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Heaven - serious concerns
Posted by daff on 17 October 2011 - 1:18pm.
Okay like most people I would like to think there will be something 'after-life' but with that in mind I had the following strange thought last night:
It will be great to meet up with my dad and grandparents again and presumably all the other people too from my life on Earth but, and this is my concern, will I be able to listen to music anywhere? If so will my entire collection be accessible? If not how about my favourite hundred or so songs?!?!?
Has anyone else given this any thought?
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I wouldn't worry
Steve Jobs is probably onto it right now.
ha ha
;-)
Brilliant!
Slot old bean, I LOLd
Some kind
of cloud related gag goes here
Why would you want to listen to recorded music when you've
got Mozart, Hendrix, Coltrane and a host of others on hand?
Rigid Digit and I
are sorted...
(Don't reckon much to yours, RD;-))
Like most people?
Is that true? Do most people hope for an afterlife or is it that a lot of people are expecting one. From what I can understand, the expectation of an afterlife often seems to make a very negative difference to them during their lifetime so surely those people would be much happier if they understood that when you die, that's it.
Think most people are religious, aren't they?
Or at least profess themselves to be. And most religions are pretty much grounded on the assumption/hope/desperate wish that death isn't the end.
I can't remember the exact percentage........
........but in a very recent national poll, I believe less than 35% (or thereabouts) of people professed to be a member of any religious denomination.
but on internet dating sites
many women tick the 'spiritual but not religious' box ... anecdotal but true ...
Internet dating sites
I have been on a few of these.
Spiritual but not religious is a very common position in my experience.
To quote one of my favourite performers
about a year before he died:
"And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what's after it. And then you start hoping there is a God. For me, it's a frightening thought to go nowhere".
Pete Steel of Type O Negative
a man troubled by various r'n'r demons who returned to his original faith and was cleaning his act up when he had a heart attack, I for one am very sorry he's not around, here
I sincerely hope there isn't an afterlife.
Really. I'm quite happy to enjoy my lot down here, make the most of it and then... *end* at some point (although hopefully not for a while).
The idea of knocking around forever absolutely horrifies me.
Because if there is some sort of after-life for everyone, won't it be full of all my least favourite relations, the school bully, all my ex-boyfriends, all my ex-bosses... hideous!
Yep.
I don't *want* to die, but I want to live forever even less. I've no idea why anyone would. As I've said before, I rather like being a collection of chemical reactions which will one day just stop. My life is only of any consequence to a tiny handful of people, who will themselves be dead one day, so I think I'll just concentrate on living as well as I can and try not to mess any of them up too much while I'm doing it.
Thought
You ask "Has any ever given this any thought?"
Yes, I have. For about ten minutes, before I realised the idea of the sort of afterlife where one meets EVERYONE they ever loved/hated/met, (including pets) was so preposterous, I thought I'd do something else instead.
PS Dear God, if this afterlife where one meets up with Auntie Gloria & Uncle Fred does actually exist, can you arrange it for me to shag Cary Grant (1939 model) or Clark Gable (1933 model). Or both. Ta.
Presumably not in front of Auntie Gloria or Uncle Fred.
Uncle Fred
That's a good point, Bob. Uncle Fred was blinded in WW2. In the afterlife, will he be blind or not?
Powell & Pressburger didn't address that in their seminal documentary: "A Matter Of Life or Death" did they?
Yeah.
What happens about ageing, as well? I'm pretty sure my Uncle Chris - 91, not terribly mobile, can't play the piano as well as he used to - would rather go to heaven as his younger, dashing, WW2 bomber pilot/youngest ever (at the time) Fellow of the Royal College of Organists self. But who decides which version of yourself you get to be? And can you change your mind if it doesn't work out?
I sometimes think maybe the world's religions haven't quite thought this through.
Excellent point Bob
I sometimes think maybe the world's religions haven't quite thought this through.
Excellent point Bob - Well said.
In a way they did
Doctor Reeves wears the motor-cycling gear he had on when he died, but doesn't show any physical results of his accident, and all the soldiers and RAF men seem to be in very good nick considering they are newly dead.
Yes
I suppose they did. You go to the afterlife at the precise time you die.
