I've been studying Christianity a little. There are two reasons:

1. Study the effect Christianity has on the world.
2. Find out if the Christian beliefs that I am exposed to are in fact the way that most Christians believe.

Number one is a doozy, but I got some great info on Number two after the first few pages of The Next Christendom by Phillip Jenkins. Jenkins draws a great distinction between what he refers to as "Northern Christianity", or European-influeced, and everyone else in Africa, South America and Asia. The burgeoning Christian populations are growing fast and largely ignored by mainstream Evangelistic media and academia.

I don't know what to make of this, apart from the fact that what I know as a "Christian", a white person, will not be accurate as I grow older. The majority will still be in Europe and America, but these other populations will no doubt rise up and enforce their viewpoint on us.

So, back to Number two. Christianity, when compared to other things that people consider important, is unique in that it talks extensively about death and what happens afterward. The Christian views on death are the most powerful aspect of the religion, and why most are attracted to it.

Of course, my view on death is that consciousness ends the same way everything else does, by merging into a larger whole. Eventually this larger whole is split by some process, and more consciousness is born of the same stuff that ours once was. This viewpoint resonates with my logic because it is circular, everything else in nature goes by cycles.

The Christian view on death is very contrary to this logic, it dictates that consciousness is created and travels on a linear path from birth to death, then spends eternity in death. This viewpoint is very anthrocentric.

Humans have a need to delineate differences in the vast wash of matter and energy that we walk through every day. There is very little physical difference between a pillow and a rock and some air, but our brains draw lines around these objects and show the variances that matter to us. And only the variances that matter to us.

It is this need to delineate that gave rise to a linear view of consciousness, which is of course not limited to Christianity. The problem with having such a linear view is that the world is not linear, it is cyclical. To assume that one can change anything and that it has no chance of eventually returning to its original state is a fallacy. But the Christian viewpoint states that the world is static, which leads to fallacious assumptions about the environment and what we can and can't do to it.

My theory about Hashem's means to a (fri)end is more consistent with the natural order and doesn't have the side effect of damaging the environment. The "goes around, comes around" message is vital to understanding the human condition, that we are here to improve upon ourselves as much as possible before death, and to cultivate the multiverse to teach us.