However, I  believe in love that  transcends everything.I  believe in  doing the  right thing, not  walking away from the pain of others,  speaking  for those who cannot speak, merely because it’s the  right  and moral thing  to do,not  because  doing  so will get  me into someplace  called  ‘heaven’.

But, will I see my loved ones again?   Gosh, I  hope  so, and I  can’t help thinking,  as we   get closer  and closer   to  understanding   things  like  quantum  physics, there is Something  there. What, I don’t know.  As  a previous  poster  stated,  when the time comes for me to go, it’ll be  too   late to come back and let people know. 

Still and all, I remember this thought, and for the life of me, I can’t  remember where I heard this, but the  story goes that a scientist was climbing a mountain..At  the same time a theologian  was climbing  a mountain. When  they   got  to the top they found that they had arrived , the both of them, in  the same place.

Who knows?  One of the few things I DID hear  from a cleric that I accepted was this:  Whatever is there,  we , probably, would not understand it anyway, so it is best to be  about living our life here  on earth,  doing unto others  as we would have done to us.  

My cousins to this day, as adults, still claim that they saw their recently departed Grandmother sitting on the chest at the end of their beds.  One woke up before the other, and then they both were awake and saw her together.  They immediately told their mother.

My husbands grandmother tells the story of having either a vivid dream or a half awake experience of seeing her son in the military walking towards her while she lay in her bed.  He sat on the side of her bed next to her and told her that he loved her.    A few days later she received the news that he had been killed in a training accident on the same day as her dream. 

Personally I am very mathematically minded and believe in fractals - a fractal is a series of things that resemble each other in similar structures:  trees, brocolli; rivers and streams, veins and capillaries.  Universe, galaxies, solar systems, atoms, neutrons and protons.  Ferns have fronds, and each frond has leaves, in the shape of the fern, but smaller.

See the fern picture here:

http://classes.yale.edu/fractals/Panorama/Nature/NatFracGallery/Gallery/RealFern.gif 

I think we humans are the smaller scale fractals of a higher being, made in His and Her image  - creating our own creations, in our own images, as Creators ourselves.

I also don’t believe in "death" but rather our consciousness will shift from this life to the next, but we will retain our personalities, and affections for each other.    I also believe in the eventual resurrection for everyone. 

I have no existential fear of death - a fear of immense suffering in life, even if just a short period before death, yes, but not of death itself.

Now if you’re asking about the nature of faith…

I read a great book recently. I picked it up because I’d always wondered about how military chaplains justify their service positions. The author’s experience is definitely a worthwhile read. Most of his comments and observations are applicable to all instances of personal challenge.

Faith Under Fire: An Army Chaplain’s Memoir by Roger Benimoff and Eve Conant

My Catholic childhood gave me solace when I  just knew that my Meme was up there with the stars.She must have been the nice shiny one just beaming for me.

In adulthood I left organized religion altogether and tried to be a spiritual being.Trying to sort it all out. 

Lately in my golden years I start to believe that everything was and is a fantasy and life is here, it is what it is. So deal with it, no fairy tales, no Santas, no angels. All I truly believed with my heart and soul is leaving me. I wish it would not be so but there it is.

I remember once, toward the end of his life, hearing my father say to his minister, "I’m not sure I can believe in the idea of heaven, but I can definitely believe in hell." OK, Dad was maybe a mix of dour Scot and existentialist, but I think I get what he meant! I would love to believe that there is a heaven comprised of light and warmth, where we will be reunited with those we loved in life (including our dear pets!). I would love to believe that exists. But … I think for me what exists is the heaven of memory of loved ones. And the fact that as long as even one person remembers, a soul is not "gone" or "dead" - heaven is the memory we leave in the minds of others - and so is hell.

(But I’ll keep my options open. Life is a foxhole, and I’m not quite brave enough to be the atheist in it! There IS a spirit, and in all its beauty and complexity, that’s what I believe in. The spirit goes on. Heaven? Or hell? That’s up to us.)

Heaven is a brilliant concept. How else to keep sinners in line and pay for indulgences. If there is no reward at the end of life, then why adhere to certain rules? Why blow yourself up if waiting for you are not tens of virgins and paradise forever? Of course, along with heaven there was hell with its promise of fiery flames licking your poor body ad infinitum. If there wasn’t the concept of heaven and hell two of the greatest works in literature might not have been written: Milton’s, "Paradise Lost" and Dante’s "Divine Comedy." Without the concept of heaven millions of people whose lives were/are insufferable cling to the belief that at least they are "going to a better place" when they die. Human beings, like other creatures in the animal kingdom, are survivors. But unlike the other creatures, humans want to transcend their survival and live in some utopia forever. It’s difficult to conceive of our death––the nothingness of it. So much easier to believe in a heaven. I, myself, am satisfied with earthly things and love the idea of my ashes mingling with the soil in a place I treasured long ago on a lake that I always think of as my first  Eden.

Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden.

                          –––––––––John Milton 

This is one of those thread topics that I will not read the other posters’ posts as I’m fairly sure of the content, and either you believe or you don’t.

Those who do will be beyond themselves to convince those (of us) who don’t that they’re (we’re) wrong, and in being wrong it’ll cost them (us) dearly post mortem. Those (of us) who don’t will be stating their (our) position (as did the OP), realizing as they (we) do that our belief system has absolutely nothing to do with biological reality.