Heaven is for Real! And I'm Supposed to be Impressed?

One of the questions I like to ask theists that highlights the absurdity of their beliefs is this: “What is Heaven like?” Upon hearing this question, I often see the theist’s eyes light up, but not in that, “I’m glad you asked!” kind of way. No, more like the wheels in their head start turning, gearing up to turn out some fantastical vision of their own making. But I think the question is quite fair given that going to Heaven is the goal of any given (mono)theist’s beliefs. If Heaven is the goal, one should have a fairly good idea what they’re pursuing. Given the importance of Heaven, I would think that whatever Heaven is would be clearly spelled out in religious texts if for no other reason than to motivate the believer to follow the rules necessary to get to Heaven.

Instead, what I get when I ask this question are answers as individual as the people describing Heaven. And this has to be so because Heaven is not adequately described either physically or in terms of what ‘life’ will be like, at least not in the Bible. There are much fewer passage in the Bible describing Heaven than the word itself is used. That being so, theists are forced to use their imaginations when thinking about moving to the Big City. But let’s take a look at some descriptions from around the Web that are at least somewhat scripturally-based:

1)     “Heaven is a place of ‘no mores.’ There will be no more tears, no more pain, and no more sorrow (Revelation 21:4). There will be no more separation, because death will be conquered (Revelation 20:6). The best thing about heaven is the presence of our Lord and Savior (1 John 3:2). We will be face to face with the Lamb of God who loved us and sacrificed Himself so that we can enjoy His presence in heaven for eternity.”

2)     “Most of us have heard that heaven is a place where the streets are paved with gold, the gates are made of pearl, and the walls made of precious jewels. Those images come from Revelation 21, which offers us the most extended picture of heaven in the entire Bible. If you ask me if I believe those things are literally true, the answer is yes and no. Yes, they are literally true but no, heaven won't be anything like we imagine. It will be much greater.”

3)     “So what will we do for all eternity? The answer is, we're going to help God run the universe…We will use our gifts to administer the new heaven and the new earth. Bakers will bake, teachers will teach, singers will sing, and I suppose that preachers will preach. For all I know, soldiers may march off to battle and quarterbacks will throw passes. Think of the flowers the botanists will study. Gifted astronomers will go from galaxy to galaxy studying the wonders of God's creation.”

4)     “Heaven has a river, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb [Jesus] down the middle of the city. On each side of the river there will be a tree of life, yielding twelve kinds of fruit every month. The streets will be pure gold, like transparent glass. The walls of the city will be adorned with every kind of jewel, emerald, onyx, amethyst, topaz, etc. There will be no need for a sun or moon, and no need for a temple or church. The presence of the Lord will be its light.”

What I laugh at the most when given the physical descriptions of Heaven is that if I visually imagine it, Heaven starts sounding like an episode of Pimp My House. Precious metals and jewels galore, oh my! Really? If everyone has these things, they’re not valuable anymore. Is God trying to wow us by showing us how rich he is? Sorry God, but not only do we have enough rich assholes flaunting their wealth on Earth but personally, I’m not that big a fan of gold, aesthetically speaking. Description-wise, I’ve failed to be impressed by anyone’s vision of Heaven seeing how obviously these visions relate to the desires of the person making such claims.

As for what ‘life’ would be like, I often hear from believers that we would spend most of our time (if not all) worshipping God for eternity. That sounds like it can get old fast, say, after a century or two, and I know I’m not alone in thinking this. Moreover, this notion of eternal worship again raises the question of why God requires worship or even wants to be. Regarding the third gem above, why would God need any help running the universe and why does running the universe sound a lot like the things we’re already doing on Earth? I’m particularly incredulous at the idea that soldier might go off to battle and kill people, er, that can’t die since this is Heaven, a place of ‘no mores’ according to the first gem? I’m surely not able to reconcile those two visions.

Here’s the thing about going to Heaven, a place where there is no more dying, pain, sorrow, suffering, etc. God could have created a situation where everyone started off in Heaven. BUT, apparently one is required to suffer first in order to deserve a room at God’s 1,000 star hotel. Not only that, but one has to increase their suffering by denying themselves many Earthly pleasures or pleasure of the flesh in order to deserve being somewhere where there is no suffering. On Earth, the believer is constantly tested (whether by themselves or by others or by situations) in order to be given a prize. And that’s where the catch-22 comes in: On Earth, all this suffering and free will stuff is a virtue but in Heaven these virtues are no longer necessary. While we often pass tests to see if we’re deserving of certain statuses, being required not to pass any more tests means whatever position I have in Heaven (assuming I’ve earned it; I’m not doing so good thus far…) will lock me into that fate. The theist may contend that I wouldn’t want to do anything else but be in the presence of God once I’m in Heaven, but I fail to see how this differs from being a mindless robot with no free will. So again I have to ask why didn’t God just make things like this to begin with?

The typical defense for such a grand oversight in the descriptions of Heaven is that the idea is beyond human imagination or understanding. Okay, so if I can’t imagine it or understand it, where does anyone get off claiming Heaven is somewhere we should want to go? Oh, that’s right, faith. But each person taking their vision of Heaven on faith means that there is no single unifying vision which means that even given a best case scenario all but one person’s vision of Heaven is wrong, if that one person is even correct. The choices then become this: Either everyone is wrong about Heaven, only one person is right about Heaven, or everyone is right about Heaven. It’s probably the case that everyone is wrong, but in case only one person’s vision is true, no one knows (pretending to know doesn’t count) who that person is. If we take option number three, that everyone is right about Heaven, I’m surely better off becoming a believer seeing how my Heaven is going to have strippers and a beer volcano.

As it stands, I don’t see a compelling reason to want to go to Heaven based upon all the current descriptions. Of course, I’m open to hearing fantastic visions, just be prepared for a lot of questions. There aren’t a lot of reviews of Heaven on Trip Advisor and I’m one those people who is really choosey about my accommodations, especially one that’s going to be forever.

Cart Attack

[Sorry for the puff piece, but I have been busy lately. I'll be getting to some juicier stuff later this month. And by 'juicier' I mean the usual stuff everyone else is too scared to say.]

Although life is surely more comfortable these days, I do sometimes wish we were still hunter-gatherers. This is because there is little more I dread than going to the supermarket, for various reasons. First, there is the fact that you have to read the label on everything if you care at all about your health; that people who don’t want to be slowly poisoned are forced to do this at all is despicable. Second, there are usually kids in the supermarket, even at 2am wtf. Third, and worst of all, there are adults in the supermarket and they like to park their fucking shopping carts in the middle of the goddamn aisle. It’s a particularly inexplicable activity when other people are around and – I don’t know – may want to get by? 

 

I’ve seen it happen so many times I feel like a baby seal bludgeoned with a baseball bat of stupidity since I cannot fathom the origin of this behavior. Why do people go down an aisle, park their cart smack-dab in the middle, walk over to an item, stop, mull the decision, and perhaps even call their spouse to confirm the purchase all the while other people are trying to eek by? Is it a (another) case of self-absorption (since it appears to be getting worse every day)? Is it the unconscious manifestation of a desire to be a fuck-face when one is not consciously going out of their way to be one? ‘Cause that’s what people who do this are, fuck-faces.

I’ve certainly been too kind when coming across these retards (pardon the insult to retarded people), usually settling for a sarcastic muttering of “That’s a good place to park” whilst rolling my eyes as I pass by. But since the day last week one guy parked his cart perpendicular to the aisle blocking all traffic, I’ve decided to retaliate. Make a problem for me and I’m going to make a problem for you. I’m going to take stuff out of their cart they want and put stuff into their cart they weren’t going to buy and see if they notice. Or, I’m going to take their cart and go park it somewhere else, like the dildo aisle. Or maybe I’ll follow them around and park in the middle of the aisle in front of them and see how they like it because, yeah, I do have time to play games.

Until people stop parking their carts in the middle of the supermarket aisle, there will never be world peace, so stop praying for it. After all, it seems to me that many of the people who think it’s a good idea to pray for world peace are the shitheads who are parking their carts in the middle of the aisle. How about y’all take your cart and park it someplace the sun don’t shine instead? The next time this shit happens, the store manager’s gonna need a clean-up in aisle four.

Adam and Evil

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints; the sinners are much more fun…” Billy Joel

For two thousand years, a great deal of fanfare has surrounded the idea that people need to be ‘saved’ by accepting Jesus Christ as their savior because we are all sinners. The idea of sin goes back to the very first chapter of the Bible in the Book of Genesis, in which the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, perpetrate what is known as The Fall. Certainly, such a notion is a primary reason why some theists go to great lengths to justify a belief in their singular God and His son. Only, a critical analysis of this particular creation myth reveals a god that, if actually existent, is a god of questionable morality and perhaps even malicious.

In the book of Genesis, after God has made the Earth and heavens, He decides to make man in the likeness of Himself (and other unnamed gods) for no reason that is made even remotely obvious to the casual reader. Then, because this man, Adam, is lonely, God makes animals for the man to have dominion over. Next, He makes a woman for Adam, presumably because having sex with sheep is inappropriate. God places the both of them in the beautiful garden of Eden where they may live happily ever after, but not without a dire warning: Do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge. If they do, God warns, they will die.

Most of us are familiar with what happens next. A serpent comes to Eve, telling her one lie and one truth. If Eve eats fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, not only will she not die—a lie—but she will come to have knowledge of good and evil as the gods do—the truth. After eating the fruit (presumably a bad apple), she then gives her husband fruit from the tree and he eats it too. They now know the difference between good and evil, which seems to come as a surprise to the typically described omniscient God the next time He comes around.

Incredulous, God punishes Adam and Eve. For starters, they’re going to die—and the serpent who instigated the entire affair, who gets off relatively easy by comparison. In addition, not only are Adam and Eve going to die, but God tells Eve she is going to bear tremendous pain during childbirth and subjugates her to her husband, while Adam is sentenced to the backbreaking task of having to grow their own food. Finally, they are cast out from the Garden of Eden least they try next to eat from the Tree of Life and live forever.