So most people spend the afterlife as old people with slightly knackered bodies and dodgy knees.
EDIT: Dear God, the thought of David Niven in his RAF uniform has made me ask if he can be added to my "I would in the afterlife" list. Ta.
Christ.
So heaven is probably full of people wishing that euthanasia were an option. I wonder if there's the permanent, metaphysical equivalent of a Dignitas clinic?
Oh well, in that case
can I have Ann Margaret in a white jumpsuit covered in beans?
Not at the same time
you saucy madam?
What if
all the people you really really want to spend eternity with, actually really really don't want to spend it with you?
And what do you do when you bump into the one whose heart you broke, or who broke yours?
What if Jesus turns out to be a right tosser, and corners you in the celestial kithcen for absolutely aeons, full of little homilies and parables? And nothing to eat or drink but manna and watery home-brew wine.
It sounds absolutely ghastly.
Parallel heavens.
Just as there are an infinite number of parallel universes, there are also an infinite number of parallel heavens. The good news is that you get to go to one where everything is as you would like it, people are as you would like to remember them etc. If they prefer to be remembered another way, or to have nothing to do with you, they get to go to a different parallel heaven.There's even a parallel heaven where, if you prefer, you don't exist. S'easy, innit?
so the infinitude of heavens is...
... simply an exercise in applied selfishness? That makes God sound like an utterly rubbish nursery nurse surrounded by an infinite number of 3-year-olds. ("No!!! MY TURN!!!")
So,
assuming I make it upstairs, I can summon up someone from the depths of Hell to complete my little Utopia?
I'll have to tell Mr Handcart that his place in heaven is contingent on the bloody bathroom light being fixed.
It's too late for Mr Handcart
If he's doing DIY, he's already in hell.
I Refuse To Believe In Heaven
until it's proven that there's lots of fantastic fornicating up there. Angels singing non stop for all eternity? No thanks.
God Shuffled His Feet
I don't want to go to heaven.
It's where all the goody-goodies go. Hell sounds a bit hot. It's probably nicer in Limbo.
I'm going to come back
as a comedian.
That'd be really funny.
OOMBA
In the unlikley event that there is an afterlife
then I strongly suspect that it won't be anything like this one, and I would also doubt that we would be very much like the people we are now. In that place, of course, time as we know know it would cease to exist.
In that place, of course, there would be no Third Law, which is where it all starts to fall apart.
All in all, therefore, I think it's unlikely. But who knows? One day we'll find out. Or not, as the case may be.
I used to think
that I wish I had known my two Grandma's as an adult but now I'm glad I didn't because I would inevitably see their flaws and they would see mine. I like them up there on their pedestals.
Said it before and I'll say it again
If there is no afterlife, I will feel such a fool.
Everyone is trying to get to the bar
Heaven
is going to be unbearably crowded though isn't it? Which kind of proves that it doesn't exist I suppose.
my idea of heaven
Well I'm an atheist so I don't give it much thought. But to enter into the spirit of this thread (pardon the pun) my idea of heaven is:
me, Megan Fox and January Jones. I'm in charge of the situation. Then when I get tired of them, Donna from West Wing turns up with Susanna Reid. Then Rachel Riley from Countdown and Carol Vordermann for a few thousand years. I'd eventually get round to Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner.
I could get used to this religion thing
Hedley!
It's Hedley Lamarr...
*smug, knowing, cliquey movie gag reference and I don't care*
I defer to Mr Cross
Who's got the best tunes?
If Cliff Richard is going upstairs, we'll have to assume that Led Zeppelin, Robert Johnson and assorted others are going down. I know who I'd rather spend eternity listening to.
If there are two lines, I'll jump into the Go To Hell line if it means I get to thump George Bush Jr, the lead singers of Maroon 5 and Nickleback and any given judge on a reality TV program. Although being able to do that might mean I was in Heaven.
And if I do get up there, I'll happily spend an hour or two each afternoon taking my late labrador for a cheerful walk. Simple pleasures, me.
It does make me wistful though
that I won't get to find out what 2099 is like. No, it's okay, I already know: amazing technology, poor housing, Tories in power.
It's threads like this...
...that make this web site a heaven on earth.
