{"id":1909,"date":"2013-05-27T12:28:55","date_gmt":"2013-05-27T17:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/?p=1909"},"modified":"2013-09-01T14:48:15","modified_gmt":"2013-09-01T19:48:15","slug":"i-dont-want-to-go-to-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/i-dont-want-to-go-to-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"I Don&#8217;t Want to Go to Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week the pope announced that atheists might go to heaven. To which I replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How dare you threaten me!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>He was wearing his pretty white dress with 24 carat gold trimmings and enough gold jewelry to make Liberace jealous, surrounded by other men wearing similarly fabulous attire. He took a break from condemning gayness to proclaim:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcFather, the atheists?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Even the atheists. Everyone! &#8230; \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBut I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe, Father, I am an atheist!\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 But do good: we will meet one another there.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Why would an atheist want to go to heaven? There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing to <em>do<\/em> there. Sure, their version of Handel&#8217;s &#8216;Messiah&#8217; has got to be amazing, but after two or three listens you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to want to hear some Allman Brothers, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not up there. Does heaven have steaks, cooked to perfection with just the tiniest bit of perfect seasoning? Cuban Montecristos and Cohibas? Craft beer and fine Bourbon? Hot and willing women? No, no, no, and hell no. Heaven, heaven is a place, a place where nothing, ever happens.<\/p>\n<p>Wait, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/atheists-going-to-hell.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1910\" alt=\"atheists going to hell\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/atheists-going-to-hell-300x134.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"134\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/atheists-going-to-hell-300x134.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/atheists-going-to-hell.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Whew. That&#8217;s a relief. They had me scared for a minute there.<\/p>\n<p>This, my friends, is what heaven should sound like. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, but that&#8217;s OK, because can listen to it right now, here on earth.<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"420\" height=\"315\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/WfM6nRVBvGs?hl=en_US&amp;version=3&amp;rel=0\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed width=\"420\" height=\"315\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/WfM6nRVBvGs?hl=en_US&amp;version=3&amp;rel=0\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week the pope announced that atheists might go to heaven. To which I replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How dare you threaten me!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 He was wearing his pretty white dress with 24 carat gold trimmings and enough gold jewelry to make Liberace jealous, surrounded by other men wearing similarly fabulous attire. He took a break from condemning gayness [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1909"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1947,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909\/revisions\/1947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}