Heaven Runs out of Room

[Junghalli]

Only, we probably stand a pretty good chance of winning. All the theistic mythologies of hell were written around two millenia ago and they all predicted what seemed like awesome characteristics then. They're pretty pathetic by our standards today. I cam imagine some of the responses right now.

Hmm, offhand I'd say the most powerful pre-modern depiction of demons and angels would probably be Milton. If we went with his description we'd be fighting Godzilla-sized creatures with T-1000 like regeneration (Satan is described as being of Leviathan-like proportions, and I believe there's a battle scene where they keep stabbing each other but the wounds heal as soon as they pull the sword out, though I haven't read that part myself). Thankfully they still fight with melee weapons, apparently, but they do have some ranged weapons (thunderbolts, and at one point the demons talk about making some sort of presumably flamethrower-like weapon out of hellfire).

We could probably still kill them, but we'd probably need nukes to do it, or at least seriously heavy firepower.

[Darth Servo]

and I believe there's a battle scene where they keep stabbing each other but the wounds heal as soon as they pull the sword out

No, no, thats from "The Highlander".

[TimothyC]

Off hand at the OP I think I'd be calling BS at whatever the proof was, and live my life the way I have.

[Darth Wong]

Only, we probably stand a pretty good chance of winning. All the theistic mythologies of hell were written around two millenia ago and they all predicted what seemed like awesome characteristics then. They're pretty pathetic by our standards today. I cam imagine some of the responses right now.

Hmm, offhand I'd say the most powerful pre-modern depiction of demons and angels would probably be Milton.

Who cares? The source material ends roughly two millennia ago. If we're going to use Milton, we might as well use the computer game Doom.

[Stuart]

Hmm, offhand I'd say the most powerful pre-modern depiction of demons and angels would probably be Milton. If we went with his description we'd be fighting Godzilla-sized creatures with T-1000 like regeneration (Satan is described as being of Leviathan-like proportions, and I believe there's a battle scene where they keep stabbing each other but the wounds heal as soon as they pull the sword out, though I haven't read that part myself).

That doesn't buy too much. Look on it this way; if the demons and angels are interacting physically with us (ie if they are torturing us in the afterlife) then we can interact with them on the same basis. At this point, size doesn't mean very much. OK, M16s aren't going to be that useful but they aren't a primary killing tool anyway. We'll be doing the killing with artillery and crew served weapons and, films to the contrary, TOW anti-tank missiles will make even Godzilla's eyes water. So, probably will .50s

Thankfully they still fight with melee weapons, apparently, but they do have some ranged weapons (thunderbolts, and at one point the demons talk about making some sort of presumably flamethrower-like weapon out of hellfire).

Thunderbolts - contemptuous sniff. Big deal. An Abrams will shrug those off, so will Bradleys and Strikers.

Call their flamethrower and raise them F-15Es or A-10s delivering napalm.

We could probably still kill them, but we'd probably need nukes to do it, or at least seriously heavy firepower.

Seriously heavy firepower we're not short of. We're awash with it. In fact, after five years chasinga round trying to shoot at people we can't find, having them all stacked up ready for grid square removal would be a really welcome change of pace.

And if we did need to use nukes, so its a targeteering problem. The good old days are back.........

[Stuart]

Who cares? The source material ends roughly two millennia ago. If we're going to use Milton, we might as well use the computer game Doom.

Agreed Mike, if we're going by theology, the source material is that extant 2,000 years ago. And that makes the demons/angels (hey in this context they're both just targets to me) pretty pathetic.

You know Mike, there's a really good novel brewing up in my mind here.

[Darth Wong]

I think the problem here is that movies really don't show how lethal modern weapons are. Partially because movies always show gasoline explosions, and a gasoline explosion really doesn't look that hard to survive. So people don't grasp how absurdly powerful our shells and bombs can be.

One thing I've never understood is why the humans in Godzilla movies don't aim all their ordnance precisely at his head. They always fire at his belly and flanks.

[Darth Wong]

Who cares? The source material ends roughly two millennia ago. If we're going to use Milton, we might as well use the computer game Doom.

Agreed Mike, if we're going by theology, the source material is that extant 2,000 years ago. And that makes the demons/angels (hey in this context they're both just targets to me) pretty pathetic.

You know Mike, there's a really good novel brewing up in my mind here.

Personally, I love the idea of a war on Heaven, or Hell, or both. Those guys have had their fun at our expense for too long

[Junghalli]

Yeah, it did occur to me that modern weaponry being able to kill Biblical angels and demons would be a pretty promising premise for a fantasy series.

Say the Judgment Day happens and God (fundie assholes version) takes the 1/10 or whatever absurdly low percentage of the human race He deems worthy up to Heaven, and condemns everybody else to Hell. But then something happens He didn't anticipate:

All those people say "fuck you, we opt out of this shitty system" and we have the firepower to make it stick, blowing away the demons when they come to collect us or the angels when they try to cast us into the pit.

