10 Reasons Popular Versions of Christian Heaven Would be Hell

[Warren Stupidity]

Valerie Tarico
By Valerie Tarico
Valerie Tarico

Posted: Jan 29, 2015

Maybe descriptions of Hell are so horrific to keep people from thinking about how hellish popular versions of the Christian Heaven would be—even without Pat Robertson in the mix. Most Westerners are at least vaguely familiar with the popular Christian version of Heaven: pearly gates, streets of gold, winged angels and the Righteous, with their bodies made perfect and immortal, singing the praises of God forever. What’s surprising is how few people have actually thought about what a nightmare this kind of existence would be.

Ninety eight percent of Heaven’s occupants are embryos and toddlers. Human reproduction is designed as a big funnel. Most fertilized eggs die before implanting, followed by embryos and fetuses that self-abort, followed by babies and then little kids. A serious but startling statistical analysis by researcher Greg S. Paul suggests that if we include the unborn, more than 98 percent of Heaven’s inhabitants, some 350 billion, would be those who died before maturing to the point that they could voluntarily “accept the gift of salvation.” The vast majority of the heavenly host would be moral automatons or robots, meaning they never had moral autonomy and never chose to be there. Christian believers, ironically, would be a 1 to 2 percent minority even if all 30,000+ denominations of believers actually made it in.

The theological implications are huge. Christian theologians typically explain evil by arguing that this was the best of all possible worlds, the only way to create free will and to develop moral virtues (like courage, compassion, forgiveness and so forth), to make us more Christ-like and prepare us for Heaven. But if we run the numbers, it appears that God didn’t need the whole free will—sin—redemption thing to fill his paradise with perfect beings because no suffering, evil, or moral freedom is actually required as a prelude to glory.
The ratio of adults to embryos has social implications as well. Pastoral counselors sometimes tell a women that she will get to apologize in Heaven to the fetus she aborted, which will be a fully developed person there. As a psychologist, I don’t know what this means, because the brain and mind, our individuality and identity, and the qualities that define our personhood—develop only via experience. Imagine if 98 percent of the “people” around you had never made a decision or felt sorrow or experienced anything akin to an adult conversation. The company of Mr. Robertson starts sounding not so bad.

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/tarico20150129

[mr blur]

1. Really enjoyable read - thanks.

Pop over to Rapture Ready and meet the idiots who take all of this literally, "mansions" and all.

[RebelOne]

10. I go to Rapture Ready when I need a good laugh

It is amazing what those idiots believe.

[trotsky]

2. Of course at that point...

the "wise" theologian retreats to Armstrong territory - vague banalities that sound good but are ultimately meaningless, thus making them safe from the assault of inquiry. Once the nasty question-asker has thrown up their arms in frustration, the theist is free to bring back his or her personal god who provides us with salvation and eternal bliss. "It's OK Yahweh, the big bad atheist went away! You can come out now!"

[Curmudgeoness]

3. This is an excellent argument for atheism

if I ever saw one. Great article, and it does a great job of making me want to avoid heaven. I had only considered that I would have to spend eternity with the most horrid people on this planet, but this shows me that there is so much more to avoid.

My favorite deterrent was expounded upon in the section: Your celestial day (and night) job is to sing God’s praises.

Good stuff.

[onager]

14. Great! Another ex-SoB!

Southern Baptist, that is...

When back home for Xmas, my mother wanted me to go to church with her for the special Xmas play. I have not been to church in 150 years, but she's the only mother I've got and neither of us are getting any younger.

You'll be happy to know nothing has changed.

First we sat thru her Sunday School class where we learned - again - that the great ancient empires of Persia, Assyria, Egypt etc. were really just bit players in world history. The REAL superstars were a bunch of itinerant herders with some peculiar religious ideas and delusions of grandeur.

At least the Xmas play pre-empted any soporific sermons. It was mostly performed by kids and teens, and included some truly awful Jesusy semi-rap music. Which annoyed some older members of the congregation, so that was probably worth the visit.

[onager]

18. Wow! SBC Prez? Not Bailey Smith, by any chance?

Bailey Smith was the SBC president who announced in 1980 that "God does not hear the prayer of a Jew." At the same time, the SBC was trying to have an "interfaith dialogue" with Jews. Smith's comment pretty much nuked that dialogue, for about the next century.

When asked to apologize, Smith incredibly doubled down and refused. Even when Saint Ronald Reagan publicly disagreed with him.

For non-SoBs: "SBC" is "Southern Baptist Convention." The official governing body of the Southern Baptist church. There are something like 450 different Baptist denominations, from Free-Will'ers to Foot-Washers. Southern Baptist is the biggest. The split between regular "American Baptists" and "Southern Baptists" took place in 1860, over slaver...er, I meant "state's rights."

I have several relatives and old friends who are Southern Baptist preachers. Some of them are personally progressive, but see little hope of the SBC getting any more progressive in the next couple of generations. Since the Jerry Falwell putsch of the early 1980s, the SBC has been dominated by right-wingers and theocrats.

[Lordquinton]

20. Listening to other people on DU the SBC is a very eclectic and accepting group

with every church it's own unique and independent unit that you can't criticize until you have met them all.

[onager]

21. The SBC!?! "Eclectic and Accepting?!?"

I don't have enough ROFL smilies for that one...

Next time somebody argues that, just point them to the link below - The "Basic Beliefs" of the Southern Baptist Convention. If you call yourself a SoB, this is what you sign up for.

I especially recommend the section "The Christian and the Social Order."

http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/basicbeliefs.asp

[Lordquinton]

22. wow, just wow!

"Christians have a spiritual debtorship to the whole world, a holy trusteeship in the gospel, and a binding stewardship in their possessions. "

That's a whole lot of shipping right there. I didn't see one thing in that whole link that wasn't problematic in one way or another. If I ever encounter someone claiming SBC are a kinder gentler brancI'llll remember this. Certainly easier to invoke than the catchakisms or whichever pokemon they follow in the rcc

[BrotherIvan]

5. I'm not arguing defending religion

But from this excerpt, the author begins with a faulty argument. She is also spreading anti-abortion propaganda inadvertently. The argument assumes that a fertilized egg or a fetus is a person, when the Bible clearly states that a baby does not become a being until it receives "the breath of life".

Even in Exodus 21:22, if a person kills a fetus in a pregnant woman, he is fined but is considered a murderer if he kills a living woman (the fundies totally miss that one I guess). From this we can see that the Judeo-Christian school of thought is that the unborn are not human and do no have a soul.

But more than that, I wish the author would quit buying into evangelical bullshit and spreading it on the internet.

[Goblinmonger]

7. It's not just "evangelical" bullshit.

Catholics also (are supposed to) believe that life begins at conception (according to the Pope).

Hell, look up the sin of Onanism to show that it isn't just fetuses that need protecting. Which makes me think of:

[BrotherIvan]

12. Yes, and that made up bullshit is killing women all over the world

I just object to allowing the creep of completely wrong ideas. Even casually spreading the idea that a fetus is a person feeds into a very dangerous and deadly lie. That's why I think this article is entirely stupid.

[trotsky]

9. And the author isn't exactly buying into it.

It's being presented for the sake of argument, I believe.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. the bible says all sorts of horseshit and is frequently contradictory too.

the popey guy says abortion, even by condom - abortion of the potential for the potential of a living human being - is fucking murder, and all the christo-loons are convinced that zygotes go to heaven, so take it up with those loons, not the author for pointing out how utterly fucking stupid that is.

[JDDavis]

6. Even if it were to exist, I don't want to go there

for ONE reason:

I don't want to be with anyone whose brain works like that.

Sorry, great grandma, and sister-in-law, and cousin, and friend from high school.

I've had enough of all of you in real life, thank you.

[RebelOne]

11. I totally agree.

I would not want to spend eternity with my mother, my sister or my ex-husband nor all the others I know who have passed.

[AtheistCrusader]

15. Hitchens articulates it well, two ways for me.

Near the end:

And then more poetically:

[Goblinmonger]

8. We had a lot of discussion at the seminary

that heaven couldn't possibly be a place where you got everything you wanted. That would be boring as shit. That would be more what hell should be like.

I think that kind of gets to Camus' analysis of Sisyphus. He argues (OK, this is existentialism, but I kind of dig that) that we need to see Sisyphus as happy as he starts to roll the boulder up the hill again. He has a purpose. He has something he needs to do. And maybe this time he will succeed. Of course he isn't going to succeed, but does that have to be punishment?

[kath]

16. This piece is largely a rip-off of a chapter in Mark Twain's "Letters From the Earth"

http://www.classicreader.com/book/1930/3/

A very good read, as is his "The Diaries of Adam and Eve"