In a way it could be rather funny if there was a limited life after death. ie: Just after you die you get around 5 minutes of experience where you hear a message saying something like:
"Congratulations! Your life™ is over. Welcome to oblivion™. If you lived life to the full and enjoyed the experience then please press 1 after this message when you hear the tone. If you lived your life according some sort of belief in life after death then all we can say is we gave you enough clues and please be aware that we have no complaints department. Anyway, please press 2."
<BEEP!>
Going off at a tangent here, but another thing i find about all religions in relation to the afterlife is that if you live a good life and worship god(s) (the right ones in the right way of course) then you go to the nice place. If you don't (you go to the bad place).
Assuming that there is an afterlife, and considering the vast number of potential religions and variants of those religions, even assuming you pick the right pantheon/deity, you could still be worshiping the wrong variant, and still end up in the bad place. The probability of getting the bad place must be close to 100%.
Or, lets assume the right afterlife is the Olympian variant. Sure, the heroes, kings, great leaders and thinkers get to go to Elysium. The nasty people end up in Hades. But the vast majority end up on the plains of Asphodel and drink from the river of Lethe and become undead automatons... not nice.
I always liked the variant of the afterlife as presented by Terry Pratchett in his discworld novels. You go where you believe you will go. I think this would be especially ironic for the Christians who would spend eternity singing the praises of Yahweh... suckers! I'm off to Valhalla to drink mead every night served by Norse maidens with cleavages you could ski down.
"Congratulations! Your life™ is over. Welcome to oblivion™. If you lived life to the full and enjoyed the experience then please press 1 after this message when you hear the tone. If you lived your life according some sort of belief in life after death then all we can say is we gave you enough clues and please be aware that we have no complaints department. Anyway, please press 2."
<BEEP!>
Going off at a tangent here, but another thing i find about all religions in relation to the afterlife is that if you live a good life and worship god(s) (the right ones in the right way of course) then you go to the nice place. If you don't (you go to the bad place).
Assuming that there is an afterlife, and considering the vast number of potential religions and variants of those religions, even assuming you pick the right pantheon/deity, you could still be worshiping the wrong variant, and still end up in the bad place. The probability of getting the bad place must be close to 100%.
Or, lets assume the right afterlife is the Olympian variant. Sure, the heroes, kings, great leaders and thinkers get to go to Elysium. The nasty people end up in Hades. But the vast majority end up on the plains of Asphodel and drink from the river of Lethe and become undead automatons... not nice.
I always liked the variant of the afterlife as presented by Terry Pratchett in his discworld novels. You go where you believe you will go. I think this would be especially ironic for the Christians who would spend eternity singing the praises of Yahweh... suckers! I'm off to Valhalla to drink mead every night served by Norse maidens with cleavages you could ski down.
A finite number of monkeys with a finite number of typewriters and a finite amount of time could eventually reproduce 4chan.
