This is the first step to revolution.

(God i hate these threads! somebody is going to take this comment out of proportion)

Yeah, Christianity has a win-win situation for God.  If nothing or something negative happens, its written off as against God's will.  If something positive happens, the fact that there is a scientific or statistical explanation is put aside and it is considered as an act of God.

My reasoning is that Heaven is a continuation of this life, your life experiences continuing on after you die.  Since you will end up in Heaven, certain events you did on Earth will seem meaningless in Heaven, and you have no reason to do future, similar events in Heaven.

It was mentioned that pharmacists could develop drugs just for fun, but if you ask a pharmacist why he is working on a HIV vaccine or a cure for cancer, they will not tell you that they are doing it just for fun.

So, to use your earlier comparison, if you saved a guy's life in New York and then moved to LA where no one knew or cared, does that mean saving his life was pointless?  

Or, if you were about to move, would it make no difference if you went on a killing spree, just because you were about to leave it all behind anyway?  

Bottom line:  the discoveries you made, etc. that you did on Earth would be meaningless if you did them in Heaven -- and you would have no reason to try; but that wouldn't mean that they were meaningless when you did them on Earth.  

To use the same comparison, I could save a guy's life in New York or I could let him die, in both cases he will end up in Los Angeles.  If you had time to think about it, you would be faced with the choice of saving a man so that he can live on Earth a short time longer and prevent his Earthly loved ones from grief, or you could let him die so that he can enter eternal paradise and see loved ones that already passed away and miss him.  Thus, you dont really save someones life, you decide what 'realm' they are going to be in.  Thankfully people dont think this way in real life, we always try to save and help others as if death is final and to be avoided at all costs, but if we actually put Heaven into our cost benefit analysis of many choices we make, things would be quite different.

Another example, if a man's entire family dies and he told you that he missed them was going to allow himself to die by stop taking his insulin.  Would you tell him to let himself die or try to talk him out of it? 

Many things that we do on Earth have meaning, but if there was a Heaven we would later realize that they were meaningless.  If you do a great thing on Earth, say you discovered a cure for paralysis then donated all the money you made to build homes for poor people.  Then you get to Heaven and see that your discovery doesnt matter because everyone with paralysis is healed and the hard earned money you donated doesnt matter because everyone has a mansion.

And even if the memory of doing something great remained, there is no possibility for you to do anything else that is great.  Thus, the only enjoyment from achievements that you can get in Heaven is from past memories.  And what about a billion years into the future, everything in Heaven is the same and you are still holding on to those same memories so that you can remember something you once did that was great.

Manus, you need as much non heaven as possible before you get to heaven, so you can know how great it is when you're there. That's why christians don't let other christian die, it will make heaven better for them...

Get it?

I have called specific aspects of your argument ignorant or incoherent and then in each instance I explained my reasoning so that you could rebutt my assessment. Also, as I said very early in this discussion I use the words by their definition..ignorant meaning lacking information and incoherent meaning without logic or connection to the discussion.  You actually have used them without describing which part of my post you object to (a good example quoted above in the last paragraph), so you're projecting a bit on that issue.  I've ignored this because I know some folks can take it wrong and I don't want to create a problem I just want to have the discussion.  The discussion itself between two members can and should continue and I have no ill will towards you so long as you stay on the topic and away from the personal stuff.

Now, in an effort to reach a conclusion lets go back to the original post that spurred this discussion:

1) This discussion can be broken into two distinct parts. The first part is whether discovery and invention here on earth is made meaningless by the existence of god, and the second part is whether the same is true in heaven.  To date the bulk (if not the entirety of) your argument has been focused on the second part of this discussion.  I believe this second part of the discussion cannot be resolved because neither of us has any reliable source on the meaning of existence in heaven...it's something neither of us can speak to without pure speculation. If you have an argument that isn't speculation then make it, but I'm not going to address speculation because I view it as a waste of time.

But the first part of the discussion we can examine without speculation and you haven't given a real argument as to why life would be less meaningful here on earth because of god's existence.  Whats more is that even this first part of the discussion is somewhat ambiguous because it is unclear if we are talking about the "meaning of life" or just basic meaning like "if I do this job I get paid".  I'll let you tell me which you were referring to.

Now I'm somewhat stunned at your last paragraph above because in my prior posts I've made it pretty clear (ie  Sqrl said: "you didn't address the issue of inventions having meaning here on earth but instead only repeated their lack of heavenly importance.") that I was objecting to the earthly aspect of the discussion and not the heavenly bit.  I've made this point a couple of times now and you've yet to address it instead focusing on the meaning in heaven only.

The very reason this discussion of heaven is pointless is because you speculate that these things have no meaning and therefore there is no meaning at all (as opposed to just those things having no meaning), where as I would agree that inventions and discoveries IN HEAVEN lack meaning but that heaven has meaning beyond the things that have meaning here on earth.  Your argument is basically that things that have meaning on earth should have meaning in heaven and if they don't then heaven lacks meaning...this is absurd because we don't know what you can or can't do in heaven, or really anything about its morale, social, technological, or economic structures because we have no direct observations on which to base an argument. We don't even know if those structures would exist or if there are things they do for meaning that we have no concept of.  The meaning of heaven from any angle is speculation..both in support of meaning and against it having meaning.  

