don't show up often anyway.

But there is a story by Lester del Rey called "...For I am a Jealous People," where the aliens invading Earth unmistakably have God on their side. On classical del Rey style, the buildup is so long that the pay-off seems diminished in comparison (the man was a great editor and publisher, though). BUt also in classical del Rey style, it's a smashing idea.

Quote: zippyboy

Anyway FrGamble, I have an answer to your belief no one could ever invent heaven. In man's early history, back when we were living in tribes comprised of groups of extended families of maybe 100 people,
.

In religion, everything starts out small. Even the big
god in the Old Testament started out as a small,
regional god, one of many. When they condensed
them all into one all powerful god, Yahweh won
and it was him from then on.

Long before the Bible had to "back anything up" smart and thoughtful people realized that there was more to this life than meets the eye. People instinctively knew even as far back as we can know that you would have to be a total idiot to think that all there is to life is the stuff you see around us and the fleeting moments we walk around. The tribes knew that if you were willing to sacrifice lovingly for your fellow men and women by hunting for food then it was too paltry a thing to just think we died. We are too smart and too spiritual as human beings to ever allow that thought into our mind. Long before even the Bible was written people had spiritual experiences, felt the presence of their ancestors still alive, sometimes in tangible ways, they didn't need to make up an afterlife - they knew it. Jesus comes as a long culmination of our spiritual progress, confirming through His life, death, and Resurrection the reality people always knew. The machinations and contortions atheists now try to go through to somehow deny that there is more to life is plain silliness and fights against human nature the same way they try to artificially pretend modern science does anything but support the idea of an intelligent creator of the universe.

Quote: FrGamble

Long before the Bible had to "back anything up" smart and thoughtful people realized that there was more to this life than meets the eye. People instinctively knew even as far back as we can know that you would have to be a total idiot to think that all there is to life is the stuff you see around us and the fleeting moments we walk around.

I know this makes you angry, especially if you're responding to even bob (I've had him blocked for years, I get enough nonsense from other sources), but pelase try to watch the argument from intimidation.

Back on topic, I think you're too sold on your belief to consider seriously any alternatives. I'm under no illusion that I'm shaking your faith, or even making it tremble a little bit. But there are lots of other explanations for believeing, or wishing, for an afterlife, or for "more" than this life. I grant it's clever to embrace any and all pre-Judeo-Christian beliefs, or even latter and contemporaneous ones, by saying they weren't wrong, but just had an incomplete understanding of the "One True God." Yet you, and Christianity, Judaism, the various pagan belifs, animism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Islam, Manicheism, etc, etc, etc are still without any tangible evidence.

Consider, too, what you're accepting alongside an "incomplete understanding" of other faiths. Just about all cultures from Meso-America down to the Patagonia practiced wholesale human sacrifice (the Tlaxcaltec people alone truly could have painted any town red with one round of religious fervor). The Carthaginians very likely sacrificed babies and children to one or more of their gods.

And to continue with an earlier theme of mine, the religion you practice may still be called Catholic, but I propose it would probably have been considered high heresy by any educated Catholic back in the Middle Ages, I think a Pope from that era would be horrified by today's Roman Catholic Church. He'd surely consider the separation of church and state an abomination, and point to merely excomunicating heretics as way too lenient a punishment

Consider Pope Urban (I forget his number) launched the Crusades by promising instant entry to heaven to anyone who would fight in one. I'm sure this attitude would be anathema, perhaps not in the literal sense, to today's Church and the entire worldwide congregation (except a few crazies; who'd be considered crazy for agreeing with a long-dead medieval Pope, no less).

In other words, for all practical purposes, today's Catholicism is a different relgion than Medieval Catholicism.

Quote: FrGamble

you would have to be a total idiot to think that all there is to life is the stuff you see around us and the fleeting moments we walk around. .

And others think you have to be off your rocker
to read so much into it. The more you make
up as to the purpose, the more you want to
make up. It never ends. There was a guy back
in the 60's named Baba Ram Das, His whole
teaching was built around 'Be here now'.

Whatever you're doing, give it all your attention.
Who does that, I don't. I'm not really living
my life, I'm living in the future, always worrying
and speculating about what happens tomorrow
or next week or 2 hours from now. I don't live
in the moment at all. The strange thing is, we
have to teach people how to do this, they don't
know how.

Zen monks live in poverty because anything else
is a distraction. All of life is a distraction, especially
organized religion. Anything to keep us from
contemplating real spirituality.

You're right Nareed I was a little heavy handed in my response to Bob, I even worried about getting a warning.

Two quick things. It is indeed amazing how the Catholic Church reads and understands the "signs of the time". The development of doctrine and traditional practices is quite providential. It shows tremendous flexibility while continuing to hold to the Truth of the Gospel. This is another sign that as the longest surviving human institution it is also divinely guided.

As far as tangible proof of the afterlife I would think we all would have heard or personally experienced enough stories about ghosts and such to put the idea of life after death as almost a given.

FrG,

I'm not a moderator here, but I didn't see anything questionable or actionable in your post. At most, you built a straw man to attack in there, but as Nareed noted, you were definitely on the defensive. JMHO.