What Do You Do All Day in Heaven?

[C C]

Never quite grasped how, if men and women are born and die in fairly equal numbers, how there can be multiple virgins available to each man. Also complicating things is they do specify virgins - how many women are dying virgins? Wouldn't that be a prerequisite to being a virgin in paradise? Do they take the very small number of female virgin souls that show up and soul-clone them or something? Or is there some sort of Virginity Odometer on women which can be rolled back to zero, at death? Please don't laugh, these are serious doctrinal and metaphysical questions!

Presumably the virgins are houris. The women faithful, OTOH, seem to each be monogamously confined to a husband once again (no multiple supernatural male lovers).

But the most critical thinking Islamic scholars contend that mortals are unable to fathom what the divine pleasures of Paradise are like, and so familiar earthly delights were substituted as metaphors (food, sex, gardens, eternal health).

Strangely enough, the usually invisible jinn can qualify for both jannah and jahannam, too -- and would similarly have companions in Paradise when such concrete examples aren't dismissed as allegory for abstract bliss.
_

 

[TheVat]

My TIC comments aside, I had noted there was debate along scholars as to whether houris are strictly ethereal beings or were derived from earthly women (or both sexes - that's also disputed, it seems). And apparently my reset of the odometer conjecture was not wrong, per some scholars. Though such students of the Quran and later literature would probably not appreciate the odometer metaphor.

Hadn't realized how lowly the Jinn are - as epistemically limited as humans, and rather fragile, having been formed from smokeless fire. From C C link: "Jinn are generally weak and fragile beings, whose potencies derive mostly from people attributing powers to them. Even though jinn are mostly impotent, they are able to possess people. The majority of Muslim scholars hold the opinion that jinn can at least possess individuals...." This decisively contradicts pretty much everything I had learned of the jinn from Disney movies and Western folk tales. Still uncertain if they could reside in old oil lamps or bottles purchased in curio shops.

Do tabloids in Riyadh supermarkets have stories like, "Local woman possessed by jinn, leaves husband, opens yoga studio."?

 

[PsychoticEpisode]

Imagine spending an eternity in any of the heavens available out there. Not intimating that you’ll be doing the same things ad infinitum but there are religions that claim that whatever it is you are doing is forever. Should we know what an eternity entails before we wish for it? I’ll give credit to ancient philosophers and scribes who took on the subject and did their best to seek eternal happiness or whatever for humans after death as the main goal in life. Even today it’s still a huge topic. Does a religion settle the issue for many?

Time seems to be the main stumbling block when describing a heavenly eternity. Is heaven just a realm where time doesn’t exist? Is time endless with no beginning? Does a god experience any time at all? The soul?

Sounds like heaven is moving at the speed of light in a complete vacuum. Does alpha and omega imply there is a beginning and end? If God makes his way to Earth to fire up a bush and chat, is he experiencing time? Does the soul feel the passage of time no matter what it faces?

Is it paradoxical to say eternity and timelessness in the same argument? Doesn’t forever after death imply there was a beginning, I mean you’re not the first one there? Then again spending an eternity could very well mean that you will do so until the universe disappears altogether into nothingness.( don’t think that makes sense). Or perhaps once the universe is gone, something else takes over and heaven just remains as it was with you continuing on keeping busy. If you’re praising god or burning in hell, for an eternity, then at least you know what’s on the agenda.

At least the Simulation Theory folks can have the plug pulled or have a power failure.

Eternity must be such a grind. I might grow to hate heaven should I have to put up with it. I’ll wait and see. Like what Bob Hope said on his deathbed as family members discussed where to bury him, ‘Surprise me’.

 

[foghorn]

My TIC comments aside, I had noted there was debate along scholars as to whether houris are strictly ethereal beings or were derived from earthly women (or both sexes - that's also disputed, it seems). And apparently my reset of the odometer conjecture was not wrong, per some scholars. Though such students of the Quran and later literature would probably not appreciate the odometer metaphor.

