The Afterlife Must Be Very Crowded

by Neil Bamforth

Religion eh? What is it all about? Personally I don’t mind it, as long as it stays the hell away from me anyway. If people want to have what ever faith they have then fine and dandy. Just practice it without intruding on us heathens though will you? Go praise your deity however you like, but just don’t involve me.

I have been thinking though – and yes, I know, me thinking is dangerous territory.

Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, the religious among us are right. Daft I know, but, just go with it a while will you?

Obviously they can’t all be entirely right as they believe in different deities. There can’t be more than one ‘supreme being’ or, for a start, they wouldn’t be supreme because there is two of them, or three or what ever. That would make for a hell of an argument wouldn’t it?

“I am supreme!” – “Oh no you’re not! I am!”. That could be the bar room brawl to end all bar room brawls.

Let’s just assume that there is one ‘supreme being’ and, when we shuffle off, our ‘mortal souls’ come before him and he / she / it (delete as applicable) judges our immortal souls.

“You’ve been very good on the whole so you get in heaven / paradise or where ever”
“You’ve been an asshole so you’re off to burn in hell”

It would be one or the other – although there’s some in between place called ‘purgatory’ isn’t there? That must be were the average soul goes for being occasionally good and occasionally an asshole.

If my vague memory of religious education serves me, I think, after a while in purgatory, if your soul has behaved itself, you get to ‘go up top’ but, if not, you go to the hot place.

Something like that anyway.

Now. Humanity has been around for a long time. Not very long compared to the planet of course. The planet Earth has been around for even longer than we have.

Before we came along via some kind of evolution and apes – or, for the religious among us, via their deity creating us – there wasn’t a great deal going on, from our point of view anyway as we weren’t here.

Dinosaurs were here of course. I have no idea what those poor buggers did to upset the supreme being though. All they did was wander around gently eating foliage or, perhaps less gently, each other and ‘BOOM!’, the supreme being sends along a meteorite and the poor old dinosaurs are toast.

Then the supreme being creates us. Now that has to be debatable if you want to claim we are progress over the dinosaurs. I don’t recall them ever damaging the planet unduly. Mind you, some of them were big buggers so I suppose methane gases might have been a bit of an issue.

Anyway, to prevent the world being destroyed by dinosaur farts, the supreme being wiped them out and created us.

We live, we die, the bit in between is called life. I hope you enjoy it.

Our souls then go before the supreme being who announces our eternal fate – unless we go to purgatory, then it’s for a long while.

How many humans have lived and died since we evolved? – I’d better say ‘since we were created so I don’t upset the supreme being and his / her / its followers.

A lot. That’s how many. A hell of a lot.

If you think we’ve got problems with insufficient housing because of immigration just think of the problems heaven must have, not to mention hell, which probably gets far more immigration than heaven.

“Another few hundred thousand have just turned up Satan”

“Oh for Gods sake! Where the hell can we put them? Maybe we should build a wall or something to keep them out”

“Oh, and I nearly forgot boss. We’ve a severe shortage of demons and pitchforks. Can we get a few more?”

“You think I can afford more demons and pitchforks? There’s so many souls here I’m nearly bankrupt now!”

That is one of my many problems with religion. The bit after you die is a particular puzzle for me.

I’m not great in crowded places as a rule. I get ‘people claustrophobia’. It’s all those sweaty armpits and things.

Billions and billions of humans have died since we first got here. Billions and billions of souls in eternity, squashed together without anywhere to live. Homelessness in heaven and hell must be at epidemic proportions.

Religion makes about as much sense as standing in a public place in ‘middle America’ and announcing that God doesn’t exist and Jesus was a nutter or, to maintain balance, standing in the middle of Islamabad and declaring Mohammed was a pedophile.

Not only would you be extremely nuts to do such a thing, you would, shortly afterwards, find out whether there is an afterlife and just how crowded the place is.

I did actually once ask our local vicar about this problem with overcrowding in the afterlife. His response wasn’t exactly helpful.

“God works in mysterious ways” hardly suggests, when it’s my turn, that I won’t be living under some eternal bridge in some eternal cardboard box or, if my soul goes down, so to speak, in some eternal fire resistant cardboard box.

I’ve reached the conclusion that the supreme being might actually appreciate us banning religion. At least it would give him / her / it, time to arrange a bit more room for our poor tortured souls.

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