2) A few bible verses aren't exactly the kind of argument I'm used to seeing from an athiest, but the fact is that I cannot assess their true meaning without proper context. After all pronouns without context are pretty pointless.  Take the first quote for example, are you claiming that the meaning of the verse is that I could ask to have all humanity tortured and killed and that I could expect it to be fulfilled.  In other words, is what is written as straight forward as it is presented or is there a deeper meaning?

These passages are not telling people they can stop farming their lands and live off the promise that god will fulfill your every whim.  They are passages intended to give hope that things out of your control could be influenced (ie rain for crops, diseases, etc..), not to literally promise a personal diefic assistant to solve your problems.

What I really don't get is that the differences between entitlement and prayer are fairly blatant and yet you insist that your statement is valid.  The differences come in initiation and outcome.

Initiation:

The way entitlement is initiated is by signing up for the program and hoping that your situation is at least bad enough for you to qualify.  If you're making too much money you might not qualify, if you don't have a kid you might not qualify, etc...  To this end you might turn down better jobs, have children, etc...just to qualify.

The way prayer is initiated is obviously prayer, but you hope that you are a good person who is deserving of god's help.  If you're engaged in sinful activities god may not answer your prayers.  To this end you might volunteer somewhere, treat your family well, adopt, do good deeds,  etc...

Outcome:

The way entitlement actually has an effect is once qualified you receive what you asked for either in the mail or you pick it up.  Additionally most programs provide this dispensation of benefits on a regular basis.  If you don't get your benefits you can go complain or in extreme cases you can even sue.

The way prayer actually has an effect is not so direct, there is no date and time you can pick up your check.  You don't get to plan your weekend around the knowledge that your prayer is coming true at 5:30 on Friday afternoon, you have to keep working for what you want hoping that your prayer comes true. You have no guarantee it will come true and there are no repercussions for god if it doesn't.  As a result you're forced to keep trying on your own and simply hope that the the prayer is answered.

These two concepts may both be methods by which people receive benefits, but that alone does not make them the valid subject of a moral equivalence. Even in things that seem similar there are often massive differences that make such comparisons ridiculous.  Consider a man trying to kill a 1 month old baby in its crib and then consider a man who kills to save his baby from that circumstance.   Both have killed but the baby killer is a monster that goes to prison if he's lucky enough not to be executed.  The father on the other hand is a hero who is not even brought up on charges.

Do you think the baby killer would be justified to sit in jail saying "Damn hypocrite fathers, I might be a murderer but they are too!".  This is absurd because there is no moral equivalence just as there is none here, though this case is obviously not as extreme of an example. 

I can see that you're arguing that just affecting whether someone's life ends or not could be rendered less important by the existence of Heaven.  For that reason I should have picked a better example and I apologize.  

What about discoveries or inventions or actions that alleviate suffering?  That isn't rendered moot by going to Heaven, is it?  Like, say, stopping someone from being tortured.  

Or those poor people that all get mansions in heaven:  if your donation meant that they would get heating in the winter as opposed to not, while they were on Earth, then why is the meaning stripped from that when they get to Heaven?  Sure, they don't need help any more, but they sure had a use for it when they got it on Earth.  

How is it any more meaningful without Heaven?  You're all going to die and the universe will burn out and where will your donations be then?  What use will your cure for paralysis be when the stars are all dead?  

I realize you're banned right now but hopefully you'll see this.   

For me, the distinction is that when you get to Heaven nothing you do matters anymore.  I guess I'm a bit of a pessimist, but if I new that nothing I did in the future would matter I would have much less desire to do things now.

For instance, lets say I signed up for a class and was told that it didnt matter whatsoever if I passed it or not and that I would have no use for the material in the future.  Then I wouldnt give any effort in the class because I know that nothing I do pertaining to that class now will have a bearing on my future.

But that's not equivalent at all.  It's more like you'll have a lot of use for the material for three years and then never again.  

Also, didn't you dodge my questions?  
1.  Why doesn't what happened to people on Earth matter just because they get into Heaven?  They still had that good/bad experience.  You're basically saving them from having unpleasant or traumatic memories.  (That's assuming you had no influence on whether they got into Heaven ...)

2.  Why are Earthly deeds meaningful as opposed to meaningless just by the absence of an afterlife?  Sure, you could say that what affects our Earthly lives is relatively more important when that is the only life you get, as opposed to also having an afterlife that lasts much longer than Earthly life, but you still have yet to show IMO why the existence of an afterlife erases all the meaning that life would otherwise have.  

I guess those might not actually be very separate questions; when I look at it now, #1 appears to be a specific example of #2.