The Waiting Room to Eternity

Christianity declares that we are all born sinners, so it can convince us all to be wholly dependent upon God to cure us of this condition. But that "God" will only cure us, not through any effort of our own, but through his grace, which he bestows sparingly upon those he alone determines to be "worthy." And while he sets out some guidelines for how he makes his selection, the only thing the Bible assures us all with absolute certainty is that salvation is never guaranteed for anyone.

Of course, in this life, it is not God at all who assures us of any of this, but only his Holy Catholic Church, or any of the 40+ thousand Christian derivatives, that all make a great deal of money while here on earth, helping wayward frightened souls reach the heaven they can only hope for.

It is a curious thing indeed, then, that such religions claim that only by "believing" in what it is they are telling you, can anyone expect to protect themselves - at least as far as possible anyway - as much from so many prowling demons here on earth, as from God's eternal judgement of hellfire in the afterlife. 

I can think of no stranger arrangement possible, then, than that an almighty God should create a universe filled with flawed and highly manipulable souls, who must all rely necessarily on other flawed and highly manipulable souls, to show them how to avoid eternal damnation and reach eternal paradise, using nothing but the writings and "traditions" of so many flawed and highly manipulable souls who had come before them.

All scientific discovery, according to the devoted "believer," serves but one of two purposes, and two purposes only. One, is to only ever affirm the infallible "truths" that had been set down from the beginning of time by God himself. The other is to occupy our minds as we while away the years before each of us is finally and irrevocably dispatched to an inescapable eternity of either pain or pleasure.

Of course, an eternity of either one can only result in each becoming the other after awhile, and vice versa, ad infinitum,  It is this discovery that every heaven will eventually become as insufferable as hell as assuredly as every hell is destined to become as tedious as all the pleasures of an eternal heaven, that should convince us of the need to make the most of what we have here on earth.  And this is because the afterlife is a prison house of equal parts heaven and hell from which there is no escape - and the "Lord" of the house, is only as much of a saint as a sadistic psychopath.