The Problem with Heaven
The problem with heaven is that it’s an important fallacy – a false belief about something very important. The fact that there will be no second chances is vital information, something that should ground every human deed. If these few earthly decades really are all we get we should concentrate our efforts on them, and on the earthly decades that follow. The last thing we can afford to do is take our eyes of the ball and start musing and fretting about a non-existent other world.
It’s difficult to know who to blame, but easy to see who benefits. In a sense you can blame the idea itself. It’s the definitive viral meme – an idea which gets itself propagated to the detriment of its host. Its origins lost in time it spreads by mouth, or lurks in books, poised to skew the outlook of subsequent generations. With no basis in fact, and a handful of threats, heaven infects billions of minds.
Over the centuries it has picked-up some robust self-righting mechanisms, should rationality flip it on its back. Like a chain-letter, heaven dares us not to believe: Doubt its existence and you definitely won’t get in – you’ll surely go to hell. This is a great one for keeping hedge-betters on board: What’s to lose by believing? At least you stand a chance of getting-in if it does turn-out to exist.
In truth there’s a lot to lose. Such a fundamental flaw in perspective leaves one open to all sorts of abuse. Which brings us to a second set of beneficiaries – certain humans. Not everyone loses out from heaven belief, not economically anyway. The Church of England and the Church of Rome have grown fat on the promise of heaven and the threat of hell, as have the Bakers and the Moons.
Heaven is one of the grand deceits employed by the rich to control the poor. Even when the preacher truly believes the consequences are the same. The have-nots are persuaded to care less about the inequality of this world on the promise of a pay-back in the next. The wealthy and powerful gain a more submissive workforce; the church gains an effective means of blackmailing and milking its congregation.
Rather than an eternal holiday-camp heaven is just a lever humans use on each other, in the here and now. It’s a means by which some people get other people to do things for them, often unspeakable things. The most fashionable example is suicide bombing. While any fair critic can see that social and political injustice is the primary motive for such deeds, the role played by religion is equally clear. To whatever degree such acts are coaxed by the promise of heavenly reward this is a stark example of one group of individuals using the myth of an afterlife to get another group to do something appalling. Less fashionably, how many Christians seek comfort in the prospect of heaven as they risk their lives bombing the residents of Baghdad, Kosovo, Dresden or Coventry? God is on their side, after all.
The “moral-worth” defence of heaven evaporates under the light of such examples. Indeed, morally the whole scheme seems to be missing the point. As intelligent moral agents we already know that trust, honesty and good conduct are vital to a functioning society. We know that violent and selfish behaviour are things to be discouraged. Of course you shouldn’t cheat or steal or rape or murder, not because you’ll go to hell but because you’ll create hell in the here and now. These are basic moral truths, ones that all responsible parents drum into their offspring. We reward and punish to instil these values, and condemn those parents that don't.
The morality wielded by heaven and hell is just an extension of these eternal human truths, an exaggeration of the nice and nasty here on Earth. Heaven is just an exaggeration of a pleasant life born of pleasant behaviour; Hell is just a celestially intensified Earthly misery, born of misconduct.
Rules of compassion and fair play are part of our make-up as social beings, predating all metaphysical threats and incentives. Ignored and abused as they are they are the cornerstones of human society. We make our own heaven and hell here on earth, through our moral conduct, here on Earth.
Heaven is a special and especially dubious kind of belief – the lie that’s supposedly good for you. Rather than a necessary myth it’s a corruption of a universal moral principle: Act unpleasantly and you will create an unpleasant future – plain and simple. Add-on mystical incentives and penalties are at best superfluous and more often an opportunity to corrupt this basic principle. Don’t do it because you’ll be in trouble after you die? Don’t kill because of what God will do to you? Is that really what should concern us?
It seems odd then that a life without heaven-belief is so often dismissed as ‘meaningless’. Surely there is more meaning to a life that strives to connect conduct to outcome, rather than to a meaningless, non-existent afterlife? Why divorce behaviour and consequence from reality? Why not ground them in the here and now – what could be more meaningful than that?
