[mbillie1]

I think heaven is more problematic tbh... if you're disembodied then how do you be, since we exist through our senses? If you're embodied, then necessarily your body will decay unless it is constantly and magically reset to a certain cell condition, and that would by necessity reset your brain also... it seems like being who you are at any given moment and being the age / health state / physical condition you are at that same exact moment can be separated qualitatively but that needs to be argued for, you can fairly claim that existence (god or not) is just a flux and every state is only self-identical in theory... you are only you by virtue of being in your (slowly dying) body, and only by virtue of the coming into and going out of being that is life are you able to gain any sense of identity... this idea that "I" is some atomic thing, that you have a "self" independent of every single physical, finite contingency that exists in every single moment, that is a large assumption to make and in my philosophical opinion one that cannot hold up to scrutiny. Of course plenty of things about eternal life / afterlife don't hold up to philosophical scrutiny... the easy way out (and tbh the only way out remotely resembling any kind of "intellectual honesty" if such a thing can be said to exist at all where religion is concerned) is to say "it's the miracle of faith; it cannot be explained rationally, you just have to accept it" which is one answer, but in my opinion a very bad answer, the best among worse answers that try to break down pseudo-scientifically and pseudo-philosophically the exact processes involved in life after death, etc.

Sorry for this awful formatting...