"The Hellish Pointlessness Of Heaven"

January 22, 2012

Paula Kirby addresses the concept of a meaningful existence sans transubstantiation to immaculate spiritual circumstances (i.e. heaven):

Many Christians claim we have no reason to care about others if there is no God. But this is itself a religious claim, arising from the theological concept of Original Sin, which declares humankind fallen and corrupt. We can safely ignore it, for in reality we do not need childish stories of eternal reward or damnation to coerce us into being good:research shows that the least religious societies have the lowest incidence of social ills, including crime and violence. Healthy humans have empathy built in, and the explanations for this lie in psychology and evolutionary biology: no gods required.
Life cannot be meaningless so long as we have the capacity to affect the well-being of ourselves and others. For true meaninglessness, we would need heaven.
In the state of permanent, perfect bliss that is the very definition of heaven, ‘making a difference’ is ruled out. If the difference made an improvement, the previous state could not have been perfect. If it made things worse, the result would not be perfect. In heaven, neither is possible. Even being reunited with loved ones could not add one jot to their bliss or yours, for heaven would be, by definition, a state that could not be improved on.
Just consider for a moment the hellish pointlessness of heaven. At least in our real existence our actions have an effect, for better or worse, and it is therefore worth trying to get them right. In an eternal life where we can have no effect whatsoever, we might as well be dead.

I think there’s two flaws with Kirby’s frame.

Firstly, it’s safe to assume that a tri-omni God would be competent to design an afterlife in which “perfect bliss” contained all of the multifarious flaws and pitfalls which were necessary for a person to achieve spiritual grace within its grasp. There’s no theological requirement in the Judeo-Christian tradition that we define heavenly perfection in a way that results in anything other than maximum spiritual satisfaction.

Second, a Judeo-Christian heaven, as I generally understand its proponents to define it, is best understood as a state of spiritual grace. This is similar to the Buddhist formulation of “Desire = suffering.” The desire to be surrounded by loved ones is very much a material, human desire. The fact that the opportunity to “make a difference” doesn’t exist is irrelevant, because in a state of spiritual grace, your desire to have these things wouldn’t exist. Spiritual grace exists prior to, and not because of, the availability of these anthropomorphic accouterments.

The argumentum ad perfectum is better deployed to critique the concept of God’s existence before the material universe. If God is both eternal and “perfect,” then God obviously existed prior to the universe. If God was perfect prior to the creation of the universe (and by perfect, we mean optimal circumstances in all ways), then any change in God’s environment or circumstances would be a deviation from the state of perfection. Since the universe exists, God is either, a) imperfect, b) does not exist, or c) can exist paradoxically, as both perfect and imperfect simultaneously.

Keep in mind that option © is not metaphysically absurd. If we accept God as an eternal, immaterial first cause, then it follows that God created logic (and ergo existed before it). A God that exists prior to logic is not subject to it. Put another way: God, as defined by traditional Judeo-Christian theology, can indeed create a boulder that he(she?) can’t lift.

Returning to the question of meaning, I think the “heaven” issue is better addressed from the Atheist point of view in the form a bifurcated observation: First, if you need God/afterlife to justify your good acts towards others, you’re admitting that you need the external threat of future punishment to justify your good acts towards your friends and family. You need to be able to look your loved ones in the eye and tell them that without God, you wouldn’t see fit to care for them. That’s hardly an enviable position to be in.

Secondly. if a peaceful, perfect afterlife does await you, and you will in fact be detached from all material desires (including your relationships with friends and family), then the best thing I could possibly do for my loved ones is to relieve all of them from their mortal coil post-haste, so as to usher them towards paradise. As I’ve written on a prior occasion, an orthodox afterlife of rewards and punishments cheapens life as we know it by making it “second best by far” in the overall scheme of existence. That’s a conflict that I have yet to see rectified in a satisfying manner by modern theological traditions.

9:00pm | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxFDDyTc

(Notes: 17)