" short, the ideas of the afterlife that so many billions of people in our world have inherited emerged over a long period of time as people struggled with how this world can be fair and how God or the gods can be just. Death itself cannot be the end of the story. Surely all people will receive what they deserve. But this is not what people always thought. It was a view that Jews and Christians came up with over a long period of time as they tried to explain the injustice of this world and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. "

― Bart D. Ehrman , Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife