we are talking here of your final destination.
wormfood / fishfood or ashes ...
What is the purpose in life ? To be happy and productive. Do no harm ,help where you can and generally try to enjoy yourself. When you die it is over. If you are short-changing yourself because you hope to get a better 'afterlife' .... not very smart.
And don't let anyone convince you that ' its ok to be poor and have misery , you will be rewarded in the afterlife' , especially if at the same time they ask for a donation...
I don't care if you believe in God / Gods / Flying spaghetti monsters / The Force / Eywa / treespirits or whatever. And i am not mocking anyone. To each his own beliefs. And i respect that. No problem. Do as you please.
But , here is the part i DO have a problem with : ORGANIZED religion. It's all about MONEY , POWER and CONTROL.
Look at everything that has been done in the name of god , and all the misdeeds performed by religious organisations. And its not just one religion : all of them. Look at northern ireland between christians and protestants .. look at palestina , look at the muslim world : Sunnies vs Sji-ites. Heck even INSIDE one religion they are battling each other in the name of the SAME god.... Look at the Roman Catholic church with their painting over of childabuse... They sit on piles of money , the pope walks around in 100.000$ prada shoes and drinks out of solid gold cups...
Jesus Christ was a carpenter , walked in sandals and a 'carpet' and drank out of a wooden or stone bowl ...
I know one thing :
If the Roman catholic God does exist, and he would show up in Rome ... the whole of the vatican would be the first against the wall... due to all the misdeeds they done and still do. And the same goes for all the other gods and religions. Let, for each religion, have their god show up and make judgement of the 'controlcenter' of his/her respective religions.... The're won't be anything left. The sheer amount of misdeeds done in 'deiities names' is enough to warrant the obliteration of them. Let's go on crusades , let's send little kids into minefields carrying a little plastic key to the 'paradise', lets suppress women , let's hate people that do not belong to our religion or believe in our god. Let's declare the pope infallible and then, when he declared something we (the puppeteers) didn't like , dig his corpse up , put it back on the throne , recant the thing, and cut the corpse up and burn it so nobodoy can undo what we just undid...
You do know why the mandate of celibacy was created right ? So that the earthly posession of priest would not go to their offspring but would go to the 'church' to enrich it further ...
One of the heighest commandments is 'love thy neighbour as thyself. Share , do not envy . And it gets trodden on over and over and over..
It's not the individual that goes to church / mosque / whatever and prays , and gives to charity. It's the puppeteers at the top. They don't even follow their own rules, and they always have an explanation in their favor. They twist and turn as their own satan in a vat of holy water... Those are the true evil in the world. Add they can't be controlled by governments... they are outside the law ... above it , beyond it. And in some cases they are the government ...