It appears Adam and Eve sinned; they disobeyed God, and from this a reader is to extrapolate a lesson: If you disobey God, the consequences will be undesirable, to say the least. However, a philosophical question arises as to whether or not Adam and Eve acted with ill intentions towards God and whether or not they should be punished for what they did.

I think it is fair to point out that it is perfectly clear that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of what was good and what was bad prior to eating the forbidden fruit. God may have told them that eating the fruit from this particular tree would result in their death, but they had absolutely no cause to believe that either death, disobeying God, or prancing around the Garden unclothed were bad things until after they ate the fruit.

With that in mind I think it equally fair to say that it is God then that explicitly bears the responsibility for creating the circumstances that would cause Adam and Eve to “fall.” What reason did God have for putting the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden? Why did He create a serpent that would be so beguiling as to fool Eve? If He was testing Adam and Eve, He must have known they would fail this test given that God is (or described as being later on in the Bible) all-knowing. Of course, if God had chosen not to know the future regarding this matter, God is either irresponsible or worse, a sadist. For the theist who wishes to take this creation account seriously, the absence of any analysis is required to think that God might not be evil. But we mustn’t judge too quickly.

We learn by reading further into the Book of Genesis that thanks to Adam and Eve’s disobedience, every subsequent human being suffers consequences. Because of the first man and woman, everyone is now born with a stain upon their soul as punishment for Adam and Eve’s insubordination. Certain monotheists call this “Original Sin,” something from which they think everyone is in need of being “saved” from. But what God does to Adam and Eve is akin to my requiring you to rob a bank with me, not tell you the details of the plan, then have you die during the heist so that I can get away unscathed. Best of all, your ancestors take the rap! Again, we must ask the compelling question as to why God would set the events of mankind into motion in such a manner. If we take into account that the Judeo-Christian god is described as being as omni-benevolent as He is omniscient (though we cannot figure out why from the Genesis account, other than to have faith that what the Creator creates is good), why did The Fall turn out to be anything but good? Couldn’t an all-powerful God have prevented this mess?

We, as human beings, must require that we know God’s plan in order to determine whether or not His punishment from the onset of our supposed history is just. Yet, if God is silent, if His ultimate plan is a matter of speculation, we might speculate many things—and that includes discovering who the Wizard of Oz really is. Given the account of man’s creation in Genesis, somewhere, somehow, one or more of God’s three, traditionally ascribed, major attributes—omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-benevolence—has failed to make either who God is or the story of Genesis (or both) credible.

God’s supposed goodness suffers the greatest damage in Genesis. After all, a child doesn’t know the meaning of a punishment until they are actually punished, so it seems odd to me that God would choose to punish his creation (and his creation’s creations) so severely. If God’s reasoning was to think that it would surely teach humans to never disobey Him again, He positively failed on that account.

It is this failure to be kind to his creations that casts doubt upon his other attributes, most notably His capacity to see the future. If God knew, or even could have logical deduced what the outcome of The Garden of Eden scenario might have been, He should have refrained from creating Adam and Eve. [That is, if humans hold God to any recognizable moral standard. Heck, even God’s own standards.] If God did not know what the outcome of events would be, then He is not omniscient.

Unfortunately, the best theistic defense is to characterize God as a perfect entity and this, they argue, by definition must include omniscience. Thus, if what the theist says about God’s omniscience in relation to His perfection is true, then God had to have known what was going to happen. If that’s true, we must return once again question God’s supposed benevolence. “Ah,” the theist will continue, “Keep in mind that God is perfect. God cannot not be benevolent.” But this would make God amoral since a being can only be moral if able to make choices. Even if God could choose evil but never did, we still couldn’t be certain that he could commit evil if He’s never made that choice. God must have free will then, hence, no one can be positively certain that God was without some evil intent in the creation of mankind. The theistic defenses of God’s qualities that allude to perfection drown in a circular sea of reasoning as quickly as any other characteristic ascribed to God.

            Given the contrivances in the story of Genesis, one should find it difficult to entertain tradition monotheistic descriptions of God seriously. God cannot be perfect because omniscience/amorality prevents this from being the case (a theistically “moral” person would argue, anyway). Nor can God be omniscient without casting suspicion on His “benevolent” motives. We might, for a second, consider that God is indeed supremely powerful given that the logic necessary to make the attributes of God mesh with the story of Genesis is as impossible as a square circle. But if God can only do what is logically possible then God’s attributes are reduced to contradictions, though perhaps we should have seen that coming. On the other hand, we humans are not omniscient and we’re not perfect. Maybe that’s a good thing.

References

God. The Holy Bible . 1000th. Hippo: Synod Press, 393.

Krueger, Douglas E. What Is Atheism?. 3rd. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998.

Plato. The Trial and Death of Socrates. 1st. New York, NY: Dover Press, 1992.

Smith, George H. Atheism: The Case Against God. 1st. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1979.