Where is Heaven?

magilum
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Where is Heaven?

Where is Heaven?

 

 

Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?

Ooh heaven is a place on earth

Belinda Carlisle

 

 

Tower of Babel - Did it threaten to reach Heaven?

And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

 

And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

 

And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

 

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

 

So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

 

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Genesis 11:4-9, Bible, KJV

 

 

Christ's ascension - following the resurrection, Christ is described as flying up into Heaven bodily.

And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

Acts 1:9-11, Bible, KJV

 

After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.

Mark 16:19, Bible, KJV

 

While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.

Luke 24:51, Bible, KJV

 

Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.“ And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on.

Revelation 11:12, Bible, KJV

 

 

Elijah goes “up” to Heaven.

 

As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.

2 Kings 2:12, Bible, KJV

 

 

The Rapture - the saved anticipate flying skyward bodily.

 

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

 

Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, Bible, KJV

 

 

Observation has spoken conclusively on what is above us: gradations of increasingly light gasses, followed by an inhospitable vacuum. Many more stars, moons, planets, solar systems, galaxies, nebulas and so on, join us in space. For iron age people, though, for whom looking up at the sky was the limit of one's knowledge of it, placing something beyond it for them would have been like placing something beyond the universe, or beyond the known dimensions would be for us. It is a point beyond our observable experience, and a gap in our respective bases of knowledge. In light of what we now know about the sky, the atmosphere, space, it has become popular, if not essential, to identify Heaven under more modern theoretical terms: as a dimension. However, it poses a problem for the supposed accounts of what are meant to be actual ascensions. If it doesn't follow that reaching an extra-dimensional place would begin with floating upward, beyond the clouds, would a real account of such an event have recorded it as such?

 

It would make absolute sense for the people of the day to view the sky as an end -- as it was the end of their experience and knowledge of the universe. Any story one were to concoct at the time could easily take for granted that the sky literally lead to Heaven. But if we attempt to update that idea, we must either doubt their experience, doubt their sincerity, or take liberties in interpretation we have no justification taking.

 

---

 

A couple mainstream mentions of an extra-dimensional Heaven

 

Heaven -- Where Is It? How Do We Get There?

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=1374010

 

The New Heaven

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,939257,00.html


magilum
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bump

bump


Cpt_pineapple
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Thanks a lot, now I got that

Thanks a lot, now I got that song stuck in my head.


Avecrien
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The rapture deals with

The rapture deals with coming up to meet someone as he's coming down, not floating off somewhere beyond clouds. The destination is the same as the guy that's being met, earth.
I don't believe heaven, as a place for special people to go when they die, exists.
I believe its a corruption of and completely unfair to the hebrew notions behind the word. Some people just want reality to revolve around them. Some people don't like reality.

Mike Gravel for president!


Vastet
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Heaven is the feeling when

Heaven is the feeling when being with a beautiful, intelligent woman who loves you as much as you love her. Eye-wink

Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.


magilum
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Avecrien wrote: The rapture

Avecrien wrote:
The rapture deals with coming up to meet someone as he's coming down, not floating off somewhere beyond clouds. The destination is the same as the guy that's being met, earth.
I don't believe heaven, as a place for special people to go when they die, exists.
I believe its a corruption of and completely unfair to the hebrew notions behind the word. Some people just want reality to revolve around them. Some people don't like reality.

Where would we be that we'd need to "come up" to meet "someone" on his way down?
I appreciate your replying to my question, actually. I'm curious whether your notions are supported within religious texts, or whether you've derived your views personally. I'm not baiting you, I'm actually curious about this.


Hambydammit
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I wrote a story last year

I wrote a story last year about where heaven is. What a lot of theists don't realize is that the Bible says precisely where heaven is. You just have to do a little extrapolation. Anyway, without further ado, (and only minor editorial updates,) I give you:

HOW GOD TAUGHT US WHERE HEAVEN IS

Once upon a time, there were some people who lived in a place called Amalek. They were called Amalekites. There was a time when they were very mad at the Israelites. When they found out that the Israelites were at a place called Rephidim, they sent their army out to attack the Israelites.
The Israelites were ruled by a man named Moses. Moses was the leader of the Israelites, but Joshua was in charge of the army, so Joshua chose some of the men from the army to go fight the Amalekites. Moses told him, "Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands."
In those days, God liked to do strange things with his super powers to make sure the Israelites knew that he liked them better than other people. When Moses went up on top of the hill to watch Joshua's army try to kill the Amalekites, God told him to lift up his staff over his head. Moses did this, and as soon as he did, the Israelites started winning the battle. When he lowered the staff, the Israelites started losing the battle. Since Moses realized that every time he lowered his arms, God would let the Amalekites kill more of the Israelites, he tried very hard to keep the staff lifted over his head. Since he hadn't been to Marine Boot Camp, he wasn't very good at this. His arms got so tired, in fact, that two men named Aaron and Hur had to put a big stone on the ground for him to sit on. When he sat down, the staff was still over Moses's head, but was low enough that Aaron and Hur could each hold a side of it, and Moses just had to keep his hands touching the staff, because if he cheated and took one of his hands off to rest his arms, God would let lots of the Israelites die, because he loved them better than other people. God was very happy at the end of the day, because with Aaron and Hur's help, Moses had held the staff above his head all day long without letting it down and allowing some of his army to get killed. (At least he didn't let it down after he figured out what a dilemma he had on his hands, or rather, in his hands. It was too bad about the few people that died before he knew any better.)
After Joshua finished killing the Amalekites, God did a really strange thing. He told Moses to write down what had happened, and make sure that Joshua saw the writing, because God was going to erase the memory of Amalek from under heaven. This is how we know where heaven is. Since the words were written down, and anybody on earth can read them, the memory of Amalek is still on Earth. Since God said that the memory of Amalek would be erased from under heaven, we know that heaven is below the earth. This is strange, because in another story, we'll learn how a man rode up into heaven in a chariot made of fire, but that's ok, because the earth is round, and if he went upwards slowly enough, by the time he got high enough, the earth would have rotated so that he would enter heaven. Anyway, since we know that heaven is below the earth, and the earth is round, and rotates on an axis while rotating around the sun while rotating around a galactic center that is flying away from the center of the universe, we know definitively that heaven is at a point exactly opposite the hill where Moses had to keep his hands over his head for a day. Since we don't know for sure exactly where that hill is, we just know that heaven rotates around the earth at a spot exactly opposite some spot in the middle east, so it would look like it was up for half the people in the world, and down for the other half. (There is currently a group of astro-physicists on commission to come up with the mathematical formula that will allow us to predict the exact location of heaven at any instant. At this time, the best guess is somewhere over Arkansas.)

God also decided that he would be at war with the Amalekites from generation to generation. This didn't take long, since he is God, and that's why there are no more Amalekites in the world today.

 

Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin

http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism



magilum
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Thanks for the links,

Thanks for the links, Technarch.
*Reads*