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Most religions teach some form of life after death, whether in the form of heaven or reincarnation. But the concept of life after death in a religious sense is the carrot dangled in front of believers, who think if they conform enough to the control being exercised over them, that they will hopefully achieve it.

There is no disputing that humans physically die. This is convenient for religion. Otherwise, promises of eternal life here on earth would no doubt be easy to disprove. Instead, Christianity, for example, chooses to promise eternal life in heaven as the Great Reward. (Problem is that even Christianity can’t decide if you can achieve salvation by works or by faith, but that’s for another discussion.)

Heaven and God are impossible to prove, and for that reason they are impossible to disprove as well. In fact, merely questioning God’s existence is often seen as blasphemy. In my church days, I would ask what seemed to be logical questions about the Bible, only to hear I shouldn’t question it.

I had to believe it, but I couldn’t question it. Every cult seems to take their blueprints from this Christian standard.

What does this have to do with life after death? It’s one of the main reasons I’m convinced people need to be “saved” from religion because they don’t live for the life they have here on earth, but some promised afterlife that won’t be there when they die. Believers are on the wrong path for these reasons:

• They are living for something that they don’t fully understand, can’t prove, and doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny – the Bible (or whatever religious book they believe).
• Everything they do is with “going to heaven” in mind, thus in some instances they don’t live today to the fullest.
• Christians promote selflessness, but isn’t a person’s whose life goal is to “make it to heaven” kind of being selfish? Would they do these “selfless” things if heaven wasn’t an option? Aren’t they only doing good deeds with their own agenda in mind?
• The Bible has no clear set of rules. There are the old “Mosaic” laws, there are things Jesus is quoted as saying that most Christians don’t even do (Give away all your possessions, for example), which really confuses new converts.

So many addicts have come from religious or quasi-religious families who put far too much pressure on their children to live up to unreasonable expectations. When problems did arise, they were laid at “God’s” feet. Put your faith in God and he will take care of everything. Live to the Christian standard. God will judge you if you don’t. Focus your life on God and you will be saved…. All of these pressures not only to conform, but to sometimes suppress natural human instincts is often too much to bear for some people. And God forbid if they didn’t interpret the Bible the way the rest of the church did.

For example, a man can’t look at a woman lustfully, or it is the same as if he had sex with her… at least according to the Bible. So say some hottie walks in the office, and ol’ Religious Tom sees her and runs back to the water cooler to avoid temptation. God forbid he gave her one second of admiration on a physical level or he’s on the fast track to H-E- double toothpicks.

What if ol’ Tom was still a single man and still a virgin? And horny? A good Christian would go home, take a cold shower, read the Bible and forget about these temptations. Sounds natural, eh? Problem is… what happens if he can’t resolve these physical feelings? No – he certainly can’t go home and “hand”le the situation for a little relief because that is sin. So what happens? The struggle between his religious beliefs and his natural sexual urges hit the battlefield. Even if he wins the battle, psychologically he’ll lose the war. The man becomes tormented by something that a five-minute stint in the bathroom could take care of.

If you’re a believer and have managed to get this far, I implore you… Go relieve yourself. Right now! Five minutes of “sin” would be far better than the torture you’ll go through if you try to just suppress your natural urges day in and day out. Get those five minutes out of the way, ask Santa, er um.. Jesus for forgiveness… and you can spend the next 23 hours and 55 minutes as a happy believer without those physical distractions.

How ridiculous is that anyway? But this leads me to the topic at hand (no pun intended), of the promises of life after death.

Living your life with promises of a reward in the afterlife is handing off the true enjoyment of being alive to something else – religion. Going outside on a beautiful spring day for a Christian is an appreciation of “God’s” work… in other words, it all goes back to earning enough brownie points to get into heaven. To a non-believer, it’s just a nice day to enjoy in all its glory – with no strings attached.

If you see a pretty girl, it’s not the devil tempting you in some sort of test that God is grading. It’s a pretty girl. That’s it. Admire that pretty face, flash her a smile, and move on. No strings attached.

We live in a world full of beauty and full of ugliness. Appreciate the beauty for what it is and acknowledge the ugly in the same manner.

Living with the thought that you are some kind of pawn being used between an invisible god and an invisible devil is just foolishness. Perhaps our ancestors needed to believe these things for some sort of comfort, or to fill in the blanks of the things they didn’t fully understand. We know better. So live your life to the fullest every day. Don’t hand it off to an imaginary friend and don’t make choices in life with promises of an afterlife dangling in front of you.

If there were a God that could make such promises, I guarantee you he would have made it very clear what he wanted us to do. He wouldn’t say he would return before all of his apostles tasted death, then relied on others to re-interpret that later. He wouldn’t say these are the end times… two thousand years ago. He wouldn’t allow science to disprove all of the scientifically disprovable references in the Bible. He wouldn’t allow dozens of religions to pop up. He wouldn’t allow the devil to traipse around messing up his creation.

Christians think that living for the moment is some sort of distraction by the devil, or some selfish mindset.

I believe there is no God, but that there is a devil of sorts. He steals people’s lives and fools them into false beliefs with false hopes.

The devil is religion.

Live every day to the fullest. Discover ways you can help humanity. Find ways to make yourself and others happy.

In other words, concentrate on life before death. Not after.

Wake up! We’re serving waffles today, and it’s only noon.