Help me not fear heaven/hell

[SenseMaker007]

I was raised Christian but don’t believe in god anymore. I think it’s all nonsense. We’re on this pale blue dot alone. I believe in science and reason.

The problem is my atheism is only at 99%. There’s 1% of me that still thinks I could be wrong and that I’m going to hell for being a bad person. I’m also afraid of the idea of endless life, mostly because I struggle with anxiety and the idea of eternal anxiety in heaven is my idea of hell.

Look up as many atheist's responses to Pascal's Wager as you can.

My personal response is that if God exists it's just as likely that he prefers atheists and sends theists to hell instead.

Or God sents everybody to hell.

Or God sends everybody to heaven.

Ultimately, it's impossible to eliminate a mere logical possibility if it's logically possible.

But it's also pointless worrying about what you can't control. I accept the fact that there's a logical possibility that I could burn in hell for all eternity. But I also think that that possibility is a great deal less than 1%. It's effectively zero. It's so unlikely that it makes a lot more sense for me to be afraid of dying young of cancer or something like that.

Another thing that makes me not fear eternal hell is because I literally do not care how long pain or pleasure lasts. It's the peak of it that matters most and the second peak of it that matters second most, etc. One minute of the worst pain possible is just as bad as an eternity of it. So the eternal aspect holds no power for me. We're just left with the fact that after I die on this world it's logically possible that I could experience the worst possible pain. Okay, it's logically possible ... but that there's any reason whatsoever to believe that it will happen.

Also, it's just as likely that a supreme being will strike us with the worst possible pain one minute from now as it is that they'll do it after we die. Because there's zero evidence in both cases. And I'm obviously not going to worry about the fact that literally at any point it's logically possible that I could suddenly experience the worst pain possible.

Ultimately, anxiety only makes sense if the thing you're anxious about is something you have control over. If you don't have any control over it (and you certainly don't have control over whether God exists or not) ... then it's irrational to worry about it.

In that case, your emotion isn't a result of reason and you, therefore, can't reason your way out of it. Reason is the slave of the passions, as David Hume said, after all.

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I’m also afraid of the idea of endless life, mostly because I struggle with anxiety and the idea of eternal anxiety in heaven is my idea of hell.

But surely the badness of anxiety is how intense it is, rather than how long it lasts?