Any heaven we can imagine will become hell in eternity--consider 72 virgins (or raisins) for eternity. Unless the law of diminishing marginal returns has been repealed in heaven, it will certainly pale after repeated experience.
Jesus even suggested this in his response to the pharisee's question on the widow who was remarried to seven brothers (e.g., Mark 12:18-27):
18Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 19"Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. 20Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23At the resurrection[c] whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?"
24Jesus replied, "Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'[d]? 27He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!"
Jesus describes heaven in non-rational terms, I suspect, because his listeners couldn't grasp the concepts or the language lacked the descriptive capacity beyond "it's heaven."
This doesn't mean that it's all hippie-based "expand your mind, I'm ok, you're ok" irrationality. God gave us reason, imagination, and free will, arguably as tools to search for understanding about God. But just like I used to mock and ridicule Christians and Christ because it seemed wholly irrational from a liberal/leftist college kid standpoint, Christianity only made sense after I got saved. Heaven will only make sense when we get there.
Beware arrogance. Consider that we are but bottom dwelling worms in a fragile air-ocean/biosphere. Astronomers see incredibly violent explosions of energy, thankfully far away. A mere cosmic twitch(an asteroid/comet hit like SL9 on Jupiter in 1994, a nearby supernova...)and we’d all be gone in an instant. Beware arrogance....
Look, being conservative and a scientist aren't mutually exclusive. Just like being religious isn't a prerequisite for being conservative. The reason science and religion have such a hard time getting along is because in the past, the church was the highest authority on all things, not just spiritual. Remember, things that we take for granted now (i.e. Earth is not the centre of the universe) almost got people like Galileo killed in their time because of the church.
You can attribute whatever you want in your life to Jesus and that's just fine with me. Different strokes for different folks. But generally there's a real explanation for everything. It's another reason why I never try to argue science with the religious. I was born a catholic, I consider myself agnostic. Some of the hard core Christians here on FR would call me an atheist or a heathen (and probably some other not very nice words too, whatever happened to "Love thy neighbour."?).
Unfortunately, party because of religion, some things look to be inevitable. Most people who grew up in the 60s and 70s took it for granted that we would expand our reach from this rock to the moon and Mars and even beyond. The days of Apollo. Now, look what religion has done. We're wasting money dealing with a group of fanatics (who have been told by their religious leaders that we are the enemy and are to be destroyed at all costs) rather than advancing the species. Now don't get me wrong, you've gotta do what you've gotta do, and we have to protect our way of life. But my argument is that we shouldn't have to.
I'm all about freedom of expression (and religion). That also means that I have the freedom to disbelieve in your belief.
As to your point about the limitations of human intellect, I will post only a quote by Robert A. Heinlein:
"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run these are the only people who count."
I think one reason that futurists are so maligned by the religious is that it would prove that either Nietzsche was right ("God is dead.") or that he/she/it never existed in the first place. Imagine what immortality would do the human psyche! Here's another one, by Ray Kuzrweil:
"Take death for example, a great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it, we make extraordinary efforts do delay it and often consider it's intrusion a tragic event. Yet we'd find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. If death were indefinitely put off, the human psyche would end up...well...like the gambler in the Twilight Zone episode."
Now...for posterity's sake I'll tell the story of the Twilight Zone episode that Kurzweil references. In that episode, a man is shot (after shooting a few other people) and goes to (what he presumes is) Heaven. He gambles and always wins no matter what. But he becomes bored with this "existence." He begs his "guardian angel" to send him to Hell. Then the "angel" tells him that he's in Hell.
In Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines (recommended reading by the way) he suggests a thought experiment. Say sometime in the next 30 years, we have the technology to replace a single neuron in your brain with a microchip. It's a cure to Alzheimer's among other degenerative diseases. Great, everyone's happy. But let's let the process go a little further. As each neuron fails, we replace it. One by one, all of your brain's neurons become electronic. You don't lose any of your memories that you haven't lost, presumably your cognitive ability is even enhanced.
The question is this: At what point do you cease to be Human? It's a rhetorical question. If you take the view of most Christians that life begins at conception, then the logical follow-on is that as soon as that first microchip is implanted, you're a machine. Now assuming we have the ability to replace individual neurons, then we probably have the technology to replace other organs, lungs, livers, kidneys. Say I take a mechanical kidney implant, or a mechanical liver, at what point do I become a machine? Are patients with artificial heart valves machines? Or how about hip replacements? These are fundamental questions that I'm pretty sure scare the heck out of the religious. Because it means immortality. And I'm sorry to say it, but the basis of religion is that you will find comfort after you leave the physical world. What happens when the consciousness never LEAVES the physical world? Religion falls apart.
I'm going to leave it at that, I'm getting long-winded.
I agree. “The Tao that can be described is not the true Tao” — Laotse
As to the article itself I'm sorry but whatever AI/VR-Transhumanism comes about it can not replace actual living. It is assuming that the mind can recreate a whole living universe within it self's mainframe that can be just like the human senses of the living and actual life experience. Bottom line it is creating a human being and a planet in a machine. It is nice Sci-Fi but what type of device can hold billions of consciousness while at the same time constructing billions of universes for all these minds to live in plus if you create other humans in the mainframe to interact with then those will become actualized living beings in the construct which then will create more universes in the mainframe plus what if the constructs decide for themselves to over throw the mainframe and want to become human again in the real world. And then there is always the anarchy factor of someone planting a virus in the machine to destroy it. Then comes the problem of sorting out who rules the machine-verse and who decides the morality of the machine-verse etc. Then there is problem of a power source for this machine and also who is going to be paying the power bill for this machine while it runs. But the really big question is who will be willing to stay behind and hit the "Any-key" when the program hangs up?
We have already seen the(The Matrix/ The Matrix Reloaded/ The Matrix Revolutions/ The Animatrix) and several other movies that have dealt with type of subject matter so if this is the future of Sci-Fi and us as a race then we are in for a lot of reruns.