Your Heaven Is Your Own

[feotakahari]

 I once saw two people on the TV Tropes forums arguing over the precise nature of Heaven. Person A thought Heaven was a place of continual self-improvement. Person B thought Heaven was a place of rest and contentment. But the argument itself is immaterial. What matters is the way they argued it.

Person A’s argument was simple: rest and contentment wouldn’t be Heaven for him. He strived to improve himself in life, and he intended to continue doing so after death. In his terms, “I don’t want The Dungeon of Monsters That Are Just Strong Enough to Really Challenge You."

Person B argued that person A was being deluded by his earthly constraints. Any being freed from the shackles of mortal thought would see that an afterlife of rest is better than an afterlife of challenges. When Person A died and went to Heaven, then he, too, would understand that and accept his afterlife of rest.

I see a lot of arguments that remind me of person B, especially when religion is involved. Not so much in what’s being argued, but in the argumentative technique–the insistence that your personal preferences are objective facts, and other people’s personal preferences are objective falsehoods. Some people are better at framing and disguising this than others, but I’ve yet to see anyone change their minds because of it. It simply fails to be convincing.