"Mom, dad, heaven is boring...can we go to the movies instead?"

If I had to think of one item from my former faith that irked me the most, it was the concept of heaven.  The very premise of heaven always struck me as manufactured.  What is heaven according to Christianity?  Well, it's where Christians (and presumably pre-Christian Jews) will spend eternity praising God.  I'm sorry, but who in the hell wants to spend eternity "praising" someone else?  I can think of a thousand things I would rather be doing than waxing some deity's ego, a million things, for starters: having sex with my wife, playing with my kids, learning to play the piano and guitar, playing video games, driving cool cars, riding motorcycles, eating good food and ice cream, philosophizing with the greats of old, playing baseball with Babe Ruth, having a Q & A with both Hawkins and Einstein.  Any one of these things would pique my interest more than walking on golden streets and "basking in God's glory." At least the muslims came up with an afterlife that sounds sort of interesting (minus the doe-eyed boys bit--yeah, I can pass on that), though unless I had an industrial-strength prostate, I think I would get tired of banging out virgins (not to mention that my wife would not be pleased with me), and there are far more interesting things to eat than grapes (I wonder if muhammad would have said "chocolate ice cream" instead of friggen' grapes, we already know he wasn't smart enough to include bacon).  

I just came up with way more interesting things I would have included in my heaven had I been the author of the Bible.  No, instead, Christians have to languish under a vague and restrictive set of rules in the hopes that they're on God's "nice" list just for the dubious honor of spending eternity in worship. Oh.  Joy. Of course, this begs the question: what happens to those on God's "naughty" list?  Oh, they go to hell.  Yeah, your loved ones who rejected God, no matter how "good" they were as people, get to spend eternity separated from God...and you.  So while you're waltzing around heaven on golden roads, everyone you care about (at least those who reject Christianity) is roasting in hell with the devil and his minions.  It makes no sense that a person who lives a good life and serves others, yet rejects Christianity, would burn in hell, but an evil, selfish person (like my father’s wife) who accepts Christianity would go to heaven.  

I know, I know, "the transcendence of the divine."  I'm sure any Christians reading this is screaming "How arrogant, to think you know better than God.  The Bible says that the reward in heaven will be greater than we can imagine."  Well, if you must know, I think that the authors of the Bible simply lacked the imagination to come up with a better afterlife, so they kicked the can down the road in the hopes that someone else would come up with a more compelling carrot.  Moreover, if I am arrogant--and I accepted your notion of God--he made me this way, he made me with an inquisitive mind.  

"If I am wrong, then I die, but if you're wrong, you go to hell."  Ah, Pascal's wager.  Let me turn that upside-down on you.  You had one chance, and if you're wrong, when you die you will have wasted your life.  I'm not talking about any good you may have done in the name of your faith; I am talking about living your life in service of something nonexistent, paying for a church to continue to exist solely as a vehicle to propagate your fallacious beliefs, and holding yourself to artificially high standards of morality--for nothing.  Here’s the kicker too: there is far more evidence for my point-of-view than yours; I have hundreds of years of scientific research to corroborate my POV, you have a ~2000 year-old book written largely during the Bronze Age by men with less learning than my 1st grade daughter.  

Oh, while you’re singing praises to God and enjoying your vague unimagined treasures, your friends and family are wood chips in God’s big furnace o'fury, but you’re not supposed to care.