The concept is so massively un-PC I doubt it would have much of a chance of getting printed, but it'd be pretty awesome.

[Ariphaos]

A bit I wrote for Solar Storms a year or so ago.

"When you meet God, how will you forge the path?
Shall it be extinction, like uncounted species before you?
Or will you tear open Time and Space itself, and step forward to greet the Maker?
What will you do?
Will to prostrate yourself, groveling like an insignificant worm?
Or will you stand proud, and meet the gaze of the Lord with unwavering eyes?
When the Creator speaks, will you tremble, or stand firm?
And when He asks you
'Why have you come?'
Will your answer be to beg for forgiveness?

...

Or will you declare your intent to overcome Him, and transcend the God of Gods?

And when you state this...

Will the Demiurge laugh at your impotence, and cast you into the pits of Hell like Lucifer before you?

Or will he and all the 'verse quake in terror at Your inevitable victory?

Yeah, I think you can guess my answer.

[NeoGoomba]

Lucifer would probably LOVE to sign on with us. He knows the terrain (Heaven AND Hell), and probably still has some sort of contacts within Heaven in the third of the host that didn't fight, and now theres a force with potent weaponry above glorified S&M trolls. He provides the intel, we provide the muscle and high powered weaponry.

It would suck for him to go from the Adversary to merely a glorified informant, but it would suck more for him to be strapped front of the first Abrams tank to bust through Heaven's Gate.

[Vaporous]

Another angle to consider: There's going to be a big gap of time between the announcement and whatever new order (or total chaos) that follows, and another between any invasion of the Afterworld. Given that we've already lost "Divine Favor" and all that, what stop Satan from contacting us for a joint effort? Or, more likely, what stops him from invading us first with his un-numbered legions?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Alright, here's what I got:

At the start, after the war in heaven, there were 301,655,722 angels, according to the 14-th century cabbalists. That number can't really change over time.

Now since demons were originally 1/3 of the Host, we can figure the number of demons is half that, or 150,827,861 at the start. Unfortunately for us, Demons can multiply (unlike angels), so there were almost 151 million demons at the beginning of time, and that number is increasing.

Many angellic/demonic beings were characterized as manifesting in their true form as hundreds of feet tall, or able to shatter men with the roar of their voices, and commanding various fires and thunders. So, lot of targets to choose from.

[Setzer]

Well, it would be a lot easier if we knew how quickly demons could reproduce.

[brianeyci]

I believe the question of the op is whether athiests would start worshipping God. If incontrivertiable proof of God existed, athiests could convert in large numbers. Athiesm isn't a belief system and isn't a moral code. It's not even a way to live your life. It's just a lack of belief in God. Unlike religious retarded movies, which say that no matter what proof is provided doubters will never believe, there is a threshold of proof.

Religious propaganda films always have the character of the doubter, the moron who hates God because God didn't intervene to save his wife/husband/brother/lover's life. I believe this kind of person is truly a moron, or perhaps doesn't even exist except in the uneducated. It's like blaming Q for not going around saving everybody in Star Trek: it's entirely possible his powers are limited and don't allow him to save the world. It's also entirely possible all the evidence from the Old Testament is bullshit, and it would not survive to convict God in a court of law. So the doubter, the moron who won't believe in supernatural powers even if it's right fucking in front of him is an invention of the religious right to make athiests and non-religious people seem "dogmatic" and "inflexible."

There would be a myriad of side effects too, from super-health lifestyles in the first world, to keeping the body alive for as long as possible.

Expansion is a matter of survival. With a whole new world to conquer and maybe many other worlds, even fundamentalists won't ignore the potential. God's only hope is to see the problem before it starts and seal the rift, but he'll probably be arrogant and won't see the problem in time.

It will be a war of attrition, and the factories of China will shit out armored cars, machine guns and the mortar. Something a little more advanced than WWII, but not by that much. Tanks are designed to battle other tanks, and perhaps are not ideal to storm Heaven given... Heaven has no tanks. It will be all about cars and artillery. If memory serves, that is actually an area the USA is lacking in, and perhaps will be unsustainable. If I remember right, Saddam's artillery was actually higher quality and more numerous than all the allied forces in Gulf War I.

The sheer amount and size of demons, if that number is right, will necessitate cheap shells, not tomahawks. Nuclear weapons will probably still be taboo, given they'll annihilate souls, and infantry will still be needed to take and hold territory. So towed artillery, probably by horse or even human power, will rule. Suddenly China's one billion population comes into play. Wikipedia says that China has three hundred million men ready for active service, the entire population of the USA. The USA will probably be slower than China to take advantage too, given the USA is Christian.

[ray245]

Not to mention most chinese aren't christian in the first place.

