Excerpt #60 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
Life is a high-risk and ultimately fatal activity.
Keep this in mind. That is why we created “heaven.”
For relief.
For hope.
For something to look forward to.
For a just reward.
The place in the sky where everything, finally, is going to be fine.
Don’t bet on it.
“Heaven”… some definitions:
“a place or condition of utmost happiness”
“promised land”
“an abode of blissful spiritual life after death”
It’s an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations with all their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous. – Gloria Steinem
Heaven . . . “the dwelling place of God, gods, or other spiritual beings and the abode or state of being of the saved, the elect, or the blessed in the afterlife or in the time after the Last Judgment. The term also designates the celestial sphere or spheres in contrast to the earth (the dwelling place of man) and to the underworld (the abode of the damned), often called hell.”
REALITY IS NO MATCH FOR FANTASY.
Heaven . . . “in Christianity, the spiritual realm over which God reigns as king, or the fulfillment on Earth of God’s will. The phrase occurs frequently in the New Testament.”
This is all nonsense, the product of intelligence in infancy, all created by churchmen and churchwomen profoundly ignorant of
our world.
FILTER BELIEFS THROUGH THE FINEST SCREEN.
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, accept it and live up to it. – Buddha
ARCHAIC BELIEFS ARE SELF-IMPOSED BONDAGE.
Fulfillment is not found in an afterlife.
It’s not in the next embodiment.
The opportunity for it is here and now.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE COSTLY THAN IGNORANCE.