One popular notion that you see in movies and TV and hear people talk about is that you can pick your own heaven. When you die, you end up doing the thing that gave you the most pleasure on Earth. But there’s no religion that I know of that allows this to happen. Is there one?
In 13 weeks, when I get my graduate degree… 
Seems like most religions condemn people to hell for doing the things that give them the most pleasure on Earth.
Seems like most religions condemn people to hell for doing the things that give them the most pleasure on Earth.[/quote]
True. And there seems to be much better descriptions of Hell in literature.
And why is all the good-tasting food so bad for us?
Seems like most religions condemn people to hell for doing the things that give them the most pleasure on Earth.[/quote]
From that witty misanthrope Ambrose Bierce:
[quote]HEAVEN, n.
A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.[/quote]
[quote]HADES, n.
The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live.
Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a majority vote on translating the Greek word “Aides” as “Hell”; but a conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it.
At the next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement: “Gentlemen, somebody has been razing ‘Hell’ here!” Years afterward the good prelate’s death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.[/quote]
[quote]NIRVANA, n.
In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it.[/quote]
[quote]RELIGION, n.
A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.[/quote]