In this episode, Trent sits down with Brandon, the atheistic host of Mindshift to discuss his seven objections to the doctrine of heaven.
Transcript:
Voiceover:
Welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
It seems like most people would want to go to heaven. That is not the case with my guest today, which will make for a really fruitful and interesting dialogue. So, welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist Trent Horn. Joining me today is Brandon, the host of the YouTube channel MindShift. He is a non-religious YouTuber. I’m sure you would identify as an atheist, Brandon?
Brandon:
Yeah, for general purposes.
Trent Horn:
Sure. And recently, you put out a video. I thought it was really interesting. It would’ve been a great subject for doing a video reply to, but I thought it would be more interesting to have kind of a one-on-one dialogue of the points that you brought up rather than just a straight reply to it.
So the video you did is called The Problems With Paradise: 7 Reasons Why Heaven Fails. So, before we get into the video itself and talk about the issues that you raise with the doctrine of heaven, could you tell our audience a little bit more about yourself and your channel?
Brandon:
Sure. Yeah, and thanks for having me on instead of just making a reply video. I think it’s great to be able to speak about it whenever possible, so I appreciate that.
Yeah, my name’s Brandon. I started a YouTube channel just about five months ago now, and I’m really happy with what I’m trying to accomplish, at least, or the goal of it, which is just helping people who were in my spot. I was a believer for 30 years and was pretty involved, from missions to ministry to Bible school, et cetera. I feel like I have a pretty good, at least Protestant base, which will be interesting talking to you, Trent.
And yeah, I’m working my way through the Bible from a secular objective perspective with what we can know and just covering topics like this. Heaven, granted… I think it’s kind of funny this is the one we’re going to talk about. There’s a thousand things I’d love to eventually talk to you about.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Brandon:
Heaven is one of those conversations where it’s funny because it’s what we would say not a salvation issue, even though it’s kind of what salvation leads to, like pre-trip, post-trip, that kind of stuff. I feel like there’s so much vagueness about heaven that, yeah, some of this is assumptions, and we’ll get into that. But yeah, my channel is simply trying to help people who have been stuck or are doubting or questioning, similar to what I thought was happening for myself, and the harm or at least the potential harm that I think can occur from that.
Trent Horn:
Well, the reason I wanted to talk with you about this topic, and it definitely will be fun to have you on for other topics to be able to discuss, is that it’s a very unique position. I’ve seen some people defend this, but there’s probably a fair number of atheists and non-religious people who would say, “Well, I would love if heaven existed. I would love if Christianity were true and everything that’s said about heaven is real. I just don’t think it’s false, but I really, really wish it were true.” So your position seems to be different than that.
Brandon:
Yes and no. Yes. I mean, I’m not going to backtrack on the video. I think that the certain perceived idea we have of heaven-
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Brandon:
… along with some of the perceived ideas we have about the excuses of our Earth and the setup and free will or lack thereof, the problems of suffering and divine hiddenness, these kinds of things, in hand with the Christian heaven create problems for wanting to worship that God, for wanting that experience to be true.
Can I picture some kind of heaven that is good? Of course I can. One of the points in the video that I know we’ll cover is maybe heaven just shouldn’t be infinite. Maybe there shouldn’t be a hell. I think that robs the joy of heaven. Maybe there shouldn’t be different tiers, levels, or rewards in heaven. So it’s not so much that a, heaven can’t exist or that that wouldn’t be beneficial or a better thing. It’s that the current setup, as far as I understand it, juxtapositioned to the current belief system of that God, is problematic.
Trent Horn:
Okay. Well, let’s get into it here. Once again, I’ll link to the original video if anybody wants to check it out, along with Brandon’s channel, The Problems With Paradise: 7 Reasons Why Heaven Fails.
What I wanted to do… And you had a nice setup for your video because we can just go through each of the reasons and talk about them. Before I do that, though, I’ll give a primer, at least from a Catholic perspective, of what we mean by heaven. And I think in a lot in our conversation what’s going to happen is… I agree with you. There are certain descriptions of heaven or ways that heaven is portrayed that I agree I wouldn’t want to be there for all eternity. So it really does depend on how you understand the concept.
Brandon:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
So what, at least from a Catholic perspective, the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way. It just says in paragraph 1024, “Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.” It goes on in paragraph 1027, “The mystery of blessed communion with God and all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture speaks of it in images, life, light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the kingdom, the Father’s house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise.” And then quotes 1 Corinthians 2:9, “No eye has seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
So we have images of heaven that are given to us in scripture and tradition, but we always have to be careful about confusing the images for the reality. So that’s just a start, a baseline heaven, “ultimate end, supreme, definitive happiness.” You had seven problems with heaven. So let’s go through them. You can explain each one, then we can kind of discuss them. The first one, I guess I would call the problem of monotony or boredom. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?
