The self congratulation society is clearly doing well on this
thread! Speculation about the future, clearly makes people
feel good, so typical of humans, they follow their feelings.

Now clearly not everyone can be right, given the many gods,
many holy books and many other theories being bandied around.
Yet all seem convinced that they are right, evryone else
is wrong.

So how do we judge it? By who is claimed to be smart?

Given that old Osama seems to have outwitted the entire
US army, navy and airforce, all loaded with Xtian true
believers, perhaps his religious beliefs are in fact the
real ones ?

Given the many virgins promised in his heaven, could it
be that many females will land up being houris in their
next life?

Just a thought :)

Hi Yabby,
Self congratulations do not appear by themselves, they are some way or another invoked, like so many of those involved with this thread, comments are put forward and left to the readers own device.
How they decipher the words, how to adopt an understanding is a persons own perogative.
We are blessed with a brain that is able to interpret sarcasm, from something that was possibly meant to be recieved in all innocence, yet taken in the wrong context and before you know it, all hell breaks loose.
Things taken in the wrong context derives from our very own upbringing, the way we look, speak and how we express what we say with facial gestures, all from the gene pool.
Even now, after many years, I find I am iether scowling or squinting or certain mannerisms, exactly the same way my father did and this has only been quite recently and was pointed out to me by my wife.
Some of us don't want to inherit bad habits that a parent had, but one cannot avoid this, it's in your making, it's what makes ones personality. If you are a bad @rse, drunken slob, who sits on his laurels all day to let the wife do all the work and running around, you can bet your life that one or maybe two generations down the line, some family member did exactly the same.
Now get off your @rse and stop reading this nonsense!!

Team... did anyone read Ecclesiastes ? Specially you Spanks... it addresses the kind of questions raised by the very thread itself.

Its truly worth a read.

It's not our faith we take to the 'other side'.. we only 'have' another side due to the events our faith is based on.

No virgins though :) sorrrrry.. Christian heaven was not designed or invented by males preoccupied with sex and promising things to war weary soldiers to make them more willing to die for their prophet.

Nowhere in the old testament is there any hint of parallel about sexual joys in the next life as a reason for fighting hard. Nothing..nada..zippo... zero.

cheers

Thank you Spanky, Yabby and Boaz for your continuing contributions to this thread. I doubt Spanky really "knows" me from their experience as a Clinical Psychologist, but that doesn't mean that I don't respect what they do, what they know, and the value of their experience. And thank you Boaz for encouraging me to reread Ecclesiastes. One of the difficulties of evaluating religious experiences, is that people with some mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, have auditory and visual hallucinations of Jesus,Satan, Angels, Evil Demons etc., as well as delusions that they are Jesus, or some Biblical Prophet. I have known a dozen or so schizophrenics -- mostly the paranoid kind -- during my life, and this has been a common feature of their psychosis. I have also done a lot of legal research of criminal cases involving mental illness, including schizophrenia, and the consequences of schizophrenic psychosis is often quite disturbing when studied within the context of the violent murders committed by them. That this occurs raises questions about the mind/brain connection, freewill, the nature of the soul, God's Master Plan and how we fit into it, the efficacy of Christ's Redeeming and Atoning Sacrifice, Faith, etc. There are a lot people offering a lot of different answers. There is also a lot of ignorance e.g. Tom Cruise, as a leading Scientologist, claims that he has studied the historical development of Psychiatry, and believes that it originated with NAZI doctors in the Concentration Camps. As Spanky knows, this is not true. The two recent cases - one in the USA and the other in Oz - involving Scientologist parents taking their adult children off their antipsychosis meds which then led to their children committing murders of family members, has had Scientologists stating that they did not advise the parents to take their kids off their meds. However, it is Scientologist dogma that mental illness as defined by the medical profession does not exist, and Psychiatry is evil. On the other hand, Scientologists aren't Christians, and L. Ron Hubbard's teachings are a bit peculiar.

I know I have asked this before, but it still lacks a decent answer. Boaz wrote:

>>No virgins though :) sorrrrry.. Christian heaven was not designed or invented by males preoccupied with sex and promising things to war weary soldiers to make them more willing to die for their prophet.<<

That's a fine introduction to what heaven is not.

But what would be a fair description of the Christian heaven? Do any of the ancient texts provide a clue? Is there any consistency in the way in which heaven is described by the various religious authorities, or is it pretty much "make it up as you go", depending on the circumstances in which you find yourself?

For example, when I was small, the generally accepted (i.e., as communicated to us kids by adults) view of heaven was of angels playing harps on white fluffy clouds, and a general feeling that it was a nice place to be. Hell, on the other hand, was a nasty, dirty place where you burned for eternity, and was definitely to be avoided.

Sometime along the way, the vision was allowed to fade, along with Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy (there was no Easter Bunny down our way, for some strange reason; possibly because we couldn't afford chocolate easter Eggs), but oddly was never properly replaced with an "adult" version.

So, you guys who know about these things, enlighten me please.

What exactly will I miss out on? And is it really as dire in the other place as you would like me to believe? Are the fires of Hell still burning, or will it be more like Geelong on a wet Sunday?

Hi Pericles,
I have one word for you...stigmata,
If one believes heaven is full of angels playing harps sitting on white fluffy clouds, then so be it. When we go and this is what we believe, then let it be so.
I for one, would be looking forward to the big jump if heaven is like this, on the other hand, if hell is described as brimstone and fire for all eternity, I would not choose to go there, unless I was some kind of pyromanical masochist!
This is what life has taught us from young, God is good, Satan is bad.
All things to do with good is God and all things to do with bad is Satan. (sorry for the two being in the same sentence) see...stigmata!
We as humans have ourselves to blame for the pictures we create in our minds for when the curtain comes down.
Maybe we all go to that apparent identical Earth orbiting in the exact path as ours on the other side of the Sun, who knows? They say the other Earth is a mirror image to ours. It is also said that the Earth we live on, is in fact hell and we are here due to our wrong doings in our previous lives. Speculation due to the unknown, this is what we are faced with, until somebody comes up with some hard evidence as to whether an afterlife truly exists...keep believing there are angels with harps on fluffy white clouds and enjoy the life you are living in.