Pick Your After-Death Myth

One of the most commonly used tools a religion uses to gain converts and to control them is the after-death myth. Which one of these myths appeals to you most?

• Nothing at all happens. You just stop existing. This is my favourite. It fits what I know about death and dying. It its not fanciful. It does not indulge in wishful thinking. Also it does not condemn me to some boring activity for eternity without escape. It is painless.
• You are reborn as a human or animal. Your new life depends on how well you behaved in this one. If you are really good you get to stop the cycle of rebirth.
• You are reborn. You get to choose how.
• You are reborn. You have to be the person you most despised and live their life.
• You are reborn. If you are very good, you get to be a god and do a lot of dancing. An hour of your subjective time is a century on earth.
• You are reborn. You are given an assignment appropriate for your ability to serve the universal good. If you do well, you are given a more challenging, interesting assignment.
• You are reborn. You relive your old life, only from the point of view of one of the other players in it, usually the one you were most unkind to. This means people being unkind to you now, are you in a former life.
• You join the cosmic consciousness. Later a piece of the cosmic consciousness may decide to incarnate again. But it does not really make sense to say that it is the same as some previously existing individual. It is more like a fresh bucket of water taken from the ocean. It has no relation to any buckets previously dumped into it.
• You are judged. If you are bad, you get poked with pitchforks and burned with fire. If you are good, you get to wander about in a park or floating on a cloud, playing harps and singing hymns of praise forever, a sort of endless communist praise of Chairman Mao.
• You are judged. If you are bad, you get roasted alive, then when all your flesh is burnt, it is reconstituted to be burned off again. If you are good, you get to have sex with cute males or females and eat delicious fruits.
• You get to live your life over again, this time with a coach. You keep reliving your life until you get it right.
• Everything you ever wished for but did not happen, now happens to neutralise your desires. Then you get to live in some other part of the universe.
• Life after death is so pleasant it is beyond description. You can’t possibly imagine how wonderful it is since there is nothing remotely that pleasant here on earth.
• Dying is like having a huge orgasm.
• Dying is like feeling totally supported and loved.
• You hang around as a ghost for a few years, then head off on a long walk to a place where other dead people congregate.

• Death — I’m strongly against it.

  ~ Woody Allen

• You know the chicken at Tresky’s Restaurant? It’s worse.

  ~ Woody Allen
• It is very confusing and chaotic, like an acid trip. If you freak out with fear, you will have a bad trip. If you go with the flow, you will have a pleasant trip. You have to be careful not to focus on things that terrify or disgust you. Just observe them objectively.

~ Roedy (born:1948-02-04 age:68)