Hadn't realized how lowly the Jinn are - as epistemically limited as humans, and rather fragile, having been formed from smokeless fire. From C C link: "Jinn are generally weak and fragile beings, whose potencies derive mostly from people attributing powers to them. Even though jinn are mostly impotent, they are able to possess people. The majority of Muslim scholars hold the opinion that jinn can at least possess individuals...." This decisively contradicts pretty much everything I had learned of the jinn from Disney movies and Western folk tales. Still uncertain if they could reside in old oil lamps or bottles purchased in curio shops.

Do tabloids in Riyadh supermarkets have stories like, "Local woman possessed by jinn, leaves husband, opens yoga studio."?

When I read stuff like this I just can't help thinking what will become of the UK parliament...
I’m a little off topic here, but there are some people in the UK who reckon there should be more people in the house of Lords that believe in this sort of stuff. At present we have 28 Church of England Bishops reserved seats in the lords. Some want islamic religious leaders too.
GOD help the UK

 

[TheVat]

When I read stuff like this I just can't help thinking what will become of the UK parliament...
I’m a little off topic here, but there are some people in the UK who reckon there should be more people in the house of Lords that believe in this sort of stuff. At present we have 28 Church of England Bishops reserved seats in the lords. Some want islamic religious leaders too.
GOD help the UK

No worries, there'll always be more gin than Jinn, in those Lords.

Ba-dunk tishhh!

 

[C C]

When I read stuff like this I just can't help thinking what will become of the UK parliament...
I’m a little off topic here, but there are some people in the UK who reckon there should be more people in the house of Lords that believe in this sort of stuff. At present we have 28 Church of England Bishops reserved seats in the lords. Some want islamic religious leaders too.
GOD help the UK.

Even in a "worst case" scenario, the UK (and certain other European countries) would only be on track to join this category: List of secular states with majority Muslim populations

• Sharia law isn’t taking over Britain (excerpt): "There is no separate sharia legal system in the UK. What exist are sharia councils and the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal. The sharia councils have no statutory authority under English law. They may be used to resolve personal disputes such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. "
  
  #Support & opposition: In 2008, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has suggested that Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts should be integrated into the British legal system alongside ecclesiastical courts to handle marriage and divorce, subject to agreement of all parties and strict requirements for protection of equal rights for women. His reference to the Sharia sparked a controversy. Later that year, Nicholas Phillips, then Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, stated that there was "no reason why Sharia principles [...] should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution." A 2008 YouGov poll in the United Kingdom found 40% of Muslim students interviewed supported the introduction of Sharia into British law for Muslims. Michael Broyde, professor of law at Emory University specializing in alternative dispute resolution and Jewish law, has argued that Sharia courts can be integrated into the American religious arbitration system, provided that they adopt appropriate institutional requirements as American rabbinical courts have done.

It would be difficult for the established secular and traditional liberal state to get dissolved, even in the idealistic takeaway from the overall gist of various ripples of Neo-Marxist thought: Radical equality pertains to more than just individuals: All cultures have merit, or each of them gets it no more wrong or right than any other. The prescriptions of literary intellectual morality (social justice) comes before reality (or whatever supposed warranted dogmatism about it).

Take rehabilitated China, for instance: While the government in theory allows multiple religions (including Islam) and various group identity orientations, it still enforces the political hygiene of everyone conforming to state ideology and tolerating no rebellion against it. And the Han Chinese will always hold a slightly privileged postition over other ethnicities like the Uyghurs.

Granted, that's not the deep ethical refinements and revisions of the Neo-Marxism of the West, but even the latter influences on progressive policies will find themselves having to (once again) maintain broad compliance to the "population group blindness" of the traditional liberal slash secular state in order to sustain harmony among the many different cultures. Despite criticism of the inadequacies of that neutral "blindness" and consequently advocating the benefits of positive discrimination and DEI in counteracting oppression.
_

 

[foghorn]

Even in a "worst case" scenario, the UK (and certain other European countries) would only be on track to join this category: List of secular states with majority Muslim populations

[*]Sharia law isn’t taking over Britain (excerpt): "There is no separate sharia legal system in the UK. What exist are sharia councils and the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal. The sharia councils have no statutory authority under English law. They may be used to resolve personal disputes such as marriage, divorce and inheritance.

