Things to do in Heaven when you're dead - Page 2

sir_pudding · 07-07-2007, 05:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BillionSix

Michael: Um, I've met him. We had one on one conversations back in the old days, back when we were all creating things.

I thought that it turned out that they were speaking to God through Metatron. If Lucifer was right, there was no God, just an (con-artist) Angel claiming to speak for him. CDaU certainly allows for this, as well as the "God's an Ethereal" possibility.

BillionSix · 07-07-2007, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris the cynic

One would hope.

Given enough time, yeah. He would probably be the subject of a few chuckles around the coffee shops, but thinking the same delusional thoughts can be fun for a lifetime. Eternity is a different manner.

Still, it would be fun to watch him climb the ladder, maybe halfway. Once he feels the power of God infusing him, lightening his spirit, and taking away the cares of the world, and giving him a true feeling of pure peace and goodness, possibly for the first time in his life...... that should really **** him off!

Brian

Sagitta · 07-08-2007, 07:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BillionSix

Once he feels the power of God infusing him, lightening his spirit, and taking away the cares of the world, and giving him a true feeling of pure peace and goodness, possibly for the first time in his life...... that should really **** him off!

Yeah, but a funny sensation isn't going to make a rational person change his judgement.

Blackwing · 07-08-2007, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris the cynic

Why not assign unfavored servitors the duty of convincing them there is a God?

Blink. (Evil GM smile) Why, thank you very much! (Goes away cackling)

BillionSix · 07-08-2007, 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sagitta

Yeah, but a funny sensation isn't going to make a rational person change his judgement.

I think you underestimate what it would be like. I mean the whole of Heaven is supposed to be infused with, like, Cosmic Truth, and stuff.

I think a "funny sensation" that reached someone on that level would definately affect a person. It would be undeniable.
To give another example: If you had searing pain all through your body, and went to the doctor, and he did every test imaginable, and found nothing, and told you that you were in perfect health, a rational person would not say, "Oh. I guess I am not really in pain."
A person who clings to their false belief against all evidence, including the evidence of the senses and spirit, (and athiesm is a false belief, in game) is not rational. He is pointlessly stubborn, even delusional.
A rational person accepts that he can be wrong. That is how scientists operate. They study the available evidence, and use reason to draw conclusions based on that.
The belief that, "Well, I am standing in Heaven, and am surrounded by angels, and blessed souls, and I am looking at a ladder that leads to a place that emanates peace and tranquility, and there are people here that actually remember the creation of the universe and can tell me details about it, and those details corrobarate with each other. I can accept that. But I can't accept that God exists, because he is not currently standing in front of me."
This person is not rational. He would not accept the existance of God if God was there, he would not believe he was God.
At most, he might say, "Oh, he's not God. He is just some ultra-powerful being that created our universe," and he would convince himself that this made sense, because the alternative would be admitting that he was wrong.

You are right. A rational person would not change his judgment over a "funny sensation." But I think that the spiritual truth of the Higher Heavens is more than just a funny sensation. I am not saying it couldn't happen. Many Christians will cling to their beliefs no matter what, with no proof whatsoever. Athiests are no different in that regards. But it's not rational.

Anyway, in real life, I am not religious. I am more of a secular humanist, whatever that means. But in the fiction of the game, "God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food," is an objective reality, and I tend to view in-game things from that perpective.

Besides, it's a moot point, since you can just get someone with the Divine Logic attunement to go talk to him.

Brian

BillionSix · 07-08-2007, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I thought that it turned out that they were speaking to God through Metatron. If Lucifer was right, there was no God, just an (con-artist) Angel claiming to speak for him. CDaU certainly allows for this, as well as the "God's an Ethereal" possibility.

But God has spoken directly since then. At Michael's trial, and Uriel's.

Brian

sir_pudding · 07-08-2007, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BillionSix

But God has spoken directly since then. At Michael's trial, and Uriel's.

