Heaven, hell, and the afterlife

[revots33]

This is particularly for the theists, although I'd like to hear any opinions.

Do you believe in heaven and hell (or some other version of eternal life after death)? Why or why not?

The reason I ask is this. There's been a lot of discussion about why people do/don't believe in God. Many believers see God as the "first cause", from which the universe must have come. Others argue that the complexity of the universe shows purpose, and so must have been designed by a supreme being. There are other philosophical arguments as well, and I think a lot of them have validity.

But I haven't heard many arguments for belief in the existence of heaven or hell. Since this belief cannot be argued in the same way the existence of a Creator can, I'm curious as to what reasons people might have for this belief.

So, why do you believe/not believe in heaven and hell?

And, if there was some hypothetical way to prove, beyond any doubt, that we simply cease to exist at death, and that heaven, hell and the afterlife do not exist - would that knowledge make you stop believing in God? In other words, how much is religious faith connected to the belief in some form of eternal life after we die?

[evolvedForm]

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And, if there was some hypothetical way to prove, beyond any doubt, that we simply cease to exist at death, and that heaven, hell and the afterlife do not exist - would that knowledge make you stop believing in God? In other words, how much is religious faith connected to the belief in some form of eternal life after we die?





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To me it would be essential. (I should point out that I'm an atheist). But to me, belief in a god without the belief in a transcendental soul is effective atheism, or at least agnosticism. That's because this god shouldn't, or couldn't possible IMO, have any effect on the believer's life. That is, of course, if we define 'god' in a christian sense.

[Lestat]

I think your last paragraph bears the most intriguing question...

If there is no heaven or hell, does God become much less important to you on an individual level?

[Matt R.]

revots,
I'm a theist, with beliefs much closer to deism than most other theists (I think). Essentially I believe God exists and can/does interact with the universe, but he in no way is required to and does so rarely. But as far as your question goes, I am much less "certain" in an afterlife than I am in a God. While I admit there may not be a God as I can't prove it, if you pressed me I would say I am very close to certain based on what I observe and understand about the world. I think my belief is reasonable, although I understand the views of agnostics and (some) atheists.

Now, I believe very strongly that it is impossible to assign properties with any certainty to "God". I really believe all religions in their pure form (i.e. the non-literalist or fundamentalist interpretations of religious philosophies) all point to some fundamental truth. I actually think it is the epitome of arrogance to say stuff like "God must save me because I believe so and so..." or "there is heaven and God is sending me there because yada yada yada...." To which my response is, "yeah, how the [censored] do you know? Are you so smart as to know the mind of God?" Basically, I think it would be silly to presume to know the "mind" of something infinite or close to infinite in power and knowledge in comparison to us. It has been clear (and I thought obvious) to me since I was <10 years old that the Bible and teachings of Jesus were all primarily allegorical -- not factually true but definitely pointing to a fundamental truth.

That's enough background to how my beliefs work. Essentially I am slightly more than 50/50 towards belief in an afterlife. I have no reason to think an all-powerful being would want to grant eternal life to me, but I also have reason to believe that an all-powerful being is quite possibly omni-benevolent (is that the right word?) and would grant life after death to at least some people. A recurring theme in my religion (Catholicism) is faith, and I believe everything will be okay in the long run because of my faith, regardless of whether there is an afterlife or not. My faith combined with logic tells me "yes, probably", but logically (without combining my faith with it) I can only say "maybe, but who knows?"

[Lestat]

Matt, I'm just curious...

You seem to have a decent view towards God. By that, I mean one I can at least respect, because you obviously are thinking on your own. You seem to instinctively realize that all religious teachings (save for one?), must have much wrong about them and can only be correct in some fundamental way/truth.

What I'm curious about is what makes you think a God like the one you refer to, is even capable of granting an after-life? To me, it seems more likely that the God you're describing cannot.

[bunny]

To answer your second question first - I dont think belief in an afterlife is required to believe in god (I was certainly ambivalent about life after death while also being a theist for a time) so it wouldnt matter to me. I think God's existence or non-existence is a significant fact irrespective of whether we have finite or infinite lives and I would still want to have some kind of relationship with him if I believed in him but not in an afterlife.

With regard to heaven and hell: I believe in heaven. This belief is thanks to this forum in fact, and Lestat in particular for pointing out the incompatibility with a benevolent God not giving some comfort to those who are born into a miserable life of suffering - I cant fathom why people do suffer this fate but it seems to me that given God has the option of creating heaven for them he would do so. Clearly this is more a deduced belief than my belief in God and follows on from my theism. I dont think it is necessarily a sound argument, but it makes sense to me.

With regard to hell, I have always been in madnak's camp. That is - it is inconceivable to me that a benevolent God would make hell as it is usually described. I'm not sure if I believe in hell or not (it kind of waxes and wanes) - if I do it is not as an eternal place of torture though. I think if hell exists it is just "not-heaven". In other words, good people live forever in God's presence while bad people...dont. Whether they experience nothing or whether they experience a satisfying existence but not as good as heaven, I have no idea (see my next paragraph).