Recently In Trafalgar Square London, there was a mass Muslim praying.
Look at pictures of that to see where the women are.. At the back.
Muslims allow women to pray in the same place as men, but at the back.

 

[C C]

Recently In Trafalgar Square London, there was a mass Muslim praying.
Look at pictures of that to see where the women are.. At the back.
Muslims allow women to pray in the same place as men, but at the back.

• Labour anxiety and accusations after big shift in Muslim vote to Greens (excerpt): "Labour has traditionally relied heavily on Muslim voters. Shortly before the last election, a poll by Savanta found that nearly two-thirds of the UK’s nearly 4 million Muslims intended to vote Labour."

So whether Labour or Green Party, the culture largely tends to vote left (albeit reliability could be erratic at times). Which should reciprocally earn exemptions for any lingering "medieval" tendencies that some pockets of the culture might feature. One may thus be obligated to look the other way when that happens -- whether concerning sexism, grooming gangs, blasphemy censorship and cancellation punishment, heavily subdued sponsorship of honor killings and forced marriages, etc.

After more than a decade, we might expect the pejorative "regressive left" term to be a bit outdated even as an insult to the virtue and integrity of radical egalitarian politics, but perhaps not. Grokipedia's entry to is more historically exploratory (compared to Wikipedia's):

https://grokipedia.com/page/Regressive_left_political_term

EXCERPT: The regressive left emerged as an extension of the New Left's cultural relativism originating in the 1960s, particularly influenced by Frankfurt School thinkers who prioritized subjective cultural narratives over universal standards of progress. This foundation promoted skepticism toward Western enlightenment values, viewing them as imperialistic, but the regressive variant intensified post-9/11, where anti-imperialist critiques evolved into selective apologism for jihadist ideologies under the guise of anti-Western solidarity. Unlike the New Left's focus on domestic countercultural liberation, the regressive left's particularist relativism privileges non-Western cultural exemptions, marking a shift from egalitarian universalism to defending illiberal hierarchies when aligned with perceived anti-colonial resistance.

While sharing superficial overlaps with social democracy and socialism in advocating redistribution and state intervention, the regressive left diverges by subordinating class-based analysis to identity politics, fostering coalitions with theocratic elements that contradict proletarian interests. This emphasis on group identities over economic materialism leads to uncritical support for migrant communities' imported norms, including those enforcing gender segregation or labor exploitation, which erode workers' rights in host societies and undermine traditional socialist priorities like universal labor protections. In contrast to social democrats who historically critiqued religious authority as a barrier to class solidarity, regressive factions view such alliances as progressive anti-racism, despite causal evidence that theocratic influences in migrant enclaves perpetuate intra-community hierarchies detrimental to low-wage laborers.

Empirically, regressive left adherents exhibit greater tolerance for censorship mechanisms, such as accommodations for blasphemy sensitivities, compared to classical liberals who uphold free inquiry as foundational to egalitarian advancement. This manifests in ideological defenses of speech restrictions to avoid "punching down" at minority orthodoxies, diverging from broader left-wing commitments to open debate that characterized earlier movements like the 1960s student radicals. Such relativism prioritizes cultural preservation over universal critique, empirically correlating with reduced advocacy for secular reforms in contexts where illiberal taboos prevail.
_

 

[James R]

Never quite grasped how, if men and women are born and die in fairly equal numbers, how there can be multiple virgins available to each man. Also complicating things is they do specify virgins - how many women are dying virgins?

Does the Qur'an specify that it's virgin women, necessarily?

Maybe there will be a bunch of virgin incel men waiting in Paradise.

 

[Pinball1970]

Never quite grasped how, if men and women are born and die in fairly equal numbers, how there can be multiple virgins available to each man. Also complicating things is they do specify virgins - how many women are dying virgins? Wouldn't that be a prerequisite to being a virgin in paradise? Do they take the very small number of female virgin souls that show up and soul-clone them or something? Or is there some sort of Virginity Odometer on women which can be rolled back to zero, at death? Please don't laugh, these are serious doctrinal and metaphysical questions!

