It's easier to believe in hell than heaven in this world of ours, isn't it? I have never been very sure about neither, although in some part of my brain there must be still traces of my catholic education - after all, 10 years of nuns and priests teaching you about Jesus should leave some evidence....
But even as a child I had too many questions nobody could answer. I mean, if today someone decided to go around claiming a "hotline" with God, who would doubt mental ilness? Just because a bunch of people wrote a book about the guy, after 2 milleniums there are still billions who think he was extra special. Except I never understood why, if we are all "God's children", being the son of God made him different. Is it a lineage thing?
Anyways, no offense to christians; I'm not saying Jesus didn't exist. All I'm saying is that all religions have some gaps that don't make any sense and can't be explained. So faith is really a matter of being used to believe, or choosing to believe, rather than knowing the truth.
Mankind has had a great number of gods over the centuries. It only proves that we need to believe in something, but no one is certain of what that is. Nietzche would say that it's about time to kill this christian God already and come up with a new one... A 20.11 version of God. One you don't need to pray for: you can e-mail.
The other side of it is that we always believed in evil, too. Every culture in every moment of History has had its own demons, hell, evil and etc. Wether it was christian's eternal fire of damnation, tibetan's frozen hell, or even vengeful spirits, the malefic has always been threatening somewhere near. And the power of fear can be stronger than the promise of salvation...
If you read the paper, evil makes a lot more sense, actually.
I'll tell you what I do believe. I think everything we can imagine is real in some dimension of our existence. I believe in the power of the mind; if we can think of it, we can make it happen. So if so many minds have been building these concepts of angels, demons, heaven and hell, I'm pretty sure it all exists somewhere, somehow.
(Yes, that includes Santa Claus).
