I’d sooner go to hell
Imagine going to a place that would be a paradise for an eternity. Everything would be perfect: food, music, the people. A place that someone could change through will to suit their personal needs, where time is nonexistent and the lifespan of an individual spans forever.
Now imagine someone telling you that would be a terrible place to be. I’m speaking of course of heaven, and the idea that an infinitely perfect paradise would suck. In a world with no bad, no risks, nothing to gauge goodness, how can one be happy? Infinite goodness is only truly good when infinite evil is present. How can one enjoy a sport if your team never loses? How can one enjoy a hobby if you can never make a mistake? How can one feel lucky if everything around you has been predisposed to your every whim?
Those would all be traits of a personal heaven though. That is a realm specifically for the individual. A public and open heaven would not be much better though: what if you don’t like it? You’d forever be in a realm which you cannot change by any means. An eternity spent in one spot sounds pretty horrible, but I’d still prefer the always open gates of hell to any sort of heaven.
I’d like this because I’d be able to see evil around me, and it’d make certain things so much sweeter. I’d have the best company too. I’d love to meet Gandhi (being Hindu), or maybe Tiny Tim (who had become Catholic later in his life), or possibly even Salman Rushdie (who was a Muslim-to-Atheist convert). We could all laugh about the irony of “who got it right”, and then giggle to ourselves about how so many of the greatest people ever to have existed could’ve ended up in the pits of hell simply because they didn’t believe in one incredibly specific strain of a religion.
I’ve been thinking about this notion for a while, and it’s mostly been from the perspective of a Baptist. No matter how I spin it, it always ends badly in Abrahamic religions. If the world was evenly divided between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, then 66% of the world would have to be doomed. If I listen to any of the Abrahamic texts, I would have to be a hermit in order to live my life as perfectly as possible. If I accept the idea of heaven (personal or public), I will be damned to forever exist in a realm that I abhor.
What point is there to living if your consciousness simply continues on for infinity? Life is abrupt; any extension of it is punishment.
A nice little ditty by The Vandals: