Implications of eternity

One of the claimed advantages of being a creationist is that you gain eternal life.

Of course, for people who understand theimplications of "Eternity"the idea of ANY sort of eternal life is utterly and totally frightening.

I've always been fascinated by the fact that no one seems to be able to describe in any detail their expectations of what heaven might be like. While I understand that no one who has gone there has ever come back to describe it, you would still think that people who yearn so earnestly to spend all of eternity in heaven would have formed some sort of expectations.

Allow me to examine a few possibilities.

Let's say that you can read books.

There are a finite number of books that have been written or will ever be written. Therefore you could read, at great leisure, every book that ever has been written and every book that ever will be written. You could even learn everyother language fluently and read every bookthat ever has been written or ever will be written in every one of those languages as well.

Let's say that you can just think in heaven. That would seem to be a minimal requirement.

There are 60 trillion (yes TRILLION) synapses inour brains. (See http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html ) Since that is a finite number, you can have every synapse take every possible state if given an eternity for that to take place. That means that you can have every possible thought within an eternity.

But let's not stop there.

Let's say that in heaven our brains are elevated.So we have a million times as many synapses.

That is STILL a finite number. Therefore even with that many additional synapses, we can still have every single thought possible.

But let's not even stop THERE!

Let's say that in heaven, all brains are combined together into a sort of global consciousness. In that case you can take total number of synapses, multiply it by a million to increase our capacity and then multiply THAT by the total number of individuals ever going to heaven.

Regardless of how many times you multiply it, the result is still a finite number. That means thatall humans together could still have all possible thoughts even in a state of combined consciousness.

It goes on and on and on.

You can even do those things over and over again.

You could read ALL books a million times.

Or have all possible thoughts in a shared consciousness with all other human beings a quadrillion times.

When all of that has happened, how must time do youhave left?

It turns out that you have just as much as when you started.

It is EXACTLY as though nothing has changed.

It is EXACTLY as though you did NONE of those things.

You still have PRECISELY eternity left.

What do you do now?

More to the point, why would anyone possibly hope for such a fate?