What do you think of this quote regarding heaven (see details)?

Question

I read this in a critique of modern atheism by James Woods (quel surprise; he's actually a very intelligent man and an atheist himself) and I thought this was a great observation:

"In heaven, it seems, all tears will be wiped away and we will be free of pain and suffering. We will also be free of freedom--necessarily so, because if freedom were to exist in heaven, we would merely replicate our lives on earth and start doing terrible things to each other again. Heaven, as an intellectual category as much as an "actual place," depends on the idea that the highest form of happiness--to be face to face with our Maker, and so on--is a state without freedom, or with severely curtailed freedom. But if this is the ideal state, the state that our Creator longs to have us in, then why was heaven not instituted on earth? Since heaven was not created on earth, we must conclude that our lives here are more or less painful experiments, and that the world is a training ground for heaven."

It kind of goes along with the argument that if there actually was a god, either he is ineffectual or cruel.

Answer 1

you are making the literal christians think to much they are going to blow a fuse if they start to have independent thought on this matter....good for you

Answer 2

Ok for one you said :
" Heaven, as an intellectual category as much as an "actual place," depends on the idea that the highest form of happiness--to be face to face with our Maker, "

And then went on to say:

and so on--is a state without freedom, or with severely curtailed freedom.

This is a fallicy without fact in any way, you have no idea what heaven will be like, It is beyond what you can imagine, Our minds are finite and no matter how much we try , we cannot comprehend what Heaven is like.

The freedom that you want is the ability to do what you want , when you want to whomever you want without any one telling you you cant.

and as for heaven not being instituted on earth? it was, however Adam through his disobediance spoiled that. but this is a concept that is alien to you
1st Cor 2;14 says that you do not have the ability to understand.

Answer 3

He is mostly correct. This earth is a training ground for heaven. If we can not obey God here, then what makes people think that they will obey God in heaven? He is wrong on a particular point though, Freedom is not the right to rebel. From the way he spoke this is the inference. True freedom and happiness can ONLY be found in the absolute obedience of the individual to the Law of God.

Answer 4

I couldn’t disagree more. Through spiritual understanding do you learn of eternal things, and one of them is being free from all bondage, and that includes false notions that there is no freedom in heaven. It is only by a full surrender does one gain boundless freedom. To think that God needs to take some time and experiment is to not understand the true nature of God as demonstrated by Jesus. One must dig deeply into His teachings to fully understand them, and without understanding, one stands in a black hole and believes it to be a reality.

Answer 5

I Like The Last part....However There is Freedom in Heaven, it's just that we would not know to do wrong to each other because sin/evil does not exist there. Example: If you have alot of apples in your hand and I have 1 I would be unable to get jealous of you because jealousy is non-existant there. Instead I would just compliment you and you would offer me some.

Answer 6

I guess even very intelligent people overlook easy things. We will be free of pain and suffering in Heaven because it wont exist there. So we wont be able to do horrible things to eachother because they have to include pain and suffering to BE horrible. In otherwords, theoretically we would be able to do whatever we want to and it WONT cause pain or suffering eg. If I were to hit someone in the head with a hammer, it would be a bad thing, sin, because it causes injury, pain and suffering to someone else. If that person was not harmed in any way, then it wasnt a bad thing. What will be missing for eternity are the very things that make things bad or sinful.

Answer 7

Why is heaven not instituted on earth?
This is a common and timeless question in philosophical and religious circles. My response will sort of be a "chain," so bare with me.

Some would reply that the Creator *did* have the intention of putting humans in an ideal state, yet human's "free will" intervened.

If God is omnipotent, how did he let this happen? Well, according to this particular argument's response, God chose to create human beings with ..... yes, you guessed it......FREE WILL.

(Side note: This is with accordance that pre-destination is not that God already planned everything, but that he could already predict what human's choices will be. But he chooses to give human's free will anyways, because he must allow humans to go through a process of growth that has potential to lead to Wisdom.)

