What is Heaven Like to an Atheist?

I wrote about this also for the Examiner:
On Faith: What is Heaven Like.

I have been and will be continuing to respond to all the On Faith issues on my Examiner page. We can never have enough Freethought voices out there.
-Staks

Having just lost a beloved pet of thirteen years, I understand why people felt the need to create a happy afterlife; the death of a close relative or friend would make the desire even stronger.

But, man, the Xtian vision of heaven is pretty lame and vague. Sure, the Norse and Muslim visions of paradise are misogynist as all get-out, but at least it was something interesting.

I think some of this post is a bit of a strawman. I’m no expert in Christian mythology, but I think most Christian sects believe that to get into heaven you must believe and act in a certain way. For example, in Catholocism, your actions count. If you sin, you cannot get into heaven, unless you take particular actions: repent, confess, etc. While there may be some Christian sects who believe that belief alone is enough, I do not think that this is generaly true.

to noah,i can’t speak for most southern baptists but the churches i went to loved to use the example of a old lady who never did a thing wrong in her life but didn’t believe,she’d still go to hell simplely for not believing in god/Jesus.

rbray18,

Right. Read my post again. I said that I think that most religions require BOTH belief and good behavior. The original post suggests that belief alone is enough to get into heaven. I do not believe that most religions teach such a doctrine.

I remember hearing about heaven as a young child, and my primary visualization was of a place up in the clouds with angels flying around.

This was the impression I had from cartoons and television and movies, but I had no idea people thought it was a real place. Even now, it’s such a funny idea to me. I have a hard time “getting” that people believe it actually exists. I mean, I know they do believe it, but it still seems so odd to me.

It’s not just heaven, though. I have a hard time understanding how people can believe in any kind of afterlife. It’s not part of my background, so I feel like everyone has got to realize how false the concept sounds, at least on some level. It seems like such obvious invention and wish-fulfillment to me.

Honestly, I think everyone knows subconsciously that death is the end, and that’s why such deep grief is associated with the end of life. Even people who say they have a belief in heaven still experience those incredibly intense feelings of sadness. I think they know that it isn’t true, although perhaps they can’t admit it to themselves.

Having been raised Mormon, my impression of heaven was this: Only white male heterosexuals who got married in the temple get to be gods. Their wives got to be eternally pregnant servants to their husbands. Anyone else who falls short of this lofty goal gets to do exactly what every other good Mormon got to do in life: proselytize to the “nonbelievers,” baptize them into the Mormon faith, and sing praises to Joseph Smith (and those other lesser beings God the Father and His son Jesus Christ.)

Thanks but no thanks. I’ll take Eternal Darkness (there is no real Hell in Mormonism) and go party with the other sinners. After all, since I’m gay I cannot, by rights, be married in the temple unless I find a woman to con into it. 🙁

If there is some kind of continuation of existence or experience after death, I seriously doubt it would be dependent on anything you did or believed while alive. It would probably be something like all “psychic energy” flowing back into “the source” like matter flowing into a black hole. Once it flows back in, all previous identity will be lost. Even if something like this happens, there is no point to worship “the source” and plead for favor. Just live a good life, be good for goodness sakes, and don’t worry about what happens after you die.

There is, in fact, no evidence at all of any “psychic energy” existing either before or after you die. (although there is plenty of wishful thinking).

I was raised to believe if you believed, you’d go to heaven, end of story. But sinning kind of said you didn’t really believe and on Judgment Day, god would demand an explanation for all your sins since asking Jesus to be your savior or he wouldn’t think your faith sincere and, man, you’d better have a good explanation. Oh, and you wouldn’t be aware of hell in heaven or anyone there so no worry about the guilt of others being tortured.

When I was little, I too thought heaven was like earth but only with the good stuff and no bad. You would finally be free to do whatever you wanted to do. You could play 24/7 and never get tired. Eat and eat all the delicious bad for you stuff and never get a belly ache or grow fat or have to go to the bathroom.