Although where are we even going to find the 'gate' to hell in the first place?

Furthermore, given that there are other religion in the world as well...will those religion become a reality as well?

We can always use hindu, chinese, japanese and all the other modern religion's god to help us.

Which means we can easily get a bunch of chinese heavenly army to aid us. The chinese gods still maintain an army. And given that chinese 'update' and 'modernize' their religion ( chinese burns more than just paper money for their loved ones, paper Car, paper personal computer, paper Xbox360, paper plane, paper playstation, paper ipod )

From what I understand, the chinese version of hell is bascially a afterlive where you will get new technology, as long as your family burn paper version of them.

So, all we need to do is to burn paper Abrams tanks, paper F-22, paper aircraft carrier, paper artillery etc...VOVLA! We got an unlimted supply of military equipment.

Also, this means the chinese heavenly army should be a 'modern' one.


plus characters like sun wukong ( he is worshipped by some chinese), Guan Gong AKA Guan Yu ( from the three kingdom period), Zhuge Liang and etc.


One thing I can't stand about chrisitanity is...the fact that christians believe that only ONE could exist.

And I believe that the effect of christianity's god will only affect christians because they believed in god in the first place.

For people who did not even know of Christianity existence (rural areas) will should be able to escape this fate.

[White Haven]

The athiest reaction is the delicious one...a group of people who haven't believed in the existence of a being have no preconceived notions of that being's 'goodness' or other attributed qualities. They only know that they've been dealing with its bigotted followers for ages, and now the being in question has proven himself to be easily the worst enemy that humanity has ever known.

As for 'we don't know where Heaven in to attack it,' knowing that it's there to find is half the work done right there. In large part, the question would be how easily-analyzed the contacts with Hell and, if it were properly observed at the time of the announcement, Heaven are. Given that the two realms have similar origins, observation and research on and into the properties and methods of accessing Hell could potentially lead to advances in the search for Heaven's gates.

And, in closing, this thread has produced some of the coolest mental images of all time.

[CaptainChewbacca]

There IS a certain compelling quality to the armies of earth launching airstrikes against the gates of hell while armor columns roll across the planes of Meggido.

[Darth Wong]

Alright, here's what I got:

At the start, after the war in heaven, there were 301,655,722 angels, according to the 14-th century cabbalists. That number can't really change over time.

Now since demons were originally 1/3 of the Host, we can figure the number of demons is half that, or 150,827,861 at the start. Unfortunately for us, Demons can multiply (unlike angels), so there were almost 151 million demons at the beginning of time, and that number is increasing.

Many angellic/demonic beings were characterized as manifesting in their true form as hundreds of feet tall, or able to shatter men with the roar of their voices, and commanding various fires and thunders. So, lot of targets to choose from.

Where did they get any of this from? They wrote more than a thousand years after the last source material was produced too, so it doesn't seem any better-connected to the source material than any of Jerry Falwell's rantings.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The Encyclopedia of Angels. I can get you a full bibliography later, but the author pulled material from a LOT of different texts, heirarchies, ecclesiarchies, and various 'holy lists'.

[Stuart]

There IS a certain compelling quality to the armies of earth launching airstrikes against the gates of hell while armor columns roll across the planes of Meggido.

Part One of Armageddon??? just went up in fanfics. I hope that was the right place to put it. Enjoy.

[CaptainChewbacca]

There IS a certain compelling quality to the armies of earth launching airstrikes against the gates of hell while armor columns roll across the planes of Meggido.

Part One of Armageddon??? just went up in fanfics. I hope that was the right place to put it. Enjoy.

Yes, I saw. It is Awesome & win. Check your email.

[Stravo]

Have to say this is most certainly not the direction I expected the topic to go. I figured we might get some doom and gloom a la the Peak Oil threads (can't very well bomb Oil into submission) but this "Storming Heaven and Hell" idea is completely not the way I thought it would go and I like the creativity.

[Molyneux]

Have to say this is most certainly not the direction I expected the topic to go. I figured we might get some doom and gloom a la the Peak Oil threads (can't very well bomb Oil into submission) but this "Storming Heaven and Hell" idea is completely not the way I thought it would go and I like the creativity.

I propose that this be immediately labelled the "Samurai Cat" scenario.
Infinite legions of damned souls, with infinite heavy weaponry, against the armies of Satan and Heaven combined...when neither side can actually die.

If they televise it, it'd be the most awesome reality show possible.

[Darth Wong]

Have to say this is most certainly not the direction I expected the topic to go. I figured we might get some doom and gloom a la the Peak Oil threads (can't very well bomb Oil into submission) but this "Storming Heaven and Hell" idea is completely not the way I thought it would go and I like the creativity.

Good old human nature. Give us a responsibility, and we will hem, haw, or bury our heads in the sand. But give us an enemy, especially an ultimate enemy like this one, and we will fight to the end.