A train of thought...

This is more a train of thought rather than anything else so don't expect any answers, and hello btw ^-^.

It seems to me that the greatest question in life is not actually 'what is the meaning of life?' but rather 'what is the meaning of death?', maybe they're the same question deep down? But I find myself questioning the reason why we have to die and what happens next, rather than what is the meaning of me being here in the first place.

Is death a means to control humanity?
According to the bible we used to live to be much older, hundreds of years old, so why don't we anymore? Maybe aging is a type of survival mechanism built in to all life on this planet, if humans had never stopped living to 300 years old we would be more or less extinct now from chewing through the worlds resources. Of course the development of pathogens and other antagonists of life are to blame I guess, but it's still worth pondering over.
Maybe I've just been reading too much Logan's Run (if you haven't seen the film or read the book I recommend it).

Which kind of leads me to that in effect, we are designed to die.
Is that why we find the need to believe that this life must continue after death? I guess it's selfish in a way, we've been given this amazing life and yet we still ask for more, as if this life isn't good enough. Take the life of a butterfly who would be lucky to live to be a year old, I wonder if it ponders how long it will exist? Whether or not there is an afterlife?

To my knowledge not once in the bible does God or Jesus ever condemn any man or woman to hell, even Lucifer will be redeemed one day and be granted homeage in heaven. So why should an afterlife be any different to the world we live in?
Hell this world is hardly perfect, but all the daily horrors are horrors we have brought upon ourselves.
Unless this world is our Purgatory; a place between heaven and hell where we must first be purified of our sin before entering the embrace of God.

I think the mystery of death is what makes life so beautiful, on one hand you've got the ambition to make the most out of this life because it could the only life you get, but in the other hand you've got afterlife, and the idea that the way you live your life here could determine your fate for the rest of eternity.
One of the beautiful things in life is that when we find out the answer to this mystery, it well be our knowledge alone, not for the media to control and sell to us.

A question; if there is a heaven, and if it is the utopia as it is described, who are we in heaven? Are we the person we were when we died, when we were 5 years old, when we were in our prime years or what? The answer that we are simply ourselves in heaven doesn't make sense to me, we change so much in this lifetime that our identity when we young often hardly resembles the identity and persona that we progress (or regress) into throughout our lives.

One thing I dislike is when people believe they understand what happens once we die, if so, they understand life, which is bullocks, that's like the christians and preachers that claim to understand God. Go read the fuckin' Book of Job and tell me you understand God again.

I don't want to turn this into a discussion about the validity of God being omnipotent and omniscient thought so I'll stop here for now. Maybe I'll continue it later.