Brandon:
This is the weakest one, for sure, and really, what it’s going to lead to is we have two or three main arguments, and it was just expressing themselves in seven different ways.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Brandon:
But the way I picture it is you’ve got a boat that’s sinking and there’s a hole and the water starts coming in and you put your finger in it, and if you put your finger in that one, the other one’s going to explode.
So it’s not that we can’t have a heaven that isn’t free of boredom, although I think it’s an interesting philosophical question. And this is what I point out in that first point. True infinity, true eternity is a concept that is so difficult for us to understand, as would be an all-powerful God. So I understand it’s, well, maybe He is infinitely good and interesting and has infinitely many things to teach us during that time.
I think it’s a little bit of a cop-out for the position that heaven is presented to us as. We do have these physical, manmade things, like streets of gold and houses and feasts that mean we are dwelling and we are eating, and there’s enough relation to our current human body that whether it is a new body or a new spirit, however you want to do it… Again, there’s so much confusion around these topics.
Assuming we’re anything like we are now, I think infinity poses a problem, and I think that problem gets broken down over the course of a few subjects. And I don’t know how much we want to tackle this first point, excuse me, but if there’s no suffering in heaven, the idea that we would be able to do anything and that it would be meaningful and that there wouldn’t be boredom and that there wouldn’t be this lack of meaning, which is the Christian perspective, we need the harm for the meaning, we need the bad to understand the good, et cetera, it seems counterintuitive to me.
Trent Horn:
That’s point… I wrote down here, “Point number four, pain is necessary for pleasure,” so maybe we’ll-
Brandon:
Okay. And they all work together.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Brandon:
So, yeah.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, they all come together. But I think that this is a fair point that the idea of something never-ending, there is a fear of, “Oh, well, what if I run out of things to do? What if I am bored? Tedium, monotony.” I think that’s a common concern that people would have, and it prompts us to think more deeply about it.
One thing when I was thinking about this is that boredom and monotony, it may not be a property that arises from a circumstance as much as it arises from the disposition of an individual. So, for example, you could take two people and have them perform a task, a repetitive task over a set amount of time, and it could be the exact same task, but one person is bored out of his mind and the other one isn’t.
So I do think that that might play into it a little bit of whether something is boring, part of it is the circumstance, but I think a large part of it might be what our own disposition is. Does that make sense?
Brandon:
Yeah. And maybe you’re going somewhere else with it, but on that initial point, I would say, would the person who’s not initially bored become bored if given enough time, even if that is their predisposition to enjoy that thing more than the other person who becomes more easily bored, or even if they have the personality that doesn’t get bored as fast? Again, all of it seems to break down when you add forever, eternity.
Trent Horn:
Right. And I guess when we think about eternity, that term we have to be very careful with because God’s eternity, at least from a Catholic perspective, is different from eternal life that we would have in heaven.
So Catholics believe that God is timeless. So God’s eternity, as the philosopher Boethius put it, would be “the whole and complete and simultaneous possession of endless life.” So all of God’s life exists in one timeless moment, essentially.
But I do believe that in heaven, we will… I think we will have bodies, we’ll have the resurrection of the body. We will experience the passage of time. How that passes, that also factors into the boredom element here a little bit. I do not believe we will be timeless because we will undergo change. We will have experiences. To be timeless isn’t really proper to us as finite creatures.
But when it comes to our experiences, I figure you’re agreeing with it, yeah, a person can have a different disposition, but what if it’s endless? We’re never going to have all of the endlessness at once. It’d always be another day and another day. So the question is, will there be a suitable change? Will there be something that keeps us from becoming bored?
And I think that if you look at, well, if God is infinite and there is infinite goods that we can understand and enter into, that’d be one element to prevent things from becoming boring. I also think, and this is from… I was reading an article from my friend Randal Rauser, who is a Protestant theologian, and he talked about how there are things we do that are repetitive but never become boring. He gave the example that he always enjoys sipping a morning coffee out on his porch in the Canadian wilderness and just taking that in. And every day… He’s done it, like, 2000 times in a row.
Brandon:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
And because there’s familiarity there, it’s always something that he looks forward to. So I think that in heaven we’ll do a… Certainly, there’s a finite number of earthly things to do, but repetition may also be a possibility there that we won’t get bored of. We’ll always enjoy the sense of familiarity with those things. So that might be a few other thoughts.
Brandon:
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s the cool thing about heaven, right? I think anything is possible. I think these are problematic things to how God made us here, if indeed that is the case, because I understand the separation from the eternal God and the concept around that versus us in an infinite state of existence, or maybe if there’s a better term you want to put that as, but there’s still finite conditions on it, right?
If we do have a body in heaven and, say, we still have two arms, that’s still the spiritual earthly mix. That’s it. That means we’re going to be limited to things that two arms can do. It does put restriction. If there’s only so many people in heaven, which is something that would be believed to be accurate, there’s only going to be so many people you can meet, so many interactions you can have.