My vision was kind of like that song “Playground in my Mind” (hmm, no wonder I love that song). “where the children laugh and the children play and they sing a song all day…” Really grownups didn’t even enter into it. Not even god or jebus. We’d be free to be us.

Then I grew up and started fearing god in earnest in my teens. Of course, I was listening to a lot of Billy Graham and Garner Ted Armstrong.

I remember getting pissed at Graham after one of his specials where some lady sang Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and then going on about how she thought that song was about Jesus dying on the cross for us and laying down for our sins like a bridge over troubled water.

This was the beginning of my shouting at televisions. I was an ardent Paul Simon fan. More than. He was rather a father figure to me growing up. (Mental substitute in place of my asshole father; I probably made Paul Simon out to be a much better person than he actually is though I still suspect he’s a much better person and father than my father.) I was screaming at the TV, “It was written by a Jew, Goddamn it.” (I’m surprised my mother didn’t beat me bloody, especially since this was after she called Paul Simon a heathen because he’s a Jew. Maybe she was too shocked not only at my behavior but because Billy Graham was using an evil heathen’s song.)

And loathed and detested Billy Graham from then on. My, the teens are a strange time, aren’t they? Unfortunately, I switched him out with Garner Ted Armstrong. Eh? What the hell was wrong with me in my teens? Note, I was also a very suicidal teen and convinced god spoke to me because Garner Ted Armstrong filled my head with we could hear the voice of god if we but listened. (Took that a bit too literally, didn’t I?) But, on the bright side, this fear of hellfire and brimstone prompted me to get closer to god and understand him better which led to losing my faith, first in jebus then altogether.

At that point, I only had a vague idea of heaven. The playground was replaced by something more vague and sinister. Some notion of having to please god forever to avoid torture but if you did, he’d let you live in peace, floating around the clouds, playing a harp and the cute guys would all love me.

Man, I was one fucked up teen. Ah, well, I survived it. I’m sometimes amazed I did but I did. And I’m feeling much better now. 😀

Now, I’m damned glad there’s no heaven and think it would suck. Not only would it be utterly boring and you’d live forever fearing god’s wrath but, man, my mother and my ex would both be there. Christ, say, what you will but those two truly believed.

Damned glad I don’t. What a freaking nightmare.

This to me is one of the most damning things about Christianity: One is not “saved by works, but by faith.” That may not mean that works aren’t a part of the equation, but the crucial element is the “faith” bit. Without that, works are “dead.” From the Christian perspective, helping others, being kind to others, etc. is not enough. If you don’t believe in their god, then off to hell you go.

The problem is that the converse is true then as well: If one is not “saved” by works, then one is not condemned by them either, becuase the ULTIMATE criterion is faith, not works.

Technically speaking, from the Christian perspective, Stalin is not in hell for all the terrible things he did, but rather because he was an atheist. Who you ARE matters more than what you DO.

And yet, if he were to “repent” etc. on his deathbed (as Constantine himself did and the thief on the cross) then everything would be OK.

No matter how you look at it, that’s ethically twisted.

In an episode of the British sitcom “Waiting for God” some years ago they were speculating on heaven. Tom Ballard (one of the retirees) said that the clergy made it sound like “an Albanian Disneyland.”

I always got the impression growing up as xtain that somehow in heaven everyone would be the same and my mom always told me no one would know anyone in the same way they did on earth. Dont know why she thought this. Also, I have known xtians who believe the old “once saved, always saved” line which I suppose means as long as you are “saved” you can act pretty much however you want and still get into heaven. As, for hell, the xtian belief is that unless you believe in christ you’re screwed, so I would imagine if this was the case there would be some really good people in hell. For myself, I dont believe in either place.

The free will issue gets me. Can one sin in heaven? Lucifer did. So clearly you can if you are an angel. But how about a dead human? If you can’t sin, then you don’t have free will. happiness would be akin to being permanently high on some awesome drug. Fun for a weekend, but hardly appropriate for eternity.

If you can sin in Heaven however, does that mean that you could bully other dead humans, make them miserable?