My final opinion on heaven/hell is that I find them impossible to imagine. Whatever existence we have after death is non-physical (that's my belief anyhow) and as such, so divorced from my current experiences that I really cant speculate what it would be like. It is not inconceivable to me that afterlife is universally wonderful...just better if you are a good person as you will be "completely" happy to be in god's presence, rather than just experiencing life without suffering...

[revots33]

Thanks very much for the thoughtful reply bunny. I think one of my problems with heaven/hell is that it seems such a fundamental concept of my Catholic upbringing (Jesus died to give us eternal life etc.) - yet even priests and religious experts can't seem to agree on what they are like. Some agree, like you, that hell is just "not God". Others believe it is a place of genuine eternal torture. Ideas of heaven seem to differ too, depending on who you talk to.

My problem is, why do we seem to believe so much in something that even our own church experts seem to be interpreting on the fly, in whatever way they want? It seems a pretty reasonable argument to me that, even if God does exist, ideas of heaven and hell may have been created by man. Heaven to counter fears of death and our longing to be reuinited with dead loved ones, and hell to keep people in line with church teachings by threat of eternal torture.

For example, if a man was about to jump off a tall building, but was convinced God would catch him inches before he hit the ground, you'd call him insane. And yet, otherwise rational people are CONVINCED (and I realize bunny that you leave room for doubt, but many do not) that they will somehow be resurrected after they die. There is simply no more proof for one than the other.

[Matt R.]

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What I'm curious about is what makes you think a God like the one you refer to, is even capable of granting an after-life? To me, it seems more likely that the God you're describing cannot.

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Lestat,
Yes, I tend not to make claims on what I think God can or cannot do. But given that he is responsible for the creation of our universe, it would seem reasonable that he has the power to create the universe in such a way where consciousness could continue to exist past biological death.

I will use an analogy that I think is fairly close to how I view it (I've seen similar analogies to the nature of God on here). If you imagine the creation of say, a computer program or system, and somehow the programs that are present in the system are self-aware, you could say this "system" is similar to our universe. The program follows certain rules, just as we must follow physical laws. Of course this program has a creator (analogous to God) which programmed this universe. Let's say the entities in the program were smart enough to deduce what these rules were and they perform science experiments, practice philosophy and mathematics, etc. Now just because these entities within the program can deduce the rules (just like how we use science) does not mean that nothing created those rules, or the program itself.

So how does this relate to the afterlife? Pretending I was the programmer -- if I knew that my programs were self-aware and concerned themselves with the thought of an afterlife (i.e. they did not want to cease to exist), I would grant them an afterlife if it was within my power. Now the programmer can simply make a backup copy of his self-aware entities, and they would continue to exist past the death that they observe *within* the program. There is no way it is possible that the entities can gather evidence of this process or deduce how it works. But it is there, even if they don't know it.

Similarly, in our universe I think it would be impossible for us to scientifically observe the mechanism by which God grants an afterlife. But that it not to say he is not capable of it. Actually, I believe that if there is an afterlife, it if firmly rooted in physical law. Consider how our brain perceives space-time is completely incorrect -- it is almost "magical" how it really works. Given how crazy the workings of our universe are (the parts we cannot directly observe), I don't think it is out of the question that there is some mechanism which we can't currently scientifically observe that could extend human consciousness past organic death.

[revots33]

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So how does this relate to the afterlife? Pretending I was the programmer -- if I knew that my programs were self-aware and concerned themselves with the thought of an afterlife (i.e. they did not want to cease to exist), I would grant them an afterlife if it was within my power.

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Interesting Matt, I like the computer/program analogy. However, don't you think there are many other things we would like, that the "programmer" does not grant us? We do not want to get frail and sickly as we age. We do not want to be murdered. We do not want to starve to death or be drowned in a tidal wave. So why would God, being benevolent, care about our not wanting to cease to exist enough to grant us an afterlife - but not care about all the other things?

[Matt R.]

Good point. The best answer I can give to that is that (from my perspective) the world would be incredibly dull if God took away some or all of those things. First of all, there could definitely not be free will -- no one would be capable of murdering, stealing, etc. and they would be *forced* to simply be good. If we were to live forever and never get injured, we would not cherish our good health and our life here on earth as much (i.e. without the bad, we would have no perspective to appreciate the good). Also, to prevent things like tidal waves or accidents occuring, the "programmer" would have to constantly intervene to modify the random occurances in his program. He could never just let things happen as they were meant to happen, based on the laws of the program/universe.

But, it's definitely an interesting question. However, I see the world as we have it now as the "best possible" unless God were to constantly intervene every time something bad happened, while still keeping the variety that we observe in our world to keep it interesting. AND, if there is an infinite afterlife, even if we were to somehow undergo constant suffering for 100+ years on this earth, it would be infinitely small relative to whatever we experience after death (in other words, anything bad that we could possibly experience in this life is completely irrelevant if you compare it to infinity).