Though a theist I feel way too many people are hung up on these concepts. To me the goal is not the attaining of one, or avoidance of the other. Oh sure, nobody likes to feel the pain of a hellish experience, but at the same time suffering is in part what molds us into the ego we identify with. If we felt nothing but bliss of heaven or the agony of hell, I am convinced we would feel nothing at all.
Maybe the point of life is more so like waves lapping upon a shore. The come in. They go out. Simply put, our never ending journey, indicated by the motion of the sea, is our true calling.
2006-09-09 03:50:58 · 7 answers · asked by Love of Truth 5 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
LL, i enjoyed your answer very much and you made a very good counter argument. However no matter how we live we will spiritually survive death, if not only to a heaven and or hellish spiritual realms, then on to others lives, as yet another drop in the ocean.
2006-09-09 04:12:46 · update #1
Verily I say unto thee -- thou art not far from the Kingdom of Heaven. I agree with you 1000%. The substance of faith must be affinity of heart to the message. Love is the answer, and it's impossible to invoke love through threats of eternal torment, or bribes of eternal delights.
You embrace it, because you embrace it. You hope for no reward and fear no punishment. Then and only then are you truly free.
Super Question, really!!!
2006-09-09 03:57:09 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
From a psychological or psychiatric point of view one could summarize these actual physical locations as such.
The problem with fields such as psychology and psychiatry are they are limited to human understanding. Many psychologists and psychiatrists don't realize the fact that there are other dimensions to this universe and that what we quantify as heaven and hell are true geographic points at some place either inside or outside our physical universe - my guess is outside.
Pain and pleasure were built into us by a Divine Creator. Perhaps as in the example of pulling one's hand away from a stove burner, He gave us the pain principle as a survival mechanism...to avoid danger.
The pleasure principle would certainly have been the Creator's method of choice for causing human beings to multiply. Secondarily, the pleasure of eating food would ensure that human beings would eat rather than starve, again ensuring survival.
Perhaps from a spiritual standpoint God has ALLOWED human beings to "overextend" the pleasure principle in order to form an awareness that this life isn't all there is, and that we should live accordingly, thereby ensuring our spiritual survival after physical death.
2006-09-09 11:05:12 · answer #2 · answered by LL 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think the concept of Heaven is a fairy tale hoping to adjust human conduct based on a would-be pleasurable reward.
Hell is more like the boogey man, it's a way of scaring children into obeying because of what might happen to them if they are bad.
Both the heaven fairy tell and the hell nightmare are attempts to manipulate our self-love and subconscious, but that territory is an unknown, even to ourselves. La Rochefoucauld, in the first edition of his Maxims, described self-love brilliantly and said trying to control it was like controlling the waves of the sea.
2006-09-09 10:56:30 · answer #3 · answered by urbancoyote 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The concepts of heaven & hell are man made,without these concepts many weak minded people would die and the world might be chaotic because there would be no hope,and no consequences.
2006-09-09 10:54:57 · answer #4 · answered by aries4272 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The concepts of heaven and hell are just tools used by religion to control people.
2006-09-09 10:52:38 · answer #5 · answered by bonzo the tap dancing chimp 7 · 1⤊ 2⤋
Um, ok. I think heaven's easier to believe than that New Age, cosmica, hippy crap. But whatever floats your boat, dude.
2006-09-09 10:54:11 · answer #6 · answered by p2of9 4 · 0⤊ 2⤋
no you have to belive in something that is what makes us who we are
2006-09-09 11:04:15 · answer #7 · answered by blue r 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