Heaven would be like a huge shopping mall where everything was free and my feet in my four inch ankle strap shoes never ached no matter how long I shopped and hell would be a place with even more shops but they'd always be closed and my feet would be aching before I even started
Heaven and hell are what you make them... Heaven - my wifes arms wrapped around me and her head pressed to my chest saying I love you. Hell - Walking away from said embrace to go to work.
Hell is just the threat that keeps people going to church and under control. This was most effective in the Middle Ages but its impact has wained. Heaven is another thing that just keeps people in church and was used to make the peasants work and not question their shitty lives. "Your life is so shit because the NEXT life is gonna be great..." Yeah, okay In summary, I don't believe in Heaven and Hell. Or anything else from ancient fairytales.
It's funny how everyone is always trying to change everyone else. For two thousand years "they" said you had to be good (and not too greedy) so that you could go die and go to heaven. Now, there are hundreds of self-help "prophets" who say that if you do/become x-y-z your life will be better -- another way of saying "work at it and you will eventually experience heaven now, not later." Gak! Anyone know of a "prophet" who can tell me that I'm okay NOW, and that it's OK to be in the place where I currently am, so that I don't have to WAIT for a future time (for me to be dead or different) in order to finally "have it good." ??!! (And I'm only half-kidding)
I'm not sure what I believe happens to us after I die, since I haven't died yet so I wouldn't know. (Although I did almost die once - honestly! I didn't feel anything strange though except excruciating pain from my illness.) I don't like the whole idea of Hell. Eternal torture just doesn't sound like something a supposedly "loving" God should subject people to! Not sure about Heaven. I'd like to believe there is a Heaven. As for what happens to really EVIL people when they die (I'm not talking about the run of the mill people who commit "sins" like having premarital sex. I'm talking about people like Hitler...), I'd prefer to think they just die and that's the end of it.
I believe in a heaven of sorts, maybe not in the biblical sense, but certainly a pleasant afterlife. Personally, I don't believe that there is a cut and dry line between our physical world and a spiritual world. I don't know how to justly describe it, and I'm sure I may sound out of my mind to a few, but I believe that world itself has a soul. To me the world is, in it's own regard, alive, and part of us stays with it after death. I came to these conclusions through a lot of thought, but really, the more convincing arguments for my case are from personal experiences. At times when I am working outside, just sitting around outside, or enjoying a hike or kayaking trip this inexplicable, overwhelming feeling comes over me; and I am convinced that there is more there than what I can see. I'm sure all of you have at one time or another felt a very strong, ungraspable presence. As for hell, I do not believe in a god, or any higher power, so unforgiving and so vengeful as to subject anyone to such pain and suffering.
"Now heaven would be a DJ spinnin' dub all night long And heaven would be just kickin' back with Jesus packing my bong And if you don't believe in Jesus then Muhammad or Buddah too And while the world is warring we just sit back and laugh at you" - OPM :smile:
