With all the wonder of Earth, why think of heaven and the angels?

All progress is an active avenue toward a higher goal. If you stop where you are, you become an impediment to the progress of others. You are not alone: all of us travel the same highway.

Because we are terrified of the day that we die and are no longer able to appreciate the depth and scope that is our lives on Earth.

So terrified, as a matter of fact, that many of us spend the entire time we are given here worrying about tomorrow, the afterlife, and million other things that steal from us the the very life that we are so desperately trying to hang on to.

We all die. It’s not morbid. It’s not negative. It’s not nihilistic.

It’s a fact. Quit wasting your lives and start fucking living them.

To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell. (Tom Robbins)

Good for you that you are able to see beauty in this world through the prism of Hope, regardless of the ugliness that abounds. I too see the same thing once in a while and is filled with utter joy. Other people however, need inspiration to attain feelings of Hope.

‘Cause people believe in them and the reasons are varied.

Because some people don’t want this life to end.

Escapism.

Because people ask “why?”.

Wonder leads to fantasy. What’s wrong with that?

Thinking (imagining) a perfect afterlife is part of the dream and we dream because we live.. And there’s simply no reason to view it religiously nor condemn others because they don’t.

@SofaKingWright, I don’t know if you can make a blanket statement such as the one you shared. I know that for me at least the knowledge that there Is an afterlife has made me value this one more. Yes, I DO believe in heaven, but a glimpse of the beauty of creation has made me want to care for it all the more. I know that the earth and all it contains are precious to God, and by extension that knowledge has influenced me to want to care for it. I majored in Environmental Studies in college and I use that major and what it has taught me in many ways from day to day. True, I know that by no means is my love for creation shared by all who believe, but I am hurt by what humans have done both to creation and to our fellow humans.