Poll: What do you think will happen to you when you die?

I'm immortal:

I have consciousness and awareness of what is happening to me and around me currently. If, at any point in the future, I were to forget about ALL these events and effectively my entire existence (death or complete amnesia), I would simply arrive immediately at that point of forgetting, and fail to experience now.

Therefore, either I am immortal or there is some sort of afterlife. I'm leaning towards immortal, since I don't believe in an afterlife. And I will never experience complete amnesia.

As a good Hindu girl, I should believe this, but I'm not fully on the reincarnation bandwagon. I guess I'll know when it happens...

It looks like there are a lot of Fruheads destined for Limbo.

Not me, I can never get under the bar.

Good night, lights out.

In ABC poll of American given in 12/05 had these results:

Dec. 20, 2005 � Vast majorities of Americans believe in heaven and think they're headed there. But elbow room won't be a problem: About eight in 10 believers envision heaven as a place where people exist only spiritually, not physically.

Eighty-nine percent in this ABC News poll believe in heaven, which is consistent with data going back 30 years. Among believers, 85 percent think they'll personally go there � mainly in spirit, since 78 percent say it's a place where people exist only spiritually.

Here is The complete ABC poll results

I haven't been able to find a happy middle ground between "OMG God exists and so does heavan for ever and ever!" and "Uh...the bible is full of...it just doesnt make sense. Neither has any other spiritual text I've read or read about. So I figure everything ends at death. Even the universe'll die."

Of some sort, probably nothing like what's described in the Bible, but yes, I think there is an afterlife, and I think there are criteria for being in the Heaven portion of the afterlife, but I don't think the criteria are that well documented in the Bible. Nor do I think Hell is a place of fire and damnation and endless suffering and stuff like that.

*shrug* I certainly don't believe that flawed humans here are able to say who will get to go to heaven and who won't.

Does the bible actually every describe where you go when you die? I'm pretty sure it doesn't in the Old Testement. Just some bits about the judgment at the end of days.

Well Jesus did talk quite a bit about salvation and the way to salvation, suggesting that there is an afterlife of some kind and there will be those who are saved and those who are not.

For Catholics, I believe 2 Maccabees is generally a source in the Old Testament supporting belief in an afterlife.

Revelations is the main source of alot of the speculation about Heaven vs Hell when you die. Generally speaking, depending on the school of thought, there will be the Tribulation, the Rapture, and then Christ will come to rule over the earth with the ressurected faithful for 1,000 years during which time the Devil will be restrained. At the end of the 1,000 years he will be released and deceive followers. He will be defeated again, and the world will end with the Final Judgement (i.e. Judgement Day). The Final Judgement will assign people to heaven and to hell.

If you're really bored, I can probably go into my old notes when I was studying this stuff and pull out the relevant citations. Not that I necessarily believe any of it. Martin Luther did not consider Revelations to be prophetic or apostolic and declared that Christ is neither taught nor known in the book. There is and was alot of debate about the inclusion of Relevations in the canon of the Bible.

In the end, the Bible is a collection of documents that were cobbled together by man, written down sometimes decades after events happened, and subject to the politics of the church at the time.

For Catholics, I believe 2 Maccabees is generally a source in the Old Testament supporting belief in an afterlife.

Just want to point out that 2 Maccabees (or 1 Maccabees, for that matter) is *not* in the Jewish Bible (Tanach), even though it *is* in what Protestants and Catholics consider to be the Old Testament.

Well Catholics and Orthodox. Protestants do not have Maccabees.

Revelation does a pretty solid description of heaven as a city with 12 gates and no sun needed because all light will come from God. The roads are paved with gold. It doesn't sound like the heaven I want to go to. I like green growing things too much.

The whole point of it being heaven though is the perfect restoration of our relationship with God. Wherever that happens will be wonderful and so is fine by me.

Heaven is better than the best place you can imagine and you can't git thar on yer own.