What is heaven like?

I would have to say when it comes to religion, Im agnostic. I feel I can almost sense some type of higher power and really would like to believe there is a reason for my being here. But unless there is some type of irrefutable scientific proof I cannot blindly believe what other men ask me to believe in.

But I do think about the afterlife and heaven and hell and God often. Sadly though, it seems the older I get the more I tend to lean toward believing that humankind's religions just dont add up. Here is something I was pondering the other day.

What is heaven like if it truly exists?

I know what we are told in the bible- but surely Christians who believe in heaven have thought about it beyond "it's a nice place."

If that's where you are going to spend the rest of eternity, you would have to think about what its like and try and piece together what youve been told into some kind of idea of where you will spend the major part of your existence.

I mean from my understanding , when you finally die you either get sent to hell and spend eternity in the worst place imaginable. Or if you are good, you get sent to heaven, and spend eternity in the best pace imaginable.

But if that's the case , Im trying to imagine it and wondering what you actually do there.

Once you talk to Saint Peter and enter the pearly gates, then what?

Do you have the same emotions and feelings?

Are emotions that are considered negative, like fear, jealousy, anger etc still part of who we are? Or are they immediately stripped upon entering heaven?

Do we look the same? Or are we all angelically beautiful, as depicted in almost all pictures of angels.

Do we feel pain? And if we dont, does that mean we dont feel pleasure either?

And most of all, what is heaven like, and how do we pass the ages there?

I imagine that it might be nice to sit on a nice soft cloud and play a harp for a few days. But after a year of it, Id be fairly bored and want more. After ten years I would have busted all the stings on my harp. And after twice that time I would be considering heaven more like Hell.

How could I go on, knowing that I had eons of such pointless existence just "being happy" when I have nothing to do. And nothing to compare happiness to?

If there is no pain or sadness or those emotions considered negative, pretty soon wouldn't my happiness become divided between "extreme" happiness and "so so" happiness, that I would very soon come to call sadness?

Is there conflict in heaven?

What is the purpose of going there? Surely there is a reason and some great goal we work towards. Being totally frozen in time without some feeling of evolution or progress seems to me more like a punishment than a reward.

Even the most enjoyable pastime would get boring after a million years.

I know most ppl will answer many of those questions with "Our mind's cannot fathom God's great plan, so I cannot answer it for you, and when you go to heaven you will understand what it's all about."

But if ppl can be told about heaven from god or angels or whoever was first told about it, then surely they must have more than just the traditional pearly gates and harps to make them want to go there?

The concept has been around for a very long time. If ppl truly BELIEVE in such a thing, they must know something about it. Otherwise it is wrong to claim you know it exists- but know absolutely nothing about it, other than it really is there.

This is not in any way a dig at Christianity. I respect all peoples right to believe what they want. But I am a very inquisitive person by nature and tend to think on things and try to fit them into the world I see around me.

So for ppl to tell me I should believe in something. But only give me a very vague description of a place no one has ever seen or come back from, I really am wondering a little more about it.

And Im sure that if me, an agnostic, has wondered what is beyond the pearly gates and actually THOUGHT about this amazing place, rather than just blindly accepted it as being there without needing to fathom it for themselves- Im sure those who believe in it must have some type of vision as to what it is like.

I know also that whenever religious debate enters a forum it doesn't take long before both sides reach a stalemate and the only recourse they both have is to start insulting each others intelligence in the hope to discredit the other persons argument and therefore prove that god does or doesn't exist.

But Im actually hoping for few thoughtful descriptions from both believers and non believers of the place Im supposedly going to go to... or not go to when I die.

Thanks.

