It's starting to rain and I'm a bit bored so here I am. I love the very first response - Simply put-because most have been conned.
Yep - they spoke to a snake. Nobody conned there, all good. And the devil tells lies such as - people will exist in some form beyond physical death, but the bible on the other hand wants you to know you're screwed.
No - stop press - if you're from exactly one type of Christian group from among the 41,000 or so, you're okay. After they extract 144,000 of the most excellent individuals to sit about ruling and stuff, because there's always a lot of ruling and laws to make. The rest you will be reconstituted like Deb mashed potato back into your old self. Everybody will be 25, smokin hot and nobody will have to clean the toilets. Sorry, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindu, Baha'i etc - you guys just die like for real.
Stay with me here, this is serious stuff - there are some among us who will go off in alien space craft with Tom Cruise, and others who will become little kind of gods, big God's apprentices and rule their own planets just like Lisa Simpson and her petri dish.
There are others who will get bus loads of virgins, 72 dark-eyed virgins to be exact. So many religious experts and so little time to take on-board all their wonderful wisdom. When you think for yourself it's the devil taking. When you follow the so-called divinely inspired without question you're saved. I don't think so.
Basically dying scares most people shitless. I believe in some kind of perpetuation that will be so profoundly different from this life that it's probably impossible to even describe or put into words. Taking grabs from religious writings and imagining that they offer a clear image of the after-life is childish at best.
If there is an after-life, and I believe there is, it will be as profound an awakening as it is for a child arriving in this world from the security of its mother's womb. The child has senses that gradually come into play and I imagine that we might have a whole raft of aptitudes that will unfold in the next dimension.
If I am wrong then I'm greatly comforted by the fact that if there is nothing - well, there is nothing and I'll have nothing to bitch about. If you'll excuse me now, I'm going off to invent a new religion.
