I remember the day I got into a deep debate with a hell-fire and brimstone over zealous preacher about that song. He went on and on about blasphemy for saying "There's no heaven". And I had to explain that the entire quotation is "IMAGINE there's no heaven." IMAGINE. As in "allow your brain to think about the possibility." That heated debate went on for almost an hour.

Nobody said there's no heaven. The lyric just said "consider the possibility" that there's no heaven. How would that change your thinking? WOULD IT change your thinking? Would you act any differently if you thought there was no heaven? And what about people like me who do not believe in a god or an afterlife? What does "heaven" mean to me? And if "hell" is supposed to be the anti-heaven option for that afterlife, and I don't believe in heaven, then logic follows that I also don't believe in hell. The idea of a heaven or a hell does not dictate my ability to know right from wrong. That is innate and instilled into people by their role model. I don't need some ancient book of stories passed down through centuries and reinterpreted and translated again and again and again. The things that the bible claims to have happened would have happened in a time where there was not yet any form of writing to commit things to paper. These are all stories "grandpa" passed down. SO how can you ask people to base their life on a book that may contain nothing but fiction?

And that kind of discussion went on for an hour.