Belief: Part 2 of 2

A friend of mine once told me "It's too bad you are an atheist. I'd really like for you to be up in Heaven with me when you die".

Yeah, he's a childlike idiot. For one, I've told him numerous times I am not an atheist. Being an atheist requires faith. And two, he assumes that some part or all of our personality persists after death. And three, that some region of space and time exists somehow somewhere eternally which would correspond to an earthly idyll. And four, a really big stretch, is that, because he believes in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, all of the awful sins of omission and commission he has performed throughout his long and tawdry life will be forgiven.

Another time, after a very strange and ultimately annoying proselytizer informed me that I was going to hell. Or rather, in her mind, Going to Hell.

I replied, "Honey, I've had job offers".

Again, she assumed that for one the personality, in part or in whole, persists after death. For two, that there exists some type of cosmic justice which closely corresponds with our monkey ethics and morals. And for three that some place exists eternally, in which those not quite up to snuff according to these cosmically ordained monkey ethics and morals, enjoy eternal suffering and degradation.

There's actually more than just these assumptions as to where you can go. The first assumption is the big one, that you persist. What happens after that gets shadier and vaguer, and all pretty much colored and limited by human imagination. But I figure (accepting the first assumption as true) it probably is roughly divided into benign, neutral, and malignant consequences. Perhaps not. If, for example, you are just let lose into the larger universe, without any possible way of interacting with matter, like a ghost or something, where is the fun in that? Or purpose? Or even worse, what if you can't interact with anything? Including other spirits. Not much fun at all.

Oh, it could be fun. Who knows? As is the case for or against God, if you posit an infinite universe, or an infinitude of universes, pretty much anything is possible. Heavens, Hells, Purgatories, Valhallas, Ginungagaps, boring Limbos, and who knows what else?

Because we are constrained by our monkey minds within our monkey bodies to only a small set of what can be. Anthropocentrism as opposed to what else exactly?...