Atheists & Agnostics
Related: About this forumI hate heaven.
I hate what it does to people. I hate the concept. I hate everything to do with it.
When someone says to you, "I wish I was dead so I could be in heaven with him", and really means it, what the ---- are you supposed to say? What do you tell them?
I don't hate much, but heaven, heaven is a ----ed up idea.
Edited to remove offensive language; normally I'm more careful, but I'm furious right now. My apologies.
Blue Owl
(49,913 posts)Warpy
(110,900 posts)and singing in the choir.
If people expect to see their dead friends and relatives when they die, maybe they will. The brain is known to be intensely active for about 10 minutes after cardiac death, making it entirely possible we float out on a tide of hallucination and happy hormones.
10 minutes of absolute bliss fueled by all those endorphins and enkephalins we didn't use up in life would be an eternity as we faded out to nothingness.
The last thing I want to happen is getting shown to a cloud and looking around at all the people I couldn't stand in life, the ones actively bucking for sainthood.
After all, even if something does live on, it does so absent the brain and the brain is where memories, personality, skills and just about anything we think of as "me." Our egos would be left behind.
But heaven? It's always been a colossal bore when someone has described it. The concept of hell is a lot more interesting since they describe it in greater detail, the sadists.
I'm with Twain, "heaven for the climate and hell for the conversation."
progressoid
(49,825 posts)Jokerman
(3,517 posts)Especially the live version from "Stop Making Sense".
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)It's supposed to calm people, and reassure them that their loved one is "in a better place" but when you analyze it it's kinda cruel that we tell them they are in a better place as that would just make a person want to join them (and I have several friends who think exactly that) conversely, if they already believe that it's cruel to say it doesn't exist as their hopes of someday seeing them again get crushed and they have even less to stick around for.
I think churches made suicide a sin so that people wouldn't take the obvious route of joining their loved one in a better place, kinda a tortured existence they force on people when you think about it.
F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)Except much better said than I could have.
angstlessk
(11,862 posts)I think I became an atheist at about age 9
theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)An old hunter (played by Arthur Hunnicutt) turns down eternity in heaven when he's told he can't bring his dog.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)but on Earth, on the bed, which actually exists.
Heather MC
(8,084 posts)In heaven, they will not be themselves, so it will be as if they are not there at all
Brainstormy
(2,380 posts)but after many, many years of being atheist I still sometimes hate having had to give up hell, and the idea of Dick Cheney burning in it for all eternity.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)Brainstormy
(2,380 posts)would be heaven!
deucemagnet
(4,549 posts)Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)but if someone did say that they wished they were dead to be with someone who died, and they meant it, I suppose that I would tell them that "they should believe God still has a purpose for you here, you can't quit now". It sounds silly to me, but I have comforted friends by pointing to their own beliefs to help them deal with it. I have two options---ridicule them for the ridiculous ideas that they have, or focus them on what they think comforts them.
As to heaven, I have always told people that the last place I would want to spend eternity is the same place occupied by the self-righteous, smug, and slimy Christians who annoy me here in life. Disclaimer: all Christians are not self-righteous, etc.
F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)I think I'll tell them a variation of what you said. While I'm all for ridiculing religion, the person who said this needs help, not ridicule.
As far as what brought the fury, it's that I've seen this person suffer from religious beliefs; he's been unable to let go. I think he would be better off as an atheist. When he said that to me, I had enough of the crap that religion's caused in his life. I needed to vent somewhere, and this was the only place I could think of that wouldn't be offended and get pissed at me. Just didn't want to deal with that at the time.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)One of the few places that I would go to myself.
I would like to ridicule people who get stupid about religion too, but I also believe that ridicule just makes people fight us more viciously. I have not convinced anyone to change their beliefs, but I do have some success in getting tolerance for my non-belief when I talk rationally to people. But I don't take the opportunity to do that talk when they are in a stressful situation. I have gotten fed up, and I can say that it has never done anything positive.
I hope that you can find a way to deal with this person without anger.
F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)To clarufy, my anger was directed at religion, and not him. I would never be angry with him for his beliefs, or try to attack his beliefs at a time what he needs most is support.
I like what you say about being rational instead of ridiculing. I agree that ridiculing religion tends to do more harm than good, and that the best way to earn respect and tolerance is to simply state the facts, and not attack the person behind their beliefs. That said, I cannot and will not ever respect religion. It does too much harm to people for me to respect it.
sammythecat
(3,568 posts)Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)We're constantly forced to set aside our beliefs because religion and faith are so strongly intertwined with grief and crisis, that it's not something that can be easily talked about in the moment. People don't think rationally when they are upset, and that is a prime time for religion to strike with it's empty promises of a "better place." We're the bad guys for stating our beliefs in those times, no matter if that's what we need to go through to process, or if the whole concept of an afterlife is problematic in our views, we have to grieve their way.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)But that doesn't mean that we have to do our grieving their way. If I am the griever, I will not tolerate talk of religion. But when I am trying to ease someone's grief, and that person is a believer, that is just not the time to challenge them.
I see religion as a way for people to grasp at straws, and I think that it does more harm than good in every way possible, but just try to convince a believer that they would be better off to learn to deal with life as it is instead of how it will be after their life is over!
And regarding the "people don't think rationally when they are upset", I don't see rational thinking when they are not upset in regard to religion. Which is why I only try to be rational, not judgmental.
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)That is true, I should have added "normally rational people tend to not think rationally when upset, and religion knows this and preys upon people at their weakest"
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)kairos12
(12,817 posts)onager
(9,356 posts)What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine, neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.
From the famous 19th-century non-believer Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. A few more of his quotes, long as I'm here:
I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.
An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment.
A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.
Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.
If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.