If There IS a God, Will You Get into His Heaven?

 

Let’s postulate, just for argument’s sake, that there is a god. So after we die we go to . . . ?

Well, here’s the first problem.

Most theists these days firmly believe they’ll end up at the pearly gates, with 72 virgins, reincarnated, or in nirvana, while all non-believers—meaning everyone who doesn’t believe in their religion—will end up in their version of hell (or reincarnated as a cockroach). So let’s consider the various possibilities and what they imply.
 

1. There are no gods

In which case every believer has wasted his or her life waiting for a heaven that doesn’t exist instead of striving to achieve paradise on earth.
 

2. There’s just one god, so just one heaven.

But which one?

To figure that out it helps to understand—How Many Gods “Exist”?

Some 2,870 different gods have been catalogued. But there are only written records (most skimpy) for the past 5,500 years. (The oldest is the Kish tablet, discovered in Iraq, dated to around 3,500 BCE. But the language is unknown.) So in the 200,000 years since homo sapiens first appeared there must be unknown tens or hundreds of thousands of other gods, not to mention all those gods who went unrecorded in the past five millennia.

Here are just a few handfuls of the known gods:

Yahweh (Judaism), God (Christianity), Allah (Islam), Zeus, Hermes, Hades, Hera, Aphrodite, (Greek), Jupiter, Mors, Terra (Roman), Odin, Thor, Loki, Njordr (Norse), Krishna, Vishnu, Kali, Ishvara (Hindu), Shangdi, Mazu, Shou Xing, Tu Di Gong (Chinese), Izanagi-no-Mikoto, Izanami-no-Mikoto (Japanese), Cernunnos, Damona, Epona (Celtic), Ra, Isis, Anubis, Osiris (Egyptian), An, Ki, Enlil, Enki (Sumerian), Sin, Marduk, Ishtar, Nabu (Babylonian), Simurgh, Rostam, Gaokerena, Zoroaster (Persian), Kurreah, Mutjinga (Aboriginal).

So in which god’s heaven or hell will we end up?

Every monotheist will answer “Mine!” Trouble is, there’s no evidence that their particular heaven (or hell) exists—and nor is there proof for any of the 2,869+ others.

We can only resort to probability.

Today, there are some 22 religions with half a million or more followers. Not counting sects (Christianity, to cite just one example, has over 22,000 according to the Encyclopedia Britannica) or multiple gods (after all, the gods of polytheist religions like Hinduism all live in the same heaven) let’s assume just 22 potential heavens—and hells.

That means there’s a mere 4.5% (1/22) chance that anyone alive today will end up in the heaven of their belief even if they lead the virtuous life that their faith requires, for this virtuous life may well contain sins of other faiths.

On that basis the chances are I’ll see you and everyone else who’s alive today in some totally unexpected hell.

Of course, adding in religions with fewer than half a million followers means many more than 22 heavens are postulated today. On top of that, there are also an unknown number of other heavens believed in over the past 200,000+ years.

Today, just a few religions dominate the world: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism being the four majors.

Before the invention of agriculture homo sapiens lived in tribal groups averaging around 150 people. Even if three to a couple of dozen tribes shared pretty much the same god(s), there would have been tens if not hundreds of thousands of different religions (and so different heavens) at any one time.

So if we try and estimate the total number of potential heavens postulated in human history the chances of landing in the heaven you believe in drops way below 1%.

As I said, I’ll see you in hell.

Or maybe not . . .

 

3. The Baha’i option . . .

A third possibility is the Baha’i option, the religious equivalent of the blind men and the elephant.

As a Baha’i believer once explained to me, they believe that all religions are aspects of the same god. As if god were a mountain and each different faith had found what they believe is the True Path. Except when they all get to the top and actually meet god, they find that all those “infidels” they were slaughtering back on earth are there too!

 

4. . . . or polytheism

Before we completely give up hope, as far as we can determine monotheism—the belief in the “One True God” who spurns all others—is a fairly recent development.

Before Judaism, most if not all religions had many gods, not just one.

Polytheistic religions are far more tolerant of other believers. In Roman times, to cite just one case, believers in one religion respected the gods of other religions.

That’s why Christians got fed to the lions: they would not respect other gods.

On the basis that monotheistic faiths are a tiny minority of all religions, there’s an excellent chance we’ll end up in some polytheistic place where hell is an alien concept.

Whew! . . .

But wait! Maybe (god forbid!) …Heaven is a democracy.

Over 50% of all the human beings who’ve ever existed since time began (as far as we can tell) have been alive in the few hundred years since the industrial revolution sparked a population explosion—which still continues today.

Which means close to half of all the humans who’ve ever lived have been monotheists.

So if God is elected by popular vote it will be a contest between Jehovah and Allah—which, in the not too distant future given current birth rates, Allah will win.

Though if we start counting all the sects of the same faith which hate each other’s guts, then we’re back to a roll of the dice.

 

5. ALL those gods exist

Finally, perhaps all those gods exist. After all, we have the evidence from the Old Testament that Yahweh wasn’t the only god. To quote just one of many examples: “God standeth in the congregation of the mighty, he judgeth among the gods.” [Psalm 82:1] (though Deuteronomy 4:39—“The LORD he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else”—implies that he killed off all his competition).

So on Mount Olympus will be Jupiter and his mob while part of the southern Pacific will be ruled by Fiji’s Rokomautu, Australia will be the land of the Dreamtime while in North America Trickster will be playing his games.

A cornucopia of possibilities—except for all those pesky monotheist gods trying to kill off all the others.

Less likely (but let’s face it: who Knows?) it might be some kind of cosmic computer game where a bunch cosmic nerds are competing against each other to win the prize for having the most believers—and having killed off the greatest number of competing religions.

And any moment now their cosmic mother is going to yell: “Hey, you lot, it’s time for lunch.”