Free will was very important in the design of the human, because it would be pointless for God to create "human robots," just like our human nature would want human offspring, and ordering your child from a robot store wouldn't be the same. (Like in the movie, A.I. where the mother gets a robot-child.")

Now, this argument will continue to explain why human's screwed up their lives when they had free will. Humans are thought to be evil by birth. (Here comes the idea of EVIL argument, lol.)

Why are humans evil at birth? This doesn't mean they are born serial killers, but that humans are born with the potential to be evil because evil is the outcome of IGNORANCE.

Okay, here we get into EVIL VS. GOOD and IGNORANCE VS. WISDOM argument, which you are probably famiiar with if you have read Plato.

We are born ignorance because we don't know that Good is what is best for us. (The defintion of Good is that it can be recognized as what is in our best interest as humans, individually and together. That is why children are born doing everything wrong ...........from hitting their siblings (even if they haven't witnessed a negative role model) to the evil of getting yourself hurt by putting in a hairpin in an electric socket.

Evil is our human nature, and that is "natural," yet we strive to be less human and be more God-like in our pursuit of Wisdom and Goodness.

We are born evil because we are born IGNORANT, and climbing to wisdom is a type of ladder (yes, the ascending ladder that you probably read if you studied Aristotle.)

The more wisdom we gain, then the more Goodness that will come.

So this is the formula:

Ignorance = Evil,
and Wisdom = Goodness

So.... to summarize everything, God wanted us to have paradise, yet we screwed it up. But it is okay because God knows that we had to go though this process -- some have it easier, others have it harder. I could go into more detail about this, because there abviously plenty of deductive arguments. (How there is no fairness in this, but I am sure you can search this one out if you need more answers.)

How does this fit in with suffering? (Oh boy, this is another completely HUGE argument!) Well, if you had a tmeline of a "soul's" existence, then life on earth would be a tiny microscopic dot on a line that extends for a VERY LONG TIME.
So, earthly suffering seems so extreme to us now, but in the HUGE scope of things -- it will be worth it.

Hope this helps -- this answer I provided is not to convince, but so that people reading can be aware of all types of philosophical arguments.

Oh by the way........ free will allows us to make the choice to abide by God's wisdom -- God's will. Humans are at their ideal state when their will is the same as God's will. This doesn't take away our freedom, nor are we are bound by it.

But we *choose* to get to that place because we finally understand that God's will is the Highest Good (which is in our best interest of course).

Answer 8

coming from an atheist that tries to interpret concepts of the bible. doesn't that seem kind of odd to you? tsk tsk tsk. do i even need to explain it? i mean this is laughable. I dont even know how to respond. It's funny from a christian point of view looking at your descriptions and James Woods (a broke washout) view of Heaven. It's nonsense. Read your quote again and you will see that he contradicted himself twice. It doesnt make any sense. LOL. Atheists cannot and WILL NOT understand and know the meaning's of scripture interpretation and Godly interpretation just as Christians will not understand teachings and concepts of other religions. You spend a lot of time doing research on the bible and Christianity. Proves my initial point of Atheists are truly not atheists but are drowned in their own ambiguity. Keep researching and hopefully you will find God's love and be able to post something non-frivolous here.

Answer 9

I think the verse says irrespective of original belief of a person, if he believes in Allah alone shall enter paradise providing ofcourse that he obeys Allah's commands. Allah had taken a covenant from believers of all Divine Religions to listen to prophets sent by Allah from time to time. Muhammad (SAW) is also such a prophet, belief in whom is pre-requisite for obedience of Allah. Remember faith without a code of conduct is meaningless. Muhammad Javed Iqbal

Answer 10

Heaven will be free of sin which brings pain. the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life.

Answer 11

it is training ground for heaven in a sense. we are all here to experience and learn for God, then when we are done we cross back over to be with God and our fellow spiritual beings and soul mate.