[Xikarita]

Hey everybody...been a long time!
I'm going to talk about the inicial subject in this thread, if that's ok...
As a Roman Catholic by formation, I do believe in Heaven. I didn't always think like this, I rejected religion during my early teens, only to return to it just a few years ago.
Back to the subject...
To me, Heaven is a place where you are united with God. And Hell is a cold, lonely place, devoid of God's presence...simple as that.
God gives everyone the chance to follow their path; the fact that you have to endure suffering during your life is part of God's design, I believe (up to some extent). After all, if He showed Himself to everyone, we would have no choice but to believe! Where's the merit in that? So He rewards only those that follow His path, of their own choice.
The issue of spirituality in the Western World....
Philosophical systems in the Western world have evolved to make Man the center of their studies, and more than that, the unit that measures everything. That is to say, we tend to think of things in our own terms; that's why many people imagine God as a long-bearded old man- a human figure.
The problem is that this system has long began to collapse. We use our ''exact'' sciences as an answer to everything, but we forget that we are only imperfect and limited creatures, and therefore our sciences can only be imperfect and limited as well. We need God in our lives, but because our sciences haven't been able to reach a ''solid''(?) conclusion on this, we eliminated Him and chose to focus our energies in obtaining material goods, and forms of entertainment that allow us to forget, even for brief moments, how bleak our existence is without God...
Sorry if I strayed from the main point.