I had an idea what the after life would be like...
Take this one with a grain of salt though...
Basically we all live our lives, and when we die, we kind of wait around, our souls floating around the Universe...
When finally the Universe ends...
The Universe contracts, and all our souls join up...
When the souls all join up, we get to experience what it was like for everyone else...
This may mean sharing our life experiences with that of another human, with a dog, or even an insect...
Basically when we share our life experiences here, we find out truly what it was like for the others, and our last action is in feeling what others were feeling with as much sympathy and empathy that is possible...
I like to think that, if we truly achieved good in our lives, it would be recognised and appreciated. And if we took up the road to another way (perhaps an angry way, for example), we may be more understood, and perhaps finally forgiven...
After all, we are 'victims of circumstance', where very little can change our fate, but having the opportunity to show our love for the world...
As you should appreciate, its difficult to be happy all the time when life deals you the wrong cards...
Btw, am mostly agnostic, but like the plethera of ideas about what heaven and hell are like. This is mostly because, the devout will have something there to guide them to peace and charity (hopefully), which is greatly needed...

I've wondered what heaven might be like. Or hell for that matter. I'm also mostly agnostic. I have almost the same thoughts as you do Chained Wings. I don't know it may sound stupid but I think maybe our minds have something to do with heaven or hell.

My wonder is this. What if our imaginations are meant to be tools to create our own afterlife? From a point of view that seems delusional, but our minds are real. Our thoughts and dreams are real. Maybe we have the power in our minds to build a world from our dreams. The afterlife could be that world, our world. That world could be heaven or hell depending on who created the place.

That's an interesting concept, and it sort of got me to thinking...

We are born with this amazing array of senses. The ability to see, to touch to feel, to taste, to hear etc.

And we are born into this amazing world, full of warm sunsets, breathtaking landscapes, succulent food and heart rending music, the ability to enjoy each others touch and so much more.

Why is that?

According to what MOST Christians believe, you need to live a frugal life of chaste obedience- and then you get into the REAL heaven; the place to finally start living.

But what if all those long dead visionaries got it wrong?

What if God put us on this planet with all these wondrous things to see and hear and feel and do, and gave us the ability to experience them. And then gave us free will to enjoy it... or not enjoy it.

And that maybe finding heaven wasn't all about loving thy neighbour and never having sex before marriage. But, in using our mind- a true miracle in itself- to find heaven ourselves.

And it has been here all along.

And the fact that those that do such horrific negative things tend to attract negativity to themselves and will often describe their life as "hell" seems to give the idea some merit.

Maybe heaven and hell DO actually exist. And our actions on this plane will make us enter heaven or hell, WHILE we are alive. Not once we die. Because it just seems sort of too late once we are in the ground.

And why grow such a lovely garden for us to play in and wire in such an amazing capacity to enjoy that garden- when its considered a sin to actually do most of the things that are so enjoyable when we are here?

This is something I only just came up with and Im sure it has its flaws. But as a germ of an idea, I like it.

Its also a prime example of why I joined this site. To communicate with like minded individuals and come up with some kind of answer to why I am here.

To me, asking what heaven is like, is like asking a blind person to differentiate between blue and red. In much the same way, religious people describe heaven through descriptions without seeing it themselves; in essence they read what others say. Until heaven is experienced, whatever it is or isn't, it will never be felt or understood.

This does not mean Christians or other reigious folk are wrong; but it does mean that we must at least question the foundations of these self-proclaiming illuminations.

As for me, I'm still trying to understand what makes things happen at base-level, and then extending this level. Speculating from where I am now, my problem is with the duality that perfection has its opposite, and my answer is that the opposite of perfection is a composite of itself within perfection; and that to assume this equal magnitude is itself contradictory. That poses me a new question.

The most important question you pose chained wings is 'Is there conflict in heaven?' Think on this.

You cannot really know the truth of the matter. Either it is true or not. I am not really sure it is because it doesn't make any rational sense because there is no answers to the questions you bring up. I guess believing is just fanasty thinking and not true or it is true but we are given no understanding of it.

Heaven is ruled by God thereby making it a dictatorship.

Why would you want to live under dictatorship?

Don't you have better things to do on a Sunday than worship your leader one day a week?