Perfect, eternal paradise just doesn’t make sense except as a childish fantasy.

I’d rather hang out with Gandhi and Buddha in Hell, than Ted Bundy and John Calvin in Heaven.

I had a friend of my brothers once to led me that heaven is where you spend eternity “glorifying God”.
I thought that did not sound much like paradise.

Some fundamentalist Christian sects (populated by members of my family) have a doctrine of the “elect”.
It goes something like this:
1. God gives faith to people by some mysterious manner (like a lottery decided before birth).
2. Those people develop faith upon hearing about Jesus (like it is a symptom of a condition).
3. Those people go to heaven.

Behavior means nothing, since no action you can possibly take affects your heaven/hell destination. Basically, all humans are so evil that nothing they can do makes up for it.
There are some interesting corollaries:
Members of the elect who do not hear about Jesus during their lives are reincarnated until they do. (Yes, reincarnation is part of Christian mythology, for example John the Baptist is also supposed to be Elijah)
You can spend your whole life in church, giving to charity, praying, etc. and go to hell. Even if you do your best.

I always asked “If nothing I can do helps me go to heaven, why bother trying?”

They spend alot of effort trying to spread the gospel, an act that, by their own admission, is almost useless. I suppose the only thing they hope to accomplish is the discovery of one of the elect that has not heard of Jesus (which is unlikely in ant 1st world country). They also recruit people who, by their own admission, are going to hell despite their efforts.
I may have some of the details wrong, but that is the gist.

” If Heaven existed, someone would have to be the “worst person” there, right?”

Nice to see the Well-Ordering principle put to such good use!

I have briefly skimmed over these comments and only one or two comments included excerpts from the canonical Bible. Any person’s belief of heaven, whether we like it or not, is based on our belief of the Bible. If we believe the bible to be true, we have a basis for believing in a Heaven. If we do not believe in the bible, then our belief of heaven is soley based on our own perceptions and opinions developed by a relativistic and moralistic culture. For example, if you say heaven doesn’t exist, that’s fine, that’s what you believe; but don’t you dare tell me what is true. That is the result failing to believe in (oh should I dare say it?) Absolute truth. In my opinion, it seems our world hasn’t gotten any better or more peace by living this way, am I right?

Finally, I believe the bible is true. Christ, is the only way. If the name of Christ, 2000 years later, still makes your cringe, check your pulse, because something has your heart beating..

That is the result failing to believe in (oh should I dare say it?) Absolute truth. In my opinion, it seems our world hasn’t gotten any better or more peace by living this way, am I right?

Finally, I believe the bible is true. Christ, is the only way. If the name of Christ, 2000 years later, still makes your cringe, check your pulse, because something has your heart beating..

Yes, Zach I completely agree with you. 2000 years of the vast majority of people believing in absolute truth, and an enormous portion of those people believing in your favorite book and your favorite sage has definitely not gotten our world any better or more at peace.

My heart is beating in the hope that people will free themselves from their destructive, bloodthirsty addiction to absolute truth, will stop slaughtering each other over miscellaneous differences in their absolute truths, will stop aggrandizing themselves with their prideful, vain and superior boasts of possessing absolute truth, and will finally become interested in HONESTY.

A catholic from birth, I am just beginning to discover and embrace the reality that god and heaven and hell do not exist.

Funny that this enlightenment has come from my employment at a church. I thought that working at a church would bring me closer in faith and that the charitable acts of the church could be personlly fulfilling, since I was helping make that happen.

Well, just the opposite has happened. I have found the least amount of Christians at this particular church and found greed to be the great motivator. This church is corrupt and rediculous.

In the meantime, I am admitting that I only believed in all this god stuff because I was told to believe. I just don’t believe anymore. And although it is difficult to un-brainwash myself, it feels kinda good.

Let’s hope heaven is not for real. We’re simply not made to exist in an environment without contrast. There has to be bad things happening to make the experience of good things possible. This video illustrates the point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLEwr49YTDs