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[MrRoboto75]

If I leave town and never come back, I haven't died.

[Citation Needed]

[Dunamisdeos]

Also for reals let's be honest, if you go to Mars and never come back, you have statistically been eaten by xenos or forced into some kind of alien slave-mining getup.

[martinuzz]

If you go to Mars and never come back, you either have fallen into the cocao bean grinder, or the maple syrup mixer.

[Reelya]

I was talking to a Christian once and just casually mentioned how people used to (e.g. back in the bible-writing days) assume that heaven was literally up in the sky (a physical place) and that hell was literally under the ground (e.g. where the Lava comes from, fairly obviously). He retorted how that wasn't true and that they always knew heaven was "another dimension". Which is clearly wrong as the entire concept of "another dimension" is clearly a concept steeped in modern physics.

So, we're up in space now, so where are the heavenly gates?

EDIT: It's probably not a whole lot different to the Flat Earth people who hold that "past" Antarctica you fall off the Earth, a convenient place that no regular person can really go and check, and heaven was just assumed to be up in the sky, another convenient hard-to-reach place.

[scourge728]

I was talking to a Christian once and just casually mentioned how people used to (e.g. back in the bible-writing days) assume that heaven was literally up in the sky (a physical place) and that hell was literally under the ground (e.g. where the Lava comes from, fairly obviously). He retorted how that wasn't true and that they always knew heaven was "another dimension". Which is clearly wrong as the entire concept of "another dimension" is clearly a concept steeped in modern physics.

So, we're up in space now, so where are the heavenly gates?

higher

[martinuzz]

Heavenly Gates? What's that? Bill Gates trying his hand at his own billionaire pet space project?
Let's pray that there's no Windows in those gates.

[redwallzyl]

I know that one of the Apollo astronauts gave a presentation to some people from Napal and one of the kids asked if he saw anyone on the moon. He said no. Turns out that particular groups version of heaven was on the moon.

[smjjames]

I was talking to a Christian once and just casually mentioned how people used to (e.g. back in the bible-writing days) assume that heaven was literally up in the sky (a physical place) and that hell was literally under the ground (e.g. where the Lava comes from, fairly obviously). He retorted how that wasn't true and that they always knew heaven was "another dimension". Which is clearly wrong as the entire concept of "another dimension" is clearly a concept steeped in modern physics.

So, we're up in space now, so where are the heavenly gates?

Not really, the concept of other dimensions is used plenty in science fiction, fantasty (elemental planes, etc) and 'the spirit world' is all over the place. So, it's not a huge logical leap since theres the concept of dimensions outside of the one steeped in science.

I know that one of the Apollo astronauts gave a presentation to some people from Napal and one of the kids asked if he saw anyone on the moon. He said no. Turns out that particular groups version of heaven was on the moon.

Some religions are going to have to undergo cultural shock, unfortunately, either that or adapt.

[Reelya]

@smj, that's missing the point a little. The debate was about what people believed at the time the bible was written.

Science fiction and fantasy writing are all modern phenomena. For example, in the New Testament it mentions that on the Day of Judgement, the dead will literally rise from their graves on Earth to face judgement. All supernatural phenomena were in fact viewed as being very closely aligned with observable physical reality. These religions were not being advocated to literate people with advanced concepts such as non-physical planes of reality and the like, they were being advocated to peasants who only knew basic physicality.

Religions only really got into the "yes but it's to ethereal too be seen ~woooooo~" stuff after the rise of science started challenging religious doctrines. When religion dominated explanations of the real world they merely stated outright that the universe adhered to their own set of rules and there was no reason to speculate about hidden realms. God was up in the sky, and that's all you needed to know. End of debate. It's only doctrines on the decline that need to start dealing in "yes but you can't see it" stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres
EDIT: For example, read through the Celestial Spheres stuff and you can see that they believed that outside the opaque sphere which holds the stars up, there's the realm of Gods/Angels/Ascended people. And the claim was made that it would take 8000 years to walk to the star-sphere. i.e. a completely physical place "up there" but just too far away for any human to get there.

[Draignean]

I was talking to a Christian once and just casually mentioned how people used to (e.g. back in the bible-writing days) assume that heaven was literally up in the sky (a physical place) and that hell was literally under the ground (e.g. where the Lava comes from, fairly obviously). He retorted how that wasn't true and that they always knew heaven was "another dimension". Which is clearly wrong as the entire concept of "another dimension" is clearly a concept steeped in modern physics.

