Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Heaven Reads No Vacancies (Part 3)

The next biggest question regarding the comfort of Heaven is the issue of space. There are one of two options for the capacity of Heaven, each of which shall be adressed. Either it is infinite in size, and therefor has absolutely no limit to number of people it can comfortably occupy, or Heaven's size is finite, and therefor has a population limit that it can sustain. Both of these pose a number of different problems.

First, we will assume Heaven is infinite in size. If this were the case, then there would be an endless possible distance that one could place between themselves and everyone else. If you were to build a house in Heaven, it would be entirely possible that you are neighbors with someone who lives 10 trillion light years away. As far as having company over for dinner goes, this could be rather antisocial. Also, if this is the case, then getting from point A to point B in Heaven could very well occupy most of eternity. Again, this would get very old, very fast. The outcome, I believe it safe to assume, would be that no one would ever visit anyone for fear of spending eternity roaming the vast nothingness that exists between residences.

Option B, by comparison, isn't much better. If Heaven has a finite amount of space, there will one day reach a point that Heaven can no longer occupy anymore souls. The problem with souls, being that they are immortal, is that once they have taken up a seat in Heaven, they are in it forever. Obviously, 'forever' is a difficult concept to grasp, but just think about it for a moment. Once that seat is taken, it will never in all of eternity be emptied. That means that of our 33 billion souls that are currently sitting up in heaven, 33 billion will still be there in the next million years, plus however many people ascend during that time. It is obvious that with an infinite number of souls filling up a finite amount of space, Heaven will clearly run out of room, and eventually be forced to close its gates to all those worthy of entering.

On the flip side, Hell must follow the same rules. Assuming that of our 110 billion people who have existed on the planet Earth, 33 billion of them have filled seats in Heaven. This means that 77 billion have to go somewhere else. If that place were Hell, and it followed the same rules as Heaven, then either (a) the devil would be easy to avoid in infinity, or (b) Hell is probably full by now.

So really, if you think about it, it doesn't matter what you believe. When you finally reach those pearly gates, you're in for a rough ride when you realize that the sign has been flipped over from "Welcome!" to "No Vacancies".

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