Imagine you end up as God’s architect. Heaven and hell need refurbishment from time to time. You cannot offer the same facilities to Medieval peasants and today’s office workers and shop attendants. God is quite sensible about all this, and your job is quite open-ended. After all, you know your customers, whereas God is a bit sketchy about life’s petty details. You are led to understand that you are not the first in God’s employ; some great artists held your post in the past. As for the budget, it is negotiable, but here you are dealing with God’s own work, and you quickly get a feeling there is hardly any time left for foolish things. And here is my question: would you not come up with something very much like what we already have here on earth? Would you not focus your energies on a few finishing touches to the world that works pretty well already—heaven and hell intricately intertwined?

Addendum (November 17, 2003)

Two Harvard economists, Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary, have recently written a paper about religion and economic growth.[1] They examine data from some sixty countries to determine whether there is any connection between the two, and which way causation works. Their most surprising conclusion is that beliefs in heaven and hell are good for economic growth. Of the two, fear of hell is more powerful by far. The economists therefore argue that religion works through beliefs rather than practice. In other words, going to church does not matter very much. Returning to the original piece, the research by Barro and McCleary suggests that the world we live in is indeed pretty close to perfect, economic growth and all. Here and now, heaven and hell are very much intertwined, but hell leads by a wide margin. All that is needed are a few finishing touches, as I have already argued.

Footnote

1. NBER Working Paper No. 9682, 2003, Washington, D.C.