[bunny]

To answer your second question first - I dont think belief in an afterlife is required to believe in god (I was certainly ambivalent about life after death while also being a theist for a time) so it wouldnt matter to me. I think God's existence or non-existence is a significant fact irrespective of whether we have finite or infinite lives and I would still want to have some kind of relationship with him if I believed in him but not in an afterlife.

With regard to heaven and hell: I believe in heaven. This belief is thanks to this forum in fact, and Lestat in particular for pointing out the incompatibility with a benevolent God not giving some comfort to those who are born into a miserable life of suffering - I cant fathom why people do suffer this fate but it seems to me that given God has the option of creating heaven for them he would do so. Clearly this is more a deduced belief than my belief in God and follows on from my theism. I dont think it is necessarily a sound argument, but it makes sense to me.

With regard to hell, I have always been in madnak's camp. That is - it is inconceivable to me that a benevolent God would make hell as it is usually described. I'm not sure if I believe in hell or not (it kind of waxes and wanes) - if I do it is not as an eternal place of torture though. I think if hell exists it is just "not-heaven". In other words, good people live forever in God's presence while bad people...dont. Whether they experience nothing or whether they experience a satisfying existence but not as good as heaven, I have no idea (see my next paragraph).

My final opinion on heaven/hell is that I find them impossible to imagine. Whatever existence we have after death is non-physical (that's my belief anyhow) and as such, so divorced from my current experiences that I really cant speculate what it would be like. It is not inconceivable to me that afterlife is universally wonderful...just better if you are a good person as you will be "completely" happy to be in god's presence, rather than just experiencing life without suffering...