Again, over the vast span of… It seems to me a failure of imagination to really be able to say like, “Well, you know what? I’ve lived 70 years on Earth and I’ve enjoyed that cup of coffee every single morning.” 70 years is 0% of infinity. What’s 70 billion years? Are you still enjoying it? Does the sunrise still have the same spark? Did you have the hard night that led to that coffee playing that trick on your brain that actually creates the joy? There’s such, again, I think, a failure of truly envisioning what perfection forever would look like in terms of the finite capabilities of a body to find enjoyment or non-boredom or non-monotony.
Trent Horn:
Right. I do think, though, that the objection of failure of imagination does cut both ways, and I think that would be more for those-
Brandon:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
… who think that heaven would be boring. I agree with you, and this is something… Peter Kreeft has a book, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven, and he imagined experiences in heaven might begin with learning everything that can be done to learn about life on Earth and then having perfect communion with other people.
So I think what’s important here, when we talk about life in heaven, there are these particular instances, these moments we have on Earth, where we experience this wonderful kind of bliss. And an important element of that is that time is something we’re not as concerned about. We’ll be wrapped up in a conversation with another person, and we’re thinking, “Oh, it’s getting late. I got to go to bed. I have to retire.”
Heaven might be, what if you didn’t have to do that? That you have these moments of this kind of bliss, and they’re very, very brief in this life, that intimate conversation that you have late at night with someone or that sheer joy you share with your child in a particular activity. And I notice sometimes that when we have these particular moments, the flow of time is a little bit different. Because when you talk about things being endless, one second after one second, after one second, sometimes… It’s always interesting, right, that when you go through an experience, the way that you appreciate time in it, it can feel longer or shorter based on it.
Brandon:
Sure. Relative, yeah.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. So I think that those little instances of it… Could we have that in heaven? And I think so in an endless way. And I think you might say, “Yeah, but if it’s endless, then what?” So it’s like earthly things, communion with other people, which I agree will be finite, then after that would be entering into the mystery of God.
And I think that the only thing that would make heaven pleasurable and not hellish would be the fact that God is infinite. I know that Joe Schmid recently… He had a poll on his YouTube channel. He has Majesty of Reason. And he asked people if you would want to live forever in this universe. And I said, “Absolutely not.” Because what would happen is eventually, in 40 trillion years, it’s just me and a bunch of hydrogen atoms. That would be awful.
But if you think that there’s always… Just as there’s always a greater number on the number line, I don’t see anything preventing an all-powerful, all-knowing God from having another greater good for us to enter into.
Brandon:
And I don’t see anything preventing that either. I think where that would break down for me, and there’s two interesting points I think I’m trying to keep track of that you said, and I’ll lean on you for… I can talk as long as you want. So as much time as you want to give to a dedicated point or not, you feel free to move this conversation.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Brandon:
But the first part of it, you mentioned the sweet moments we have on Earth and how they have to end and how maybe they could be extended, et cetera. I think it’s a good point, but I think what it points to is those moments become precious because they’re limited. I just had a hiking trip with my buds. I only get to do it once a year. We’ve all moved away from each other. We gather up, we take four days in the mountains. It’s the best time. I hate when it ends. It’s the worst thing, and I just crave it for the next year for many different reasons.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Brandon:
If I could just do that forever, where’s the craving? Where’s the sweetness? What’s the new conversation that needs to be caught up on? We’re not sharing our lives with each other. I think it is that restriction that makes those moments sweet and to say, “Oh, you’ll get to have those sweet moments unending or without interruption,” I think robs them of what makes them sweet, which is, again, kind of my problem with this perfect city.
If you want to say something on that, that’s fine. But your second point that I wanted to address as well with, “Okay, so we exhaust all the finite aspects of people and time and conversations and et cetera, now we get to enjoy the mystery of God, the infinity of this God.” I don’t want to open a whole new can of worms, and I don’t think we’ll go down this road, but for me, that’s where it’s, well, God’s character still isn’t changing, right? He’s still immutable. He’s still going to be the same God that was portrayed in both parts of the Bible. He’s still going to be the same God that we have interactions with or people that believe they have interactions with, et cetera.
And for me, not trying to be some anti-theist, that is not particularly appealing. The God that I understand Him to be through His actions and words in the Bible itself is not someone that I’d want to explore for infinity. That doesn’t… And we’re obviously going to disagree there-
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Brandon:
… but I think part of that… It’s not a cop-out answer from you because I understand your point. Getting to be with the creator of the universe forever, who is infinite and infinitely mysterious and all-powerful, that’s got to offer something to infinity, especially if He’s the one creating it. Yes, but only according to the nature that He is. And for me, understanding this nature as I do from His own words and actions, it does not seem to be something beneficial or that I’d want to explore forever. And I’m not trying to be purposely blasphemous or heretical, but-
Trent Horn:
No, I think that that’s fine. Do you think it is possible to define God as unlimi... Read more on Catholic.com