I am a completely secular and don't beieve at all in God, and so by definition 'after life'.

I think people are just afraid, if one is religious, to 'think' that their life means nothing after death. Because such an idea makes 'life' itself meaningless. Religion is one way of giving a life more value than it probably is.

One way to 'highten' life's value is to form a groups or society around one or more common ideologies, such as religion. Second way to do this is to believe in after life, something to compare the present life with. Hell is just an idea that represent anything that can possibly be worse than the present one. The heaven is opposite. Both methods are often used together.

So believeing in heaven and hell makes the present life better or worse than the present, which would give you hope when you do 'good' or stop you from doing 'wrong' things.

Now, who is to decide what is 'right' and 'wrong', and to what end? This question will tell people why religions are so easily taken over by power crazed maniacs.

But all religion requires 'group' life, as I described previously. So killing fellow social folks etc that upset the group life will almost always be considered 'wrong' amongst religions. To answer 'to what end' can be answered if we observe which religious groups or social groups are benefiting from the promotion of such ideology as hell or heaven, to a particular society.

Thinking logically (I hope!) also then requires me to come up with reasons why God does not exist. Here are my explanations.

Firstly, noone has no choice over the most deciding factor which makes a happy life, for example combination of parents or their wealth, living under dictatorship or capitalism.

Secondly, you cannot choose the factors which determines a lot about whether one had a fortunate or unfortunate life: death. If one has been beaten up to death or submerged under acid to be melted away slowly, then I think that's a terrible life. Again, noone has no choice as to how we die, the most significant factor determining happiness.

Not only we cannot determine our own happiness, others' are so random as well. How could a bad arse dictator killing many can have so comfortable life now or in the past AND dies so nicely in bed surrounded by families? There is no justice in life.

If God stand for justice, then he does not have to make the world as it is. I am sure he can make the planet earth peaceful, forever. He doesn't; or he cann't? Or may be he does not exist.

Yes, he does not exist. Yes, hell and heaven do not exist either.

I'm not judging anyone, this is only my opinion...

I don't believe in God, I personally think that God was an invention fabricated by early man to explain the unexplainable. Imagine 200,000 years ago, a time when language had not yet been developed, imagine a hurricane ripping through your villiage destroying your crop and tearing apart your homes. Early man didn't have the intelligence or the scientific knowledge to understand that it was merely a weather phenomenom and nothing more, so an explanation was required to describe whatever happened... so God was invented! It's obvious that there's no God. If God does exist, hyperthetically speaking, why did God create an uneven Universe, why did God allow Hitler, Stalin and Osama Bin Laden to live, why does God allow evil to prevail over love, kindness and equality, why didn't God "create" us say 10 billion years ago, why wait 14 billion years to do it, why doesn't God dissolve all the cancer in the world...(I could go on for hours). The Universe spontaneously happened out of absolutely nothing for no reason. It will expand forever, eventually all the stars will burn up their fuel and the Universe will become cold and desolate within 100 billion years. Creationists and fundamentalists think this is pessimistic and there's nothing to live for... I however, think there's everything to live for. Sure one day we will all die and we will have no conscious recollection of ever existing, but the fact we are alive and conscious of ourselves and the Universe is more than enough reason to preserve what we have, cherish our environment and spread love througout the world. There's more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand on every beach and desert on this planet. God does not exist!

"On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody..."

I've finally got round to Pullman's Dark materials, and I'm relishing the challenge. Since I'm a Christian adult I don't think much is going to be lost on me - so ti should be good. Sadly I am disappointed that right from the outset he has misrepresented the nature of the Church and the representation of the Christian God. But Dan Brown seems to manage the same as well. Sometimes I wonder who do these people talk to when they want to find out about 'religious beliefs'? Having struggled with just about every aspect of Christianity and religious belief during my teens and an experience of agnosticism help me to understand where these guys are coming from but I can't help but think they're being a tad dishonest in some ways.

It somewhat bewilders me how a person can rationally believe a super-intelligence "created" humans and the Universe. What "created" God? If God is the "creator" of everything, something MUST have "created" God! It disheartens me to think we are the product of God's invention, it's all for nothing if we are. I've got a question for anyone who believes in God... If a person does bad things all their life, they steal, murder, racially abuse anyone they encounter, lie and decieve their freinds and family... if that person is lieing on his/her death bed and the remaining 10 seconds of that persons life they are truly sorry for what they've done and welcome Jesus/God into their heart, from what I've been told, this person would be welcomed into heaven? Is this rational morality? I believe the "promise" of an after-life in Heaven is merely an excuse to do bad things and then go to confession and say sorry! Oh and "Time" is not God's creation, it's merely Man's description of motion...

"On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody..."

I'm going to a discussion soon about Dan Browns 'The DaVinci Code' .... my only opinion of it really is that it isn't that great a book, regardless of the subject - there are far better books on the subject - 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail' and 'The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant' being two that spring to mind. However - listening to a group of Christians deliberate the ins and outs and the 'questions' raised by it should be interesting and might prompt my brain into commenting.

I suspect offhisface was closest to the truth.
Keeping the masses in check by fear. Taken to the extreme by the Christian church. But where did the idea come from. Robert Temples book "Netherworld" and Alan Alford's "Atlantis Secret" provide a pretty convincing origin.
The underworld depicted by the Greeks (who took it from the Egyptians, who took it from the Sumerians) is probably a good contender. Plus not only could they controll by fear but at the same time discredit the pagan religions by turning their underworld into a place of evil and demons.