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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Loud Whispers]

You think a life of enforced happiness wouldn't be personality changing?

We talking opium or just Americano

You think a you without sin is actually you?

By definition me without fingers is still me

Edit: I just thought of Pullman's Dark Materials. The "Dust" is the sin, and yet without it we are nothing.

We're still something

[TD1]

I was using hyperbole. We are something - it's just that something is a lesser form of self.
---
We're talking opium.
---
You without fingers is still you. You with part of your personality removed is not "still you."

[Frumple]

I don't see how heaven fits into your criteria.

The existence without sin is personality mangling, the unending worship is either boring and/or personality mangling, the bit where you occasionally go and watch things in hell get tortured is hopefully either personality mangling or torturous in itself, implied part where you're okay that family and loved ones, or even just people period, are probably being tortured is again either hopefully torturous, more of the same (no improvement over mortal life), and/or the results of personality mangling. Few other bits, I do believe, though I can't recall particular details on the rest.

Best I've ever seen someone claim it can offer is either more of the same with less (or at least different) suffering or your soul/self basically ripped to shreds and then reassembled into something entirely different, and that's... at best, not really much more appealing than an opium pump or targeted lobotomy. No thanks, y'know?

[Loud Whispers]

I was using hyperbole. We are something - it's just that something is a lesser form of self.

Like a slightly retarded version of yourself?

We're talking opium.

Sheeeit

You without fingers is still you. You with part of your personality removed is not "still you."

Yeah it is, you've just changed

[origamiscienceguy]

I don't see how heaven fits into your criteria.

The existence without sin is personality mangling, the unending worship is either boring and/or personality mangling, the bit where you occasionally go and watch things in hell get tortured is hopefully either personality mangling or torturous in itself, implied part where you're okay that family and loved ones, or even just people period, are probably being tortured is again either hopefully torturous, more of the same (no improvement over mortal life), and/or the results of personality mangling. Few other bits, I do believe, though I can't recall particular details on the rest.

Best I've ever seen someone claim it can offer is either more of the same with less (or at least different) suffering or your soul/self basically ripped to shreds and then reassembled into something entirely different, and that's... at best, not really much more appealing than an opium pump or targeted lobotomy. No thanks, y'know?

Well, we really have no idea what happens in the afterlife. What I remember is that:

-We get a new, perfect body (no cancer, injuries, but still us)
-We still have free will (there is still sinful things to do, but we won't. Either because of a lack of temptation, or we will be much wiser.)
-Eventually, we will live on a new, perfect earth. (Probably the same wildlife, but all the animals would be vegetarians or something.)

[Rolepgeek]

I'm really not seeing the whole 'will have free will, but won't sin' thing. Unless God removes the parts of our minds/personalities that makes us desirous of another's possessions, even if they be abstract ones like wife or husband, we will have temptation, if there is social interaction. And while I can see the whole 'wiser so we don't sin' thing, in the sense of us knowing it's a bad idea for a variety of reasons, and never acting on it and setting the thought aside and blah, if I remember right, having that desire in the first place, is sin.

Also

PLANTS HAVE FEELINGS TOO YOU MURDERER THEY REACT TO STIMULI AND GROW BETTER TO MUSIC HOW DARE YOU

Also, I have to wonder whether Trans people would get have their body or their brain chemistry changed to fit the other. Because there is some evidence that it has to do with hormone imbalances during gestation. When and how much testosterone you receive in the womb. Brain has a map of the body, see, and dysphasia is basically when the map of the body and the actual body don't match up, so the parts that are there that "shouldn't" be feel alien, while the parts that aren't there feel missing. It's like ghost limbs for people who've lost a limb, but sorta in the other direction. To some extent this applies to masculine/feminine and gender identification. As someone's gender is a fairly large chunk of their identity, if not necessarily their personality (though personality being the same either way would be...odd, to most people, I have to wonder which one would get 'fixed'.

I will say this is defense of it though.
@Frumple: Someone who is an asshole has an intervention and learns to stop being an asshole. This is also personality mangling, but I would also argue that it is not a bad thing. You are currently making a Noncentral Fallacy, and while I am not trying to attack you, I feel I must point it out. Martin Luther King Jr. was a criminal. He was just the good kind of criminal. What are the aspects of personality mangling that make it bad? Would those apply to the life without sin imagining of heaven? I can easily imagine it in a lesser form, with more of a 'you have more self-control, willpower, and wisdom, so everyone is able to refrain from sin and resist temptation with ease' with the obvious caveat that if you're the type of person who would sin on their own (truly sin, not bullshit 'fall in love with wrong people stuff' here, let's not argue in bad faith here), you're kinda not getting into heaven in the first place.

I mean, I'm fairly generous, but I can see why God would keep those sorts out. The rest of the bits of the bible are just to try to make sure people can do their best to understand how to become close to God, because that is an end-goal in and of itself for Him. And if you go with the whole annihilation idea, which is the most merciful He can be, if you squint and look at it sideways, then it fits neatly. Plenty of ways for it to be self-consistent. Taking the 2000 year old book written by hundreds of different people at vastly varying times with bits and pieces added or taken out as it suited the fancy of the first blokes to keep copying it down, and that's all before the translation, literally and exactly in all aspects forever, is not one of those ways.