Doesn't that violate CDaU? I always thought that God had "Spoken" in some more metaphorical way. In Uriel's case by taking him to the Upper Heavens, and in Michael's perhaps through Yves? For CDaU to hold, the following possibilities cannot be counteracted by evidence in the setting, IMO:

God is the Omniscient, Omnipresent Creator of the Universe
God is just an Ethereal, a former Middle Eastern minor god, who somehow lucked into the most powerful religion on the planet and now is incredibly powerful due to a massive Essence stream.
God never existed. Metatron was a liar.
"God" is really an abstract force, the Symphony itself.

chris the cynic · 07-08-2007, 02:44 PM

Well picture this:
A voice comes down from the Higher Heavens saying, "Michael is Pardoned and absolved of all guilt. Dominic, lay off." When someone says, "It's God," the Symphony confirms it.

What could explain this?

If God is the omnipotent, omniscient, omni-other thing being that created all including Heaven who currently resides in the higher Heavens it stands to reason that God is speaking and all is as it seems.

If God is an Ethereal then presumably he is staying in the higher Heavens and presumably he has made the Symphony bow to his version of the truth, so the situation is unsurprising.

If God never existed then one of the things in that climbed up the ladder shouted that down, the fact that the Symphony is saying it really is god is an echo of the Metatron's lie which was, incidentally, powerful enough to fool the greatest Seraphs in existence and keep them fooled to this day. (Why people don't shout down more often is a good question in this case.)

If God is the Symphony then it is a little harder to work with, you still could have someone who climbed the ladder shouting that down, but you have the question of why the abstract symphony told the assembled Seraphs that it was God speaking. And if someone didn't shout it down why would an abstraction say that, how would an abstraction say that? How would an abstraction say anything? Unless, perhaps, the feeling in Heaven was so dominantly in the, "Lay off, Dominic," direction that the symphony itself was warped was to create an audible statement. In that case it wouldn't be so much conscious speaking as the Symphony reflecting the overwhelming mood, and since, in this way of thinking, the Symphony is God when someone says, "That's God speaking," they are right.

This last possibility is, depending on your view, either very negative for Dominic because he held a view that was so abhorred as to make the symphony cry out for one of only two times in history, of very positive for him in that he stuck to his principles in spite of having almost everyone against him, but either way it requires that the overwhelming position in Heaven was pro Michael. That might not fit into all campaigns.

-

I'm sure someone else could come up with better rationalizations.

Sagitta · 07-08-2007, 03:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

a. God is the Omniscient, Omnipresent Creator of the Universe

Yep. Or He could simply be the underling responsible for overseeing the development of our small section of it. A job He no longer holds, for one reason or another. (Don't worry, I'm sure they didn't hold that Fall stuff against Him, He's probably been promoted to more important duties than this dreary backwater.)

Quote:

b. God is just an Ethereal...

God can't be just an ethereal, because he created celestials, and no ethereal can do that. He could have started off that way, and later made angels and demons with detailed, consistent, verifiable false memories going back millions of years, but Occam's razor cuts this theory pretty deep. Ethereals take it seriously, nevertheless.

Quote:

c. God never existed. Metatron was a liar.

Some beings (claim they) met God before Metatron was created - Yves and Michael, for example.

Quote:

d. "God" is really an abstract force, the Symphony itself.

God has been known to speak, so He must have some kind of mind - unless there's some other explanation for the words of Metatron and other prophets.

William · 07-08-2007, 03:14 PM

A blessed soul in the Lower Heavens has an instinctive understanding that above Jacob's Ladder is a place where the questions get answered, where the struggles are calmed, where God is tangibly present. (Resisting the urge to take advantage of that instinct is one of the reasons the bodhisattvas -- and, even more awe-inspiringly, the Saints, who not only delay the Higher Heavens but take on weighty corporeal existence again -- are so respected.) So there's at least one way an atheist can find out his answers.

Secondly, most atheists are of the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" variety. Dying and, against all expectations, finding that one continues to exist, that beings calling themselves angels and demons are running around... this is some pretty extraordinary evidence. Presently-evaluatable experimental data includes the qualitative difference between divine and non-divine religions, and the statistical tendency of small accidents in the Lower Heavens to resolve benevolently.

