What do people do all day once they get to heaven?

[Mike Cl]

I'm personally of the opinion that the world is the product of the mind, rather than the other way around. I find it a little hard to swallow that some special combination of matter can create the consciousness, along with all of its personal experiences from the senses. The mind creating matter, however, is something I do every night when I fall asleep.

Really?  And where is this matter you have created?  While you are at it, could you create some gold for me?  I would appreciate it.  I have dreams, even lucid dreams--but when I wake up, I find nothing there--I have created nothing but an internal state.  And if I don't write down what that state is, even the memory of it goes away.  Are you suggesting that what you dream is now real in another dimension?  So, this universe is simply the result of some beings dream? 

Do you have any evidence of this 'mind'?  What then, created this mind?  Another mind?  Is this mind attached to a body--or is it just a mind? 

[Blackleaf]

Really?  And where is this matter you have created?  While you are at it, could you create some gold for me?  I would appreciate it.  I have dreams, even lucid dreams--but when I wake up, I find nothing there--I have created nothing but an internal state.  And if I don't write down what that state is, even the memory of it goes away.  Are you suggesting that what you dream is now real in another dimension?  So, this universe is simply the result of some beings dream?

I understand that dreams are illusions, which go away when we wake up, but how do we know that the real world is much different?

Do you have any evidence of this 'mind'?  What then, created this mind?  Another mind?  Is this mind attached to a body--or is it just a mind?

It's not an idea that can be proven or disproven, but it makes more sense to me. But whether we begin with a master mind or a big bang, you still have to start with something.

I don't pretend to know anything, but there are a few theories that would fit, including solipsism. Another idea is the idea that life is like a shared dream, with people collectively creating the reality around them. What I would expect is that there is a larger mind that all others come from. The minds create the world, with all of its rules, including the ways the smaller minds react to changes in the body. So the mind control the body, which affects the minds. It's a little convoluted, perhaps, but it gets around the problem of how physical matter creates an immaterial thing like the mind.

[jonb]

[Mike Cl]

I understand that dreams are illusions, which go away when we wake up, but how do we know that the real world is much different?

It's not an idea that can be proven or disproven, but it makes more sense to me. But whether we begin with a master mind or a big bang, you still have to start with something.

I pretend to know anything, but there are a few theories that would fit, including solipsism. Another idea is the idea that life is like a shared dream, with people collectively creating the reality around them. What I would expect is that there is a larger mind that all others come from. The minds create the world, with all of its rules, including the ways the smaller minds react to changes in the body. So the mind control the body, which affects the minds. It's a little convoluted, perhaps, but it gets around the problem of how physical matter creates an immaterial thing like the mind.

Well, I do understand that life itself is a bit difficult to understand.  And I fully appreciate that you have your own ways of looking at it and trying to make sense of it.  I'm not through doing that yet, myself, I suspect.  It does not bother me that physical and material things can combine in ways that produce seemingly impossible things.  I understand my brain as being composed of physical compounds and elements.  The chemicals in my brain produce stuff like electricity and such that powers the nerves that supply consciousness--nothing magical, just seems like it sometimes.  Which is why when I die "I" die with my brain.  And I no longer exists.  Those connections that are needed in my brain no longer are--and never will be again.  And that does not bother me.

[Baruch]

I understand that dreams are illusions, which go away when we wake up, but how do we know that the real world is much different?

It's not an idea that can be proven or disproven, but it makes more sense to me. But whether we begin with a master mind or a big bang, you still have to start with something.

I pretend to know anything, but there are a few theories that would fit, including solipsism. Another idea is the idea that life is like a shared dream, with people collectively creating the reality around them. What I would expect is that there is a larger mind that all others come from. The minds create the world, with all of its rules, including the ways the smaller minds react to changes in the body. So the mind control the body, which affects the minds. It's a little convoluted, perhaps, but it gets around the problem of how physical matter creates an immaterial thing like the mind.

I quite agree, but please don't stop there ;-)  We have various experiences.  These experiences have various characteristics.  The way these experiences play together vary from person to person, even when it is a directly shared experience.  There could be one experience, or several that overlap.  It is easiest for me to contemplate the second alternative.  Which is to say ... why I use the phrase "person to person" instead of just "person".  For me a "person" is a state of being/becoming ... and there at least naively exist more than one, and they overlap or there could be no shared experience or communication between them.  Some experiences have the characteristics of night dreams, some have the characteristics of being awake, and others overlap as day dreams.  This is a continuity for me ... I have no reason to deny sight because I can hear, or deny hearing because I can see ... each experience has its own value.  Psychologists would tell you that if we didn't sleep at all, or dream at all, we would go mad.  So perhaps sleep and dreaming are important, just as being awake is important.  The idea that mind is primary, rather than matter ... is because of the philosophical Idealist, John Berkeley.  The lexicographer Samuel Johnson, when discussing these ideas with his friend and biographer, Boswell ... kicked a stone with his shoe and said ... "I refute him (Berkeley that is) thus!".  But then Samuel Johnson didn't know quantum mechanics ;-)

[Baruch]

Well, I do understand that life itself is a bit difficult to understand.  And I fully appreciate that you have your own ways of looking at it and trying to make sense of it.  I'm not through doing that yet, myself, I suspect.  It does not bother me that physical and material things can combine in ways that produce seemingly impossible things.  I understand my brain as being composed of physical compounds and elements.  The chemicals in my brain produce stuff like electricity and such that powers the nerves that supply consciousness--nothing magical, just seems like it sometimes.  Which is why when I die "I" die with my brain.  And I no longer exists.  Those connections that are needed in my brain no longer are--and never will be again.  And that does not bother me.

