Ever since man obtained the power to think, he has been looking for ways to escape his present circumstances and go somewhere more pleasant, where life is easier and infinitely more satisfying. If there is one thing that has not changed from prehistoric times to the present day, it is that we are not satisfied with the present. When life was primitive and it was a struggle to even feed oneself, and one had to constantly guard against being eaten by beasts in the jungles, man was not satisfied. Today, food is assured for most, we are safe and secure in our houses, shielded from other animals and the elements of nature, and yet we are not satisfied. The primitive man, with his primitive tools, could not accomplish much and naturally wanted outside help from someone more powerful than him to obtain things that he himself could not. Today, our sciences and arts have developed greatly. We have much more than our ancestors, yet we are not satisfied. The reason is that desires are infinite, but fulfilment is finite. Even today, we pray to higher powers to grant us things that we cannot provide for ourselves. If we cannot have them in this world, at least let us have them in the next.
Our constant and undying dissatisfaction with our present circumstances is the cause behind the timeless appeal of heaven. The idea has been there ever since man learnt to imagine things beyond what he saw, and it has never lost its appeal. Correspondingly, the opposite idea of hell has also been around forever to scare us. We may believe in Jesus or Allah or Jehovah or Ram; it makes no difference. We want a comfortable afterlife. For that, we are willing to suffer the present life; we are even willing to make the present a lot worse, in hopes of a good future. Once the hope of moving someday to Mars appears in our mind, we become more willing to trash the beautiful planet we already live on. We are like lost travellers in a desert who keep running after a mirage of an oasis with plentiful water and, in the process, waste even the meagre supplies they have and end up in a worse state than before. We would be much better served if we accepted that our present is all we have and tried to improve it, whatever we can. It is futile to ask for a heaven. We have the means to make it right where we are. Our actions can make our world a little bit better, a little more like heaven, or they can make it a little bit worse, a little more like hell.