Heaven..

Most religions promise an afterlife after death.. just wanted to know people's thoughts ont he whole concept of an afterlife.

Just before we die we see a tunnel with a white light at the end.. the decent to heaven?

Well what is heaven? Is it a new community where you move in as it were? The amount of people 'up there' would be absolutely huge.. OR (IMO) do we go back into our own reality (similar to ghosts) and basically live like we did before (similar to the Sixth Sense)?

Do we keep our physical form or apperance? Or go up as we would like to remembered? Or just be an invisible energy source still holding memories?

What about animals? Are animals in heaven? Even all the deadly creatures and dinosaurs and the like?
(I sound like a young child visting Sunday school for the first time!!)

Is this thread in the right topic?

This is an interesting topic right here.

Just before we die we see a tunnel with a white light at the end.. the decent to heaven?

Yeah, most religions believe that the 'tunneling effect' we see before losing conciousness is the decent into heaven.
However there have been tests with astronaughts to see how much G-forces they can wdthstand before blacking out.
All the astronaughts claimed to see the light/tunnel.
After this was investigated, it was found that this is simply caused by the sudden rush of blood away from the brain.
HOWEVER:
If your truely interested in the topic...
you should look into the writtings of "Eric W. Weisstein".
He brings up some good points on the physics of (for lack of better words) "travelling to the next plane of existance".

As for your question on other people's opinion on the topic, (and your other questions about animals in heaven) i cant give you a straight answer on my opinion, as personally, im an Omnist.
(So I would have to talk about quantum physics and the conciousness.

Its a hard question to answer really because no one knows if it actually exists. All we have is the religious effort to try and explain it (and very poorly might I add) and the extra additions by some hopeful and disillusioned people. That being we all live forever in perfect harmony and get to play bingo with jesus and poker with god on a saturday night, or it might be Monty Python style with it being Christmas every day - what a place that would be eh?
Other problems arise in that if you were disabled on Earth then would you still have the disability? Or if your child died at 2 years old when you were 20 and then you died at 90 having married 3 times because the previous wives died, when you got to heaven what wife would you get and would your child still be 2? There are many such dilemmas about heaven.

G

If you see the white light when your on your death bed in hospital...its probably when the doctor opens one of your eyelids and shines a torch into your eyeball to see the pupil react...

Personally I believe the body is vehicle, the brain is the engine, the mind is the steering wheel, and the soul is the driver.... You CAN step out of a car and continue your life... So afterlife....most likely..just another level of existance, whether its heaven, only if its a better existance than the current one

Merger