Yes it is. An unimprovable state cannot be constantly improving. I can't explain that any further because it's already self evident.

That only works if there is no such thing as a perfect existence (i.e., an existence that it would be impossible to better), which would make no sense at all.

You seem to be wanting to reject both P and not P. (P = "perfect existence exists")

The thread is premised on the claim that perfect existence doesn't actually happen (if it's perfect, it's not good enough because it fails to allow improvement).

But when offered a viewpoint that suggests that perfect existence doesn't actually happen, you reject it because "that only works if there is no such thing as a perfect existence, which would make no sense at all."

This thread makes no sense at all. Maybe you can explain why "the absence of a perfect existence" makes no sense at all?

it sucks to live in a heaven where nothing ever gets better. It also sucks to live in a heaven where things are always getting better, because to posit that things either (a) have to stink to begin with or (b) have to only get a little bit better at a time so that the point where things cannot get any better is never reached.

Either way, heaven sucks.

The Twilight Zone....A Nice Place to Visit ending

When I was a kid I tried to explain this classic episode to my catechism teacher. Maybe it was my immature ability to communicate the point but she didn't understand what this episode so eloquently conveyed.

Having been raised Catholic, I have always argued that the concept of heaven is far too hazy, especially for something that is a central tenet of the Christian faith.

Everyone seems to have their own definition of it, even devout believers. I've heard everything from eternal bliss to a vague "oneness with God", to bodily immortality here on earth, but with the subtraction of suffering/evil and the addition of God's presence. A friend of mine even said that "heaven is whatever makes you happy". Seriously?

I don't know which one is correct... but I agree with the general idea of the OP that eternal, uninterrupted happiness (if that's what heaven in fact is) sounds oppressive and boring.

Why can't things in heaven be great yet always getting better?

You seem pretty emotionally tied to your position. I'm curious as to whether you will allow reason to enter your mind (ie, break the false dichotomy), or if you will stay in your emotional position (keep redefining your position until you win).

Interesting post Aaron, I'd argue the only reason anyone would ever believe that heaven exists in the first place because of the very emotional attachment you alluded to in your post. There is no logical reason to presume that infinite happiness is available, much less for an infinite duration. Clearly it "feels" good to imagine such a possibility, but how could one define that feeling other than an emotional tie?

The beauty of this line of thinking is you skip all the nonsensical speculation of fitting (the finite) human experience into an unrealistic (the infinite) abstraction you call heaven.

The question at this point is not about whether heaven exists or does not exist. It's about the variety of positions that he is taking in order to support his claims.

So far, he has the following positions:
1) A perfect state is not perfect (it lacks something, namely the ability to be improved).
2) There exists a perfect state. (He used this to reject the 2^t argument.)
3) A constantly improving state is bad. (His latest post.)

If it takes claims such as the preceding in order to reject even the possibility of heaven, then it seems to be far more reasonable to simply accept that heaven is at least logically possible. Trying to argue that heaven is logically impossible (which is what OP's argument seems to be saying) seems absurd, at least as OP is trying to argue it.

Edit: To be clear, the question of actual "attainment" of heaven (whatever that means) is not being addressed.

Edit again: To clarify further, OP's language was "conceptually impossible" which I have taken to mean "logically impossible."

Aaron, the problem is that you have to think of a heaven with two elements:

1. Eternity-- it goes on forever, and we never cease to exist.

2. Perfection-- the concept we are discussing in this thread.

The reason it can't be "always getting better" is because since there's an endpoint on the "getting better" line, the only way that something that is ETERNAL can be "always getting better" is if the improvements keep on getting more and more minute. It's like the graph of the tangent function, where you get closer and closer to the line but never hit it.

Now, if heaven is not eternal and we cease to exist at somepoint then it's possible to conceive of "always getting better" with the improvements being less minute, but that's not a tradeoff that Christian believers want to make.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_at_infinity

Perhaps you've never seen it before, but it's mathematically solid and at least intuitively sensible. It yields precisely the situation I'm describing. The point at infinity exists, and you can approach it forever, and you can approach it at increasingly faster rates.

Just to head off a possible objection based on the picture, + and - infinity do not need to be in the same place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_real_number_line

The discussion of the extended real line doesn't have any pictures or anything to help guide your intuition about what it's trying to say.

There's no basis for defining human happiness in such a way. It isn't how any of us experience it.

It would be like if you said that you could break Wilt Chamberlain's scoring record if an NBA game went to infinite overtimes and you played in it. The problem is that there's no actual basis for assuming that there will be an NBA game with infinite overtimes.

Are you redefining your entire argument to revolve around "happiness" now? Up to this point, you had been arguing about "eternity" and "perfection." In fact, you said precisely the following:

.