Except that matter isn't real (in the sense of Samuel Johnson vs George Berkeley), because we have an illusion of solidity because atoms are almost entirely empty space, and the Pauli exclusion principle and the Heisenberg uncertainly principle keeps things from collapsing in on themselves or passing thru each other (though solid objects do pass thru air).  Per the old materialism, modern science is magic.  You can even make light without starting a fire ;-)

[MagetheEntertainer]

Christians get to kiss gods ass for eternity
Muslims get to fuck weird looking pale girls whose bones you can see through their skin for all eternity
Hindus got some shit with a peacock and a river of honey going on
Mormons get their own planet.

[Mike Cl]

Except that matter isn't real (in the sense of Samuel Johnson vs George Berkeley), because we have an illusion of solidity because atoms are almost entirely empty space, and the Pauli exclusion principle and the Heisenberg uncertainly principle keeps things from collapsing in on themselves or passing thru each other (though solid objects do pass thru air).  Per the old materialism, modern science is magic.  You can even make light without starting a fire ;-)

I know, I know.  Nothing is real.  But until I can put my finger through a steel bar, I'll continue to think that that steel bar is real.  What is real is what science has revealed it to be.  Old materialism--new materialism--I don't care.  Whatever science can demonstrate is real enough for me.  We are learning more and more the real nature of this universe as we can see, feel, taste, and understand.  That is enough for me. 

[Baruch]

I know, I know.  Nothing is real.  But until I can put my finger through a steel bar, I'll continue to think that that steel bar is real.  What is real is what science has revealed it to be.  Old materialism--new materialism--I don't care.  Whatever science can demonstrate is real enough for me.  We are learning more and more the real nature of this universe as we can see, feel, taste, and understand.  That is enough for me.

Thank you Samuel Johnson.  Now back to making funny definitions of words in a big list with you!  Lexicographers!

[Mike Cl]

Thank you Samuel Johnson.  Now back to making funny definitions of words in a big list with you!  Lexicographers!

You are welcome.  Happy to be of service.

[T7ven]

Here is a reason why it is impossible for nothing but happiness to be experienced in Heaven. The main reason we are happy and thankful is because we experience harships through life that make the happy moments... well, happy. If there is no sadness, then there is nothing to make positivity positive. Everything will get dull quickly because you will lose thought of pain and suffering, and along with that you will lose thought of emotion altogether because they correlate and can barely function without eachother. Nothing but happiness will lead to nothing but nothing.

[Baruch]

Heaven/Hell is one place, not two.  A lot like towns with the better and worser neighborhoods.  And there is no need to wait ... Heaven/Hell is right here, right now.  The distinction between this life/next life is erroneous.  Like saying that because I have a right hand, I have to wait until I am dead for my left hand to appear.  But this POV is terrible ... there is no second chance, this is it!

[Blackleaf]

Heaven/Hell is one place, not two.  A lot like towns with the better and worser neighborhoods.  And there is no need to wait ... Heaven/Hell is right here, right now.  The distinction between this life/next life is erroneous.  Like saying that because I have a right hand, I have to wait until I am dead for my left hand to appear.  But this POV is terrible ... there is no second chance, this is it!

According to the descriptions I've read of Heaven and Hell in the New Testament, Heaven and Hell are built right next to each other. There's a gap in between that prevents passage from one to the other, but you can still talk back and forth. In fact, they're so close together that people in Hell can see inside the city of Heaven and see them eating. From Heaven, you'll always have the lovely view of all of your family and friends from your mortal life who didn't give their hearts to Jesus burning in eternal fiery torment. I wonder what a planet-sized pile of perpetually burning bodies smells like.

[Hydra009]

According to the descriptions I've read of Heaven and Hell in the New Testament, Heaven and Hell are built right next to each other.

[SGOS]

According to the descriptions I've read of Heaven and Hell in the New Testament, Heaven and Hell are built right next to each other. There's a gap in between that prevents passage from one to the other, but you can still talk back and forth. In fact, they're so close together that people in Hell can see inside the city of Heaven and see them eating. From Heaven, you'll always have the lovely view of all of your family and friends from your mortal life who didn't give their hearts to Jesus burning in eternal fiery torment. I wonder what a planet-sized pile of perpetually burning bodies smells like.

I'm not familiar with that description, but it explains something that always bothered me in a Movie titled The Rapture, starring Mimi Rogers, an atheist:  A promiscuous woman finds religion, and sends her daughter to Heaven, but is disappointed with Christianity, and turns against God and sends herself to Hell, where she could still talk to her daughter on "the other side."  So the screen writers didn't just pull that concept out of thin air.