How Come People Think When They Die They Go To Heaven?

How come people think when they die they go to heaven

Doesn't say that the in the Bible. It does say that there will be 144,000 in heaven from the earth that will rule with Jesus for 1000 years

 

I don't know...there are a number of reasons. For instance, many people who have had near-death experiences describe returning from a place of bliss.

It could also just be that everything is golden and eternal in some sense and rather than the trials and tribulations one experiences in this life of confusion, we become one with that true nature at death.

But I don't know why people who believe the Bible believe that if the Bible says otherwise. I guess the Bible is mostly symbolic of good things for most people.

 

mostly because they want to.

 

I think some people need to believe there is more to life than our existence in this world. Especially people who lead miserable, unhappy lives with no meaning. I think the promise of an afterlife that will be so much better than their life on this Earth may be what keeps them going and gets them through the dreariness and drudgery of their day to day existence.

 

Many are raised to believe that. Which i believe came from the fear of death/nothingness. Many don't want to believe they will fully die so they adapt or cling to the imaginary belief of an afterlife.

 

People have such a one-dimensional view of reality. It's so amazing that we manage to survive at all with this amount of stupidity and shortsighted pessimism that it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were a fourth dimension in which all conscious experience was eternal.

 

I think the future thefutureawaits is alluding to is the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Most Christians today believe that at the time of death their souls will go on to a different dimension: heaven, hell, or purgatory. But the earliest Christians seemed to hold the view of some Jewish sects, like the Essenes and Pharisees, that when people died their souls would be warehoused in Sheol until the Resurrection when they would be reunited with their restored bodies and would live again in the Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven that would be established on Earth under the rule of Jesus. Jesus spoke repeatedly of the Kingdom of God which would happen on earth before some who were alive when he was speaking had passed away. Clement I, Bishop of Rome in the late first century, held that view. According to New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, the idea that people's souls went immediately to heaven in the sky developed as people's confidence in the imminent return of Christ waned. The older belief is still held mainly by Jehovah's Witnesses. So Thefutureawaits, are you a Jehovah's Witness?

 

Is believe in an afterlife really defined as a one dimensional view of reality? Because believing in an afterlife kinda turns the one dimsnsion reality over on its head don't it and the folks that don't believe in anything would be better off as being labeled as having a one dimension reality. And that reality is life and death. Pretty one dimensional and boring I must say.

Makes sense to me anyway.

 

More like a dimensional view of fantasy.

 

A dimensional view of fantasy?

You don't seriously believe that do you? I mean take a read of the 10th dimension:

"Scientists believe that the fourth dimension is time, which governs the properties of all known matter at any given point. Along with the three other dimensions, knowing an objects position in time is essential to plotting its position in the universe. The other dimensions are where the deeper possibilities come into play, and explaining their interaction with the others is where things get particularly tricky for physicists.

According to Superstring Theory, the fifth and sixth dimensions are where the notion of possible worlds arises. If we could see on through to the fifth dimension, we would see a world slightly different from our own that would give us a means of measuring the similarity and differences between our world and other possible ones.

In the sixth, we would see a plane of possible worlds, where we could compare and position all the possible universes that start with the same initial conditions as this one (i.e. the Big Bang). In theory, if you could master the fifth and sixth dimension, you could travel back in time or go to different futures.

In the seventh dimension, you have access to the possible worlds that start with different initial conditions. Whereas in the fifth and sixth, the initial conditions were the same and subsequent actions were different, here, everything is different from the very beginning of time. The eighth dimension again gives us a plane of such possible universe histories, each of which begins with different initial conditions and branches out infinitely (hence why they are called infinities).

In the ninth dimension, we can compare all the possible universe histories, starting with all the different possible laws of physics and initial conditions. In the tenth and final dimension, we arrive at the point in which everything possible and imaginable is covered. Beyond this, nothing can be imagined by us lowly mortals, which makes it the natural limitation of what we can conceive in terms of dimensions."

It's basically telling us that our own feeble imagination can conjure up absolutely anything with absolute certainty, it's all about your imagination. So like I said, the non believers live in a small secluded world of lesser dimensions.

 

Your body is like anything in life, eventually it wears out..

Has to stop eventually..

Puredarkness said it right, it's the fear of death, the nothingness.

If you watch someone die, you see it in stages..

With the idea that all are forgiven on death.. that afterlife place has to be huge!

Not 1 person can be confirmed as coming back and saying there s an after life..

Which is a bummer for terrorist.. lol

 

So Jehovah's witnesses don't believe in heaven? Interesting, I never knew that

I dont believe in Heaven but I understand why people do. I have a huge fear of death, mine as well as others. Life was easier back in my Christian childhood days when I knew I was going to float up to heaven after I died and reunite with my deceased love ones. Now that I dont believe in heaven life is pretty much one big existential crisis for me

 

Death is a sleep like state. You become non existent. Your soul does not go on after death. You were born a living soul and when you die, you are a dead soul. The immortality of the soul is the biggest lie that the churches teach. Well that and Hell so you burn forever. Not biblical

 

Absolutely. We are speaking of heaven, beliefs here. These are your beliefs not your reality.

Absolutely. I enjoy playing with my imagination and have certain beliefs but i don't consider that reality.

 

Never read so much bullshit in my life.

 

I wasn't saying the belief in an afterlife is a one dimensional view of reality. I was trying to say the insistence that it's impossible is a one-dimensional view given what we know. I can take an afterlife or leave it, personally. If this life is all I've got, then it's all I'll ever have...it's not like I'll be missing something.

But the fundamental knowledge that we now possess, such as the arrow of time being a purely human construct, ought to make it clear that an eternal consciousness is entirely possible. It's not wishful thinking on my part at all -- there's no guarantee that this state of existence won't be entirely unpleasant.

I don't get all the assumptions that are being made. Consciousness itself is fundamentally a mystery. We have no idea how it interacts with time and space or whether or not it is even possible for it to be completely erased once it has come into existence. It's so simplistic to reduce us to bodies when we are absolutely clueless as to the true nature of the universe and therefore what a body really even is. Just because you can experience it on some level doesn't mean you actually fully comrehend what it is.

Even if this were all instigated by a fear of death, that would mean nothing. Many truths can be learned through fear of something else. I had a fear of being late for work, and somebody dreamed up the automobile. Etc. Wherever these ideas come from isn't the point. It's that they're perfectly viable given what we know, and instead of just taking it upon ourselves to know everything, we might open ourselves up to the fact that this is all very mysterious, actually. So many people exercise absolutely unreasonable, unwavering faith in the power of their own perceptions and then ridicule others for having absolute faith in the power of their imaginations.

None of this guarantees anything, of course. I just personally find it more interesting and honest to keep an open mind and to be truthful with myself about what I can and cannot know without any doubt whatsoever, and honestly there isn't much. Our perceptions are useful, but why wouldn't they be? Our successes in predicting how what we can perceive will function are not bestowing upon us absolute perspective on the true nature of the cosmos.

 

So what led you away from the flock? I was raised Catholic, went to parochial school, had to go to church, had a fundamentalist step-mom, and other bad stuff. I stopped believing a little at a time, starting at about 14 I think. By the time I was 18 I was so fed up with it that I walked away for good. By the time I was 20 I was an atheist.

My own death no longer seems frightening but I have a huge fear of losing more people that are close to me, especially my brother. He is the last one left alive from my immediate family...I don't want to be the last one.

 

I'm sure they believe in Heaven, but not as a place people go to as soon as they die. As I understand it, they believe that when people die they go into a temporary state of either dormancy or non-existence until Christ comes again, when they'll all be resurrected in new, improved bodies and live on the New Earth. The Kingdom of Heaven will be established on the Earth, sinners will be punished and 144 thousand "elect" will enjoy a special place in God's company. The New Earth will be HUGE to accommodate all the people who have ever been alive and will have bodies. And there will be no more death. This seems to be what the first Christians believed. But I could be wrong. Over to you, Witnesses, for additions and corrections.

 

I just find it contradicting that a non believer can talk about other dimensions while concluding that believers don't know what they're talking about. I mean it's so ironic and hypocritical lol. Pretty much one of the silliest things I've read.

 

Yes, If such a place exist it will be.

Who concluded what?

 

It was slow progress for me too, I remember when I was 14 or 15 being concerned because my best friend didn't believe in God and so I thought she would go to hell..then I started thinking that couldnt be right because she was a good kid.

Then when I was 19 or so I started questioning a lot of things, I went through a little spiritual crisis and went and checked out a bunch of books that tried to prove God's existence through science. I don't even really remember reading them but I did read the New Testament in its entirety around the same time, I had studied it in Church but never by myself. And after I finished reading it I realized I didn't believe in God, but I did believe wholeheartedly in Jesus's message of selfless and neighborly love. And I came away from that reading feeling like most Christians I knew had missed the point completely.

 

the afterlife is an excuse people use to console themselves about wasting the one life they actually have...