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That's the only mention of "eternal life" that I know of in the Bible, and it doesn't make any overt references to heaven.Addressing the baseline question: You must remember, Dawkins, that concepts of "Heaven" and "Hell" take place outside "normal" human experience. They are concepts themselves as much as they are "physical" places. Eternal life sounds boring and monotonous to us because living forever on Earth would be boring and monotonous. However, since Heaven and Hell are abstracts, experience there would necessarily be different from experience on Earth. As Heaven is "paradise," experience there is routed straight to bliss - therefore spending eternity in Heaven would literally be an eternity of bliss. Don't take it to mean an eternity of experiencing blissful things in the fashion we experience them here - that isn't what it means, at least not as I read it.Note the irony - Diagnostically speaking, psychology would refer to beliefs held divergent to "normal" human experience to be delusions. In essence, experiencing "heaven on Earth" would be a delusion. However, since this uses "normal" experience here as a baseline, saying that heaven is a delusion is simplistic; it would simply set a different standard for experience, wherein experience like that found on Earth would be the delusion and "bliss" would be the standard.
That's the only mention of "eternal life" that I know of in the Bible, and it doesn't make any overt references to heaven.
Addressing the baseline question: You must remember, Dawkins, that concepts of "Heaven" and "Hell" take place outside "normal" human experience. They are concepts themselves as much as they are "physical" places. Eternal life sounds boring and monotonous to us because living forever on Earth would be boring and monotonous. However, since Heaven and Hell are abstracts, experience there would necessarily be different from experience on Earth. As Heaven is "paradise," experience there is routed straight to bliss - therefore spending eternity in Heaven would literally be an eternity of bliss. Don't take it to mean an eternity of experiencing blissful things in the fashion we experience them here - that isn't what it means, at least not as I read it.
Note the irony - Diagnostically speaking, psychology would refer to beliefs held divergent to "normal" human experience to be delusions. In essence, experiencing "heaven on Earth" would be a delusion. However, since this uses "normal" experience here as a baseline, saying that heaven is a delusion is simplistic; it would simply set a different standard for experience, wherein experience like that found on Earth would be the delusion and "bliss" would be the standard.