[aaronmorey]

Hitchens never seemed to understand that "North Korea" isn't the Christian conception of heaven.

To wish for him to be surrounded for all eternity by those he loves most, in the presence of the source of all love, truth and beauty... I think that's something we'd all like to experience along with him.

Edit: Unclear phrasing

[RyanMcGreal]

I think Stephen Fry put it best during a tour of Salt Lake City that was conducted by a Mormon evangelist:

----

She gave us a good tour and we saw this tabernacle here and this here and so on and then at one point she said, "I just want to tell you a little about the church of the Latter Day Saints." And we all politely stood and then she said how in the afterlife all families will be reunited. "You’ll be with your families forever!"

So I put my hand up and said, "What happens if you’ve been good?"

http://bigthink.com/ideas/17866

[ArbitraryLimits]

As a former Mormon missionary, I can assure you he was not the first person to think of that particular comeback.

[JoeAltmaier]

Comeback? As an honest question, maybe it deserves an answer. I mean, sure tongue in cheek, but any cookie-cutter idea of heaven is bound to leave some cold. So if you dislike your family, then Mormonism isn't for you?

[ArbitraryLimits]

> So if you dislike your family, then Mormonism isn't for you?

Yeah, pretty much.

Edit: OK, that was unnecessarily flippant. I personally never heard that statement as an honest question, only as a ha-ha-only-serious comeback. It turns out that all the people I met who didn't like their families felt bad about it, and realized it wasn't the way things should be.

[JoeAltmaier]

WOw, that's a good answer. It even feels right. I'm not kidding, and thanks for your response on such a touchy issue.

[jmcqk6]

I believe Hitchens point on this is taken directly from the bible. There is no biblical basis for your description of heaven. If you read Revelations, though, heaven is described exactly the way Hitchens described it.

To put it another way, I think when Hitchens calls it "the christian conception" of heaven, it wasn't a description of what certain christians believe, but of the biblical description.

[msg]

If you read Revelation and take only one layer of meaning from it, you didn't really read Revelation.

I find myself writing the ridiculous sentence that Hitchens perhaps took a religious prose poem/vision/prophecy/allegory/history too literally.

I understand that he had an axe to grind. But he hasn't done justice to the thing he argued against.

[super_mario]

North Korea-esque is exactly how heaven has been depicted by bloody people who invented Jesus and Chrisitanity i.e. the Catholic church for 2000 years now.

Even in the Catholic mass, there is a point at which priest announces: "And so, with all the choirs of angels in heaven we proclaim your glory and join in their unending hymn of praise" at which "Holy" is sung.

This is in direct reference to the book of revelation where it is depicted exactly as such, unending praise to god.

And by the way, any meaning you take from revelation is really up to you. The book is a rambling by a deluded madman.

[grandalf]

Based on your comment, you clearly don't understand how awesome North Korea is.

[olavk]

I think Hitchens is arguing against what people actually believe. Christians believe in heaven based (among other things) on Revelation.

[msg]

But obviously Christians don't believe that heaven is like North Korea or the Movementarians. They see it quite differently from the inside.

I take Hitchens as trying to find a common ground for argument by appealing directly to the text. So it is on point if his interpretation of the text does not do it justice, especially if the Christians interpret it differently in a way that is more internally consistent.

[jtheory]

That's not obvious at all.

The problem is that no one seems to have an idea of heaven that -- if it were actually REALIZED (vs staying as an abstract idea) -- would be tolerable for any length of time by human beings. We have to assume that people are transformed into something that deals well with eternity, for example... but we never even talked about it at that depth.

I was raised Catholic by two still-seriously-believing parents, I should mention, so I have some idea of what some Christians think heaven is like. It's a vague mush of conflicting ideas.

And that's just fine, because no one wants to think about it deeply; that's not the point. It's just for saying "well, your Nana is in Heaven now, and she's very, very happy there". It's whatever it needs to be for Nana to be very, very happy.

If she's reunited with both husbands and her lover from the late 1950s as well, presumably none of them will have drinking problems or anger-management issues anymore, and they'll all get along, and be very, very happy, and also the baby that died will be there. Also very, very happy.

But again, this is already miles further than anyone delves into it. It was just "well, God will be there, and it's just amazing to be in His presence; end of story."

[olavk]

If christians define what is good and true and beautiful, then obvious the christian god represent all this. This is true by circular logic.

But if you don't unquestioningly share the christian or biblical values, and dont find til biblical god's special kind of love particularly appealing, then an eternity trapped in this might not seem so blissful.

[maxharris]

The source of all love, truth and beauty is the human mind's interaction with the actual world around it. Conciousness arises from the particular way matter is arranged in the brain, and it ceases to exist when the brain does.

I agree that love, truth and beauty are not simply reducible to matter alone. But that does not mean they have a mystical or otherworldly basis either: invoking supernatural explanations to explain software is obviously foolish, but trying to explain software in terms of atoms gets you nowhere.

This is why I reject both supernatural/mystical/religious and materialist positions. The earlier is conceptually flawed because it rejects or denigrates the physical world (at least in part), and the latter is just as flawed because it rejects the conceptual framework necessary to fully understand phenomena outside of the special sciences. Both camps claim that love, morality, etc. do not have much (if anything) to do with reason and reality.