Atheists DO Go to Heaven

A celestial North Korea, as Christopher Hitchens put it.

 

I'll stick to hoping for the various afterlife locales of heathenism. Worst case scenario is a bit like Seattle in winter, best case is a biker bash.

 

Here's a question.. If there is an "atheist heaven", does it need to have a god involved?

 

I see it as a universal pot luck: No one needs to have a cook in the kitchen, just bring what you want.

 

On the contrary, an "atheist heaven" couldn't involve a god, else it wouldn't be heaven.

 

Jesus Christ! If the afterlife is anything like the Pacific Northwest, I don't want to die. Keep me hooked up on life support ad infinitum. Fuck it. I'd take being a vegetable over being stuck in the Pacific Northwest for eternity.

 

Philip Pullman disagrees.

 

In "atheist heaven", atheists continue to evolve until they are capable of believing in God.

 

Sez you.

Philip Pullman can make his own posts.

 

I have no idea who this person is... Don't care either.

I do want to hear the variation of athiests views though. Is an afterlife completely incompatible with your beliefs or can you allow for the possibility? With or without a god, what are your opinions on what's commonly understood by "the soul"?

 

I was raised religious but then I grew up and became able to think for myself.

Personally, I believe the universe is a far more complicated and wonderous place than we're truly able to comprehend. I don't know what happens when we die. I'd like to think that something of our "essence" (or "soul", if you will) survives but the how's and why's of it all is completely beyond me.

Sometimes I honestly think I'd like to have the comfort of a firm faith in a God or an afterlife, but the rational part of me just can't do it.

 

Just to piss off Diacanu, I'm going to declare that WAB is an agnostic.

 

I am. And fuck people who say you have to be one or the other (deist or atheist). Life is not black or white.

 

93% of Woordforgers are zero or one, and they hate the other 7%.

 

It's incompatible with my beliefs, but that doesn't generalise to "atheists" as a whole, who can remain as such while adopting any belief at all as long as these do not include a deity.

 

"You'll die up there!"

 

There could be an afterlife without a God...but frankly, I don't see the point.

Why would this other dimension exist in the universe just for human spooks to reside?
What conditions in the early big-bang would bring that about?

And...without a God to run it, wouldn't it just be another horrifying human run bureaucracy?
Seems as though it would.
It'd be like the afterlife in "Beetlejuice".

No thanks.

 

You're putting human concepts on a level of existence that is beyond our physical comprehension.

And who says "heaven" is the only other level of existence? There could be many more, both above and below.

 

Let's say it is.
Experiencing such a place would transform me so thoroughly, as to destroy what I consider to be my identity.
So...how does that appeal?
The appeal of afterlife, is continence of your human identity, is it not?

It's like saying "to go to Doggie Heaven, you're transformed into a clownfish", well, if its full of clownfish, how in the hell is it Doggie Heaven?

Y'see?

Stacking on dimensions, and appealing to the inexplicable doesn't poof that problem away.

Stacking more layers onto the sandwich makes the sandwich more ridiculous, not less.

 

You're making it far too complicated.


It's more like you're someone who has lived their whole live in Phoenix, AZ. All you know is the desert and nothing else. Then one day you take a trip to the Amazon rain forest. It's a vastly different environment with wildly different experiences. But you are still you.

 

Still no sale.

 

That's the only part that mattered.
Thanks for the positive rep points.

 

Oh good. So I can continue being the guy who wants no part of some imposed social function.

 

You gonna burn it, and stomp on it with a lesbian shoe?

 

Yes. Bring nothing if you want. Doesn't matter.

 

Well, it appears the rest of the Vatican was deeply disturbed by the idea of a just and compassionate God, and has pulled Pope Francis back onto the reservation.

Link

 

Rosica'd better stay healthy. When he dies, Roncalli's gonna kick his ass.

 

Why you hatin'?

 

I think that you're all missing a big possibility: God exists, but humans are just an incidental part of his creation, like Christians consider the flea, and that his real "chosen people" are some other beings on another planet entirely. Our encounter with them will be like what happened to the Canaanites when the Jews showed up.

 

So, who wants to take bets that this Pope will pass away "in his sleep" in the next year?