This seems to have nothing to do with "conceptual possibility" as an NBA game that has an indefinite number of overtimes is conceptually possible. It seems like you're shifting your standard from "conceptual possibility" to "experiential reality."

Of course, trying to make an "experiential reality" argument about heaven seems flawed.

Thats if there is a limit on perfection which you haven't shown to be true..the state of perfection can be variable.

Think about this analogy. Think of a being in heaven as a cup. The cup is filled with happiness. A cup which is filled to its maxium can be said to be perfectly happy or in a state of perfect bliss becuase in its current state it is impossible for it to contain any more happiness or blissfulness. Now suppose that cups size isn't static but changes....It can increase in size exponetially and as long as it stay filled to its maxium it is always perfectly happy...it is always improving...and it is always improving in increasing increments.

Your claim that improvements must necessarily always get smaller and smaller is flawed.

But making experiential reality argument as to whether happiness is an infinite or a finite scale is not flawed at all.

Are you saying that the experiences of heaven are limited to only that which can be experienced on earth?

Also, you really haven't made an argument that the experience of happiness is actually bounded. That nobody has run the 100 meter dash in under 9.5 does not imply that it cannot happen. And I think it's reasonably likely that it will. Then we can approach the same question with the 9.4 barrier, and so on. I'm not sure this is the strongest line of reasoning for you to take.

Well, the only things we have to go on are our experiences, Aaron. So if you want to define heaven as something that is not in any way like anything that anyone's experienced, I agree that you might be able to escape the "heaven is awful" problem. But the thing is, if you can't ground the concept in human experience, there's nothing that prevents you from pulling anything out of your behind you want and defining it as an attribute of heaven.

Then let's go back to your OP:

Has anyone experienced a state of "permanent, perfect bliss"? Or anything "like" it? Has anyone experienced "eternity" or "perfection" (the two main points under consideration -- again, notice that "happiness/bliss" are absent)?

The real problem with this thread is that you never really decided what you wanted to talk about. You just threw some stuff out there, and you continue to just throw stuff out. It's just an incoherent mess.

Edit: "A perfect state is not perfect" but "a perfect state exists" and so forth... These are signs of an absence of an actual point.

And to reiterate... this shift in argument is a dramatic chance from "conceptual impossibility."

That's quite wrong. We have all experienced bliss, so we have a frame of reference for what "perfect" bliss might be like.

What you are arguing is that if we ignore that frame of reference, perhaps we can conceive of a heaven that avoids the problem. Which is true. But conceiving things while ignoring any available frame of reference in our own experience is also known as "pulling things out of your butt", and is widely and correctly condemned because once you go there you can basically say anything you want about heaven without any basis for it.

What part of our experience of "bliss" tells us that there is such a thing as "perfect bliss"? Or that the experience of "perfect bliss" is either finitely bounded or potentially infinite?

I know what "pain" is, but does that mean that I know what "perfect pain" might be? I can honestly say that "perfect pain" is meaningless to me. But I can go further and say that I don't even have an adequate framework for understanding actual potential pains, such as the pain of torture. I have no clue what it's like to experience those types of pain, and I think that for me to extrapolate from my own experiences will leave me with huge gaps compared to the reality of the experience.

You're the one who is making the transition from conceptual possibility to using experiences to feed information about potential experiences.

I recommend you go back to the original article and see if it makes any sense to take the position that you're now in and make the argument that was being made. I don't see how it can possibly work.

Hence, your argument about "conceptual impossibility" fails.

I wouldn't say that anything here is "ignoring" the available frame of reference. But since the concept clearly goes "beyond" our current framework of experiences (otherwise, we're not describing anything except that which we currently experience), there is a necessary conceptual jump that needs to be made somewhere. If you want to call it "pulling things out of your butt" that's fine, but then the original position you took was pulled out of your butt as well.

This is silly. To have a frame of reference for what perfect bliss feels like one must have first experienced perfect bliss. Otherwise one is just putting forth conjecture....at best.

I'll answer you because you stated the argument more succinctly than Aaron did.

But it's wrong. If I am a bowler, and I normally bowl between 175 and 200, and my high score is 265, your argument is tantamount to saying that I have no frame of reference for what bowling a 300 game might be like. That makes no sense.

You can argue it's not a perfect frame of reference that will show you exactly what it is like, but not that it's no frame of reference at all.

I'm not a bowler, and I can have a frame of reference for what bowling a 300 game is like.

It's like the third game of this:



Your analogy isn't going to work because we have an extremely well defined concept of how scoring works for bowling. It's absolutely clear and indisputable.

We don't have anything remotely close to that for the experience of "bliss."

Edit: Please address the issue of "perfect pain".