So, we're up in space now, so where are the heavenly gates?

OBJECTION!

While the word 'dimension' is modern, the idea of a world behind the world really isn't. I have no idea if you're right about the majority of people believing that in the past, but 'the entire concept of "another dimension" is clearly a concept steeped in modern physics' needs a couple citations to be believable to me.

[Reelya]

Well, no, the point being that people believed that God's location was a physical place that you could define as in a location relative to Earth (See Celestial Sphere theology). Early people were not sophisticated enough to believe in alternate dimensions, and religions had no need to speculate in that direction - since they could just claim Heaven is a place far away, which is something primitive desert nomads could comprehend.

It was only after it was conceivable to fly to the heavens, and things like Celestial Spheres fell out of favor that religions had any reason to speculate that God's kingdom wasn't actually some physically (in principle) reachable place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres
Note that the Celestial Sphere theory, with God's realm outside the star sphere was only really challenged from the late 16th/early 17th century onwards, due to the improvement in telescopes and astronomy. It was the dominant view for thousands of years, and the current view adopted by religions is only an after-thought which is backpedaling from the traditional view. Even the Copernican model still had the Spheres + God residing in the outer sphere:

The English almanac maker, Thomas Digges, delineated the spheres of the new cosmological system in his Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes… (1576). Here he arranged the "orbes" in the new Copernican order, expanding one sphere to carry "the globe of mortalitye", the Earth, the four elements, and the Moon; and expanding the starry sphere infinitely upward to encompass all the stars, and also to serve as "the court of the Great God, the habitacle of the elect, and of the coelestiall angelles."

[pikachu17]

Early people were not sophisticated enough to think of alternate dimensions?
Does no one who believed in spirit worlds count?
While probably not counting as early, the Norse also believed in alternate dimensions.
The idea that early people did not think of other dimensions seems pretty false to me.

[Draignean]

Well, no, the point being that people believed that God's location was a physical place that you could define as in a location relative to Earth (See Celestial Sphere theology). Early people were not sophisticated enough to believe in alternate dimensions, and religions had no need to speculate in that direction - since they could just claim Heaven is a place far away, which is something primitive desert nomads could comprehend.

It was only after it was conceivable to fly to the heavens, and things like Celestial Spheres fell out of favor that religions had any reason to speculate that God's kingdom wasn't actually some physically (in principle) reachable place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres
Note that the Celestial Sphere theory, with God's realm outside the star sphere only fell away in about the 18th century, due to the improvement in telescopes and astronomy. It was the dominant view for thousands of years, and the current view adopted by religions is only an after-thought which is backpedaling from the traditional view.

See, you're defending the wrong point. I don't disagree with you about Christendom. I disagree with this,

"Early people were not sophisticated enough to believe in alternate dimensions"

Read up on your norse mythology sometime. People were more than sophisticated enough to believe in a layered cosmos. The type of scientific dimensions you're talking about are utterly irrelevant to the conversation, in much the same way that string theory is irrelevant to a conversation of yarn. Dimensions, as a scientific construct, are unnecessary for conversing about otherwheres and otherwhens. People now use 'dimension' as a shorthand to mean an alternate reality, and even then they do it in a rather vague manner.

Alternate dimension and alternate reality, in the sense that they refer to a place that cannot be physically reached from here, are simple enough concepts that they have been integrated into a variety of religions.

Again, don't disagree with your point about christianity, but you're using a scope of the word dimension that very few are likely to share in casual conversation.

[Lord Shonus]

While the notion of the "celestial spheres" dates back to the philosophers of Greece, the notion that "heaven" exists just outside the outermost one is a medieval notion, and a relatively short-lived one. It didn't show up until the late 1200s, and died off completely when the whole notion of celestial spheres was debunked in the early 1500s.

Some of the earliest Jewish writings conceive Heaven (the dwelling place of God, not the afterlife) as a physical place, but this fades away quickly.

[Reelya]

The Norse didn't really believe in alternate dimensions in that sense. They have a god-realm a human realm and a dead-realm, the same sky/earth/subterranean divide, which is clear when you look at their artwork depictions. They had no reason not to believe that these were physical places located relative to each other.

And invisible spirits doesn't mean they're not here all around us, so it's not like D&D Astral Planes or something. When you die, a physical Valkyrie takes you to the physical place. Sure, can't be seen, but that doesn't mean that it's in a different realm of existence.