Consider this from George Saunders' Essay The New Mecca in The Braindead Megaphone:
“And the kids keep coming. On their faces: looks of bliss,
the kind of look a person gets when he realizes he is in the midst of doing
something rare, that might never be repeated, and is therefore of great value.”
Heaven is commonly understood as eternal life and moreover,
constant, immediate wish fulfillment.
Now contrast Heaven with the logic in Saunders.
If your life never ends it isn’t rare – at all. If you can
do anything, have anything, immediately, forever, none of these doings can have
value. Time isn’t rare and fulfillment isn’t rare in heaven.
What is rare in heaven? The damned. The only damned thing of
value in heaven is the damned.
Well I’ll be damned, just not in heaven.
(Something is of value if and only if it is rare. Value and
rarity have the same truth value. Therefore if it isn’t of great value, it isn’t
rare and if it isn’t rare it isn’t of value.)
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