“The point is: what happens in heaven?” “Unknowable wonderfulness?” “Nonsense. The answer is nothing. Nothing can happen because if something happens, in fact if something can happen, then it doesn’t represent eternity. Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change.” “Have you always thought that?” “If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual’s circumstances—and that must incluust have death.” “There are those de at least the possibility that they alter for the worse—then you don’t have life after death; you jwho believe that after death the soul is recreated into another being.” “That is conservative and a little stupid, certainly, but not actually idiotic.” “And there are those who believe that, upon death, the soul is allowed to create its own universe.” “Monomaniacal and laughable as well as provably wrong.” “There there are those who believe that the soul—” “Well, there are all sorts of different beliefs. However, the ones that interest me are those concerning the idea of heaven. That’s the idiocy it annoys me that others cannot see.”

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "“The point is: what happens in heaven?” “Unknowable wonderfulness?” “Nonsense. The answer is nothing. Nothing can happen because if something happens, in fact if something can happen, then it doesn’t represent eternity. Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change.” “Have you always thought that?” “If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual’s circumstances—and that must incluust have death.” “There are those de at least the possibility that they alter for the worse—then you don’t have life after death; you jwho believe that after death the soul is recreated into another being.” “That is conservative and a little stupid, certainly, but not actually idiotic.” “And there are those who believe that, upon death, the soul is allowed to create its own universe.” “Monomaniacal and laughable as well as provably wrong.” “There there are those who believe that the soul—” “Well, there are all sorts of different beliefs. However, the ones that interest me are those concerning the idea of heaven. That’s the idiocy it annoys me that others cannot see.”" in the context of "Iain Banks, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 11" to mean that wisdom is timeless.