You are asking if heaven makes sense? No it doesn't. Theologians have struggled with a lot of these questions down the centuries.
Jesus thinking and other first century apocalyptic Jews thought the new Kingdom would be on earth not in heaven. What did Jesus do when he was dead? His body was on earth, did his spirit hang around with dad for three days? He wasn't really dead then was he? What about everyone else before judgement day? They are all just dead rotting corpses? So what is raised? Surely not putrid bones, so a full body? How old? 20? 30? or the age when you died? That sucked ass because I died at 73 with leprosy and necrotic gangrene. Are you raised healed and hale? Do you get to chose your age? Is everyone 20?
I was born with six fingers, I was born deaf, blind, with no arms, downs syndrome so what is raised? Normal senses, a full compliment of limbs and two copies of chromosome 21? Is that still me?
Say I died at 25 from plague but my wife lived till she was 85. She married again after me but he died at 30 in a freak gardening accident. Her fourth marriage came to an end with the horrific crocodile incident of AD 53. Only her husbands sandals were found, he was 48.
When she finally dies who does she go to?
The crocodile who ate Dennis was finally captured and eaten by some Jews down river.
How is Dennis resurrected? Does Yahweh take substance from Jews bodies who ate the crock that ate Dennis?

 

[Pinball1970]

Does the Qur'an specify that it's virgin women, necessarily?

I think so but then again it may be grapes, I've heard that too.

 

[Pinball1970]

Google, there is a 2004 article in the New York Times also.

"The "Raisin" Theory: Researcher Christoph Luxenberg (a pseudonym) argued in The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran that early Quranic interpretation incorrectly changed the meaning of hur (meaning "white" or "white grapes" in Aramaic).
Contextual Argument: The Quran frequently describes paradise with imagery of luxury fruits (grapes) rather than companions"

 

[TheVat]

freak gardening accident

Great movie and I lament the unseemly death of Rob Reiner. And I'm not saying my line of questioning was just a way to wisecrack about Virginity Odometers, but yes most of my take on such stuff is that it's all fractured fairy tales.

I think so but then again it may be grapes, I've heard that too.

GRAPES?? I blew myself up in the middle of downtown and I'm getting grapes? It was clearly implied I was getting young clones of Blake Lively and Minnie Driver.

 

[Roosters for ever]

GRAPES?? I blew myself up in the middle of downtown and I'm getting grapes? It was clearly implied I was getting young clones of Blake Lively and Minnie Driver.

Or Annette, as in Annette Funicello. Had a few wet dreams about her back in the mid fifties.!

 

[TheVat]

Or Annette, as in Annette Funicello

Oh yes, I recall her, though the Mouseketeer phase was before my lust circuits were online. I do remember early stirrings for Liesl, in The Sound of Music, however.

 

[PsychoticEpisode]

First I time I saw Liz Taylor I went WOW. The last time I saw her I went OUCH. I wonder what version I’d meet in heaven should I get to one of those places? That’s if both of us ended up there. You have to think the creator built this enormous, timeless, eternal universe just so we can have sexual encounters forever, once dead. Not totally against it but man, I wouldn’t mind some golf thrown in. Why not just kill me in my prime so I don’t have to worry about erectile dysfunction?

 

[TheVat]

First I time I saw Liz Taylor I went WOW. The last time I saw her I went OUCH. I wonder what version I’d meet in heaven should I get to one of those places? That’s if both of us ended up there. You have to think the creator built this enormous, timeless, eternal universe just so we can have sexual encounters forever, once dead. Not totally against it but man, I wouldn’t mind some golf thrown in. Why not just kill me in my prime so I don’t have to worry about erectile dysfunction?

Albeit I'm one of the less qualified persons for any doctrinal demystification, I would say the soul doesn't age in any physiological sense. Ergo no ED in the hereafter. If I were meeting potential astral partners of roughly my generation, perhaps I wouldn't be averse to bumping soul-stuff with Cheryl Ladd (fitting to this topic, she was one of Charlie's Angels, ha!). Hopefully I would not have to die prematurely to have a celestial stiffy.