Enlightenment

Q: You know how they keep talking about achieving enlightenment and truth? Well, I just had a passing thought that perhaps the entire purpose of being on Earth for us is to achieve enlightenment so that we can escape our cycle of reincarnation and go to heaven where we can spend all eternity kissing Buddha's 2500 year old a@#. 

A: Well I do not know what enlightenment do they want us to achieve. Enlightenment of what. They keep talking of doing good and being great leaving desire and physical pleasures, why what for. They ask it in the name of god. Now I ask why would god give us all these senses of pleasure and pain when he wanted us to renounce them in the first place.

 Re-incarnation is a theory just like there are many theories, Buddha says that there is sufferings in this world and the cause of this suffering is desire. Is freedom from this suffering not itself a desire for peace/pleasure.. name it yourself. I would as why deny it yourself. The only thing that makes us human is all these desires and attachment. No matter what happens a person will always be more passionate than detached. Selflessness can only exist to a point. 

The thing most dear to man is his life and to him he can at most give that up. On the other hand love has no limits, he may want to own everything and there is no limit to one love as it is as big as the cosmos. This is what makes us human and it is our inherent characteristic perhaps. This greed, passion and attachment are the things which will always be greater than any kind of detachment, selflessness or altruism. 

 Now to refute the concept of heaven. Every religion in the planet who believes in heaven and hell says that the body "remains" here and that one's spirit goes to the heaven. Now If you consider the concept of heaven and hell you will learn that all the pleasures and tortures of heaven and hell respectively are those of the physical nature. Now why is this, it is because heaven and hell have been conceptualized by men of flesh and blood. 

They have not known any kind of pleasure or torture that can be inflicted upon one's soul. Some religion preaches in heaven you will get 72 virgins(Islam),others says there are angels(several). In hell a "sinner" will be hanged upside-down with his head dipped in a pool of boiling oil etc. and even bigger horrors inflicted on one's soul, while these are the tortures of body which is left behind after death and is soon to be burned or buried. 

These are some very obvious flaws, as you see that religion has been invented by men(women) in the first place.

 Something else(may be irrelevant here) Humans are too insignificant when you think of the cosmos. Have you ever thought how large the universe is and how small Earth is relatively. The insignificance of Earth is itself insignificant. Who would miss if earth were to disappear just like a speck of dust cleaned from your floor. 

Purpose of our being on earth can not be determined it is not a mathematical problem as it was not certain that human were the ones who would evolve.

Evolution has merely favored humans before the others. There was no definite plan as there is no definite possibility of some God creating the universe. If there is such a thing as a God then he/she has failed miserably if you look at Earth.