Bin Laden is Not in Hell After All

An open letter to America...

Dear America,

I'm writing to tell you of a terrible misunderstanding. I know that most of you (two thirds, according to The Public Religion Research Institute) are happy now that Osama bin Laden is burning in Hell. It took us a while to catch bin Laden, but we did it! We finally dispatched him off to his judgement day. And now most of you think Osama bin Laden is suffering in death the way he made others suffer in life.

Sadly, I have to report that Osama bin Laden isn't in Hell suffering. It's all a big lie. Osama bin Laden is not enduring everlasting pain and suffering. He's just dead. After he died, his brain simply stopped working. He's not feeling any pain. In fact, Osama bin Laden doesn't even exist any more.

Even worse, Osama bin Laden didn't suffer in death. He died almost instantly. OK, maybe the Navy Seal who shot him took the body shot first, so the world's worst terrorist felt intense pain briefly. But I'll bet it was less than a second or two

Boy Dreams, Parents Make Millions: Heaven Is For Real is Megahit

It's really sad to see a child's naive faith being exploited to make millions for his religious parents. But that's what has happened to young Colton Burpo.

Colton's appendix got infected and ruptured. He was rushed to emergency surgery and happily his life was saved (by modern medical science, I might add). But when he came out of the anesthetic, he had a rather startling tale to tell: he'd been to Heaven! And Jesus Himself was there (probably a white guy with a beard even though Jesus was probably dark-skinned), along with John the Baptist and even Colton's own great-grandfather!

Now Colton has a mega-seller book, Heaven Is For Real. Not just a sort-of-popular book, but the number one paperback on the New York Times bestseller list (login required).

Now you might think that this is just another of those Jesus-on-your-toast stories, that someone was just out to make a buck on this kid's delusions. But you'd be wrong! These are just humble Midwesterners who

Christian Memes on the Battlefield: Is Gandhi Going to Hell?

Pastor Rob Bell, a leading liberal Christian, dropped a bomb on the Evangelical right-wing faction of Christianity. Bell is calling the right-wing evalgelical ideas of Heaven, Hell, redemption and torture misguided and toxic. He is calling out the Evangelical right for their preposterous and indefensible concept of the afterlife.

Bell is saying that there are (*gasp*) other ways to Heaven than Evangelical Christianity! The blasphemy!

The Evangelical right's vision of Hell is one of the best tools in their toolbox, and it's no wonder they're upset about Bell's challenge. Of all the tricks that keep people going to church, the idea of eternal damnation and torture is

Will Immortality piss off God?

So, birthday. Fifty six – is my life half over? What are the chances I'll live to be 112 years old? Oy.

I had this weird thought. We, you and I, are all in a peculiar spot: we don't know if we'll ever die at all. It is conceivable that, before I die, scientists will discover the secrets to biological immortality. In fact, it's almost impossible that science won't someday achieve immortality for humans. Maybe not in my lifetime, but certainly within 100 to 500 years.

So what happens to Heaven and Hell when people stop dying? Seriously, this will be a real problem for the the Big Three, the Abrahamic religions. Christians, Jews and Muslims all rely on that life-after-death concept to keep believers in line, and as a sort of antidote for all of the trouble that we find here on Earth.

Life sucks? Don't worry, you'll get your reward. Saddam Hussein killed a couple hundred thousand of the Iraqi people? No problem, he's going to suffer forever in Hell.

The Heaven and Hell memes bring a balance into people's lives. They're very comforting, and assure people that, in spite of the apparent unfairness of life caused by government, society and "acts of God," everything will be smoothed over in the end.

But what happens when nobody dies? This is going to be a huge theological problem for Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

I'll make a wager, any amount of money you like, that when the day arrives that science defeats old age, religious leaders will declare that it's a sin, that it violates God's design for us. I'll even bet that it will be taken as yet another sign of the approaching Armageddon.

Of course, I can only pay up if I live that long...

If I knew I'd live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.
– Mickey Mantle (American baseball player)

For those of you interested in reading more about immortality, I'm not the only one who thinks we may live forever. Raymond Kurzweil even wrote a book about this immortality, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. He claims that if we can manage to live long enough (like, to 120), science will have cured most or all diseases and even conquered old age itself. And it's actually not an unreasonable claim. I fully expect to live to 100 just by taking care of myself.

Achieving Immortality

I heard a wonderful quote today on National Public Radio:

It's been a privilege knowing you. I'll live on in your memory. It's the best kind of immortality.
– Fred Stocking

Professor Stocking passed away Wednesday, and was beautifully eulogized by a former student, Barbara Bradley Hagerty of National Public Radio, in her radio essay. If you have a minute, take the time to listen to her broadcast rather than reading it.

I usually find myself praising scientists, or the occasional philosopher, in this blog. Prof. Stocking was a man of literature, a Shakespearean expert, a man with rare skill with words, and a teacher of great repute. It's refreshing to be able to praise a man of letters.

If there's any sort of immortality to be had, it's not in a soul that lives on after death, but rather in the things we leave behind. Everything from a child that we raised, to the work we do, to a simple, pleasant memory left with a friend ... this is the only true immortality we can achieve. And it's an immortality worth having.

Those who believe in God look for their immortality in the afterlife. In many ways, their lives here on Earth are almost irrelevant – many Christians even believe that accepting Christ as their savior is really the only thing that matters here on this Earth. All the deeds, good or bad, that they do here on Earth are essentially for nothing in the end. That's always struck me as a deeply flawed way to lead your life.

But even for those believers who have a more whole-life, "karmic" understanding of goodness and sin, who believe that it's the overall balance of their goodness that matters, their lives here on Earth are just a blip in the cosmic time scale of eternity. What happens here is over in an instant, compared to the billions of years immortality they believe will follow.

Not so for the non-believer. As Professor Fred Stocking so clearly put it, all we'll leave behind, our only immortality, is memories, which are only as good as we are. Life to the non-believer is far more precious than it could ever be to a theist, because when you're gone, that's it. If you don't leave any memories behind, then you're truly dead.