Here’s a question I never found a satisfactory answer for. Not when I was a theist, not now that I’m an atheist.
The religious believe that people who die in a state of grace ascend to heaven. In fact at least one Christian believes you bodily ascend, and the loss of a limb in life is a problem.
Anyway, it seems to be a common belief that you die and ascend as you are at that moment.
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@Jeber I think a lot of people somehow imagine "Heaven" will be just like here, with the same sorts of bodies, but not old and sick. Lots of illustrated bibles have helpful watercolor depictions. White robes, fifties hair, everyone's caucasian usually.
I think people just have trouble imagining anything other than what they've experienced, which is being conscious and alive, and not remembering anything before that, and hearing you go "somewhere".
I hesitate, even now, to describe "Heaven".
@Jeber I think I'd have to be more of a poet, and even then, poetry makes you feel something, but different people may interpret a poem differently.
There is no "body" as one would imagine it. You are there in the wholeness and entirety of your being, with other lights, in an interaction that forms a shared landscape/agora(?).
Instead of matter, there is that which Matters. That which gives form and space and function to what is matter down here.
(Cont'd)
@Jeber In that realm/perspective/vantage(?), you know you are home. You were always home. You and your home are part of each other.
You can see all of who you are and could be and have been, and in all directions around you there are others, and you are not alone.
As I recall it from my own experience anyway. And I may simply be unable to do the subject justice, my brain may be addled, or I may just not have sufficient shared language.
@Jeber For all I know, this "Heaven" people go on about isn't even the place I described.
The Creator I know doesn't resemble the ranting, violent bully in certain modern* stories. I'm still a tad stunned that there's people who think the thing that created the universe sounds and acts that way.
Is my "Heaven" even the same thing they're talking about?
*modern in my mind, is the last 2000 years or so.
@Jeber I think there is no satisfactory answer because the theology is childish. I'm an atheist but some theology at least makes sense. Heaven is a silly concept -- but it does seem to be good from a sales perspective.