Taken literally, Heaven is the continuation of existence “after” our “life” ends. More succinctly, Heaven is the eternal continuation of our species. To be part of it, you must make your contribution toward that aim. You do this indirectly by doing your part to ensure that future generations have the best chance for survival. You do this directly by having children of your own. Your genetics are you, therefore your children are you. But they’re not exactly you. As Darwin discovered, each generation has its own mark of random genetic variance. That genetic variance is what makes your children distinct, and it is added onto you and your spouse’s unique genetic variance and the all the genetic variance of every ancestor you and your spouse descended from going back millions of years to the first organism. Could this be why Heaven is represented as being inhabited by all your ancestors who have died?

Conversely, Hell could be described as the consequence for inhibiting the survival of the species. By failing to procreate, you remove yourself from the collective genetic sequence of humanity. By inhibiting successful procreation by others, either indirectly by engaging in corrupt behavior or directly by murder, you start down the path to hell, both in terms of the worldly consequences of your actions (landing in jail, alienating loved ones, falling into civil war, etc.) and the evolutionary consequences of pushing the species closer to extinction. By killing yourself, you not only remove yourself from the gene pool, but you are also actively rejecting a life that was made possible by the combined perserverance of every single organism you are descended from going back to the beginning of life on Earth. Things may seem hard in your life, but there’s a good chance they were harder for one of your millions of ancestors who chose not to kill themselves.

As such, heaven and hell are metaphors for survival and extinction respectively, but they are also metaphors for the conditions we can experience in our earthly lives. Heaven is what could be described as the ideal life here on Earth. Heaven is different for everyone, but always explained in worldly terms. For me, heaven is the presence of the friends and family whom I love, the freedom to explore the world and connect with nature, the ability to pursue meaningful careers and hobbies, and the privilege to watch my children grow up and surpass the ideal I’m trying my best to represent for them. Hell is also explained in worldly terms. The classic Victorian depiction of hell involves fire, brimstone, pitchforks, and demons, but it falls far short of the real world examples we’ve recorded throughout history. The concentration camps of Nazi Germany, the gulags of Communist Russia, the streets of Rwanda during its civil war, the shores of Normandy on D-Day, the work camps of North Korea; these weren’t merely approximations to hell — they were hell. In other words, not only do heaven and hell exist, there are people there right now, as you read this, in the physical world.

Religion prescribes rules for entering Heaven and avoiding Hell, but I do not believe they are not human inventions but universal natural laws of nature governing behavior that evolved over millions of years and must be discovered. Like the rules that dictate the behaviors of individual ants in a larger colony, they’re the rules that when followed give us as individuals and as a species the best possible chance for eternal survival. Why is it then that some people seem to get away with breaking a lot of the rules and still end up being successful from a material and an evolutionary perspective? It seems unfair and contradictory. From a Darwinist perspective, however, it makes a lot more sense.

We are unable to follow all the rules all the time. Were we able to, we would be animals, not humans, much like Adam before eating from the Tree of Knowledge. It is our free will that gives us the ability to pick and choose which of the fundamental rules for living we follow.