Does "going to heaven" really solve anything?

[iplaw]

If you go to heaven you can get kicked out?

Who said that?

[Jassman]

I think she's referring to Court's preceding post.

[iplaw]

If you go to heaven you can get kicked out?

Who said that?

Court:
I think that depends on whether you consider choosing to not live in heaven as a sin as opposed to mortal unbelief.  Unbelief is certainly a sin, but a conscious choice to deny an eternity in heaven if you were there wouldn't be would it?

I think that the distinction becomes moot once you enter heaven.   There is no reason to reject God out of disbelief anymore and it purely becomes a free will choice on your part after that.  Of course this whole discussion is alleviated if heaven is fundamentally a different place than it was before lucifer sinned.

[MommaSquid]

If free will exists in heaven, anger exists in heaven, because it's a basic human emotion.  If anger exists, what's to stop people from harming others in heaven?

But, if heaven can exist with freewill and no "bad", how can we, under that assumption, have a "meaningful" relationship with god in heaven?

Wait a minute.  If you go to heaven you can get kicked out?

God can still threaten you with eternal hell-fire after you've lived a good enough life to get into heaven!!  

Maybe I got carried away, but I don’t think so.  


Anyway, this is all hypothetical.  I don’t believe heaven and hell exist anywhere but right here, right now.

[Court]

If you go to heaven you can get kicked out?

Who said that?

Court:
I think that depends on whether you consider choosing to not live in heaven as a sin as opposed to mortal unbelief.  Unbelief is certainly a sin, but a conscious choice to deny an eternity in heaven if you were there wouldn't be would it?

I don't know. It's not mentioned in the bible, which is the source of the idea of "sin." I personally don't think that following my rationality (which, if you accept that god exists, he gave me) to what seems to me the only logical conclusion (God does not exist) is a bad thing.

[Court]

This is the problem I have always had with christianity, even when I was a Jesus-loving bible-thumper: It's too black and white. There's a right way, a wrong way, and nothing in between. There's Heaven, the all-good, all-wonderful, and there's Hell, the all-bad, all-horrible. There's goodness/purity and there's sin. Everything is forced into these opposite poles and it just doesn't make sense.
In real life, everything is a gray area.

[Jassman]

This is the problem I have always had with christianity, even when I was a Jesus-loving bible-thumper: It's too black and white. There's a right way, a wrong way, and nothing in between. There's Heaven, the all-good, all-wonderful, and there's Hell, the all-bad, all-horrible. There's goodness/purity and there's sin. Everything is forced into these opposite poles and it just doesn't make sense.
In real life, everything is a gray area.

This reminds me of the scene in the movie Donnie Darko where Donnie is explaining to the teacher that you can't lump all human emotions into the two categories "Love" and "Fear". I highly recommend that movie by the way, if anyone's looking for something really interesting to watch.

[Aullios]

Donnie Darko... good movie, but I warn you, it's pretty fucked up

[iplaw]

Court.

I don't see christianity this way at all.  There are a few non-negotiables black and whites, but for the most part I think life is lived in the gray and I am okay with that.  Like I said not everything is a "sin" or "holy," as if you can divide life into categories like that.  Most of life is lived in the gray but there are spiritual ways of living in the gray so as not to destroy our lives.

[Jassman]

iplaw,

You have to admit though that Christianity (religion in general, really) still seeks to thin out the gradient between black and white. It is kind of a side affect of being based on supposed absolute morals from God without any wiggle room.

There's a lot more grey area subscribing to moral relativism.

[iplaw]

Sure I agree, but I think that any gray area I give up is in response to a protective mandate to abstain from harmful behavior.  Truth by nature is exclusive so some issues remain black and white simply because they are and if you don't believe me just look at the law of non-contradiction and try to prove it false.

[iplaw]

I always think of this passage from G.K. Chesterton when I hear the term "moral relativism.":

But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it.

Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself.

A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts.

In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything

[Jassman]

Even though I disagree with the author's message, I have to admit that it is a great read. Thanks for posting that, iplaw.

Wait, did I just prove what the author was pointing out with that? ^

[iplaw]

If you are interested in the rest of the book here it is.  Chesterton is one of my favorite authors.

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.pdf

[advancedatheist]

Wait a minute.  If you go to heaven you can get kicked out?

Why can't god kick you out? If god created satan with the foreknowledge that satan would rebel, he could just as easily let people into heaven with the foreknowledge that some of them will rebel as well.