On Earth, there is so little evidence of God's existence or intervention that the most reasonable position, to an atheist, is His nonexistence. In IN, the Universe appears to have been made deliberately in such a way that it all could have happened according to materialist theories of cosmology, geology and biology. Once in Heaven, the balance of evidence shifts dramatically, to the point where an atheist who admits points A(ngel), B(enevolent Interventions), and C(ontinuing self-existence), but denies that from these follow point D(eity), is really reaching for skepticism, in my opinion. He's roughly on par with a solipsist.

07-08-2007, 02:44 PM	#18
chris the cynic Join Date: May 2005	Re: Things to do in Heaven when you're dead Well picture this: A voice comes down from the Higher Heavens saying, "Michael is Pardoned and absolved of all guilt. Dominic, lay off." When someone says, "It's God," the Symphony confirms it. What could explain this? If God is the omnipotent, omniscient, omni-other thing being that created all including Heaven who currently resides in the higher Heavens it stands to reason that God is speaking and all is as it seems. If God is an Ethereal then presumably he is staying in the higher Heavens and presumably he has made the Symphony bow to his version of the truth, so the situation is unsurprising. If God never existed then one of the things in that climbed up the ladder shouted that down, the fact that the Symphony is saying it really is god is an echo of the Metatron's lie which was, incidentally, powerful enough to fool the greatest Seraphs in existence and keep them fooled to this day. (Why people don't shout down more often is a good question in this case.) If God is the Symphony then it is a little harder to work with, you still could have someone who climbed the ladder shouting that down, but you have the question of why the abstract symphony told the assembled Seraphs that it was God speaking. And if someone didn't shout it down why would an abstraction say that, how would an abstraction say that? How would an abstraction say anything? Unless, perhaps, the feeling in Heaven was so dominantly in the, "Lay off, Dominic," direction that the symphony itself was warped was to create an audible statement. In that case it wouldn't be so much conscious speaking as the Symphony reflecting the overwhelming mood, and since, in this way of thinking, the Symphony is God when someone says, "That's God speaking," they are right. This last possibility is, depending on your view, either very negative for Dominic because he held a view that was so abhorred as to make the symphony cry out for one of only two times in history, of very positive for him in that he stuck to his principles in spite of having almost everyone against him, but either way it requires that the overwhelming position in Heaven was pro Michael. That might not fit into all campaigns. - I'm sure someone else could come up with better rationalizations. Last edited by chris the cynic; 07-08-2007 at 02:47 PM.

07-08-2007, 03:14 PM	#20
William Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Upper Peninsula of Michigan	Re: Things to do in Heaven when you're dead A blessed soul in the Lower Heavens has an instinctive understanding that above Jacob's Ladder is a place where the questions get answered, where the struggles are calmed, where God is tangibly present. (Resisting the urge to take advantage of that instinct is one of the reasons the bodhisattvas -- and, even more awe-inspiringly, the Saints, who not only delay the Higher Heavens but take on weighty corporeal existence again -- are so respected.) So there's at least one way an atheist can find out his answers. Secondly, most atheists are of the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" variety. Dying and, against all expectations, finding that one continues to exist, that beings calling themselves angels and demons are running around... this is some pretty extraordinary evidence. Presently-evaluatable experimental data includes the qualitative difference between divine and non-divine religions, and the statistical tendency of small accidents in the Lower Heavens to resolve benevolently. On Earth, there is so little evidence of God's existence or intervention that the most reasonable position, to an atheist, is His nonexistence. In IN, the Universe appears to have been made deliberately in such a way that it all could have happened according to materialist theories of cosmology, geology and biology. Once in Heaven, the balance of evidence shifts dramatically, to the point where an atheist who admits points A(ngel), B(enevolent Interventions), and C(ontinuing self-existence), but denies that from these follow point D(eity), is really reaching for skepticism, in my opinion. He's roughly on par with a solipsist.