Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Discussing heaven

From a review of a new book on heaven, "Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With the Afterlife" by Lisa Miller. (via Andrew Sullivan)
Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I'll show you what's lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Quran lived in thirst--so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where "the first would be last, and the last would be first"--so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today's Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang.

6 comments:

Mr. Pony said...

It seems like asking people about their concept of Heaven is like asking them to make a wish, and none of the asked seem to ever have any problem with this.

If Heaven is wish-fulfilment, what does that say about those of us for whom it is completely fine to believe the afterlife is nothing, forever?

Is it really that we are thinking more rationally, and scientifically? Or are we not getting enough sleep?

Galspanic said...

Maybe it means that atheists are a bunch of really happy people.

odori said...

Perhaps it means atheists already have a pretty good life now. Their lives aren't so miserable they have to fantasize about the next world being better.

I suspect most atheists don't have to worry about their basic, critical needs like food, water, freedom. Their lives are already reasonably good so they don't need to think about heaven to tolerate the present.

This would explain why wealthy nations tend to have more non-believers.

Fugu said...

Maybe you're right. but...

Fugu said...

I think that's part of it, but even when atheist's lives turn to shit they don't necessarily get religious. There's even a monument out there to the atheists who've been in foxholes but didn't pray to zombie jesus before the end came. Also, there's the counter argument that hard times (foxholes, starvation, slavery) instead lead some to question the existence of a god who allows such things to happen. And I've never been a history buff, but wasn't Soviet Russia an atheist state for a while? And they've had it pretty hard.

And we can probably agree that there's plenty of very religious people out there who have it really, really good. Don't get me wrong, though. I agree that hardships tend to lead people to get all spiritual, but I don't think this is a necessary crutch for all in hard times.

I'm going to go ahead and say that the difference for wealthy nations might be education as much as resources. If you learn as a kid that evolution makes sense and that the earth is probably 4.5 billion years old and that you need not believe something that cannot be proven, then when you run out of food you might start thinking of ways to grow new crops more efficiently, rather than do a rain dance or give up your virgin daughter to the local magistrate for some bread. Or whatever it is they do.

Richard Vomit said...

Sign me up for a hybrid heaven made up of the gang bang and the flowing rivers.