Wishful Thinking

Consider a person who is himself a neurosurgeon, and due to some odd illness, he has to undergo clinical comma. During the coma he has visions of a paradise full of angels, palaces, birds chirping and cherubic kids. Clearly, he is in heaven. It does not matter whether he had those visions while he was in coma, or while he was entering that state of coma, or while he was coming out. What matters is that what he saw was a function of his religious upbringing in this earthly life, and what he saw was what he wanted to see. This is a result of his wishful thinking.

Consider another person. For some odd reason he wants to create violence of a huge magnitude. In return for that he has the promise of rewards of an otherworldly life. That no matter how much his past life was messed up by events over which he had no control, he has a bright chance of resting in peace in a heaven. Whether or not he will go to heaven will depend upon what happens to him once he is dead. His motivations have, however, ensued from wishful thinking.

Consider yet another person. He saw all the mess that real world is and grew up to become an agnostic. He studied neuroscience and developed a theory that heaven and hell exist only but in the mind. That when people die they live in an eternal oblivion. That a dead person is as good as an unborn person. That the idea that if you do good deeds, you go to heaven, and that if you do bad deeds, you go to a hell, is a product of wishful thinking. His desire for there being nothing after death is also wishful thinking.