Heaven: A fool's paradise

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- TheRationalizer
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Heaven: A fool's paradise
OP - April 21, 2010, 09:45 AM

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/faith/heaven-a-fools-paradise-1949399.html

I disagree with the statement that it all began in 165BCE (not BC damn it!) The Egyptian book of the dead pre-dates that and was all about whether you go to beautiful fields to live forever with loved ones or eaten by a man with a crocodile head.

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- Zebedee
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Re: Heaven: A fool's paradise
Reply #1 - April 21, 2010, 10:11 AM

I think the Romans and Greeks had ideas of an afterlife before that too, no? Like the idea of Elysium. As well as a concept of Hell in the form of Tartaros.
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Re: Heaven: A fool's paradise
Reply #2 - April 21, 2010, 10:21 AM

Quote from: Zebedee on April 21, 2010, 10:11 AM
I think the Romans and Greeks had ideas of an afterlife before that too, no? Like the idea of Elysium. As well as a concept of Hell in the form of Tartaros.

"The earliest Book of the Dead on record dates to the mid-fifteenth century BCE, but some of the spells had their origins in the Pyramid Texts from the 5th and 6th Dynasties, carved more than 1000 years earlier."

Earlier than 2500BCE?

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Re: Heaven: A fool's paradise
Reply #3 - April 21, 2010, 10:29 AM

Nah. Before 165 BCE.
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Re: Heaven: A fool's paradise
Reply #4 - April 21, 2010, 01:06 PM

Anyway, I agree with the basic thesis of the article. Ideas like Paradise and Hell are obviously fabrications aimed at controlling people.

Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.

From The Grand Inquisitor, by Dostoyevsky
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