Ok, so to engage brains:
Would an afterlife include neanderthals and other evolutionary ancestors? When would the cut in be?
This afterlife would have to be non-demoninational, because the early Christians & today's believe quite different things. And let's also mention animists, pagans, and the shinto believers.
If it exists outside our time & space - because otherwise our souls are physical - then wouldn't everything that has lived or will live and die exist there at the same time?
If all this is the case, then what would be the point of our earthly experience, to have biological experiences of fear, hunger, lust, and sadness and death? And what use would these be as a primer for an afterlife.
Blimey, I could go on for ages.
I think yer religious type...
...would likely characterise the nature of heaven as "imponderable". Wherein lies the main reason I'm not religious. Although I have supplementary reasons.
No, wait... come back. I wasn't going to list them.
Pfft
Only the elect were redeemed by the death & suffering of Jesus ... Calvin said so - it must be true. Therefore the fallen (Catholics, Muslims, young women who chase Roger Taylor around Cornwall etc) will go to hell. Heaven's for Presbyterians. Like Ian Paisley.
oh shite
I think there is
an afterlife. Law of physics, energy doesn't evaporate. We are just on a particular vibrational frequency and can't see or know of other frequencies.
I'm sure it is pretty much like this life but that one is drawn at death to those like your true 'vibrational' self, ie muderers to other murderers, cruel to cruel etc.
Live well, for at death thou shallt be judged!
Perhaps not by a man with a beard but by the laws of nature ..
Oh, and The Fast Show. Overrated.
Interesting stuff.
Could you elaborate? What energy? What do you mean by vibrational frequency (as in what's vibrating? Is this a string theory thing?)
This overlooks 'heat death' aka entropy
Which is where everything is headed. If time is a one way arrow that is maybe its not. As per another thread, 99% of everything isn't there at all, the rest is a shimmering collection of energy states which we don't understand and which we take 'measurements' of with a very unreliable piece of apparatus viz our heads.
Nothing would surprise me but realistically I would be VERY surprised if there were an afterlife. But if there is I want more sex (like John Betjemen though not WITH John Betjemen) and also better clothes which would help - I'm tall skinny with all my own hair/teeth and reasonably good looking so I have to put the relative lack of having it off on earth down to not realising about clothes when younger (assuming I ever have actually)
would you flesh out this clothes/sex frequency relationship?
better clothes mean you get laid more often (and in more interesting ways)? if i popped up the road to Harvey Nicks tomorrow and bought some new pants, would there be texting & scones before the weekend?
That may depend
on whether or not you wear them over your trousers.
I suppose what I mean is
Not especially scones related.
If I had made more effort on the personal appearance/hygiene front I may have encountered less resistance to my incredible innate but nonetheless plastic beauty over the core teen/early twenties years. I may even have had more afternoon tea. I did get a lot of attention from gay waiters.
My clothes are stil pretty shite actually.
This is probably less a 'why are we all here' observation but an 'I'm middle aged now and wish I had pushed the boat out a bit more' one. But I am not really complaining. If my hair, teeth and scones all dropped out tomorrow I might feel differently.
Friends that I respect a great deal have a profound religious faith but they are also prepared to joke about how they have bet hard on a particular outcome. Trouble is as I see it that the outcome is bound to be the same regardless. There is a lot to be said for living well and truthfully on your own terms. Thats becoming more and more important to me.
you might want to check out:
http://www.cfpf.org.uk/articles/rdp/s_macq/summary-macq.html
for some science. Can't remember now if the vibrational stuff is metaphorical but the gist of that is that like goes to like. No mixing like there is here.
Personally I have been a part of a 'home circle' - seance - years back, which I know isn't for everyone but really is fine if youre with the right people, right conditions and you know what you are doing. I certainly experienced at least one obvious occurance which was discussed over cucumber sandwiches afterwards.
What a load of complete twaddle.
Or, perhaps, a piece of inceptive genius.
(It sort of tallies with a few vague notions I have, so I'd rather like it to be the latter..)
With the talk of faster-than-light hadrons and the possible need for a new model, it makes one wonder..
There is no talk
... of faster-than-light hadrons. Neutrinos are leptons.
I would be very excited if it does turn out that neutrinos are travelling faster than light; but it's far more likely that it's an experimental artefact.
It's amusing to see the religious/spiritual/woo-woo tendency grasping at the fringes of physics for some kind of "proof'; when the huge body of mainstream science offers exactly zero evidence for their beliefs.
A question on T'afterlife.
When I pop my clogs, should there be an upstairs, & I make it up there, who do I get to be with & when?
My adored beloved, late wife karen (sadly been gone for over 10 years)
& if so, will it be as SHE remembers me(fit, (relatively!)slim, early 40s, ambitious)
OR will I go to my adored girlfriend Carol (someone I adore beyond belief) & would it be how SHE knows me? (55, overweight, prone to terrible periods of evil, black depression & cynical?)
Genuine question folks.
(Good job I am an atheist so its not something that will happen,
when I go, I go. Thats it)
Heaven Is A Place On Earth.
Apparently.
Or
Maybe we'll just wake up and find out that all of this was just a weird dream.
Then hit the shower, go to work etcetera for days and weeks and years, until one day we wake up from that weird dream...and so on, for all eternity, in different lives.
Hmm...a sort of multiplied layered incarnation...when you begin you are a whole bunch of people but only one is awake at the time, the others are lurking in your subconsciousness...and some people have big leaks between this dream and the others and are diagnosed with mental illness...every time you "wake up" your mind and soul are de-cluttered and focused until you reach the last dream when the clarity of that uncluttered existence and lessons learned from all the previous dreams have made you incredibly wise.
And then someone will turn off the computer simulation and write a science report on the whole experiment. And Gods' parents are very proud of their little boy when he becomes a professor. His mum bakes a cake and everything.
(Well, we probably just fall asleep for good, but that ^^^^ theory just makes a better story!)
Read somewhere recently
possibly even here something to the effect that all we are is a brief blip.
Nature's own expirement in awareness and conciousness. In the blink of a cosmic moment it will end and we'll be gone. The atoms that make us will be used over and over countless times to make other things. Inert. Knowing. Who knows?
We won't that's for sure.
We are an anomaly. The only heaven there is, if there is one, is within our own concious imaginations.
EDIT: Oh brilliant. What a truly unique philosopher I am. Sorry everyone - have just re-read this post of mine and what a lot of bleedin' obviousness it is. I was trying to make a much more elegant point about human existence and faith but have failed quite splendidly.
Never mind, eh? Might get knocked down by a bus tomorrow, etc...
Jolean...
A Matter of Life and Death was a documentary? All my doubts and problems are solved, then!
Is there an afterlife?
I don't care as long as I leave this world in as painless and comfortable a manner as possible.
If you ever lie there at night
and wonder what it's going to feel like when you die, and then think, "well, I'm not going to be able to feel anything when I die because I won't be able to feel anymore" and your head really starts to hurt, that's when you start to think, "there must be something. I can't imagine what no life is going to feel like."
Jesus, I sound like Neil from the Young Ones...
"I can't imagine what no life is going to feel like"
But you've already done it dude! What's with you guys? The main reason I come to this site is that so many of my old muckers from the Prelife post here.
Surely you haven't all forgotten the great times we had?
You do realise every sexual fantasy you have ever had is just a residual memory of (for example) that time with Marisa Tomei, Rose Byrne and Flipper in the "old days"...
Nah
That's just a glitch in the Matrix
I have met many dull assed Christians.
The thought of spending eternity with them is simply frightful.
That whole "afterlife" hoo-ha
was cleared up by the theologian and popular entertainer Errol Brown - when he let slip that heaven,
was in fact, in the back seat of his Cadillac.
Final Word on the Final Destination goes to
http://rsw.cc/
Radio Spirit World (inter-dimensional)
The Other Side. The only station broadcasting from the afterlife to the living world.
what I want to know
is will we get like day passes for I don't know, good behaviour or something so that you can go down to Hell and just take the piss. Oh, hi mate remember me? bit thirsty there all that roasting here have some of my evian, oooh I spilled it all over the floor! Butter fingers. No seriously have some.glug glug glug, ooh this is too much for me lol.
That is my idea of heaven.
Evian Is A place On Earth
True.
Evian is 'naive' backwards too
AaAAaaah...