In all honesty, though, I'm shooting for immortality in this life, not the next. Nanomachines, son.

[Rolan7]

Since there's very little detail on heavenly existence, most people seem to assume it's "Whatever would be nicest".  In which case people probably have their ideal body, with it updating to match their whims at any moment (assuming we can still have whims.  Those might count as desire, aka a flaw).

I really liked Mark Twain's take on that idea.  On reaching heaven, apparently most people immediately assumed young, fit and healthy forms.  Often with a harp and robe because "that's how it's supposed to work, right?".  Then they'd sit around playing music for God with the other beautiful newbies until eventually they got bored and wandered off.  I think most people gravitated to older forms eventually, the more appropriate to sit around and discuss existence.

[TheBiggerFish]

Yeah, that sounds more like it...

[origamiscienceguy]

And we will be praising God with whatever we do.

[Orange Wizard]

And we will be praising God with whatever we do.

Yeah, but that doesn't really mean anything when it comes to what we're doing. Best guess is that'd be like this life, with jobs and games and books and bad cooking.
The differences would be that everyone is nice to each other and goes to church on Sunday. And we don't suffer from illness and so on.

Also, disclaimer - pretty much everything re: Heaven is speculative. We can infer from some things (like Eden, stuff Jesus said, and occasionally the epistles) the basic idea, but for the most part it's just making it up as we go along. It's best to bear that in mind.

...

Personally I prefer Pratchett's take on the afterlife, that is, whatever you want, but this is based on a book so... um... never mind.

[TheBiggerFish]

The afterlife is what you make of it seems to be common to Pratchett and also Mark Twain.

[Rolan7]

And they somehow make it interesting, but in the end it seems like wishful thinking.
Maybe my favorite afterlife was from that one absurdly popular webcomic that's on hiatus.  It might technically be better than Mark Twain's heaven:

When you die, you wander a dreamworld made of everyone's memories.  You can meet people you knew, or other versions of them (and yourself).  The specific events you see, and people you interact with, even the time you spend (days, years, eons) are basically what's needed to conclude your "story".  And once it's done, you die for real.

I like it because it has the potential to be super unpleasant, if there's shit you still need to confront.  That feels more fair than most afterlifes.  And it can involve studying all of history for thousands of years, if that's what you need.  Most of all, it has an eventual ending at the appropriate time.  Instead of throwing away everything you lived for and merging with or eternally praising a greater will, you get a satisfying conclusion.

Also dodges the potential sanity issues of immortality.  So does reincarnation, which I'm also fond of. 

Then there's that time-travelling reincarnation where everyone is just one soul...  That, I'm not crazy about...  Time travel is dumb

[Bohandas]

I'm really not seeing the whole 'will have free will, but won't sin' thing. Unless God removes the parts of our minds/personalities that makes us desirous of another's possessions, even if they be abstract ones like wife or husband, we will have temptation, if there is social interaction. And while I can see the whole 'wiser so we don't sin' thing, in the sense of us knowing it's a bad idea for a variety of reasons, and never acting on it and setting the thought aside and blah, if I remember right, having that desire in the first place, is sin.

Well you'll be like a rat in an experiment constantly and mindlessly pressing a button to stimulate the pleasure center of it's brain, perpetually content in this activity and no longer having any desire to do anything else

[Arx]

I'd like to take a moment to point out that as far as I know there's actually nothing in the Bible describing what the Kingdom of Heaven is like other than 'a better place', basically. There's not really anything suggesting eternal bliss or being rewired to be unable to sin. It's just 'life'. There's also some stuff about no male or female and no marriage, but it's vague and not hugely relevant to the topic at hand.

[Rolepgeek]

I'm really not seeing the whole 'will have free will, but won't sin' thing. Unless God removes the parts of our minds/personalities that makes us desirous of another's possessions, even if they be abstract ones like wife or husband, we will have temptation, if there is social interaction. And while I can see the whole 'wiser so we don't sin' thing, in the sense of us knowing it's a bad idea for a variety of reasons, and never acting on it and setting the thought aside and blah, if I remember right, having that desire in the first place, is sin.

Well you'll be like a rat in an experiment constantly and mindlessly pressing a button to stimulate the pleasure center of it's brain, perpetually content in this activity and no longer having any desire to do anything else

...how?

If I'm pretty content with my life as it is, happy and contented, does this mean that I'm like that right now? If you're basically saying it's wire-heading, I would have to disagree with you, as wire-heading entails not interacting with other people, or at least not doing so in any meaningful way other than to try and get back to wire-heading.

If your objection is just that it's sorta similar, then I find your argument inherently flawed. If you think that the list of possible things to do that don't involve sin are so finite as to necessitate some sort of mindless pleasure-seeking activity, which is quite a bit of what sin is considered bad for (gluttony, lust, greed, envy...), then I'd also have to disagree.